Mike Johnson Used Trump to His Full Advantage This Week

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that sees how auto loans for American-made cars could soon be tax-deductible and has preordered a dozen new Ford F-150s. You’d be losing money not to!

That’s just one benefit from the megabill that the House passed this week; downsides include, potentially, having less food. Meanwhile, we had hot parliamentary developments in the Senate, Democrats continued to wrestle with questions of mortality (always the mortality with these guys), and the new MAGA FBI is boring its audience.

The Surge would never bore its audience! That’s why Mr. Electricity himself leads the way.

1.

Mike Johnson

Last week, we thought the lingering problems Speaker Mike Johnson had to resolve in order to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, official title) weren’t all that difficult—but we did doubt he could get it done ahead of his self-imposed deadline of Memorial Day. Conservative spending hawks would surely need another week or two of being pains in the ass before reluctantly signing on. But conservatives were able to get the screams out of their systems in just a few short days, and after an overnight session, Johnson gaveled in passage of the sprawling bill by a 215–214–1 margin early Thursday morning.

What’s in the bill? Well, what isn’t? At its core, it extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts while introducing a few new tax cuts; boosts spending on border security, interior immigration enforcement, and defense; and slashes health care and food benefits for low-income people while eliminating clean-energy subsidies. Big picture? The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the lowest income decile would see a reduction in household resources, while the highest would see an increase. In other words, the rich come out better and the poor come out worse. We’ll find out what changes the Senate has in store, but the House Democrats’ campaign arm has seen all it needs to ahead of the 2026 midterms. In any event—nice hustle, Mike Johnson.

2.

Donald Trump

Now, sure, sure, Johnson may “run” the House, and no doubt his patient approach in dealing with competing factions of windbags kept the process in gear. But the arguing may never have stopped had Trump not entered the process and told everyone to fall in line or he’d ruin their lives. Trump did that on Tuesday morning with a visit to a House Republican meeting.

Despite the blue-state moderates thinking their longtime New Yorker president was on their side in wanting to blow the cap on state and local tax deductions, Trump warned that doing so would only “benefit Democrat governors” who “are destroying our country.” The SALT caucus accepted leaders’ next offer. To the conservatives, meanwhile, his words were: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.” And while the bill does certainly fuck around with Medicaid, the message to the conservatives was to quit fighting for the deeper, structural cuts they couldn’t let go. At a White House meeting the next day, Trump reportedly cursed out the Freedom Caucus chair, Republican Rep. Andy Harris, telling him, “You’re stupid if you vote against this bill.” Harris ultimately voted “present.” Every other Freedom Caucus member voted for the bill when it passed about 12 hours later. It’s been a while since a president had this much power within his own party, and Johnson has used him to his full advantage.

3.

John Thune

A great number of wealthy interests have been relying on Republicans to crack down on a series of strict California emissions standards and its electric vehicle mandate, which the Biden administration allowed to proceed via waivers in 2024. The means for doing this, Republicans hoped, was through use of the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to nix recently passed federal rules by simple majority vote in both chambers—in other words, without being subject to the Senate filibuster. The hitch, though, was that the Government Accountability Office determined that the waivers didn’t qualify as “rules” under the CRA, an assessment that the Senate parliamentarian seconded.

Now, to ignore the determination of the Senate parliamentarian is generally understood to be a red line that, if crossed, would erode the legislative filibuster. And we know, from their protestations under Democratic majorities, how Senate Republicans swear to love the filibuster more than their own mothers. But on the other hand … they really don’t like these tree-hugger California car rules! So this week, Senate Republicans, after some persuading by Majority Leader John Thune, shelved the parliamentarian’s counsel and rejected the waivers by simple majority, setting a new precedent that will expand the Senate’s target list of potential “rules” to eliminate by majority vote—as well as open the door to future whittling of the filibuster. Despite Democrats’ fulminations against Republicans’ move as going “nuclear,” we don’t think they’re all that upset in the long run. It gives them a new justification to tear down the filibuster further when they’re in the majority next (in infinity years).

4.

Gerry Connolly

The morning before the House voted on the OBBBA, Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly died from esophageal cancer. The disease moved quickly; Connolly was diagnosed in November. Even just a year ago, Connolly—never at a loss for words—was in fine fighting shape. Until his disease, he had the right combination of cable television presence, understanding of the federal government, and investigative know-how to serve as top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. But by the time he got the job a few months ago, that had all changed. Connolly was always available to reporters, even if he would get mad at their stupid questions. We’ll miss him.

The one-vote margin on the OBBBA the next morning, though, couldn’t help but trigger Democrats’ continued frustration about their aging political class. Connolly is the third House Democrat to die this year, after Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner and Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva. We feel—strongly—that Democrats still wouldn’t have stopped the bill had those three seats been filled; Republicans could’ve both flipped more votes if they’d needed to or could’ve woken up the guy who fell asleep for the vote. Elected Democrats, however, should expect their age, in and of itself, to be cause enough for primary challenges going forward. A great, great deal of Democratic voters have had enough. We wonder why …

5.

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

If you’ve turned on the television to any channel this week, you’ve likely seen Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson being interviewed about their new book Original Sin, which details the cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s declining cognitive condition as he prepared to run for reelection. The Surge is about halfway through and can confirm: Yep, the cognition was indeed declining, and it didn’t start in a particularly great place either. Targets for scorn include what the authors term “the Politburo”—longtime Biden advisers, like Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti—as well as the Biden family and their closest personal aides. Former first lady Jill Biden does not come across well in this book.

Some Democrats are exhausted by the news cycle this book has whipped up, in part because it’s a painful and embarrassing conversation for Democrats, but also because they believe that more attention should be focused on the misdeeds of the current officeholder. The Surge feels that plenty of attention is still being paid to Trump and that the cover-up of Biden’s condition by his family and close advisers was a disgrace. Those who participated in it to protect their own power or careers deserve sharp public accountability to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And it won’t, right? When Trump turns 80 and wanders the National Mall with his pants on his head, telling bystanders he’s “looking for Farrah Fawcett,” Republicans will be honest about what’s going on, yes?

6.

Dan Bongino

If you’re a conspiratorial right-wing streamer paying the bills by promoting snake-oil supplements, and the president of the United States suddenly asks you to serve as deputy director of the FBI, it might at first seem “cool.” Wow, real government power—neat! But once you settle into the job of deputy director of the FBI, with oaths and the need to maintain creditability among staff and support the institution, the responsibilities become kind of a drag. Dan Bongino, the former right-wing media personality turned deputy director of the FBI to whom we’re referring, learned this abruptly this week.

Despite having previously wet his beak trafficking in rumors surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death, Bongino—along with his boss, FBI Director Kash Patel—told Fox host Maria Bartiromo in a joint interview that Epstein’s death had, indeed, been a suicide. “He killed himself,” Bongino said. “I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.” When Bongino reiterated that point on Twitter, he was met with a hearty 9,600 replies (as of now) from former fans who were, well, displeased. Fellow right-wing talkers like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones—perhaps eager to ensure that Bongino doesn’t return as a competitor when his tour of duty is complete—expressed disgust with Bongino’s statement. The optimistic scenario for bringing right-wing conspiracy theorists into government, whether it’s at the Justice Department or at Health and Human Services, is that they have earned the trust to tell their followers that, having reviewed the files, the conspiracies in question are unfounded. This fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of conspiracies, though, which is that it’s more fun and exciting to believe in them instead of in workaday truths.

7.

Vladimir Putin

Trump spoke to the Russian president, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European heads of state this week, and he has come to a sudden realization: He “told European leaders that” Putin “isn’t ready to end the war in Ukraine because he thinks he is winning,” as European officials told the Wall Street Journal. Well, no shit? Now that that’s understood, the question is what path Trump could follow. The first would be to impose higher costs on Russia, perhaps with a new round of sanctions that the Senate is sitting on, to force it to negotiate; the second would be to wash America’s hands of the conflict. Which one seems more likely to prevail out of the MAGA White House? “The Europeans’ takeaway,” the Journal notes, “was that Trump didn’t believe that a near-term peace deal was in the offing and that the war was Europe’s problem.” Maybe he will change his mind again, but that certainly seems like the result Europe should assume going forward. Is this really the entry we’re closing out on for Memorial Day weekend? Guess so.