Outside the Beltway

Speaker Johnson’s Lack of Institutional Ambition

Johnson is acting more as an agent of the president than of the Congress.

Steven L. Taylor · Saturday, March 28, 2026 · 4 comments

Let’s begin with the basics. For over a month now, we have been experiencing a partial government shutdown; specifically, funding for the Department of Homeland Security has been on hold. This is the result of opposition from Democrats as a result of ICE activities, especially in Minneapolis, which included the shooting deaths of two American citizens by ICE. There have been demands by Democrats for changes to ICE procedures. A list can be found here.

The general upshot of all of this is that some parts of DHS continue to function normally, such as ICE, because of funding from the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Other areas, like FEMA, face limited capacity. The most visible problem created by the shutdown is that TSA agents have been working without pay, causing increasing problems at our nation’s airports.

On Friday of this week, at 3 am, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would have funded all of DHS except ICE. This was, on one level, a win for the Democrats, who avoided having to vote to fund ICE, but it was also a loss for them, insofar as none of their demands were met, and the Republicans had a pathway to pass ICE funding without Democratic votes.

So, in simple terms, the entire Senate endorsed a solution that would have relieved the TSA problem and left the Republicans a means to largely get what they wanted, including a possible attempt to use the reconciliation process to try to get some of Trump’s SAVE Act and Iran war funding along for the ride.

Note that it is hardly a surprise that the majority party was the likely winner in this fight.

So, when we all woke up on Friday, it seemed that the pathway to solving the airport problem was nigh.

But, not so fast! In steps Speaker Johnson, who refused to bring the matter to the floor. Via Axios: Johnson calls out GOP Senate over “joke” of a DHS plan. And instead, as Punchbowl News reports, the House passed a stopgap bill to fund everything at current levels and tossed it back to the Senate. Oh, and everyone is going on a two-week recess, so this isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.

The House just passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for 60 days.

But the move by Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team — which doesn’t have the support of Democrats or the Senate — all but ensures the DHS shutdown will drag on for at least the foreseeable future.

The 60-day DHS stopgap passed the House via a 213-203 vote with three Democrats voting with all Republicans. Republicans used a procedural maneuver — “deem and pass” — to pass both the rule governing debate and the underlying bill at the same time.

Of course, the bill is going nowhere in the Senate. It would fall well short of 60 votes, even if the Senate were to return early from its two-week recess. The House is also scheduled to leave tonight for a two-week recess.

Meanwhile, the president has signed an EO to pay TSA agents. The exact legality of this is unclear, as well as the degree to which it does anything more than create a stopgap.

But let’s focus on Johnson’s behavior here.

First, Johnson is asserting a wildly untrue assessment of what happened in the Senate. To wit: “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this on the Senate.”

Here’s the clip.

The absurdity of this claim is off the charts, for at least two reasons.

First, the bill passed the Senate unanimously. Kind of hard to make such an outcome in some Democratic plot.

Second, and more importantly, the minority party in the Senate has no ability to force the chamber to pass a bill if the majority of Senators are in opposition. Yes, a minority can block legislation via the filibuster, but they cannot force a bill to pass.

As such, the dishonest posturing here by Johnson is truly off the charts.

And it is utterly unclear to me how not taking up the measure is “protect[ing] the House.”

Worse, Johnson then went on to defend the notion that Trump’s EO to fund the TSA was the way to go.

Here’s the clip:

Let’s consider this quote: “We are very grateful to have a strong commander in chief in the White House who has taken real leadership. President Trump has already ordered by EO that TSA agents will be paid and that machinery is in process right now.”

This is an utter abdication of Congress that is being endorsed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Johnson is praising the president for going around Congress to find a way to execute their constitutional power of the purse. It is publicly surrendering congressional prerogatives to the executive. It is further acquiescence to Trump’s authoritarian proclivities (which is a crazy thing to do before another No Kings Day).

Indeed, Johnson’s phrasing is telling. Trump’s constitutional role as Commander-in-Chief is utterly irrelevant to this matter, strong or otherwise. But it is striking to me that Johnson continues to act as an obsequious minion of Trump, rather than the holder of a constitutionally-mandated office in charge of one chamber of Congress.

When I saw these clips, my mind went, yet again, to Federalist 51 and the degree to which Madison’s theory of inter-branch relations has been utterly short-circuited by party politics, and how people like Johnson’s political ambitions are not, as Madison hoped, tied to fortuntes of the branch they serve, but instead to broader partisan forces, many of which are linked to the presidency in ways the Framers did not forsee.

As I wrote in 2019:

We are taught that we have a system of separated powers (legislative, executive, and judicial) that are explicitly designed to check and balance the others. Indeed, each institution is supposed to jealously guard its powers, prerogatives, and privileges. We know this because the Father of the Constitution told us so, dontcha know.

Along those lines, as per Madison:

the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

But, instead of this vision, we have Mike Johnson standing at a podium, praising the president for using a power that belongs to Congress. This is truly stunning.

Without any doubt, this is because Johnson’s interests are connected to Trump, not the constitutional rights of the House, or to his own role as Speaker.

I will note that given that the odds are great that Johnson will not be Speaker in January of 2027, his calculations may be very short-term. But without any doubt, Johnson continues to act far more like he is Trump’s loyal lieutenant, not the head of a separate branch of the federal government. Of course, Johnson may be in denial about the likely outcomes of the midterms, or he is preserving his place in the MAGAsphere in the future. Whatever he is doing, it isn’t jealously protecting the power of the House.

It is important to stress that this is not only some demonstrated aberration from the Framers’ expectations, but it is pure and simple the most significant leader of the legislative branch endorsing greater authoritarian latitude for the president at the expense of the constitutional role of Congress.

See also Don Moynihan: Mike Johnson’s Institutional Betrayal.