Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune may have just changed the calculus that has allowed House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep Republicans in their home districts since mid-September: he no longer believes continuing resolution legislation should reopen the government only until November 21.

Speaker Johnson has insisted that the House will not vote on any legislation until the Senate passes the House’s bill, but now that Leader Thune has drawn a line in the sand, it appears Johnson might have to change course.

CNN’s Manu Raju reported on Thune’s Monday afternoon remarks: “Says Senate would have to pass new CR and send back to House.”

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The key phrase is “new CR” — and that’s assuming Senate Democrats would back any continuing resolution that doesn’t include health care subsidies, which is far from certain.

Bloomberg News’ Erik Wasson summed it up: “House CR is now dead.”

Semafor’s Burgess Everett reported, “Thune says the Senate’s goal is no longer to pass the House CR, which would expire on Nov. 21. ‘That date’s lost,’ he says, explaining there’s not enough time to pass appropriations bills by then. Says he’s open to a CR lasting into January to give a longer runway.”

Thune added: “I think we’re getting close to an off ramp.”

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The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “if this is now the case, then the House should in theory get back to work because Johnson’s position has always been that Thune needs to act on their CR. And that should mean grijalva should be seated.”

Stein was referring to Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who was elected in September but whom Speaker Johnson has refused to swear in for 41 days.

Stein subsequently added, “that said, i don’t believe Johnson will bring the house back.”

Leader Thune is also not certain on what would happen.

“Thune says ‘there is a difference’ between being optimistic & confident about shutdown ending soon. As of now, he’s the former,” reported Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio.

Desiderio also reported that Thune said, “The objective here is to try to get something we can send back” to House. The “Senate would amend CR to extend end-date,” Desiderio added.

Seemingly, that would require Johnson to bring the Republicans back and bring the House back into session.

CBS News also reported that “Thune said there are procedural maneuvers for changing the date in the House bill, but doing so would require consent from all senators or at least 60 votes.”

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) says he and three others “have identified a bipartisan path forward on the future of the ACA’s Enhanced Premium Tax Credits. Even in gridlock, Congress can find common ground to lower health care costs & get back to work for the American people.”

READ MORE: ‘Unintimidated’ Jack Smith Vows to Present Case Against Trump: Report

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Former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith reportedly has told people close to him that he is not intimidated by the Trump DOJ’s reported investigation into his activities and is looking forward to presenting the public case he made against now-President Donald Trump.

“Mr. Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted Mr. Trump, appears unintimidated by the president’s demand that Republican lawmakers investigate him and that the Justice Department put him in prison for as-yet unproved and unspecified crimes,” The New York Times reported on Monday.

Smith, in an early October interview with fellow former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, said: “The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous.”

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“Smith also said that he had ‘tons of evidence’ that Mr. Trump had willingly retained the classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago and tried ‘to obstruct the investigation.'”

According to those in his “orbit,” Smith is looking forward to presenting the evidence against Trump from the two cases that were scuttled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and that of a highly controversial federal judge’s decision

“Mr. Smith, who spent more than two years aggressively collecting evidence to prove Mr. Trump mishandled classified documents and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, appears eager to publicly challenge a foundational pillar of MAGA canon: that the president was a sinned-upon innocent who did nothing to deserve scrutiny, much less two prosecutions,” according to the Times, which notes that Smith now sits atop Trump’s “prosecutorial hit list,” along with former Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

Smith had been prosecuting Trump on two separate fronts.

The so-called classified documents case and the 2020 election interference case.

Last week, President Trump alleged on social media that “Documents show conclusively that Christopher Wray, Deranged Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, and other crooked lowlifes from the failed Biden Administration, signed off on Operation Arctic Frost.”

“They spied on Senators and Congressmen/women, and even taped their calls. They cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election. These Radical Left Lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!” Trump claimed.

Also last week, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged their Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley, to call on Smith to testify publicly.

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The U.S. Supreme Court is set to meet behind closed doors this week, where it will consider whether to hear a petition filed by former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who is urging the justices to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 landmark ruling that guaranteed same-sex couples the same legal rights and responsibilities of marriage as different-sex couples.

Will the Court take up the case?

Would they go so far as to overturn Obergefell?

What happens if they do?

The jury is out on the first two questions. Some experts believe the justices won’t take up Davis’s case at all, while others say they will, and see it as a vehicle to overturn marriage equality and toss it back to the states — which the Court did in Dobbs — removing the constitutional right to abortion.

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And what happens if they take it up, and take marriage rights from same-sex couples?

Currently, there are 32 states across America that still have laws on their books limiting or banning same-sex marriage, according to Axios. Just 18 states, along with five territories and Washington, D.C., have no marriage equality bans, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

MAP estimates that nearly half (47%) of all LGBTQ people in the U.S. live in areas where their state laws and constitutions ban same-sex marriage. The marriage bans could become law again should the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell. Like the SCOTUS decision that ignored precedent and “settled law” by striking down Roe v. Wade, those bans could spring back into action and become state law once again.

State lawmakers have done little to overturn those same-sex marriage bans and enshrine the rights of same-sex couples into their state laws and constitutions as a backstop to the Supreme Court’s possibly impending decision to overturn Obergefell.

Last month at Politico, Professor of Law Kimberly Wehle served up “5 Reasons the Supreme Court Might Change Its Mind on Same-Sex Marriage.”

Wehle notes that the Court’s composition itself is far different than it was in 2015. There is a staunchly conservative 6-3 majority on the bench. Justice Clarence Thomas has called for a review of all “substantive due process” Supreme Court precedents on which Roe v. Wade was based.

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In his Dobbs concurring opinion, Thomas wrote: “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [v. Connecticut], Lawrence [v. Texas], and Obergefell [v. Hodges]. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ . . . , we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

Wehle also wrote that three justices who wrote strong opinions against same-sex marriage — Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito — remain on the bench. She notes that the Chief Justice wrote that “although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage.”

Now, Kim Davis’s case needs just four justices to grant certiorari — a vote to take up the case.

Legal scholars warn that Obergefell could face new scrutiny under the Court’s “history and tradition” test, a framework some consider highly controversial.

Wehle also points to several recent cases that SCOTUS decided against the LGBTQ community.

There are other issues underfoot that might bolster the Supreme Court’s decision-making process.

The Texas state Supreme Court, for example, last week, ruled that judges may refuse to marry same-sex couples, merely citing their “sincerely held religious belief” against the practice.

Longtime legal writer and commentator David Lat does not believe the Court will take up Davis’s case and overturn Obergefell, in part on technical grounds.

Republican strategist David Urban, in a USA Today opinion piece last week, claimed, “Marriage equality isn’t in danger, but Democrats need you to stay afraid.”

His reasoning?

“Support for same-sex marriage is on the rise, including on the right.”

Not according to a May Gallup poll, as NCRM reported at the time.

Nearly nine in ten Democrats (88%) say marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by law as valid, according to Gallup, but less than half that—just 41 percent—of Republicans agree. That’s a fourteen-point drop from the highest level recorded for right-wing voters, 55 percent, in 2021 and 2022.

“The current 47-point gap between Republicans and Democrats is the largest since Gallup first began tracking this measure 29 years ago,” the polling firm reported.

Asked whether they “personally believe that in general” gay or lesbian relations are “morally acceptable or morally wrong,” even fewer Republicans, just 38 percent, said they are morally acceptable. The national average is 64 percent, and the average among Democrats is 86 percent.

Indeed, one of Wehle’s reasons same-sex marriage might be in trouble is that overturning the ruling would be good for Republican politics.

“Overruling Obergefell could be good for the GOP, too,” she wrote. “With pivotal congressional midterm elections coming up, an opportunity to vote against LGBTQ+ rights could turn out a subset of far-right voters in red states who might otherwise stay home.”

And she observed, the “threat of political pushback from the left has proven to be irrelevant to these justices.”

Last week, MSNBC reviewed the Davis case, and noted that “since John Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005, the court has ruled in favor of religious organizations in 85% of the argued cases it heard.”

Host: Kim Davis is asking the Supreme Court to revisit her position and overturn Obergefell. The ideological balance of the court has shifted dramatically to the right. Since 2005, the court has ruled in favor of religious organizations in 85% of the cases it heard. What’s more,… pic.twitter.com/r0oCdW5ZfD

— FactPost (@factpostnews) October 29, 2025

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