Principals

1. Golden reverses on gun control
2. Gallup: Congress takes a hit
3. Two censures, one expulsion
4. China tests U.S. power
5. White House GDP victory lap
6. Future for Ukraine aid
7. Biden’s new challenger

PDB: Why Johnson’s ability to influence 2024 results is limited

Biden met with Johnson … U.S. hits Iran-linked sites in Syria with airstrikes … Washington Post: Manhunt continues for Maine gunman

— edited by Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann and Morgan Chalfant

Golden asks forgiveness on guns

During a somber press conference appearance on Thursday, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine said he would work to pass a national assault weapons ban in response to the mass shooting that has left 18 dead in his hometown of Lewiston, and apologized for opposing such laws in the past. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure,” he said, adding that he would work with “any colleague” to push ahead new legislation. “To the families who lost loved ones, and to those who have been harmed, I ask for forgiveness and support as I seek to end these terrible shootings,” he said. It was a surprising turn given both the dug-in nature of the U.S. gun control debate and the fact that Golden, one of the House’s most moderate Democrats, represents a rural district that Donald Trump carried twice. He was one of just five members of his party to vote against an assault weapons ban that passed the House last year, and could face a tough reelection fight in a state with historically loose gun laws. Speaking at the same event, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine didn’t seem ready for a similar change of heart. “I think it is more important that we ban very high-capacity magazines,” she said when asked if she was ready to support limits on assault weapons.

Gallup: Congressional approval plummets

It turns out Americans don’t like it when Congress deposes its speaker and then repeatedly fails to choose a new one for three weeks. Speaker Mike Johnson is taking over the gavel with lawmakers at their lowest level of public approval since 2017, according to a new survey from Gallup. Only 13% of adults say they approve of the way Congress is handling its job, versus 86% who disapprove. Things were already trending downward last month, when Congressional approval hit 17% amid a heated standoff between various House Republican factions over government funding that precipitated then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. If it’s any comfort, they’re still doing at least slightly better than the record-low 9% approval that the 113th Congress hit after the 2013 shutdown. Government funding runs out in less than a month, though, so they may not want to get too complacent.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s first test: Two censures and an expulsion

One more reason those numbers are so low? Well, Johnson’s first 10 days as speaker could include a vote to expel one member, a censure vote for another, and yet another censure vote in response, Kadia Goba reports. New York Republicans introduced a resolution on Thursday afternoon to boot fellow Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. after a superseding indictment this month put the number of federal charges against him at 23, including allegations he used donors’ credit cards to steal cash. The state’s GOP has been trying to push Santos out all year as they work to preserve their midterm gains. While Santos cryptically tweeted that “everything has an end in life” late Wednesday night, he insisted on Thursday afternoon that he was “entitled to due process” and would not resign — and even invited Semafor into his office to dispel rumors he was packing up his things. Johnson sounded inclined to let Santos slide on Hannity Thursday night, saying Republicans have “no margin for error” with a four-seat majority and that “we have to allow due process to play itself out” given that there’s no criminal conviction.

At the same time, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. introduced a censure resolution against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. denouncing her criticism of Israel and support for civil disobedience protests in a House office building (or as Green put it, “insurrection”). Tlaib called it “deeply Islamophic” and Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. responded with her own long censure resolution condemning various inflammatory statements from Greene — including her notorious 2018 social media post blaming nonexistent space lasers controlled by the Rothschild family, a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracies, for California wildfires.

China raises tensions in the Pacific

With Washington — and the Pentagon — focused on Ukraine and the Middle East, Beijing is raising the temperature in the South China Sea, Jay Solomon writes. China’s Coast Guard and so-called maritime militia have attempted to block the Philippine navy from resupplying the Second Thomas Shoal. American naval vessels sailed to the shoal in recent days in response. And the Pentagon is publicly warning Beijing that the U.S. can manage three geopolitical crises at once: “The United States is a global power. And that means we can deliver effects and execute our deterrence responsibilities across the globe,” Admiral John Aquilino said last week.

The economy is on a hot streak

The Biden administration is doing some crowing about the latest round of U.S. GDP data, which showed the economy growing at a 4.9% annual rate this summer — the fastest pace since 2021. “It’s a good, strong number and it shows an economy that’s doing very well,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Bloomberg, adding that the country appeared to be on track to beat inflation without a recession. “We have what looks like a soft landing,” she said. Meanwhile, the White House is out with a new memo that lightly trolls some big-name House Republicans — including “speaker slayer” Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. — for celebrating when the economy reached 4% growth for one quarter under Trump. “Oddly, these same House Republicans have been exceedingly quiet about the nearly 5 percent growth rate last quarter,” it states. As is often the case, former Obama economist Jason Furman is offering a word of caution amid the celebration: He points out that the U.S. clocked 4% growth just five months before entering a recession in 2001. The economy, in other words, can turn on a dime. “Not predicting recession. But not predicting no recession either,” he tweeted.

Johnson says he’ll split up Israel and Ukraine funding

Speaker Mike Johnson says the House will consider additional assistance for Ukraine and Israel separately, bucking the White House’s request that the two issues be linked in a broader funding package that also addresses border security and Taiwan. “I told the staff at the White House today that our consensus among House Republicans is we need to bifurcate those issues,” Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview airing Thursday evening. His comments came after a meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and budget officials at the White House. At the same time, Johnson, who has personally voted against Ukraine assistance as recently as last month, said lawmakers wouldn’t “abandon” Ukraine but would insist there is more “accountability” for funds supporting Kyiv’s war effort. “We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it would stop there,” Johnson said.

Splitting Ukraine aid, which has become one of the more divisive issues in the Republican Party, from Israel assistance will complicate the path forward for the tens of billions of dollars President Biden has asked Congress to approve for Kyiv. Supporters of Ukraine, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have backed the White House’s plan to link all four national security funding requests. “Ironically, I agree on principle with the Republicans that you shouldn’t have to merge it all together,” Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee with Johnson, told Semafor Thursday, before Johnson’s comments, “but when a whole bunch of them take political votes that are not based on the interest of our national security, at the end of the day it’s better to put it all together and get it through.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Dean Phillips takes on President Biden

Barring a last-minute change of heart — which would strand the Dean for President van we spotted in Concord, N.H. last night — Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. will enter the Democratic primary today, filing in person for the New Hampshire ballot. Phillips, 54, has described his run as a rescue mission, to spare the party and President Joe Biden a “catastrophic” defeat. Polling all year has found a majority of Democrats opposed to Biden seeking re-election in his 80s. But elected Democrats are frustrated with Phillips, who they view as a distraction from their effort to sell voters on Biden’s record. “There’s absolutely no desire for this to happen,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told Semafor this week. “I don’t understand why he’s doing this.” Biden’s own campaign is not filing for the New Hampshire ballot, citing the new Democratic primary schedule that puts South Carolina’s contest first, but local Democrats say he can and will win as a write-in candidate. Phillips has ignored the party’s three other early contests, with Democrats in Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada telling Semafor that the congressman never reached out to them about ballot access. (The deadline for Nevada’s ballot has already passed.)

— David Weigel

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Republicans are worried about keeping fundraising up this cycle, and a complicating factor to that is Speaker Mike Johnson. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson, who met with Johnson on Wednesday after his election, said many donors “are very curious about who Mike Johnson is” but insisted Republicans have a “great opportunity, because a lot of donors want to get in the room and see him and meet him.”

Playbook: In his remarks today announcing a presidential campaign, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. will criticize President Biden on border security, crime, and defense spending. “We fund more for fighting than we do for feeding,” he will say. “We’ve spent billions sending our soldiers to fight in foreign lands and STILL haven’t fixed the failures in Flint.”

The Early 202: Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who just returned from a bipartisan trip to Israel, said that Israel is “not making as much progress” as he would hope minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza.

White House

• The White House condemned “antisemitic messages being conveyed on college campuses” and student groups that “call for the annihilation of the state of Israel” after a string of high-profile protests. One incident occurred at nearby George Washington University — protesters projected messages like “Glory To Our Martyrs” and “Free Palestine From The River To The Sea” onto a library named after a Jewish benefactor. — JTA
• President Biden met briefly with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries when they came to the White House for a meeting on the national security supplemental yesterday.
• Biden’s job approval rating is down to 37%, according to Gallup, and declined 11 percentage points among Democrats in a single month.

Congress

• The House passed a sweeping energy and water package in a party line vote, an early victory for Speaker Mike Johnson. The bill, which stands no chance of passing the Senate, would deliver deep cuts to President Biden’s climate agenda.
• Conservatives believe that Johnson will move forward with a Biden impeachment and that it’s “just a matter of time.” — Politico
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer filed cloture on Jack Lew’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, teeing up a vote for next week.
• Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. is hosting the third annual “Hart Halloween” on Monday afternoon for staff, reporters, and their families. The event will have treats and participating senators will pose for a photo with the kid attendees. Cassidy’s office says half of the Senate offices are participating.
• Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had their first meeting.
• Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. is retiring after 18 years in Congress.

Outside the Beltway

A federal judge in Georgia ruled that the state’s congressional and state maps must be redrawn ahead of the 2024 election, finding that they discriminate against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats could pick up a seat if the decision holds.

Foreign Policy

• A group of Ukrainians including Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of parliament who heads a commission that tracks foreign military assistance, spent the past few days in Washington taking meetings in the House, Senate, Pentagon, and USAID.
• Former Chinese premier Li Keqiang died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 68, according to Chinese state media.
• The Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting Hamas.

Polls

Sen. Bob Menendez’s, D-N.J. approval rating sank to 8% among New Jersey adults, according to a Stockton University poll.

Courts

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. pleaded guilty in D.C. to a misdemeanor for falsely triggering a fire alarm. NY1 obtained footage for the first time of him pulling the alarm.

2024

Former Senate candidate Blake Masters is running for Congress, seeking to replace retiring GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko in Arizona’s 8th congressional district. Former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is endorsing former attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh in the race.

Big Read

Speaker Johnson’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election are so far the most widely discussed element of his biography. But his ability to influence the next election would be limited, according to a Reuters analysis by Andy Sullivan and Andrew Goudsward. That’s in part due to a bipartisan law Congress passed last year in response to Jan. 6 that raised the threshold to force a vote on election challenges to one-fifth of each chamber’s members. “The speaker has a very limited and almost nonexistent role in Electoral College process,” Michael Thorning, an election-law expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Reuters.

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, according to data from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: A group of Republican senators introduced a standalone bill for Israel aid in order to split it off from Ukraine assistance.

What the Right isn’t reading: The Fulton County District Attorney’s office has discussed possible plea deals with at least six other people charged alongside former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election subversion case, CNN reported.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Editor-at-Large: Steve Clemons

Reporters: Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Troy Carter is a Democratic congressman from Louisiana.

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