Hakeem Jeffries Says Mike Johnson Gave Him Silent Treatment on Threats
House Speaker Mike Johnson has apparently chosen the silent treatment in response to a threat on the life of one of his colleagues.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday that he still hadn’t heard from the Republican House leader, days after the wannabe assassin was arrested.
“Has Speaker Johnson reached out to you since a January 6er made a threat on your life?” a reporter asked.
“No,” Jeffries said plainly.
Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old from upstate New York, was arrested Saturday for plotting to kill Jeffries at New York City’s Economic Club.
Moynihan was convicted in 2022 for participating in the Capitol riot. Video evidence captured him breaking through fences, entering the Capitol, and rifling through documents in the Senate Gallery. During the riot, Moynihan said, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags,” according to court documents. Moynihan was also depicted standing behind the Senate well alongside Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman.
He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 2023 but was prematurely released thanks to a blanket pardon from Donald Trump that freed 1,500 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office.
Johnson claimed Tuesday that he was previously unaware of Moynihan’s threats against Jeffries, before he attempted to divert attention away from the right-wing attacker toward the past weekend’s anti-Trump No Kings protests and “violence on the left.”
“The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right,” Johnson told reporters. “Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.”
Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday that “threats of violence will not stop us from showing up, standing up and speaking up for the American people.”
Moynihan sent text messages Friday that spelled out his plans to end Jeffries’s life.
“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan allegedly wrote, according to a criminal complaint. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated.… I will kill him for the future.”
The anonymous recipient flagged the messages to authorities, expressing additional concern over Moynihan’s “increased narcotic abuse and homicidal ideations,” reported Axios.
President Trump’s unilateral, indiscriminate “drug boat” bombings have expanded from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on Wednesday. “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”
Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific.
The vessel was known by our intelligence to be… pic.twitter.com/BayDhUZ4Ac
Hegseth then went on to compare these alleged drug traffickers—who were killed thousands of miles away from the U.S. border—to the 9/11 perpetrators.
“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” he said. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”
All previous bombings have occurred in the Caribbean Sea, where the Trump administration is ratcheting up its military presence. This strike has broadened the scope of the administration’s already deeply controversial bombing campaign. And this kind of language, combining the failed war on drugs with the failed war on terror, has been deployed to justify brutal extrajudicial executions that have killed 32 people at this point, at least two of whom were just regular fishermen.
“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough,’” Trump said last week. “It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people … these are people that are killing our population.”
That number is a complete guess at best. And there is no evidence beyond the administration’s own word that these boats were carrying drugs, or that the men blown to bits were drug traffickers. There are no questions asked, and no other evidence aside from the grainy highlight reels officials like Hegseth post.
Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were two northern Trinidadian fishermen murdered by the Trump administration earlier this month for being “narcoterrorists.”
“I just want to know why Donald Trump killing poor people just so,” Joseph’s uncle “Dollars” told The Guardian. “Just because he going after the people gas and their oil. He going after people riches and killing poor people children.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is criticizing Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for refusing to address one of the main issues, if not the main issue, at the center of the government shutdown: the end of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
In a long post on X Wednesday morning, Greene called out Johnson for claiming on a Republican Party conference call the day before that he had “ideas and pages of policy,” but failing to mention or produce a single one to address the soaring costs of health care if the ACA subsidies expire, calling his actions “unacceptable.”
Greene also blamed Democrats for having “created this nightmare 15 years ago, then made it worse in 2021 by extending the ACA tax credits that are now expiring.” But she went on to castigate her fellow Republicans for “sitting on the sidelines doing nothing to fix this healthcare disaster that is leading many Americans into financial ruin.”
The Georgia congresswoman was once considered one of the most far-right members of Congress, but in recent months has publicly broken with the GOP and President Trump on everything from Israel’s genocide in Gaza to the © New Republic





















Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Tarik Cyril Amar
Mort Laitner
Stefano Lusa
Mark Travers Ph.d
Andrew Silow-Carroll
Constantin Von Hoffmeister
Robert Sarner