House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday sharply diverged from the direction that Senate negotiations were headed in to end the government shutdown.

Johnson told reporters Thursday that he would not commit to holding a vote on extending COVID-19 pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year without congressional action.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., had been floating a vote on such an extension in exchange for Democrats voting to end the shutdown — which is now in its 37th day. He has said he could not guarantee an outcome on the vote or that the House would take it up, however.

‘Leader Thune has bent over backwards. He’s offered them a vote. You know what they told him in response? ‘No, we need you to guarantee the outcome of that vote.’ Well, that’s ridiculous,’ Johnson said when asked about holding such a vote by a guaranteed date in the House if the deal succeeds in breaking the logjam.

When pressed again on a vote, he said, ‘No, because we did our job, and I’m not part of the negotiation.’

‘The House did its job on Sept. 19. I’m not promising anybody anything. I’m going to let this process play out,’ Johnson said.

His comments appeared to anger Senate Democrats who were negotiating an off-ramp to the shutdown.

‘Mike Johnson is only going to do what one person tells him, and that one person is Donald Trump, who has declared himself basically the speaker of the House,’ Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., told reporters in response. ‘So we need to be the adults in the room.’

The issue of enhanced Obamacare subsidies has been a matter of debate within the GOP, with some Republicans in more moderate districts calling for at least a year-long extension to give lawmakers time to create a new healthcare deal in its place.

But House conservatives are rejecting any such extension out of hand. Fox News Digital first reported that leaders of the 189-member Republican Study Committee issued an official position earlier Thursday demanding the credits not be extended.

It’s been a key ask for Democrats, however, that such an extension be paired with any federal funding bill before they agree to help end the shutdown.

Senate Democrats are huddling on Thursday afternoon to discuss what they could and could not accept out of a deal to end the government shutdown.

There are a dozen in the caucus who have been meeting to find a way out of the shutdown, but following Democrats’ Tuesday night election sweep, many in their caucus feel emboldened that their shutdown strategy is working and don’t want to let up yet.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he believed Tuesday’s election was ‘having an impact’ on the caucus.

‘It would be very strange for the American people to weigh in, in support of Democrats, standing up and fighting for them, and then within days, for us to surrender without having achieved any of the things that we’ve been fighting for,’ Sen. Chris Murphy said.

The majority of the caucus demands a guarantee on a deal rather than the promise of a process, given that a proposal to extend the expiring subsidies from Democrats without major reforms to the program would likely fail in the Republican-controlled chamber.

But Thune has remained adamant that he can’t promise anything more than a vote and can’t predict an outcome.

‘I made this very clear to them, I can’t guarantee them an outcome,’ Thune said. ‘I can guarantee them a process, and they can litigate the issue, get the vote on the floor, and presumably they have some way of getting a vote in the House at some point, but I can’t speak for the House.’

Top Democrats emerged from a classified Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday expressing confidence in the intelligence behind recent U.S. strikes on suspected narco-trafficking vessels near Venezuela. But they also faulted the Biden administration for what they called a failure to confront Nicolás Maduro after Venezuela’s disputed 2024 election.

The Office of Legal Counsel presented lawmakers with its written justification for a series of missile strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that U.S. officials say have killed 63 suspected traffickers. Lawmakers from both parties said the briefing reassured them the targets were legitimate, even as some voiced unease about the broader strategy.

‘The final comment I’ll make is just that nothing in the legal opinion even mentions Venezuela,’ said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

‘I think they do have visibility into drug trafficking,’ Warner added, saying he trusted U.S. intelligence assessments but would prefer traffickers be ‘interdicted and taken to court rather than blown up.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon lawyers led the closed-door briefing for congressional leaders and the chairs and ranking members of the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

Lawmakers have complained for days about being left in the dark as the Pentagon launched multiple maritime strikes without first consulting Congress. Officials declined to discuss the intended scope or duration of the campaign and provided few details about who was killed or what evidence tied the targets to narcotics trafficking.

‘Lots of mistakes could get made,’ said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. ‘But, again, they are applying the eyes and ears of our intelligence community to these boats. I don’t worry too much that there will be a strike on a fishing boat or a pleasure boat, but that’s always possible.’

Himes said the administration described ‘the process by which these boats are selected’ but did not share photographs or the identities of those killed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also backed the intelligence underpinning the operation.

‘We have exquisite intelligence about these strikes on these vessels,’ Johnson said. ‘We know the contents of the boats. We know the personnel almost to a person.’

Officials told lawmakers there were no plans to expand the maritime campaign to land operations or to target Maduro directly.

‘There are no apparent plans to expand this beyond what they say they are doing,’ Himes said.

Reports that the administration was considering potential strikes on Mexico did not appear to come up in the briefing, which lawmakers said focused almost exclusively on cocaine — some of which is trafficked through Venezuela — rather than fentanyl, Mexico’s top export.

‘It’s as described — to stop the flow of drugs, and, to be clear, to stop the flow of cocaine,’ said Himes.

Still, several Democrats said the Biden administration missed a critical moment last year to rally Latin American allies after Venezuela’s contested election, when independent monitors and several Western governments recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the rightful winner.

‘I frankly think the Biden administration didn’t go far enough after the Venezuelan people voted overwhelmingly to get rid of Maduro,’ Warner said. ‘We missed a huge opportunity when Venezuelans — in numbers probably in the mid-sixties percent — came out against Maduro, even under threat of violence. The fact that we didn’t rally the region at that point was, in retrospect, a huge mistake.’

After the July 2024 vote, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on high-level Maduro officials but stopped short of reimposing broad restrictions on Venezuela’s oil sector, a move officials said could have driven up global fuel prices and worsened migration pressures.

By contrast, the Trump administration has taken a harder line. It reimposed sweeping sanctions on Maduro during Trump’s first term and has since increased pressure on the South American strongman in his second. The Justice Department has offered a $50 million bounty for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, and officials have not ruled out whether the current strikes could be intended to pressure him to step aside.

Asked in a CBS interview over the weekend whether Maduro’s days were numbered, Trump said, ‘I would say yeah. I think so.’

Pressed on whether the U.S. would go to war with Venezuela, he added, ‘I doubt it. I don’t think so.’

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the State Department to require people to state their biological sex on new or renewed passports, a victory for the Trump administration as it aims to tighten policies involving transgender people.

The high court found in a 6-3 order temporarily greenlighting the policy that a lower court in Massachusetts had erred in blocking it. 

‘Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,’ the majority wrote in the unsigned order.

The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, blasted her Republican-appointed colleagues in a lengthy dissent for what she said had become a ‘routine’ of siding with the Trump administration on the emergency docket.

The majority ‘fails to spill any ink considering the plaintiffs, opting instead to intervene in the Government’s favor without equitable justification, and in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party,’ Jackson wrote, adding that transgender people have been permitted to state their preferred gender on passports for more than three decades.

The class action lawsuit, brought by a dozen self-described transgender, nonbinary or intersex people on behalf of themselves and others in their situation, will continue to proceed through the lower courts.

The plaintiffs had argued in court papers that passports should ‘reflect the sex [people] live as and express, rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.’

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote on behalf of President Donald Trump that passports effectively communicate information to foreign governments and private citizens cannot force the president to communicate in a way that defies his foreign policy preferences and ‘scientific reality.’

The policy, which reversed the Biden administration’s allowance of an ‘X’ gender option on passports, was implemented as part of a string of executive orders Trump issued when he took office aimed at requiring transgender people to identify as their biological sex in certain situations, including in gender-exclusive sports and in the military.

Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated that the high court had handed the Department of Justice roughly two-dozen wins this year on the emergency docket, sometimes referred to as a shadow or interim docket, where cases are fast-tracked so that the Supreme Court can potentially offer temporary resolutions until the merits of the cases are examined.

‘Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,’ Bondi said on social media. ‘In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.’

Any optimism either side of the aisle had that the government shutdown could end this week appeared to fade on Capitol Hill, as Senate Democrats appear ready to hold out longer for a deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies.

Senate Democrats left another long closed-door caucus lunch on Thursday, signaling a unified front as the shutdown entered its 37th day amid Republican demands to make a deal to reopen the government.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus are still riding high after a successful Election Day Tuesday that saw Democratic candidates pummel their Republican opponents. While there are bipartisan talks among centrist Senate Democrats and Republicans on a way out, the majority of the caucus appeared ready to hold the line.

‘We had a very good, productive meeting,’ Schumer said as he exited the lunch.

Others espoused messages of unity among the ranks and bristled that they were holding out from reopening the government.

‘It’s not about holding out,’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said. ‘We fight for access to healthcare for millions of people across this country. Affordability is a giant issue for American families. They told us that at the polls on Tuesday, but they tell us that every day of their lives.’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to put the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) on the floor again Friday to test Democrats’ resolve. It’s expected they’ll block the bill once again.

Thune and Republicans have remained firm in their position that the Obamacare issue would be considered after the government reopens, and he has offered Senate Democrats a vote on the matter, which is also expected to fail.

But Senate Democrats demand that President Donald Trump get involved and negotiate a deal on the expiring subsidies. Democrats also brushed aside comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who earlier in the day said he would not promise a vote in the House on the expiring subsidies.

‘I can tell you that Mike Johnson is only going to do what one person tells him, and that one person is Donald Trump, who has declared himself basically the Speaker of the House,’ Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said.

Still, Senate Republicans hope that Senate Democrats will accept the offer, along with the plan to pair the CR with a trio of spending bills to jump-start the government funding process.

‘I think the clear path forward here with regard to the [Obamacare] issue, open up the government, and we head down to the White House and sit down with the president and talk about it,’ Thune said. ‘But I just, right now there is hostage taking, as you all know. The consequences are getting more pronounced.’

There is also the question of whether the Senate stays in over the weekend ahead of a scheduled recess for Veterans Day next week.

Senate Democrats want to remain, but Republicans aren’t keen to stick around unless there are signs of real progress toward reopening the government.

‘I do expect to be here this weekend,’ Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said.

One year ago, Donald Trump won a transformative election victory, sweeping all seven swing states, the popular vote, and moving all fifty states redder than they were in 2020.

How did he do it?

By motivating men, young men in particular, and sports fans who were fed up with the insanity of men winning women’s sports championships. I wrote about the victory in my new book, ‘Balls,’ which was released on Tuesday.  

The book addresses the landslide Trump victory, but it also asks an important question when looking forward prospectively: Now that Trump, unfortunately, isn’t able to run for reelection, how do Republicans ensure that the Trump MAGA coalition extends, and even grows, beyond his own presidency?

In 2024, the two most conservative voting groups in America were male senior citizens and young men under the age of thirty.

This has never happened before in any of our lives.

It was a cultural transformation overnight.

Trump also won record support among White, Black, Asian and Hispanic men as well, but that same momentum didn’t extend to 2025. Indeed, Tuesday’s voting results paint an ominous picture of what 2026 and 2028 could look like if young men aren’t motivated to show up and vote like they did in 2024. 

Consider the numbers: in 2024, Trump received 1.968 million votes in New Jersey and 2.075 million votes in Virginia. While he lost both states by narrow margins to Kamala Harris — by roughly 5% — he received more votes than the Virginia Democrat candidate for governor, Abigail Spanberger — who won Virginia with 1.961 million votes — and the New Jersey Democrat candidate for governor, Mikie Sherrill — who won New Jersey with 1.792 million votes. 

So how did both Democratic gubernatorial candidates win election comfortably despite receiving fewer votes than Trump did in their states a year ago? Yes, partly because it was an off-year cycle and overall turnout trended down, but they won comfortably because roughly 600,000 Trump voters didn’t show up to vote in 2025 who did show up to vote in 2024.

Who are these voters?

Young men, sports fans, blue collar workers, the Trump MAGA base that will come out to support Trump when he’s on the ballot, but won’t show up when he’s not on the ballot.

So will these voters return in 2026 and in 2028 when Trump isn’t on the ballot? That depends on how well future Republican candidates speak to these voters. Some of y’all will think I’m crazy for telling you this, but as soon as the 2026 mid-term elections are over, expect a pivot so rapid it will make your head spin — Democrats in 2027 will all argue that Trump’s unique political gifts end with him, that MAGA is over without Trump as its leader. Yep, from ‘He’s Hitler!’ to ‘He’s the most talented Republican president in any of our lifetimes,’ almost overnight.

I’m telling you, it’s coming.

Because Democrats are going to bank on Trump as a political unicorn, a candidate so talented that only he could power a coalition as substantial as he won in 2024.

So what do Republicans need to do to extend and even grow Trump’s appeal with young men? I think it’s a combination of three things, wed the policy and the personal together, as Trump has been uniquely talented at doing.

1. On the policy front, the 2024 election was about the economy, the border, and crime

It was as easy as EBC.

Trump won the arguments on all three of these fronts. So far, Trump 2.0 has ended the border as an issue by ending illegal immigration and driven crime down to record lows in many states and cities. His challenge on the economy is that Biden was so bad, it’s taking time to clean up his mess. With record high stock prices and record low gas prices, Trump is delivering for all of us with stock market assets and all of us who have to fill up our tanks.

But there’s a lingering anger over how much goods cost. Even I feel it each time I buy a Chick-fil-A meal for my family and it costs over $50. For fast food, really!

Prices went up so fast under President Joe Biden that the sticker shock is still real even in 2025. Trump has stopped the rapid price increases and, in the case of some purchases like gas, has actually brought them back lower than they were during Biden, but that bitter aftertaste of inflation takes time to wear off.

So far it hasn’t.

2. Focus on men in women’s sports

Is it the most important issue in the country?

No.

But it crystallizes the absurdity of Democrat policies for young men and sports fans, who provided the fuel to Trump’s record win in 2024.

If you believe a man should be able to win a women’s sports championship, how can I trust your opinion on anything? As I wrote in ‘Balls,’ this issue, combined with EBC, won Trump the election in 2024. 

I think that will still be the message in 2026, too, because, amazingly, Democrats have doubled and tripled down on defending men in women’s sports all over the country.

This issue isn’t going away.

3. HAVE FUN and BE ENTERTAINING.

My two favorite moments of the 2024 campaign were when Trump dressed up as a McDonald’s employee and as a garbage man and rode around in a garbage truck.

Was it absurd and ridiculous?

Of course.

But the number one gift Trump has that he receives zero credit for is this: HE’S FUNNY!

Yes, politics are serious. But they should also be fun. Trump is a happy warrior and happy warriors win.

The two most successful Republican presidents of my life were Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Both were, in many respects, professional entertainers. They knew how to cut through the noise and were authentic in the way they did so.

Trump isn’t perfect, none of us are, but he’s the most comfortable president in his own skin that any of us have ever seen and he has tremendous political instincts.

You can spend a hundred million on an ad campaign and not get the free media attention that Trump did, scooping out fries and talking with voters at the drive-thru in Pennsylvania. That style of politicking is unbeatable. Heck, I would argue the best version of Trump is the one you get in fast food restaurants. He genuinely loves getting out and interacting with people. That’s a skill that can’t be taught, but it can be emulated.

We used to ask the question, which candidate would you rather have a beer with? While Trump doesn’t drink — as he’s jokingly said, can you imagine what he’d say if he drank? — he’s authentic and real. As artificial intelligence takes over much of the country, I believe authenticity will become the most important political key to the realm.

Young people in particular, who are steeped in social media artificiality fed to them constantly on their phones, have an innate sense of when they’re being poll-tested and marketed to, they sniff it out better than older voters.

If you want them to show up and support you, you have to win their trust.

Which is why I truly believe the election was over when it came to male voters when Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In that moment, having escaped death by half an inch, Trump, whose critics had labeled him a phony, rose up and screamed, ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ three times. At that instant, the election was over for male voters.

It was the bravest presidential moment of my life.

But it was also one of the most authentic.

In times of great peril, your own personal character is revealed. In those perilous milliseconds, Trump became a legend and won the election.

He proved once and for all he had ‘Balls.’

And so far no Democrat has proven that they do.

So long as that remains the case, Republicans aren’t going to lose men.

Which is why the best example of an oxymoron in America today isn’t ‘jumbo shrimp,’ it’s ‘masculine Democrat.’

Because after all, there are certainly big shrimp, but there are still no masculine democrats.

Clay Travis is the author of the new book, ‘Balls: How Trump, Young Men and Sports Fans Saved America.’ Buy it here.