House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) affirmed he is standing behind Rep. Max Miller’s (R-OH) reelection campaign despite allegations of domestic violence and child abuse. When asked Monday if he supported Miller, Johnson said “yes,” and that…
Page A3From§Eachthe late evening edition — 31 August 2026
Mike Johnson backs Miller despite abuse allegations; Jeffries defends his Kushner meeting as ‘reality of governance.’
As it ran on the front
Look, the Speaker backing Max Miller isn't an endorsement of anything specific, it's just — it's standard incumbent support, that's how the conference works, you back your own guy in a competitive seat regardless of — well, regardless of the allegations, I mean, obviously not regardless of, nobody's saying the allegations don't matter, they matter, they're just — separate. Procedurally separate. Did I say 'regardless of the allegations'? That's not — that's not how I meant that to land.
And on the Democratic side, look, Jeffries meeting with Kushner, that's just — that's the 'reality of governance,' his words, and frankly that's a mature, bipartisan, adult-in-the-room kind of — I mean, it's a private citizen with an active business portfolio touching Middle East policy, sitting down with the House Minority Leader, and calling that 'governance' rather than, say, 'access,' is — actually, you know, those might be the same word now. Huh. Didn't expect to land there.…
…(cont) The point stands, though: both leaders are doing exactly what leadership requires, which is protecting the coalition, whatever that coalition happens to be holding at the time. Johnson backs Miller because a contested seat is a contested seat, full stop, and if you started pulling support every time there was an allegation attached to a name you'd have a very small conference very fast — I'm not saying that's a defense of the allegation, I'm saying it's a description of the math, and the math is genuinely, structurally amoral, huh, that's — that's not the talking point, scratch that.
Same with Jeffries. You don't get anything done in this town without meeting people you'd rather not have your picture taken with, and calling that 'reality' instead of 'access' is just — it's just message discipline, it's not spin, spin implies there's something underneath to hide, and there isn't, there's just a meeting, a normal meeting, that a Minority Leader felt he needed to publicly defend on the record, for some reason. Anyway. Both sides do it. That's not a scandal, that's Tuesday.
“Two party leaders, two uncomfortable alliances, and both call it something other than what it is — 'reelection support,' 'reality of governance.' Strip the euphemism and it's the same sentence: leadership protects proximity to power over anything it's inconvenient to answer for.”
“Both leaders made judgment calls that reasonable people can disagree with, that's just coalition politics, nothing here rises to — I mean, an allegation is an allegation, a meeting is a meeting, they're not equivalent, I shouldn't have put them in the same sentence like that.”
The receipts
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) defended his private meeting with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and top outside adviser of President Donald Trump. Jeffries, who received significant progressive backlash over the meeting, told…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.