Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is championing the kind of hardline stances in the government shutdown fight long favored by the House Freedom Caucus.

The Speaker has canceled previously scheduled votes in the lower chamber and kept the House in extended recess as he aims to put maximum pressure on Senate Democrats to accept the “clean” stopgap to re-open the government, declining to negotiate as the minority party makes demands on health care policy.

He dismissed the prospect of moving a stand-alone measure to pay the troops in the shutdown, saying Democrats should vote for the continuing resolution (CR) funding measures if they don’t want service members to miss a paycheck — though President Trump seems to have made the issue moot by directing the Pentagon to use other funds to pay their

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