Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tina Nguyen.

First: If you haven’t heard the good news, the famous John Heilemann has joined Puck as chief political columnist! I’m stoked not just because I’ve admired his work for ages—one of my core memories is tearing through an excerpt of Game Change, gasping at his description of Elizabeth Edwards confronting her cheating husband in a parking lot—but we also share a journalistic and spiritual mentor in the late, great editor John Homans. (There are, in fact, quite a few Homans acolytes at Puck.)

A congressional recess is always a good time for lawmakers to go home and cool off—although for Mike Johnson, whose crucial and surprising support for Ukraine funding infuriated his right flank, it’s also a perfect time to re-up on conservative street cred. Today he did so by parachuting into Columbia University, condemning the pro-Palestinian protesters as antisemitic, demanding the resignation of its president, and then suggesting that Biden should deploy the National Guard to uproot the student encampment and quell any protests. (A Kent State scenario on the Upper West Side is probably not the best idea, but Johnson’s call will certainly run, over and over again, on conservative media.)

But will his viral culture-warrior moment be enough to keep the hardliners from rocking the boat, especially with Marjorie Taylor Greene continuing her motion-to-vacate threat against Johnson? All that, below the fold.

But first, here’s Abby Livingston with another view on Capitol Hill…

• Johnson’s Texas getaway: Mike Johnson raised money last night in Dallas for the N.R.C.C., and Texas sources tell me the speaker appeared more upbeat after the misery of last week. That makes sense, given that Dallas is typically friendly territory to the Republican establishment (George and Laura Bush call it home, after all). Naturally, Topic A in nearly all of the speeches was unmitigated support for Donald Trump.
• The C.B.C. boost: Earlier today, Punchbowl ran an item on a fresh round of Congressional Black Caucus endorsements. The C.B.C. previously endorsed several of its members tied up in tough general election races, namely Don Davis, Jahana Hayes, Steven Horsford, and Emilia Sykes. But on Wednesday, the C.B.C. expanded that roster to non-members including Nikki Budzinski, Frank Mrvan, Marcy Kaptur, Greg Landsman, Susie Lee, Pat Ryan, Hillary Scholten, and Eric Sorensen.

  While the C.B.C.’s role is often overlooked in the grand scheme of House race politics, C.B.C. members play a pivotal role in helping to elect non-Black Democrats. Each fall, its members fan out to colleagues’ districts and campaign for them—particularly in Black churches. John Lewis set the standard for this prior to his 2020 passing. These expanded endorsements indicate that C.B.C. members are enthusiastic about campaigning in the fall, and is yet another sign that, outside of flare-ups around the Israel-Hamas war, House Democrats are rowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, House Republican infighting continues to escalate by the week—on cable news, on social media, on the House floor, and even in each other’s districts on the campaign trail.

• Endless Summer: Summer Lee easily won her Pennsylvania House primary last night, which was a victory for the pro-Palestinian wing of the Democratic Party. Lee seemed to understand early on last fall that she was under threat from Bhavini Patel, a moderate-leaning city councilwoman from Edgewood, and ran a strong campaign. While it’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions from this intraparty Democratic fight, many insiders are taking it as an early litmus test for voter sentiment regarding the war in Gaza.
• R.I.P. Payne Jr.: New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne Jr. passed away today after suffering a heart attack earlier this month. He leaves behind a vacancy much like the one he filled when his father, Donald Payne Sr., the first Black person elected to Congress in New Jersey and a revered Newark figure, passed away in 2013 after serving two decades in Washington. Payne Jr., who served on the House Homeland and Transportation committees, kept a lower profile than his father, but proved he was more than a well-known family name when he landed $3.8 billion in federal infrastructure money last winter for a new Hudson River Tunnel between New Jersey and New York.

  His passing comes late in the election cycle, and David Wildstein’s readout of the succession process suggests that it will probably take months to replace him. The vacancy should ease a little of the pressure plaguing Republican leadership over its fluctuating single-digit margin over House Democrats.

After Saturday’s vote-a-rama, it’s safe to say there are plenty of G.O.P. House members who would happily depose Johnson if they could. They’re aware, however, that there’s little support for an alternative, and that Johnson might be the best they can get. “Those of us who went through that exercise prior [with Kevin McCarthy], we understand now, personally, what comes with that,” Rep. Eli Crane told me Friday when I caught him outside the Capitol Building. “All the pressures that come with that, the uncertainty that comes with that. I mean, who are we going to get to fill that void, if there is a void? And will that void be filled with somebody better, or worse?”

In fact, there’s little doubt among Johnson’s right-wing critics that removing him would hurt their cause. More likely, these people warn, Democrats could take advantage of the ensuing chaos to support an even more moderate speaker candidate. “There are people in this conference who hate and disdain real conservatives,” Crane told me. “I would say it’s almost a 10 to one, moderate-to-conservative view [among members].” A bit of catastrophizing, perhaps, but enough of a concern that it sparked whispers in MAGA world, cited last week by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, that several moderate Republicans could strategically resign if Johnson were tossed out, handing control of the House back to Democrats.

For other conservatives, however, the reality of their current situation is already bad enough: The speaker, whom they once imagined was one of them, has revealed himself to care more about supporting moderates, fighting Russia, protecting the dignity of his office, and maintaining a functioning government… than joining in their weekly grievance sessions. “Johnson wants to reflect the majority of the caucus, which includes people from New York and New Jersey who are in very tight reelects,” a Republican insider told me. “And they’re like, ‘We don't want to fight these MAGA fights. We want to go after the Columbia protesters and go after Biden on the budget and on inflation.’ More meat-and-potatoes-type fights, you know? Because let's face it, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy and Thomas Massie—all these guys—they’re able to start these fights with their own caucus because they live in these plus-whatever Republican districts. They’re never going to lose.”

Case in point: H.R.3602, the border security bill that died on the floor last Saturday, is provoking Republican-on-Republican violence on social media as they search for someone to blame. On April 17, the Rules Committee opened debate on the bill, an updated version of Senate legislation with which few members were fully familiar. (The bill was so new that the member who brought it confessed he had only read the final text just before he walked through the door.) This naturally raised the suspicions of committee members Massie, Roy, and Ralph Norman, who accused Republican leadership of giving them a phony bill that was doomed to fail, but one which moderates could vote for, as proof they cared about border security. The Democrats sided with the hardliners, noting that H.R.3602 was a more extreme version of H.R. 2. “This is not real. This is a complete waste of time. … This is about giving people cover,” sighed Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern.

The bill died within 40 minutes of beginning debate. Johnson brought it to the House floor anyway, under suspension of rules—a power held by the speaker to force a vote on a bill, bypassing the Rules committee, in exchange for requiring two-thirds of the House to vote in favor. When the bill fizzled on the floor (215 yeas and 199 nays), moderates attacked the committee hardliners, arguing they were at fault for killing a bill that could have passed out of the House via simple majority—even if it would never become law. (Their argument: The bill would have forced the Democrats to vote against border security.) The hardliners accused the moderates and Johnson of bad faith by taking a meaningless show vote on border security for the purpose of giving moderates cover.

It was a clever but potentially costly move in the long term, feeding the conference’s gripe that Johnson denies them input. “He was able to get a [Ukraine] bill passed, but is the rancor on the right any different?” the former senior House G.O.P. aide said to me. “With Johnson’s position of, ‘Oh, I know how to deal with these guys. I’m just going to go around them,’ some people would say, ‘Wow, that’s a good way to get a coalition government and pass bills.’ And some would say, ‘Wow, you’re working with Democrats and abandoning Republicans in the process.’”

While moderates (and conservatives who favor stable government) might understand why Johnson needs to get creative with this particular G.O.P. majority, vote counts for the last several bills reveal a growing frustration with his tactics and his abandonment of the Hastert Rule, the long-running Republican practice of the speaker only advancing a bill to the floor if over half the conference supports it. “When less than half the conference votes for something,” said the former House aide, “that’s not a good look.”

Despite media mouthpieces who are happy to echo her cause, including Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, Greene’s ideological allies within Congress are just as happy to leave her hanging. In fact, they’ve been making the case against M.T.V.-ing Johnson (including, ironically, Matt Gaetz, the guy who defenestrated McCarthy), arguing that yes, Johnson got swallowed up by the swamp, but the alternatives are worse. Moreover, the success of the previous motion to vacate relied on the ability of Gaetz and activists to mobilize the base against McCarthy, tipping members who’d been on the fence over to the dark side. That assist, apparently, will not happen this time: On Wednesday, a coalition of powerful activist groups and conservative figures—including Grover Norquist, Cleta Mitchell, Tony Perkins, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—released a letter condemning the M.T.V. attempts.

Finally, although Greene’s comments generate incredible click-through rates for MAGA influencers, even they acknowledge it’s a futile endeavor. “She’s making it as if [the motion to vacate] is a routine thing that Republicans should be doing, and parochializing it,” Raheem Kassam, the editor-in-chief of National Pulse and the cohost of Bannon’s podcast War Room, told me. He pointed out that Gaetz, at least, had a moral argument and strategic imperative in booting McCarthy, while Greene, currently, has none. “The reason they retained the [M.T.V.] power was on the understanding that that was a rare achievement and we wouldn’t go about doing that all the time. And now here she is, trying to make it a common occurrence. Look, I understand everything she’s saying. I get it. But if you don’t have an answer to, ‘Okay, what's your alternative, then?’ Then you don't have casus belli. It’s regime change without an alternative leader.”