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 midnight edition — 1 September 2026
Jeffries defends meeting Kushner as 'the reality of governance'; Johnson keeps backing Miller despite abuse allegations.
As it ran on the front
Let's talk about the phrase 'reality of governance,' because that's the kind of phrase they hand you when they want you to stop asking why. Hakeem Jeffries sits down with Jared Kushner, gets some pushback, and out comes the phrase: 'reality of governance.' Not 'I made a call I stand by.' Not 'here's what we talked about.' Four words that mean 'don't look at this too hard, it's just how the sausage gets made,' except you never actually see the sausage, you just get told to trust the casing.
Now look two doors down. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, endorsing Max Miller for reelection. Miller's got abuse allegations sitting on him — not rumors from nowhere, allegations documented enough to make his own party's trade press. And Johnson backs him anyway. No 'reality of governance' from Johnson, because he doesn't need the euphemism — he's just doing it, out loud, on the record, because backing your guy IS the governance, as far as he's concerned.…
…(cont) Here's what connects them, and it ain't party — it's the maneuver. Both men had a choice between a short-term discomfort and a long-term convenience, and both picked convenience, and both expect you to accept the vocabulary they hand you on the way out the door. One says 'reality,' one just doesn't bother explaining. Same move, different wrapping paper.
And that's the thing about governance, real governance — it's supposed to be the hard part, the part where you say no to your own guy when your own guy's got a problem. Instead it's turned into a permission slip. You meet with whoever you need to meet with, you back whoever you need to back, and the phrase, or just plain silence, does the rest of the explaining for you.
Meanwhile the guy actually facing the allegations gets to run for reelection with the Speaker of the House standing next to him telling everybody it's fine. That's not politics as usual, that's politics deciding usual doesn't apply to the people who write the rules. And the folks who have to live with whoever wins that seat don't get a euphemism. They just get the results, same as always, and they're the ones paying for whatever 'governance' turns out to mean this time.
“Both sides got a guy they're covering for, and both sides got a phrase for it — funny how 'reality of governance' never gets used on the small stuff. It's only the ugly stuff that needs a name that fancy. Watch what they call things next time somebody screws up; the fancier the phrase, the worse the thing underneath it.”
“Congressman Miller is entitled to the same process as anybody, and the Speaker is simply respecting the will of primary voters — that's not an endorsement of the allegations, that's an endorsement of the man, which, okay, I hear how that sounds. Let me rephrase: the Speaker believes in innocent until proven, unless it's the other party's guy, then never mind.”
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.