From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Will there or won't there be a government shutdown after Donald Trump blows up the House Republican plan to keep the government funded,

and after that same House GOP fails to pass his preferred alternative. Plus, a Georgia State

Appeals Court disqualifies Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis from continuing to oversee

her criminal litigation against Donald Trump. Welcome to Potomac Watch, a Wall Street Journal podcast.

I am your host today, Kim Strassel, here with my amazing colleagues,

Mene Uquay-Ure-Brua and Alicia Finley. Let's start with the mess in the house, and I want to be clear

we are taping this in the afternoon on Friday, and things are moving fast. But let's try to

sum up where they stood last time I checked in on Washington. House Speaker Mike Johnson

was nearing to closing out this Congress

with a fairly ugly bill that would have continued to fund the government through March 14th,

but also, and in order to get all the votes necessary, including Democratic votes, had been loaded

up with disaster dollars, farm dollars, an ethanol mandate, health care provisions,

China restrictions. Donald Trump threw a bit of a fit over its size, but also over the fact that

it lacked a debt ceiling increase, something that nobody had really even been talking about.

So last night, Johnson put a slim down bill bill on the floor plus a debt-sealing

provision. It failed miserably. 38 Republicans voted against a bill, as did all but three

Democrats. Republicans have been meeting all morning, all day. Let's listen to Mike Johnson

talking about the state of events. We have a unified Republican conference. There is a

unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward. I will not telegraph to you the

specific details of that yet because I've got a couple of things. I got to wrap up in a few moments

upstairs, but I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shut down

...