Good morning and welcome back to today’s edition of the Wolf’s Den. It is Monday, May 4th, and I was going to make a “May the Fourth” joke, but honestly, it wasn’t that funny and the news coming out of Washington is too important — and too revealing — to bury under a punchline.
So, before I continue, please, in honor of me not wasting your time with a May the 4th joke, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. We’re building the strongest independent media operation to defeat the MAGA movement, and your support helps me continue to grow. Thank you.
The big story today is not just that House Republicans are dysfunctional. We already knew that. The big story is that Senate Republicans are now saying it out loud.
Not anonymously. Not in whispers. Not behind closed doors. They are attaching their names to direct criticism of their own House Republican colleagues and warning that Speaker Mike Johnson’s caucus is damaging the Republican brand ahead of the midterms.
That matters.
Because when Democrats say Republicans cannot govern, the right tries to dismiss it as partisan spin. But when Republican Senators look across the Capitol at their own party and say, in effect, “What are you doing?” that is not Democratic messaging. That is an indictment from inside the house.
Senator Kevin Cramer, a far-right Republican from North Dakota, put it bluntly. “It’s not like these things are hard,” he said, arguing that the Senate had teed up bills for the House only to watch Johnson’s conference fail to move them. He added that House Republicans “still haven’t taken the opportunity to actually govern” and that it is “hurting the brand.”
That is an extraordinary thing for a Republican Senator to say about a Republican House.
Then Senator Thom Tillis went even further. “We can’t blame Democrats for the dysfunction that’s going on over there right now,” he said, warning that it is a “really bad look” for Republicans running in vulnerable districts this November.
Take that in for a moment.
Republicans control the House. Republicans control the Senate. Republicans control the White House. And yet their own senators are publicly admitting they cannot blame Democrats for the chaos anymore.
That is the story.
Republicans have built an entire political brand around outrage, obstruction, and performance. They learned how to go on television. They learned how to create viral clips. They learned how to scream about crisis after crisis. But when handed the actual responsibility of governing, they have collapsed under the weight of their own unseriousness.
Take for example the Department of Homeland Security funding fight. Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats worked out a compromise. It passed with overwhelming support. Then it went to the House, where it sat for weeks because Speaker Johnson could not trust his own caucus to get it across the finish line.
That is not leadership. That is paralysis.
We saw the same chaos around FISA. We have seen it on spending. We have seen it on basic governing responsibilities. Again and again, the pattern is the same: House Republicans revolt, Mike Johnson freezes, and the American people are left watching a governing majority behave like a cable news comment section.
This is why the midterm argument for Democrats is so clear.
The American people are dealing with real problems. They are worried about the economy. They are worried about immigration. They are worried about healthcare, affordability, public safety, and whether Washington is capable of doing anything meaningful at all.
And Republicans, despite controlling every lever of power, are proving they are not capable of meeting the moment.
I saw this dynamic firsthand on Capitol Hill. Congressman Tom Suozzi chaired the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group built around the idea that Democrats and Republicans should be able to work together on the country’s hardest challenges. But time and again, the problem was not that Democrats refused to engage. The problem was that Republican leadership would not give its own members enough room to actually govern.
That is the deeper rot inside today’s Republican Party.
They have spent so long rewarding extremism that even when some of their members want to solve problems, the loudest and most chaotic voices hold the entire party hostage.
Now Senate Republicans are finally admitting what Democrats have been saying all along: this chaos is real, it is damaging, and it could cost them in November.
Democrats should not just grab the popcorn.
They should seize the moment.
-Ethan
