As Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority shrunk even further this week, the Speaker of the House is announcing a trip to London to address the British Parliament — just days before the U.S. federal government is set to shut down unless spending bills are passed by the House and Senate and signed into law.

Currently, nine of the 12 annual appropriations bills still need to be enacted, unless they are combined into larger legislation packages, or a continuing resolution is passed.

“If they fail,” The Washington Post noted, it will “spark another government shutdown just two and a half months after the last one, the longest funding lapse in U.S. history.”

Speaker Johnson may have a difficult task ahead.

On Monday, Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation and retirement took effect. On Tuesday, a California Republican, U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, unexpectedly died at age 65, and another GOP congressman, Jim Baird, was hospitalized after an auto accident. He is expected to recover but his return date has not been announced.

Johnson — at least temporarily — may have to pass legislation with a 218–213 majority. With Baird sidelined, the working margin could be effectively 217–213, meaning he can afford to lose at most one vote on a party-line measure. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has a history of voting against the Trump agenda, and already there are other signs of trouble.

READ MORE: ‘Stalin-Level Propaganda’: White House Ripped for ‘Alternative’ J6 History in New Report

On a procedural vote for a Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill on Wednesday, Republicans were already scrambling.

“With absences and the extremely tight margin, the rule [vote] is going to be close again today. Dems are not expected to help Johnson,” reported Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman.

Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick reported that U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) “just said he is leaning against voting for the rule.”

“There’s plenty of us that are upset about what’s in it,” Burchett said.

Undeterred, Speaker Johnson on Wednesday announced his trip to England.

“Speaker Johnson will travel to London to address the United Kingdom Parliament on Tuesday, January 20 in honor of America’s Semiquincentennial celebration,” a Johnson press release reads. “Speaker Johnson will be the first U.S. Speaker of the House to address Parliament.”

“As our nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of American Independence, I am honored and humbled by Speaker Hoyle’s invitation to address Parliament,” Speaker Johnson said.

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The White House is coming under fire for its “alternative” depiction of the events of January 6, 2021—an episode many have described as an insurrection, a riot, or an attack on the U.S. Capitol and on American democracy.

“President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples,” the White House said on its new webpage detailing January 6, which it also called “A Day That Will Live in Infamy.”

“They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence,” the White House claimed.

In one passage — misleading and disputed by the public record — the White House alleged: “The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government.”

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“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power,” the claim continued. “This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.”

The White House’s J6 webpage also claimed that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “repeatedly” acknowledged responsibility for “catastrophic security failures” including “not having the National Guard pre-deployed, despite intelligence warnings and President Trump’s offers of troops that were ignored.”

The Speaker of the House does not have control over the National Guard, and numerous reports show that Trump made no formal offer to deploy troops on January 6, according to Politico.

Critics took issue with the webpage and many of the White House’s claims.

Axios’ Trump White House reporter Marc Caputo called it an “alternative Jan. 6 history.”

Spectrum News’ national political reporter Taylor Popielarz charged that the White House was attempting “to rewrite what actually happened on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Mediaite contributing editor Sarah Rumpf wrote that the “new White House website contains so many disgusting lies about #January6 it’s hard to know where to start.”

“Relax,” suggested The Bulwark’s Will Saletan. “You’re not living in an authoritarian country. Except for the part where the president seizes unprecedented powers. And the part where he orders sham prosecutions. And the part where his White House rewrites the history of his coup attempt.”

Attorney Drew M. Capuder called it “one of the most evil and dishonest things I have ever seen.”

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The Cato Institute’s David J. Bier simply described it as “pathological.”

Political scientist Michael D. Swaine offered an extensive response:

“A despicable, shameful distortion of reality by a lawless, rogue white house,” Swaine wrote of the White House’s January 6 website. “Yes, January 6th will live in infamy, as an effort to violently overthrow the results of a legitimate election by a criminal politician and his goons.”

“The truth is crystal clear, based on January 6th and many actions since then,” he continued. “Trump has become an illegitimate leader who should be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office. He has violated the Constitution and engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. He will go down in history as by far the worst US president. Under him, the United States is being turned into an authoritarian, rogue nation.”

Swaine urged Americans to “stand up and speak out,” and he warned that it’s “time to act on the basis of the laws and ideals of the nation and get rid of Trump and his quislings.”

“An absolute disgrace,” declared HuffPost’s White House correspondent S.V. Dáte. “Stalin-level propaganda. The people who put this together — on OUR dime — should be ashamed of themselves.”

NBC News, reporting on the White House’s new January 6 webpage, wrote that “Trump is rewriting the narrative around the Capitol siege.”

“In the months after the attack,” NBC added, “Americans generally agreed on what had just happened; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called it a ‘terrorist attack.’”

READ MORE: How Trump Might Seize Greenland: Report

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President Donald Trump followed his weekend military incursion into Venezuela with comments that suggested warnings to several other countries, including Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and Greenland.

Some Europeans and the leaders of several of the countries he mentioned, appear to be taking him seriously.

“Trump’s rhetoric, including his suggestion over the weekend that Washington may have to ‘do something’ about cartels that are ‘running Mexico,’ is reviving fears in Mexico City,” Politico reported.

Trump said the government of Cuba might just fall on its own, but, as The Washington Post reported, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “went further, indicating that the United States might be willing to give it a push.”

With Trump having targeted Greenland for months, some of the territory’s leaders are now concerned it could be at risk.

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“Danish officials think they know how Donald Trump might seize Greenland,” The Atlantic reported.

“In a late-night Truth Social post, the president announces that the Danish territory is now an American ‘protectorate.’ Because neither Denmark nor its European allies possess the military force to prevent the United States from taking the island, they are powerless to resist Trump’s dubious claim. And as the leading member of NATO claims the sovereign territory of another state, the alliance is paralyzed. Arguing that possession is nine-tenths of the law, Trump simply declares that Greenland now belongs to the United States.”

According to The Atlantic, this hypothetical scenario has been discussed by Danish officials and security experts in recent months. It “may have seemed faintly ridiculous,” but after Trump’s incursion in Venezuela, including his “ensuing insistence that the United States now ‘runs’ Venezuela—it seemed far less so.”

“For months, Danes have anxiously imagined an audacious move by the Trump administration to annex Greenland, whether by force, coercion, or an attempt to buy off the local population of about 56,000 people with the promise of cutting them in on future mining deals. Now those fears are spiking.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has “argued that the president’s threats are credible.”

“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” she told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR).

But The Atlantic warned, “if the U.S. goes down that road, NATO will effectively cease to exist the moment the first military personnel enter Greenlandic territory.”

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