California Rep. Kevin Kiley was already one of Speaker Mike Johnson’s loudest Republican critics — even before the government shutdown started earlier this month.

Now two weeks into the standoff, Kiley made clear in an interview Tuesday he has no plans to quiet down on Johnson’s handling of the shutdown, the future of crucial health insurance subsidies and the GOP’s controversial redistricting campaign that has suddenly put Kiley’s own political future in doubt.

Having already called Johnson’s strategy of keeping the House out of session during the shutdown “embarrassing,” Kiley reiterated Tuesday that it was the “wrong decision” and threatens to prolong the impasse.

Rank-and-file members could add pressure to find “some sort of agreement” that would end the shutdown, Kiley said. “When people are just not here, and those conversations aren’t taking place,” he added, that allows the two sides’ rigid positions “to calcify.”

Kiley, who was in Washington Tuesday and appeared at an otherwise sparsely attended pro forma afternoon session, added that the no-show strategy also means House Republicans are “again falling behind” on the full-year spending bills that could be part of a lasting solution to the shutdown: “All the things we were supposed to be getting done and working on are not getting done.”

So far Johnson has shown no sign of budging. He reiterated on a private House Republican call Tuesday members are to stay in their districts on a 48-hour notice to return, and members of his circle have argued members such as Kiley are among a small minority of GOP dissidents.

But Kiley has emerged as an outspoken and fearless critic who has been willing to break ranks at a crucial moment for the GOP leadership. The 40-year-old former state legislator from the Sacramento area says he is simply trying to represent his constituents and push for a solution to the damaging showdown.

“You’re not going to, you know, persuade anyone to do things differently, to keep your feelings quiet,” he said, comparing Johnson’s closure of the House to the cancellation of the legislative session in California during the early Covid crisis.

A Johnson spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Kiley’s criticism.

Inside the House GOP, however, some see payback for what appears to be an existential threat to Kiley’s congressional career: the partisan redistricting fight now playing out across the country.

After President Donald Trump persuaded Texas Republicans to redraw their House maps ahead of the 2026 midterms, California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign to do the same in his own state. Should a Democratic-backed ballot measure pass next month, Kiley and several of his GOP colleagues in the state’s delegation are almost certain to be drawn out of their seats.

Kiley has urged Johnson and fellow House Republicans to pass legislation barring the redrawing of maps outside of the usual decennial Census-driven process. “Just because a party thinks that they can gain an advantage by redrawing lines all of a sudden doesn’t mean they should do it,” he said.

But Johnson has so far refused to act.

“It’s extremely disappointing to me that he did not do the right thing in advocating for our members and protecting the House as an institution,” Kiley said of Johnson, noting that the two have spoken about the topic.

Still, Kiley’s criticism of the speaker has gone well beyond the redistricting dispute and even the tactical decision to keep the House out of session — a move Johnson has undertaken in a bid to force Senate Democrats to pass the stopgap spending bill Republicans, including Kiley, voted for last month.

Kiley has also broken with the bulk of his Republican colleagues in saying the GOP should broach a deal with Democrats on extending key health insurance subsidies as a way to end the shutdown. That’s something Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have explicitly ruled out as part of any shutdown solution.

“There is going to need to be a deal on that issue — I don’t think that there’s any doubt about that,” Kiley said of the subsidies, which are set to expire Dec. 31. “So insofar as there needs to be a deal anyway, if we can try to reach at least the beginnings of one now as a way to get out of the shutdown … I don’t know why we shouldn’t at least explore that possibility.”

He also waded into another sensitive matter by pushing for Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), whom Johnson has refused to seat until the shutdown ends. Once a member, she had pledged to be the 218th signature on a discharge petition forcing a floor vote to release Justice Department documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Kiley has not signed the discharge petition but said he would be “inclined” to vote for the bipartisan Epstein bill should it come up for a vote.

Democrats have dealt with internal dissension, as well: Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada have backed the GOP-led House stopgap bill. But none has been anywhere as vocal as Kiley in criticizing their leadership.

While GOP leaders have been keenly focused on presenting a united front against Democrats’ shutdown demands — and have placed calls to some unhappy members — Kiley said he hasn’t gotten similar pressure from party brass.

“No such requests,” he said, adding that they would not stop him from speaking out in any case.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A north Florida judge has issued a restraining order against Rep. Cory Mills after the central Florida Republican was accused by a former girlfriend of threatening to circulate sexually explicit videos of her.

Circuit Judge Fred Koberlein ordered Mills to refrain from trying to contact Lindsay Langston, Miss United States 2024 and a Republican state committee woman from Columbia County.

In his Tuesday order, the judge said the evidence supported Langston’s assertion that Mills had caused her “substantial emotional distress” and that Mills offered “no credible rebuttal” to her testimony. He found that Langston has a “reasonable cause to believe she is in imminent danger of becoming the victim of another act of dating violence” without the restraining order being put in place.

Koberlein said Mills was not allowed to go to Langston’ home or place of employment and that he was not allowed to directly refer to Langston on social media. The injunction is in place for the state of Florida. Mills did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his order, which is to remain in place until January 2026, Koberlein also refuted Mills’ attempts to explain away his actions.

“The court, considering the totality of the testimony and the circumstances, does not find [Mills’] testimony concerning the intimate videos to be truthful,” Koberlein wrote. “Even had the respondent’s testimony been truthful, his response is irrelevant because there was no evidence presented suggesting [Langston] knew the respondent no longer had possession of their intimate videos.”

The restraining order follows two lengthy court hearings held in Lake City, where both Mills and Langston testified and answered questions about their relationship — and the meaning of a flurry of text messages, phone calls and direct messages between them.

The restraining order against Mills comes amid a swirl of controversies this year for the second-term Republican, including a since-withdrawn allegation of assault and an ethics investigation into whether he’s benefited from contracts from the federal government while serving as a member of Congress. Mills has denied any wrongdoing in both matters.

During the first hearing in early September, Langston spent extensive time on the stand explaining how scared she was of the 45-year-old Mills. She described him as a “powerful” and “wealthy” member of Congress who she first became involved with in late 2021.

The second hearing focused on testimony from Mills, with particular focus on whether Mills had a sex video that he planned to release. He maintained that while Langston had sent him intimate videos, he no longer had access to them because his phone was damaged and had to be replaced.

Mills maintained the videos he mentioned to Langston were those of her baking and wanted to show any potential boyfriend of hers that the two of them had an ongoing relationship.

“You’re talking about giving up my entire career — for what?” Mills said about the prospect of releasing the intimate videos.

Mills also contended another message he sent where he suggested a future boyfriend would need to “strap up cowboy” was not a potential threat of violence but instead was a rodeo term meant to suggest that a “wild ride” was about to happen.

Mills’ relationship with Langston unraveled in the aftermath of a February incident where police in Washington were called to investigate an alleged assault by the lawmaker against a woman. Both Mills and the woman denied that any assault took place, and Mills was not charged in the incident.

Mills first won his seat in 2022 after post-Census redistricting created new GOP-friendly lines for the 7th District, stretching from Orlando’s north suburbs to the Atlantic coast. His campaigns in both 2022 and 2024 were run with the aid of James Blair, a GOP consultant who now works as a deputy chief of staff for President Donald Trump and plays a key role in pushing the president’s agenda on Capitol Hill.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

A menu of options is starting to emerge around what a compromise might look like for extending a suite of Affordable Care Act tax credits, which have become a focal point in the current government funding standoff.

With the shutdown about to enter its third week, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune continue to insist that any negotiation over the future of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies will need to happen after the government reopens.

Behind the scenes, however, Republicans on Capitol Hill and inside the Trump administration are discussing potential pathways to prevent the tax credits from expiring at the end of the year.

According to two people granted anonymity to share details about private discussions, some members of the House GOP leadership circle are having early, informal conversations with officials from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and the Domestic Policy Council to develop a framework for a deal.

As they await President Donald Trump’s buy-in, members of House Republican leadership have discussed imposing minimum out-of-pocket premium payments for ACA enrollees, according to one of the people familiar with the internal conversations.

Ultimately, whatever they come up with has to be something not only Democrats can accept but also Republicans, who are sharply divided over whether to extend the credits at all. Some GOP lawmakers say the subsidies are fueling waste, fraud and abuse; others see political peril in letting them lapse, causing premiums to skyrocket and millions to lose health insurance.

“About 90 percent of members of our conference, they feel strongly … that Obamacare itself and the subsidies have failed,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters Friday. “It’s helped insurance companies pack their bottom line, but it’s crushed families who are paying higher premiums.”

But the increased back-channeling inside the GOP is a strong sign the administration is preparing for eventual negotiations on the tax credits and possible wider health policy changes.

“I think what we’re seeing is the dam breaking here,” said House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on a call with reporters Friday.

Here are some of the policy options currently under consideration among Republican negotiators that could become the basis for an agreement — or, at the very least, an opening offer.

New income limits

Conservatives complain that the expansion of the tax credits under former President Joe Biden removed income caps on the credits, which had previously restricted the subsidies to individuals making below four times the poverty line.

Key GOP negotiators in the House indicate openness to imposing new income caps. They include Reps. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who are touting bipartisan legislation to extend the subsidies for a year.

Influential Democrats — such as Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray of Washington and House Ways and Means ranking member Richard Neal of Massachusetts, have not rejected this proposal out of hand. Murry, for instance, has noted that the vast majority of beneficiaries of the credit make below $200,000 already.

Several Republicans in the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus have likewise privately floated a $200,000 income cap.

Minimum out-of-pocket premiums

Paragon Health Institute, an influential conservative health policy think tank, has been hammering Republicans with data indicating there are millions of “phantom enrollees” in the ACA — individuals who don’t know they’re enrolled in plans because the premiums are fully subsidized by taxpayers. This has sparked interest among conservatives in mandating a minimum out-of-pocket payment to unlock eligibility.

“It doesn’t have to be big, but if you get a notice for a five-buck premium, all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, what?’” said Sen. Dan Sullivan in an interview. The Alaska Republican is part of a “working group” of GOP senators trying to come up with a conservative framework for extending the subsidies.

Cutting off enhanced tax credits for new enrollees 

Allowing current enrollees continued access to the enhanced tax credits could emerge as a palatable compromise and blunt the impact of premium hikes set to take effect this fall. The “grandfathering” of the subsidies would likely be accompanied by other guardrails to root out waste and fraud in the health plans.

But Melanie Egorin, a professor at the University of Virginia and a former Health and Human Services official under the Biden administration, points out that policy would be particularly tough as the labor market softens and people lose their Medicaid coverage due to new work requirements enacted through the GOP megabill over the summer.

“Creating a grandfathering [mechanism] in a time where the economy is not looking so great for many Americans, feels really unfair,” she said in an interview.

New abortion restrictions 

Democrats and Republicans disagree in the first place whether the tax credits truly subsidize plans that cover abortion. But influential anti-abortion groups, such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have mounted fierce campaigns to convince lawmakers and the public the plans make the procedure more affordable.

Conservatives sympathize with the argument, but the anti-abortion messaging campaign has in many ways made the policy fight more intractable. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democratic negotiator on the issue, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, have already indicated that abortion restrictions are a nonstarter for any deal on the larger issue.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose a massive new fee for employers seeking to hire foreign workers in high-skill fields have reenergized congressional Republicans’ efforts to pass legislation strengthening the controversial visa program.

After years of dissipating interest inside the GOP to tackle any immigration policy not directly tied to border security, the current moment appears ripe for a legislative breakthrough around expanding the use of so-called H-1B visas, which have propelled the country’s tech industry for decades.

Opponents say the 35-year-old program siphons jobs from American citizens and unfairly deflates wages. But it also has united an unlikely group of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum who want to help businesses in need of workers with specialized expertise. That contingent includes Republicans who have typically been reluctant to support legislation that would allow more immigrants into the country.

The recent presidential proclamation forcing employers to pay $100,000 to hire workers under H-1B visas — a move designed to incentivize domestic hiring practices — is instilling fear and confusion inside hospitals and universities that rely on the program. It also has sent a jolt through the Senate, where the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee recently reintroduced legislation designed to strengthen the rules for the program and prioritize applicants with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

“We need an immigration bill, badly,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a cosponsor of the bill who is working to get fellow conservatives on board with the effort. He’s also running for governor of a state with multiple major research universities.

“I think Trump, perhaps inadvertently, is strengthening our case for the bill,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), another co-sponsor of the legislation.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, are skeptical there is sufficient political will to make any meaningful progress on the issue. Immigration hard-liners still occupy senior positions throughout the White House and hold power on Capitol Hill; Trump has waffled on the question of whether the H-1B policy is worth preserving; and at least one key Democrat says any conservative enthusiasm now to tackle the program is too little, too late.

“There’s no appetite for immigration legislation at all,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is set to retire in 2027 with little to show for his work over nearly three decades in office to pass legislation that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The American economy relies heavily on H-1B visas, with the number of people applying for slots vastly outnumbering those which are available each year. And this is not the first time lawmakers have seen a glimmer of hope around efforts to overhaul the program — only to later see it fade.

Almost a year ago, the billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk was touting high-skilled immigration throughout the United States through H-1B visas, saying they were necessary to help fuel innovation. Trump, who suspended the program during his first term, suddenly appeared ready to side with Musk, lauding the initiative that he claimed to have leveraged for his own business interests.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a MAGA stalwart and Musk acolyte, also signaled an openness to revisiting the H-1B system from his perch as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

But Musk has since that time had a public falling-out with the president, and anti-immigration hawks like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have Trump’s ear. Trump’s new H-1B visa fee is a reflection of the administration’s current stance.

“Anything that’s going to get done, the president’s got to sign off on it,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), “So it’s going to be something that the president feels comfortable with.”

Scott worked on a previous effort to limit the number of H-1B recipients who can receive green cards annually. Different versions of that bill passed the House and the Senate in 2019 and 2020, respectively, but the two measures were never reconciled, and the legislation was never signed into law.

Wishing to seize the moment but also cognizant of the political challenges ahead, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in an interview shifted his comments to deliver a personal plea to Trump himself.

“The president has brought attention to the problems with H-1B’s,” the Iowa Republican said. “If the president will read your story, I’d give him this message: He’s created great credibility because he has closed down the border — great credibility on immigration issues.”

Endorsing an H-1B overhaul bill, Grassley continued, “would give him a chance to get some of these really simple things in immigration that ought to pass the Congress.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its intentions to work with Congress on a legislative fix.

George Fishman, a senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former Department of Homeland Security official in the first Trump administration, said Trump is being pulled in radically different directions by those advising him. Barring true interest from Trump in the matter, Fishman suspected congressional action is unlikely.

“Based on three decades of bitter experience, I’m sort of resigned to not expecting things to happen legislatively,” said Fishman, who also worked on immigration policy as a Hill aide.

Trump aside, the political dynamics around the immigration issue on Capitol Hill are broadly problematic. For years, efforts to update the nation’s outdated immigration policy have fallen short. A bipartisan Senate “gang” in 2013 managed to pass a bill that combined border security with a pathway to citizenship, but it was never taken up in the House.

Since that time, the Trump ethos around immigration has further polarized the issue, hardening even Republicans who at one point linked their personal brands to being willing to work with Democrats on it.

That includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was once Durbin’s main partner in trying to pass legislation that would protect young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents as children — the recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Graham now says he isn’t interested in doing anything to expand legal immigration until the border is properly secured — and he doesn’t trust Democrats to restrain themselves.

“We all are agreed that we need H-1B reform,” Graham said in an interview. “Well, then Democrats will say, ‘Okay, let’s reform that, but what about the DACA folks?’ And they’ll want something there, and that’s just the way it goes.”

Grassley said he understood that reality. “We got some people on the right that think they aren’t going to vote for any [immigration] legislation until you load up 12 million people and get them out of the country.”

In the meantime, Trump’s new $100,000 fee is being challenged in court by a coalition of unions, education groups and others who argue the cost is unworkable and unjustified. A judge could strike down the proclamation, and the case is ongoing.

Until then, Grassley suggested the chaos and anxiety being caused by the presidential action could work to the advantage of the program’s proponents.

“The business groups that fought the Grassley-Durbin bill over the last 10 years, that are now upset with the $100,000 the president’s putting in on each one of these [visas] … maybe they would realize that they shouldn’t have fought our legislation,” he said.

Republicans are ratcheting up pressure on Democrats on multiple fronts as the government shutdown enters a third workweek, hoping the hardball moves can finally force a reckoning as U.S. troops face a first-ever missed paycheck.

The GOP fear is that if the military pay deadline passes without action, there will be little to stop the shutdown from continuing for several more weeks at least. Some Republicans have privately warned the White House that taking unilateral action to pay servicemembers would deprive the party of a key lever to make Democrats feel overwhelming consequences for their refusal to act on a House-passed spending bill.

As Washington inched closer to the Wednesday pay date, Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue sprang into action: At the White House, budget director Russ Vought announced “substantial” layoffs Friday, finally making good on two weeks of threats.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans said they would no longer allow Democrats to keep calling up their own stopgap spending bill funding the government through the end of October, forcing votes only on the GOP-led alternative. Speaker Mike Johnson is continuing to keep the House out of session this week, and he argues Democrats will bear the consequences of federal workers and troops missing pay.

“It’s a compelling reason to open the damn government,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), adding that “the troop deadline is the issue — if anything becomes an inflection point, it’s that.”

The GOP effort to force Democrats to heel comes as talks between the top four congressional leaders remain virtually nonexistent. And there’s no sign that rank-and-file Senate Democrats — just five of whom could quickly end the shutdown — are ready to flip ahead of another scheduled vote on the House-passed stopgap Tuesday night.

Rather than military pay, Democrats are looking at another day they believe will be the ultimate pressure point: the Nov. 1 launch of open enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance plans. The party has sought to make the pending expiration of premium tax credits a central issue in the standoff, demanding Republicans cut a deal to extend them.

“The closer to Nov. 1, a lot of these elected officials are going to start hearing from their constituents,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) when asked what he thinks will break the impasse.

The fear that the shutdown is pitting the unstoppable force of Democratic anger at President Donald Trump versus the immovable object of GOP resolve not to flinch has not yet generated any substantive bipartisan negotiations.

While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries believe the only way out of the shutdown is for their GOP counterparts and Trump to talk to them, Republicans are making it clear that they don’t see the point right now and are counting on rank-and-file Democrats to pressure their own party brass.

“I think Leader Schumer has checked out,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Friday, adding that Republicans were looking for “bold, courageous Democrats with a backbone.”

In addition to the military pay deadline, lawmakers are keeping a close eye on federal aviation as another potential area that could force Congress into a detente. Thune mentioned the shutdown’s impacts on air travel, saying it was one way senators “might start to feel that a little bit personally.” Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, separately noted last week how air traffic controllers were a driving factor in the last shutdown.

But if the Trump administration thought Friday’s firings of several thousand federal workers would break the impasse, it instead appears to have only stiffened Hill Democrats’ spines to keep the shutdown going.

“We will not be threatened and intimidated by the likes of Russ Vought,” purple-district Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday.

Jeffries is calling House Democrats back to Washington for a Tuesday evening caucus meeting, and Democratic lawmakers are expected to take part in more public appearances this week even as the House stays out of session. He and Schumer have largely managed to keep their caucuses unified on the demand for a bipartisan negotiation — even though there are already clear signs of fissures between the two Democratic leaders over what would be an acceptable end to the shutdown.

“The American people want it, they are seeing how devastating this is, and they are putting a lot of pressure on their Republican congressmen and senators,” Schumer said when asked why he believes Republicans will change their minds on health care, insisting that GOP senators were “feeling the heat.”

Democrats are also trying to drive a wedge between GOP leaders and the White House. Schumer has pointed to Johnson, who is wary of extending the insurance subsidies, as the real roadblock. And Durbin, asked about Thune, noted he had known and worked with the genial South Dakotan for years but “he is at the mercy of a president who is mercurial.”

Republican leaders, however, have shown no signs they will back down from their view that any deal on extending the expiring tax credits can’t be forged while the government is closed down. Instead, they are trying to peel off another five Senate Democrats by dangling an offer to talk once the shutdown is over.

“There are some Democrats who I think are reasonable enough to know that this is not a sustainable position for them,” Thune said.

The bipartisan talks among the Senate rank-and-file are ongoing but have so far failed to bear fruit. Republican leaders floated an offer to potentially hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but Democrats involved in the talks said the details were too fuzzy to agree. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is separately floating a “six-point plan” to Democrats, which would involve a similar commitment on health care plus moving full-year government funding bills.

Even though the group hasn’t yet come up with a deal, aides believe the rapid launching of trial balloons late last week was a good sign. Eventually, they reckon, one of them will take flight and get Congress out of the shutdown.

But the other risk, Republicans are starting to warn, is that the standoff could go on for so long they might need to extend the window for reaching a broader deal on federal spending and the insurance subsidies.

The House-approved bill expires on Nov. 21, just before Thanksgiving. Now some in the GOP are floating dates just before Christmas, and top party leaders are discussing that possibility. Democrats, meanwhile, want a shorter window for action — before the Nov. 1 open enrollment date.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma Republican whom White House officials have tapped to coordinate informal talks with Democrats, said he has floated the later, pre-Christmas deadline in hopes of breaking something loose.

“You start with A, B, C, and you probably end up at D,” Mullin said. “And I think right now we’re probably somewhere around B.”