Mike Johnson seeks to win over Republican skeptics ahead of House speaker vote: Live

Donald Trump repeatedly insisted throughout last year’s presidential election that the US was suffering from high crime rates, despite that stats indicating the opposite.

That trend has continued, with the number of murders expected to drop for the third year in a row, just as the president-elect launches into a fresh tirade about America being “broken” and “the laughing stock of the world” under Joe Biden.

Here’s more from Kelly Rissman.

Before we concentrate on events on Capitol Hill today, which will get underway in the Senate at noon local time (5pm GMT) with the swearing-in of new members, here’s a little more news from Trumpworld.

Tom Homan told Fox News last night, rather unhelpfully, that he had a “gut feeling” that the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day was connected to the deadly terror attack that occurred hours earlier in New Orleans, despite the FBI saying otherwise.

Pressed by Fox News anchor Sandra Smith on whether he was “privy” to any information proving such a link, Homan acknowledged he was not before saying he felt there were just “too many coincidences” between the two incidents.

Here’s a timely history lesson from CNN’s Manu Raju putting the recent MAGA chaos that saw Kevin McCarthy overthrown and replaced by Mike Johnson in context.

Given the number of Republican holdouts against the incumbent this time, we could see multiple rounds of voting again today.

Former White House communications director Mike Dubke has meanwhile claimed this morning that Johnson’s experiences in the chair in the short time since the McCarthy putsch took place have already turned his hair grey!

Mike Johnson was one of several prominent GOP members out on conservative media yesterday insisting that the Biden administration’s “open borders” policy was the reason for the shocking terror attack on New Orleans on New Year’s Day, overlooking the crucial the fact that the suspect was an American citizen and US Army veteran from Texas.

Thank goodness for Jessica Tarlov for putting the counter-argument (i.e. the truth) on Fox News’s The Five.

Here’s Justin Baragona on how the same network’s initial reporting on the attack inspired a MAGA meltdown.

Donald Trump and his congressional allies could add requirements to welfare programs such as Medicaid, withhold prescription drugs from federal health care coverage, repeal environmental regulations and more in order to reduce federal spending and pay for his new round of tax cuts.

Trump is determined to cut taxes for Americans but doing so means the government will need to cut federal spending elsewhere – or risk raising the national debt by trillions of dollars.

Advisers to Trump, such as the DOGE bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are focused on dramatically reducing federal spending by as much as $2trn.

Their input, along with Republican efforts on the Hill, means that popular federal programs that have expanded under the Biden administration may now face restrictions.

Here’s Ariana Baio on some ideas the GOP have floated to reduce federal spending and pay for Trump’s tax cuts.

You might have expected the president-elect to issue a fresh rallying cry in support of Mike Johnson on social media last night.

That may well come later this morning but, instead, his most recent Truth Social post is this oddball order to Britain to ramp up fossil fuel exploitation and eradicate turbines, continuing his quixotic obsession with the evils of windmills.

Trump did also announce some further nominees to his incoming administration overnight, including new US ambassadors to Spain and the Netherlands and a team to support Scott Bessent at the Treasury.

The president could not resist trolling the opposition by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Republican congresswoman and now party pariah Liz Cheney yesterday as a reward for her serving on the bipartisan House committee that examined the events of January 6 2021 in exhaustive detail.

Johnson was among those leading the GOP outrage brigade, threatening to investigate the investigators as part of his bid for re-election.

House Republicans James Comer, Ronnie Jackson and Byron Donalds all joined Jason Chaffetz on Fox News last night to express their own offense at the gesture.

The House Republican leadership revealed their new rules for the 119th Congress on Wednesday, including a measure making it more difficult to remove the speaker of the House.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander to explain how they’re tightening up the process.

A number of alternative candidates have been mooted should Johnson fail, from the plausible like Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan to the utterly fanciful in the case of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.

Taking questions from reporters at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve, the president-elect insisted the Republican troublemakers would ultimately fall in line but said he would be putting in calls to attempt to force the issue if need be.

We’ll find out later today whether that paid off.

Here’s more from Eric Garcia.