A small group of hardline Republicans forced a House floor vote to fail on Wednesday afternoon in an apparent shot at Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for working with Democrats on a bipartisan path to avoiding a government shutdown. 

Tensions flared in the Capitol as Republicans rebelled against their own party on a normally sleepy procedural vote. It has temporarily paralyzed the House floor — Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good, R-Va., one of the rebels who tanked the vote, suggested they would do so again if they don’t get certain commitments from Johnson on spending and the border.

It was followed by what appeared to be a heated confrontation between Johnson and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has been leading criticism of the GOP leader since the government spending deal was announced.

Both men were visibly animated, pointing at times and shaking their heads as the group of lawmakers and staffers around them grew larger. 

Thirteen members of the House Freedom Caucus and their allies voted against Republicans to sink what’s known as a rule vote, a major public setback for House Republican leaders as they deal with just a two-seat majority right now. 

A rule vote is a procedural measure made to clear the way for an ultimate House vote on a bill’s passage. It is historically unusual for them to fail; before the current Congress, a rule had not failed since 2002. Republican hardliners have weaponized rule votes several times last year.

After the protest vote, most of the rebels were seen following Johnson into his office just off the House floor. 

Good addressed reporters off the House floor as lawmakers huddled behind closed doors.

‘We’re making a statement that the deal — as has been announced, that doesn’t secure the border, and that doesn’t cut our spending and it’s going to be passed apparently under suspension of the rules with predominantly Democrat votes — is unacceptable,’ Good said.

‘This deal that’s been announced does nothing about the border, it does nothing about spending and again, the American people just can’t afford it. They’re suffering. That’s not what they elected us to do,’ Good continued.

‘And so this was a statement of protest to say, hey, we’re not going to just go along to get along like everything’s okay, and pass messaging bills that are gonna go nowhere.’

Rank-and-file members, meanwhile, are increasingly frustrated with the House Republican majority’s public disarray. 

‘Many have jumped past frustration,’ one GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital. ‘Most are pissed.’ 

‘Some people get upset about not getting the thing we are never going to get. They need to come to a place that allows them to agitate and us to legislate. It’s not helpful or productive,’ the lawmaker said.

And Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., a conservative, wrote on X after the vote, ‘If you are a Republican member who constantly votes against the Rule, who says Republicans haven’t done anything this Congress, then perhaps you ought to look in a mirror and you will see the answer.’

It’s the eruption of a standoff that has been brewing since Sunday when Johnson announced a spending deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to set a statutory limit of $1.59 trillion for discretionary government funding. It would honor a McCarthy-Biden side-deal of an added $69 billion, but Johnson said he secured an extra $16 billion in cuts for this fiscal year to offset some of that.

But Johnson has little wiggle room when negotiating against a Democratic Senate and White House. 

Current government funding runs out on two deadlines — some agencies run dry after Jan. 19, while others after Feb. 2. If no action is taken to stop those expiration dates from coming, Congress could be dealing with a government shutdown.

Former President Trump will participate in a Fox News Channel town hall on Wednesday, January 10th.

The highly anticipated live event will begin at 9 p.m. EST, concluding three straight nights of Fox-hosted town halls with presidential candidates in Iowa.

The discussion will be co-moderated by Fox News’ ‘The Story’ executive editor and anchor Martha MacCallum and ‘Special Report’ chief political anchor Bret Baier. Trump will field questions from both the hosts and a live audience.

In early December, Trump sat down with Fox News host Sean Hannity in Davenport, Iowa for an exclusive town hall. The former president touched on President Biden and his cognitive health, the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Obamacare, education and more issues that are important to American voters.

How to watch

There are several ways viewers can watch the live town hall event with Trump, including tuning in live to FOX News Channel. Viewers can also access a live stream on FOXNews.com, FOX Nation, and FOX News Media’s streaming platform. FOX websites will have live debate reporting and a live blog throughout the evening.

Presidential primary polling shows Trump remains the steady frontrunner of the GOP race, locking in wide double-digit leads over his opponents over the past couple months. The former president has been in the midst of fighting several legal battles over the course of his campaign. Various states, including Colorado and Maine, have recently taken action to try and block Trump from appearing on the primary ballots, a move his primary opponents and many members of the Democratic Party have condemned. 

The live town hall will take place the same time that Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nikki Haley, who participated in Fox News Channel town halls Monday and Tuesday evening, will go head-to-head at the fifth presidential debate.

House Republicans are once again finding themselves at odds with each other as threats to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership begin to emerge from the right flank of their conference.

‘Anyone that wants to go in that direction is showing how unserious they are about us maintaining the majority,’ Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital about suggestions of filing a motion to vacate against Johnson, R-La.

‘It looks like they’re just trying to sabotage the future, and they’re working for Joe Biden at that point.’

GOP hardliners are furious over Johnson’s deal aimed at averting a government shutdown that he struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Several have previously told Fox News Digital that it put the conference in the same or worse position than after ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., struck a similar deal with President Biden last spring. 

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said on ‘The Steve Deace Show’ Tuesday of filing a possible motion to vacate, ‘I’m leaving it on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow. I’m not saying I’m not going to file it tomorrow.’

However, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a conservative who is also skeptical of the deal so far, told Fox News Digital, ‘It’s not our leader that’s the problem, it’s the leader in the Senate and the White House that’s the problem.’

As part of a deal to win the speakership last January, McCarthy allowed the threshold for a motion to vacate — which triggers a vote to oust the House speaker — to just one lawmaker needed to trigger it. 

Johnson, who took over the role in late October after McCarthy was ousted, did not change the rule.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a hardliner who opposes Johnson’s deal, told Fox News Digital Wednesday morning that he was ‘not one to start a fight’ over his leadership but agreed the option should remain there.

‘I think that the motion to vacate is an important measure,’ he said. ‘I don’t think members should take it off the table. Because at the end of the day, my district, people are very frustrated. And if you’re in a situation where… you’re more fearing the moderates than you are the conservatives, that we’re going to… continue to have bad outcomes.’

Like his predecessor, the threats to Johnson’s job came up after he cobbled together a bipartisan spending deal while negotiating against a Democratic Senate and White House.

Establishment conservatives and mainstream Republicans acknowledged his predicament and said there would be severe consequences for the party if they booted another leader.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called it ‘a ludicrous notion.’

‘Nobody should be bringing up the word vacate. The speaker is doing and getting the best deal you can get with… 1/3 of government,’ he said. ‘We should support him.’

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., did not speak directly about the threats but acknowledged the predicament Johnson is in while speaking to reporters Wednesday after a House GOP meeting to discuss the deal.

‘It’s kind of hard to worry about bailing water when you’ve got the alligators nipping at you, and that’s exactly the kind of conditions the speaker finds himself in,’ Womack said. 

Even some hardliners are opposed to the idea, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. — who initiated McCarthy’s ouster.

‘I’m not supportive of a motion to vacate Speaker Johnson,’ Gaetz told Fox News Digital. ‘What comes next could be worse.’

The speaker himself brushed the threats off during his weekly House GOP leadership press conference that same morning. 

‘I’m not concerned about that, we’re leading’ he said. ‘We have very difficult challenges, but we’re going to advance the ball, we’re going to advance our conservative principles, and we’re going to demonstrate that we can govern well.’

Are Europeans ‘Ready For It’?

A high-ranking European Union official has pleaded with Taylor Swift to help boost youth voter turnout in the bloc’s elections this summer as they coincide with the European leg of the music star’s ‘Eras Tour.’

Margaritis Schinas, one of the European Commission’s vice presidents, called on Swift to rally her European fans to the ballot box just like she did with her U.S. followers in the past, labeling the youth vote as ‘crucial.’

In September, the ‘Shake It Off’ singer posted a short message on Instagram encouraging her 272 million followers to register to vote by directing them to the website vote.org, operated by a non-profit group with the same name. 

Immediately following the post, the group said it recorded more than 35,000 registrations, and Schinas is hoping Swift can have a similar impact in Europe, where voter turnout remains low. 

Swift also made similar appeals in 2018 when she encouraged her fans to take photos of themselves after they voted in the midterms and post them on social media with the hashtag #justvoted. The singer voiced support for Tennessee Democrats ahead of those elections, having previously largely steered clear of politics. 

‘Now it’s the moment for them (youth) to have a say in the ballot box, to attribute praise or blame on European policies, and it is therefore crucial that we have, as we had in 2019, a high level of participation of young Europeans in the June elections,’ Schinas said at a press briefing Wednesday according to Euronews.

‘No one can mobilize youth better than young people, that’s how it works.’

Hoping it will not be a ‘Cruel Summer’ for voter turnout, Schinas then went on to discuss the impact of Swift’s September post and noted she will be touring the continent this summer with concerts planned for countries such as Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland and Austria. ‘The Eras Tour’ is the highest-grossing tour of all time and the first tour to surpass $1 billion in revenue, according to Pollstar’s 2023 year-end charts.

The European leg of the tour kicks off in Paris on May 9, known as Europe Day, which celebrates peace and unity in Europe. 

‘Taylor Swift will be in Europe in May,’ Schinas said. ‘So I will very much hope that she does the same for young Europeans and I very much hope that someone from her media team follows this press conference and relays this request to her.’

It is unclear if Swift, who is dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, will heed the call. 

Voter turnout for the European Elections in 2019 stood at 50.66%, the first time it surpassed the 50% threshold since 1994, according to Euro News, citing a Eurobarometer survey. The survey noted the increase was largely due to youth participation. 

In comparison, 52.2% of the citizen voting-age population participated in the 2022 midterms, according to the Census Bureau.

This year, four member states – Belgium, Germany, Malta and Austria – will allow citizens aged 16 or older to vote in the European elections.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, made his bluntest threat yet against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning that a motion to vacate the House Republican leader is ‘not off the table.’

‘I’m leaving it on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow. I’m not saying I’m not going to file it tomorrow,’ the Texas conservative said Tuesday on ‘The Steve Deace Show.’

‘I think the speaker needs to know that we’re angry about it. He needs to know that we need to sit down at the table and try to solve this.’

It’s notable criticism from Roy, who was not one of the eight House Republicans who joined Democrats in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in October.

Roy has been on a war path against Johnson’s agreement to fund the government struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., over the weekend. 

He called the bill, which follows through with most commitments cobbled together by McCarthy and President Biden during talks to raise the debt ceiling last year, ‘garbage’ and dismissed Johnson’s promise to negotiate conservative policy wins in the eventual spending bills.

The deal would set a statutory limit of $1.59 trillion for discretionary government funding but would honor a McCarthy-Biden side-deal of an added $69 billion. Johnson on Sunday announced that he secured an extra $16 billion in cuts for this fiscal year to offset some of that.

Johnson told reporters on Tuesday evening, ‘I am a conservative. This is not what we all want. It’s not the best deal we could get if we were in charge of both chambers and the White House. But it’s the best deal we could broker under the circumstances.’

But he was optimistic about scoring wins down the line.

‘We have the topline agreement. This allows us to fight for our policy priorities, for our policy riders now, and our appropriators are resolute in doing that,’ Johnson said. ‘Our members are excited about getting that done, and we’re going to do our job here.’

Speaking to Fox News Digital earlier this week, Roy was skeptical of what could be achieved.

‘I will amend my sentence if we end up getting some massive policy wins attached to the spending, but I do not believe that we can possibly get enough policy wins on the riders to offset the damage of spending that much more money,’ Roy told Fox News Digital on Monday.

Fox News Digital reached out to Roy for further comment and to the speaker’s office for a response.

House Republicans will consider a resolution Wednesday morning that, if passed, would set up a full House vote on whether to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

The House Oversight Committee will meet for a markup Wednesday at 10 a.m. to consider the resolution that recommends contempt proceedings against the first son after he refused to comply with a subpoena compelling him to appear for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees.

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a similar markup at 10 a.m. on a measure recommending Hunter Biden be held in contempt of Congress. 

‘Our investigation has produced significant evidence suggesting President Biden knew of, participated in and benefited from his family cashing in on the Biden name,’ House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is expected to say in his opening statement, obtained by Fox News Digital. 

‘We planned to question Hunter Biden about this record of evidence during our deposition, but he blatantly defied two lawful subpoenas.’ 

Comer will say, ‘Hunter Biden’s willful refusal to comply with the committees’ subpoenas is a criminal act’ that ‘constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to the appropriate United States Attorney’s Office for prosecution as prescribed by law.’

‘We will not provide Hunter Biden with special treatment because of his last name,’ Comer is expected to say. ‘All Americans must be treated equally under the law. And that includes the Bidens.’ 

Hunter Biden, ahead of his subpoenaed deposition, had offered to testify publicly. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan rejected his request, stressing that the first son would not have special treatment and pointed to the dozens of other witnesses that have appeared, as compelled, for their interviews and depositions. Comer and Jordan vowed to release the transcript of Hunter Biden’s deposition.

The first son, though, defied the subpoena, ignored the offer and delivered a public statement outside the Capitol.

‘On December 13, 2023, Robert Hunter Biden failed to comply with deposition subpoenas issued by the Committees on Oversight and Accountability and the Judiciary for testimony relevant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry and the Committees’ oversight investigations,’ the House Oversight report, first reported by Fox News Digital on Monday, says. 

‘Instead, Mr. Biden opted to read a short, prepared statement in front of the Capitol. Accordingly, Mr. Biden has violated federal law and must be held in contempt of Congress.’

Meanwhile, the House Oversight report identifies Hunter Biden’s testimony as ‘a critical component of the impeachment inquiry into, among other things, whether Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as Vice President and/or President: (1) took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family; (2) abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or (3) abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him.’

The report states that Hunter Biden’s ‘flagrant defiance of the Committees’ deposition subpoenas — while choosing to appear nearby on the Capitol grounds to read a prepared statement on the same matters — is contemptuous, and he must be held accountable for his unlawful actions.’

The report says House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer ‘recommends that Congress find Robert Hunter Biden in contempt for his failure to comply with the Committee subpoena issued to him.’

Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blasted the move, saying there ‘is no precedent for the U.S. House of Representatives holding a private citizen in contempt of Congress who has offered to testify in public, under oath and on a day of the committee’s choosing. Chairman Comer repeatedly urged Hunter Biden to appear at a committee hearing, and Hunter Biden agreed.’ 

If the resolution advances out of committees Wednesday, sources said a full contempt of Congress vote on the House floor could take place in the coming days. 

Last month, Comer and Jordan expanded their investigation to probe whether President Biden was involved in his son’s ‘scheme’ to defy his subpoena for deposition earlier this month, conduct, they say, ‘could constitute an impeachable offense.’ 

Hunter Biden, when making his public statement last month, said his ‘father was not financially involved in my business.’ 

‘No evidence to support that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,’ he said. 

The House impeachment inquiry against President Biden was formalized by the full House last month. The inquiry is being led by Comer, Jordan and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced a $35 million campaign investment targeting Black, Latino, Asian American and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander voters before the elections later this year.

It comes at a time when Democrats, including President Biden, have been bleeding support among this powerful group of voters.

In a press release, the DCCC announced what it called an historic eight-figure investment called P.O.W.E.R. – Persuade. Organize. Welcome. Educate. Reach – The People, aimed at persuading and mobilizing AANHPI, Black and Latino voters. Axios reported that the DCCC’s campaign was a whopping $35 million, up $5 million from what the committee spent during the last election cycle.

The DCCC said it is engaging communities of color to help take back the House of Representatives, which currently has more Republicans than Democrats.

The campaign dollars will go toward research and polling, paid media, in-district organizing, voter protection and education and pushing back against misinformation that may confuse or distract voters of color.

‘Democrats are committed to bringing responsible governance back to the House so that we can continue the important work of lowering costs, protecting and expanding health care, and delivering for our constituents,’ DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said. ‘We know that voters of color are critical to Democrats’ coalition and the DCCC’s investments highlight our commitment to continuously engaging with communities of color on issues they care about.’

The committee said it will use ‘qualitative and quantitative’ research to connect with communities of color, so it can address their priorities.

One of the ways the committee plans to reach out to the community is through ‘culturally competent and resonant’ media paid for with its funds, which aim to persuade and mobilize the voters through creative and localized messaging across different mediums.

The messages will also be dispersed on a variety of platforms the communities are most responsive to, and will be available in English, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Spanglish and Vietnamese.

The DCCC did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital about the campaign.

The committee also said it plans to track and counter disinformation spread across social media and traditional media, which could dissuade people of color from voting, through an online hub called, ‘In It Together.’

The group said the hub will provide content and resources that can be shared with family and friends to help push back against ‘false narratives,’ while stressing the accomplishments of House Democrats.

‘The DCCC is making an historic investment to persuade and engage voters of color who are critical for Democrats’ path to taking back the House,’ DCC national Engagement Director Mariafernanda Zacarias said. ‘We know how important it is to have ongoing culturally inclusive and resonate outreach with voters of color including in TV, digital, print, mail, and radio, through in-district organizing staff, and informed by in-depth research and polling. P.O.W.E.R. The People builds on the DCCC’s prior cycles of engagement with communities of color to tell the story of how Democrats are delivering for working people, and the danger Republicans pose to our fundamental rights.’