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Find out more at G.co'm Anna Palmer. And I'm Jake Sherbin.

And welcome to The Daily Punch. Brought to you by Punchable News. It's Friday, February 28th, 2025, the last day of the month. Let's get into the mix. Here are your Washington headlines of the day. Number one, judging Johnson and Thune. Number two, the latest on the campaign front. And number three, what lawmakers are facing back home? All right, Jake, let's get into it. We are taking the opportunity of this Friday morning, as we often do at the end of certain periods,

to do a Capitol Hill leader look. This is a particularly advantageous time to pass judgment.

We write on the performance of the House and Senate Republican leaders, and we are going to give

the same treatment to the Democratic

leadership next Friday. It comes at a really interesting time. Of course, President Donald Trump

set to address a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday and two weeks from today. The federal

government will shut down if a funding deal isn't reached. Yes, that is two weeks,

14 days, to be exact.

Lawmakers are in the middle of an enormously complex

and controversial reconciliation process as well.

It is a very busy time on Capitol Hill.

But let's get to it.

Speaker, Mike Johnson.

I'm going to let you take this one here, Jake,

but I think to set the stage,

you know, we haven't been looking at the nascent leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson since he

first got the gavel, was able to kind of thread the needle and return to the role this Congress.

...