Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s future hold on the speakership is looking tenuous as a government funding bill, tied to MAGA-backed legislation to address the already illegal and “vanishingly rare” phenomenon of noncitizen voting, is expected to fail on Wednesday.

Between opposition from several House Republicans and the Democratic Senate’s staunch opposition to the controversial legislation attached to the spending bill, Johnson’s efforts to pass the package appear futile.

As the House speaker endures this government funding debacle and faces harsh criticisms of his leadership from fellow House Republicans, NOTUS reports that his speakership in the next Congress hangs in the balance, “assuming Republicans hang on to the majority and Johnson even tries to be speaker again.”

Per a report in NOTUS Wednesday, Representative Ralph Norman said that Republican lawmakers hoping to gain the speakership are “jockeying into positions.”

“There’s a lot of members that are frustrated,” Representative Greg Steube told NOTUS last week, when Mike Johnson pulled the package from the House floor as it became clear the votes just weren’t there. “Depending on what the majority looks like in January or after November, I certainly think it’s going to be challenging for him to get 218 on the floor.”

Representative Clay Higgins, who is “sympathetic to Johnson’s efforts” and authored the government funding and noncitizen voting legislation, waxed somewhat poetic about the package and Johnson’s predicament: “Basically, like, the shifting sands of the conference did not ultimately create perhaps the beach that we prefer.… This town is trying to eat that man alive.”

An anonymous lawmaker put it more plainly. “I think he’s cooked.”

The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, doesn’t want Donald Trump anywhere near the town.

At a news conference Tuesday, Mayor Rob Rue said that a visit from the former president and convicted felon would be too much for local authorities to handle as they grapple with the fallout from false rumors about Haitian immigrants capturing and eatings pets, ducks, and geese.

“It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Mayor Rob Rue said, commenting on a report that Trump was planning to visit the town in the near future. Even Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, who visited Springfield Tuesday, said that while a campaign visit from a former president is “generally very, very welcomed,” he had misgivings about a possible Trump visit.

“I have to state the reality, though, that resources are really, really stretched here,” DeWine said. Neither Trump nor his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, have spoken to DeWine about visiting the town, he said.

Trump and Vance have continued to defend their part in spreading and amplifying the conspiracy, with the Republican vice presidential nominee even admitting that he was using the story for political purposes. Trump brought up the story in last week’s presidential debate and refused to back down, even when fact-checked by ABC News moderators.

Responding to Trump’s words at the debate, Rue warned last week that “we don’t need this pushback that is hurting our citizens and hurting our community—I would say that to anybody who would take a mic and say those things.”

Indeed, the rhetoric from the right, led by the former president and his running mate, has led to schools, government buildings, hospitals, and even a local festival receiving violent threats. What Springfield needs is solution and calm, not more political opportunism at the expense of an innocent populace.

Donald Trump may want to take one more geography lesson before he decides to shutter the Department of Education.

During a Fox News town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee routinely mixed up two places that could not be more different: Alaska and Afghanistan.

While speaking about domestic oil reserves and the potential for U.S. energy independence, Trump incorrectly claimed that “we have Bagram” in Alaska—which is, actually, a military base in Afghanistan.

“We were energy independent, we were soon going to be energy dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy. We just have the best,” Trump said. “We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than, all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done.”

But Trump appeared to realize that he had made a mistake, suddenly swapping Bagram for the name of an arctic national wildlife refuge in the Last Frontier known as ANWR.

“Check that one out, Bagram. Check that one out. It’s, it’s—no, think about this: Between Bagram, between—you go to ANWR, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up. We should be—we should have that air base. We should have that oil,” Trump said.

Trump still confusing Bagram airbase and ANWR.. Tries to clean it up: Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one out. ANW— it’s— it’s— no no think of this. Between Bagram. Between— you go to uhh ANWR pic.twitter.com/L1V4UFGF6o

Politicos caught the weighty mistake, deriding Trump as “clueless” for mixing up the name of a foreign site that he had considerable influence over.

“Bagram was the airbase he had in Afghanistan—the same base where we kept hundreds of Taliban and ISIS prisoners that Trump released back out into Afghanistan in his final year in office,” wrote Marine veteran and former Kentucky Democratic political candidate Amy McGrath on X. “He is CLUELESS folks.”

J.D. Vance made a new claim about why he isn’t responsible for spreading false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that have led to nearly three dozen bomb threats.

During a rally Tuesday in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, CBS’s Katrina Coffman asked Vance about whether he had a responsibility not to spread racist lies if he could help it.

“So, a woman who was behind an early Facebook post about the Haitian migrants in Springfield has now apologized for spreading false rumors,” said Kaufman. “You say that you have a responsibility to share what your constituents tell you, but don’t you also have a responsibility to fact-check them first?”

“Well I think the........

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