The chaotic collapse of the continuing resolution spending bill is putting House Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership under the spotlight and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has floated the idea of replacing him with Elon Musk, President-elect Trump’s pick to co-chair his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Paul took to Musk’s X Thursday morning to pitch the idea of the tech billionaire taking the House Speaker’s gavel, noting that the Speaker does not need to be a sitting member of Congress.

‘The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress… Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk… think about it… nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds),’ wrote Paul, a staunchly libertarian conservative on fiscal matters.

Musk, an outspoken critic of government waste, has weighed in on the spending bill debate and led a conservative revolt against the latest plan due to its bloated spending provisions – calling for lawmakers who supported the bill to lose their seats.

‘Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!’ Musk wrote on X. The legislation has angered conservatives, including President-elect Trump who also called for it to be scrapped. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., confirmed to reporters that the deal was dead while leaving the Capitol on Wednesday night. It came after GOP critics of the spending bill spent much of the day attacking Johnson’s handling of the issue.

It’s unclear if Paul was serious in his suggestion or if the post was made with tongue-in-cheek.

Democratic political strategist Jimmy Williams balked at the idea.

‘Senators should stick to Senating and House Members should stick to their Chamber,’ Williams wrote on X. ‘No House Member gives a damn what a Senator thinks about who should be Speaker.’

However, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., backed the idea.

‘I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,’ Greene wrote on X replying to Paul. ‘DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.’

Johnson ascended to the speakership after former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted late last year in a move initiated by eight Republican rebels, becoming the first House speaker to be voted out of the position in U.S. history.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D- N.Y., said last week that no Democrats will vote for Johnson’s bill, scheduled for Jan. 3. 

With Republicans set to hold a four-seat majority, Johnson retaining the gavel is not guaranteed.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Wednesday that he won’t vote for Johnson, barring a ‘Christmas miracle.’ Earlier this year, Massie supported Greene in pushing to remove Johnson from the speakership, but the vast majority of members in both parties ultimately voted to spike the ouster effort. 

With Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., saying she will no longer caucus with Republicans while remaining a registered Republican, that may reduce Johnson’s support to a single vote.

Paul is not the only senator to weigh in on Johnson’s leadership.

On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, took aim at the House Speaker for the chaotic situation playing out on Capitol Hill and suggested change.

‘It’s ridiculous. It’s a horrible plan. I can’t believe that Republican leadership ever cooked it up,’ Hawley told Hannity.

‘Clearly, they didn’t talk to Trump about it, and I tell you what, we need to have a serious look at who’s leading this Congress because if this is the best they could do, I mean, it’s just it’s total incompetence, this is a disaster.’

Hawley said the latest plan would saddle the incoming administration with a ‘terrible spending bill’ and it would need to be revisited again in March.

‘Under this bill, they’d shut the government down again, have to do this all over again, have to raise the debt ceiling again later, the same year.’

‘This bill right here would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, and the worst part is, it is all for Dem priorities.’

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report. 

Some House Republicans are privately fuming after Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy got involved in congressional talks on government funding, leading the charge to tank a bipartisan deal.

Several GOP lawmakers granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive situation were either frustrated about the pair getting involved or believe they exacerbated long-standing weaknesses within the House Republican Conference.

‘Musk and Vivek should not have jumped in at the 11th hour and should have handled it directly with the speaker. Folks on the same side shouldn’t act like these two,’ one House Republican said. ‘They’re more about the clicks and bright lights than getting the job done. I’ll have nothing to do with them after watching them publicly trash the speaker.’

A second GOP lawmaker said, ‘If Elon and Vivek are freelancing and shooting off the hip without coordination with [President-elect Trump], they are getting dangerously close to undermining the actual 47th President of the United States.’

A third lawmaker accused Ramaswamy of distorting facts.

‘He didn’t read the entire [continuing resolution] and the vast majority of what he was talking about is misinformation,’ they said.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was gearing up to hold a vote on a bipartisan, 1,547-page deal to extend current government funding levels through March 14 – known as a continuing resolution (CR).

The goal was to give congressional negotiators more time to cobble together an agreement on how to fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2025, while also kicking the fight into a term where Republicans control the House, Senate and White House.

But GOP hardliners were furious about what they saw as unrelated measures and policy riders being added to the bill at the last minute.

In addition to averting a partial government shutdown through March 14, the bill also includes provisions on health care and ethanol fuel, plus more than $100 billion in disaster aid funding, measures to fund the rebuilding of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and the first pay raise for lawmakers since 2009.

Musk and Ramaswamy soon joined the opposition, with Musk even threatening to back primary challengers to Republicans who supported the CR.

Less than 24 hours after the legislation was released, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters the bill was dead.

House GOP leaders have been working toward a plan B, but it’s unclear they’ll get much, if any, Democratic support. 

A fourth House Republican who spoke with Fox News Digital said of Musk’s involvement, ‘I think he influenced weak members who didn’t have direction until he tweeted.’

‘He’s just highlighting bad governance and indirectly a weak legislative branch,’ they said.

Trump, meanwhile, threatened to primary Republicans who supported a ‘clean’ CR without an increase of the debt limit – which expires January 2025.

The issue threw a wrench into negotiations on Wednesday night, given the months-long and politically brutal talks that normally accompany a debt limit increase or suspension.

One Republican bristled at his threat: ‘Trump threatening to ‘primary’ us also reduces his standing with many of us. I don’t want anything to do with him.’

Members of President Biden’s staff noticed his fading stamina and increasing confusion within the first few months of him entering office, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal based its report on interviews with nearly 50 people, including current and former White House staffers who interacted directly with the president, as well as lawmakers.

One former aide recalled a national security official explaining why a meeting in the spring of 2021 was canceled altogether.

‘He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,’ he recalled the official saying.

Democratic lawmakers in Congress reported that Biden was less available than past presidents. He had few meetings with members of Congress, and those meetings were often brief, they said.

‘The Biden White House was more insulated than most,’ Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told the Journal. ‘I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.’

‘I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,’ Rep Jim Himes, D-Conn., echoed.

Even members of Biden’s own Cabinet soon stopped requesting calls with the president, perceiving from interactions with staff that calls were unwelcome, WSJ reported.

A source familiar with the Journal’s reporting said the outlet had on-record interviews with a number of Cabinet members who rejected claims that Biden lacks mental acuity. Those Cabinet members included Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and EPA Administrator Michael Regan and others, the source said. The Journal did not include their comments in its report.

Biden held fewer than half as many full Cabinet meetings as his most recent predecessors. President-elect Trump held 25 such meetings and former President Obama held 19 in their first terms, but Biden had just eight.

The White House pushed back on the substance of the Journal’s report in a statement provided to Fox News Digital, saying Biden’s policy accomplishments provide ‘indisputable proof’ of his qualifications and leadership.

‘President Biden speaks with members of his Cabinet daily, and with most members multiple times a week, staying in close touch with them about implementation of key laws and strengthening our national security. During every presidency, there are inevitably some in Washington who do not receive as much time with whomever the president is as they would prefer; but that never means that the president isn’t engaging thoroughly with others, as this president does,’ said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

‘Cabinet meetings are an important tradition, but the contemporary work environment means they can be fewer and far between. As academics who study the presidency have emphasized, every member of the Cabinet – to say nothing of the President – are busy principals and more can be accomplished on behalf of the American people speaking with the President one-on-one or in smaller settings with officials who have related portfolios,’ he added.

Fox News Digital reached out to Cabinet officials and their departments, asking them if they believed Biden was fit to serve this week, and if they stood by past statements of confidence in his ability to continue.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in a statement in September, said that he has ‘full confidence in President Biden’s ability to carry out his job. 

‘As I’ve said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting. In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions,’ he said.

On Monday, DHS said that the secretary stands by those comments.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has called Biden ‘one of the most accomplished presidents in American history and continues to effectively lead our country with a steady hand.’

‘As someone who is actually in the room when the President meets with the Cabinet and foreign leaders, I can tell you he is an incisive and extraordinary leader,’ Raimondo said.

A spokesperson said this week that Raimondo stands by those comments.

Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, told Fox in September: ‘As Secretary Austin has said before, he has watched President Biden make tough national security decisions and seen his commitment to keeping our troops safe – he has nothing but total confidence in our Commander-in-Chief.’

This week, Singh said those comments still stand.

President Biden announced an audacious goal for America to reduce its carbon emissions by two thirds with barely weeks left in his administration.

Biden’s White House announced the new goal in a public statement. It calls for the U.S. to massively reduce its carbon emissions by 2035, invoking the Paris Agreement.

‘Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions,’ the White House wrote.

‘It keeps the United States on a straight line or steeper path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. In connection with this announcement, the United States is making a formal submission of this new target to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat as its next NDC under the Paris Agreement,’ the statement continued.

President-elect Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement soon after entering office in his first term. Biden then re-entered the U.S. into the treaty. Trump has not said whether he plans to once again remove the U.S. from the plan, which calls on global powers to self-impose climate reforms.

Trump reportedly plans to install an ‘energy czar’ to scale back energy and climate regulations implemented under the Biden administration.

Six sources familiar with Trump’s transition team told the New York Times last month that a series of executive orders and presidential proclamations have been drafted related to climate and energy, aimed at rolling back Biden-era clean energy regulations that some critics argue have hurt the economy. 

Other plans Trump and his transition team are reportedly discussing include installing an ‘energy czar’ to help cut regulations on domestic energy production and potentially moving the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) headquarters outside of Washington, D.C.

‘The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,’ Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital when asked to confirm the details about Trump’s reported plans. ‘He will deliver.’

Fox News’ Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.

: President-elect Donald Trump reacted to the Georgia Court of Appeals decision to disqualify ‘corrupt’ Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, telling Fox News Digital that the case ‘is entirely dead’ and that the ‘wonderful patriots who have been caught up in this for years’ should ‘receive an apology.’ 

The Georgia Court of Appeals on Thursday disqualified Willis from prosecuting Trump and co-defendants in her election interference case. 

The court did not toss the indictment but declared that Willis and her team now have ‘no authority to proceed.’ 

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said the ‘whole case has been a disgrace to justice.’ 

‘It was started by the Biden DOJ as an attack on his political opponent, Donald Trump,’ he said, ‘They used anyone and anybody, and she has been disqualified, and her boyfriend has been disqualified, and they stole funds and went on trips.’ 

Trump said the case ‘should not be allowed to go any further.’ 

‘There is no way such corrupt people can lead a case, and then it gets taken over by somebody else,’ Trump told Fox News Digital. ‘It was a corrupt case, so how could it be taken over by someone else?’ 

 ‘The case has to be thrown out because it was started corruptly by an incompetent prosecutor who received millions of dollars through her boyfriend — who received it from her — and then they went on cruises all the time,’ Trump said, referring to Willis’ relationship with a former prosecutor on her team, Nathan Wade. 

‘Therefore, the case is entirely dead,’ Trump said. ‘Everybody should receive an apology, including those wonderful patriots who have been caught up in this for years.’

Willis’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The returning head of the House Republican campaign committee says President-elect Trump’s convincing 2024 White House victory gives the GOP plenty of home field advantage as the party aims to defend its razor-thin majority in the 2026 midterm elections.

‘The battlefield is really laying out to our advantage. There are 14 Democrats who won seats also carried by Donald Trump. There are only three Republicans in seats that were carried by Kamala Harris. So that tells me we’re going to be on offense,’ National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson emphasized in a recent Fox News Digital interview.

Trump carried all seven crucial battleground states and, for the first time in three presidential elections, won the national popular vote as he defeated Vice President Harris last month.

The Republicans also flipped control of the Senate from the Democrats, and even though they had a net loss of two seats in the 435-member House, they’ll hold a fragile 220-215 majority when the new Congress convenes next month.

Eight years ago, when Trump first won the White House and the GOP held onto their House majority, Democrats targeted roughly two-dozen Republicans in the 2018 midterms in districts Trump lost in the 2016 election.

The Democrats, in a blue-wave election, were successful in flipping the House majority. 

Fast-forward eight years, and it’s a different story, as this time Republicans will be defending seats on friendly turf in districts that the president-elect carried.

‘There’s a whole lot more opportunity for us to go on offense,’ Hudson, who’s represented a congressional district in central North Carolina for a dozen years, touted.

Hudson also made the case that House Republicans who will once again be targeted by the Democrats in the upcoming election cycle are ‘really battle tested. I mean, they’re folks who’ve been through the fire before. They’ve gone through several cycles now with millions of dollars spent against them.’

‘They’ve been able to succeed because they work very hard in their districts. They’ve established very strong brands, as you know, people who know how to get things done and how to deliver for their community,’ he emphasized. ‘The Republicans who are in tough seats are our best candidates.’

The three House Republicans who are in districts that Harris carried last month are Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York.

But there will be a big difference in 2026: Trump, who helped drive low propensity voters to the polls this year, won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterms. 

‘I certainly would rather have him on the ballot because he turns out voters that don’t come out for other candidates,’ Hudson acknowledged.

But he argued, ‘If you look at the way this race is shaping up, we campaigned on a key set of issues of things that we promised we would deliver. If we deliver those things and have Donald Trump there with us campaigning with our candidates, I believe we can drive out a higher percentage of those voters than we have in midterms in the past.’

Hudson said Trump ‘was a great partner’ with House Republicans this year and will be again in the upcoming election cycle.

‘[Trump] cares deeply about having a House majority because he understands that a Democrat House majority means his agenda comes to a grinding halt. And so he’s been very engaged, was a very good partner for us this last election, and I anticipate that continuing.’

Hudson, who is returning for a second straight cycle chairing the NRCC, said that at the top of his committee to-do list are candidate recruitment and fundraising.

‘I mean, first thing, we’ve got to go out and recruit candidates. You know, candidate quality matters. And then we’ve got to go raise the money. And so I’ll be on the road and be out there helping our incumbents. But I’m looking forward to it,’ he emphasized.

Fox News’ Emma Woodhead contributed to this report

Editors note: Fox News Digital also interviewed Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington. That report will be posted on Friday.

: Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the leader of the Senate Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, is hoping to take on the centralization of the federal workforce in the Washington, D.C., area with a new bill that would relocate nearly a third of workers. 

Ernst is leading a bill, titled the ‘Decentralizing and Re-organizing Agency Infrastructure Nationwide To Harness Efficient Services, Workforce Administration, and Management Practices Act,’ or DRAIN THE SWAMP. 

The measure would authorize the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to relocate 30% of federal agency staff to places other than the metropolitan area surrounding Washington, D.C. 

Additionally, the rest of the federal workers remaining around the capital would be required to work in person 100% of the time. 

Under her bill, the OMB would further be directed to work to sell the unnecessary office space created by the relocations. 

‘My investigations have exposed how bureaucrats have been doing just about everything besides their job during the workday,’ Ernst said in a statement ‘Federal employees have shown they don’t want to work in Washington, and in the Christmas spirit, I am making their wish come true. Instead of keeping them bogged down in the swamp, I’m working to get bureaucrats beyond the D.C. beltway to remind public servants who they work for.’

‘In addition to improving government service for all Americans, we can give taxpayers an extra Christmas gift by selling off unused and expensive office buildings.’

Ernst has long been investigating federal government agencies and programs and what she deems as waste. With Donald Trump’s announcement of DOGE ahead of his second administration, the Iowa Republican appears ready to hit the ground running with specific ideas already laid out for the president-elect. 

Companion legislation is being introduced in the House by Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., who is a co-leader of the lower chamber’s DOGE caucus. 

‘The swamp is thick and deep here in Crazy Town, and I’m here to drain it. It is time to remind Washington that our duty is to serve the American people. I’m proud to join Senator Ernst to ensure the government works for the people, not the other way around,’ he said in a statement. 

In November, Trump announced that billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would lead DOGE, a proposed advisory board tasked with eliminating government waste.

‘Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,’ he wrote in a statement at the time. 

Afterward, caucuses were formed in both the House and Senate, led by Reps. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Ernst and Blake Moore, R-Utah, respectively. 

Republicans in both chambers have already started rolling out a slate of bills aimed at fulfilling the mission of DOGE. 

House GOP leaders appear to be searching for a backup plan after an initial bipartisan deal to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday was buried in an avalanche of conservative opposition.

The legislation angered conservatives in both the House and Senate, as well as President-elect Trump’s pick to co-chair his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk.

As Musk called for lawmakers who supported the bill to lose their seats, Trump’s presidential transition team released an official joint statement by Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance opposing the initial iteration of the deal.

The bill was expected to get a vote sometime Wednesday afternoon, but a planned round of late afternoon votes was canceled. Instead, senior Republicans are huddling in the speaker’s office to chart a path forward, less than 24 hours after the legislation was unveiled.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., told reporters while leaving Johnson’s office in the early evening, ‘There will be a new CR likely tomorrow. They are negotiating right now. But there will be no votes this evening.’

Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told reporters a short while later he anticipated a ‘skinny’ CR without disaster aid or agricultural subsidies.

It came after GOP critics of the spending bill spent much of the day attacking Johnson’s handling of the issue.

The 1,547-page bill is a short-term extension of fiscal year (FY) 2024 government funding levels, aimed at giving lawmakers more time to agree on funding the rest of FY 2025 by the Friday deadline.

It’s the second such extension, called a continuing resolution (CR), since FY 2024 ended on Sept. 30.

In addition to funding the government through March 14, the bill includes more than $100 billion in disaster aid to help Americans affected by Hurricanes Milton and Helene. It also includes an $10 billion in economic relief for farmers, as well as health care reform measures and a provision aimed at revitalizing Washington, D.C.’s RFK stadium and its surrounding campus.

Members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus said they felt blindsided by what they saw as unrelated policy riders being added to the bill in last-minute negotiations.

Several GOP lawmakers granted anonymity to speak freely said Johnson would see challenges to his speakership bid in early January over the matter.

But Johnson defended the deal on ‘Fox & Friends’ Wednesday morning.

‘When we start the new Congress in January, when Republicans are in control … we’re going to be able to scale back the size and scope of government. But before we get to that point, remember right now, we only control one half of one third of the federal government. Remember, Democrats are still in charge of the Senate and the White House. So, what we’ve done is the conservative play call here,’ he said.

Opponents of the legislation include Elon Musk, who posted on X, ‘Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!’

He later called on Republicans to leverage a partial government shutdown. 

”Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,’ he suggested.

Trump and Vance called for Republicans to reject the deal and instead opt for a CR paired with an increase in the U.S. debt limit, which was suspended until January 2025.

‘Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,’ the statement said.

But simply bowing to his right flank may not get Johnson out of the woods, with Democrats warning him to not renege on their deal.

‘House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government. And hurt the working class Americans they claim to support. You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow,’ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, R-N.Y., wrote on X.

Johnson was always likely to need Democratic help to pass a CR, given his slim margins in the House and widespread opposition to short-term funding extensions within the GOP.

But it’s not clear if the number of Democrats willing to break ranks will offset that Republican opposition. 

House leaders will also have to decide whether to put the bill through regular order, which will include a House Rules Committee vote followed by a House-wide procedural vote before lawmakers can weigh in on the measure itself. Or they could bypass that and rush the bill onto the House floor in exchange for raising the threshold for passage to two-thirds rather than a simple majority.

All the while, the clock is ticking until the partial government shutdown deadline at the end of Friday.