House Republicans Play Hooky as Mike Johnson Scrambles to Control Them

Representatives aren’t doing the main part of their job.

One obstacle House Speaker Mike Johnson faces in advancing the GOP agenda in Congress: Outgoing House Republicans are exhibiting a congressional variation of senioritis.

A new analysis by Bloomberg Government finds that, “overall, House Republicans who aren’t coming back next year have missed an average of 39 votes each, more than double the House’s overall average of 18 missed votes per member.”

House absenteeism is coming in large part from Republicans who lost in primaries or elections for another office. Such lawmakers have missed 60 of 595 House roll call votes, or about 10 percent, on average.

That group is made up of almost 10 lawmakers, Bloomberg notes, but it will soon grow, as Arizona Representatives David Schweikert and Andy Biggs are both vying for their party’s nomination for governor. “These reluctant retirees have missed, on average, more than triple the average votes of the rest of the House,” Bloomberg reports.

Representatives Nancy Mace and Wesley Hunt are the House Republicans who have played hooky the most. Mace, who lost her bid for her party’s gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina, has missed 105 votes. Hunt, who unsuccessfully ran in the GOP Senate primary, missed 156, but his attendance actually improved after his loss.

Bloomberg notes that these senior skip days aren’t solely a GOP phenomenon. But Republicans have evidently racked up most of them. And they are yet another thorn in the side of the House speaker, who’s dealing with intraparty strife as Republican insurgents such as Representative Anna Paulina Luna have blocked floor business in hopes of forcing certain far-right priorities.

New Video Raises Questions About ICE’s Story on Deadly Maine Shooting

A young man is dead following another fatal ICE shooting. Video footage shows what happened in the moments after.

New footage from ICE’s fatal shooting in Maine Monday morning shows the victim’s car still running in circles after they shot him at the wheel.

The Portland Press Herald released footage from immediately after the shooting in Biddeford, Maine, showing ICE agents attempting to stop the small white car. When the agents finally succeeded in opening the car door, they let the man’s body slump to the ground before putting him in handcuffs.

OMG. They still dropped him on the ground and handcuffed him after a bullet through his head. pic.twitter.com/AsKoHCkZPO https://t.co/pNKH95bryc— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) July 13, 2026

OMG. They still dropped him on the ground and handcuffed him after a bullet through his head. pic.twitter.com/AsKoHCkZPO https://t.co/pNKH95bryc

It’s a gruesome scene, and an eyewitness told the Press Herald that he saw agents pull the man from the car, “bleeding profusely from the head.”

“He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop,’” the witness said. Other footage appeared to show agents surrounding the man on the ground in an intersection, with the car sporting several bullet holes. A young child, reportedly the victim’s daughter and no older than three years old, was at the scene crying in her Bluey pajamas, according to another witness who spoke with the Press Herald.

Immigration advocates say the man, who has only been identified as a 26-year-old from Colombia, was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number. One eyewitness told Reuters that the ICE officer who shot the man said the victim tried to ram him, a story similar to those that ICE has told in previous violent confrontations.

Maine Representative Chellie Pingree........

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