Senate Gop Leader Battles Conservative Challenge

“Steve Bannon isn’t letting the MAGA civil war fade away in 2025,” the Daily Beast reports. “The bombastic conservative podcaster took personal shots at the newly re-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson on his show Monday and asserted he now views ‘scam’, H1-B visas as another form of illegal immigration.” “Those topics dominated right-wing circles early last week, but Bannon made clear he’s not ready for the so-called MAGA civil war to subside just yet.”

Dan Drezner: “There are many reasons to doubt that Trump will be able to effectively play the madman in his second term, however. The most obvious is that Trump’s first-term efforts at coercive bargaining went largely for naught. His administration’s track record on economic coercion was less than stellar. Trump’s greatest foreign-policy success—the Abraham Accords—was due to proffering inducements rather than crazily threatening sticks.” “Trump’s madman schtick worked better with U.

President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times during a wide-ranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the New York Times reports. Said Trump: “If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East.

Amazon is paying “a whopping $40 million to license the Brett Ratner-directed Melania Trump documentary plus another, previously undisclosed project from the First Lady,” Puck reports.

“Speaker Mike Johnson strongly encouraged House Republicans Tuesday morning to get involved in the reconciliation discussions early on so they have a say in what ends up in the final package,” Punchbowl News reports. “Johnson also implored members to voice their concerns about the package as soon as they have them.

“Early Monday afternoon, former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) received an email from a Georgia GOP official spelling out a trio of punishments for his embrace of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign last year,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. “The state executive committee formally expelled Duncan from the party, demanded he cease referring to himself as a Republican and banned him from attending any state GOP events.”