Congressional Republicans have done so little oversight, The Washington Post reported last month, that the White House Counsel’s Office, expecting Democrats to reclaim a majority in at least one chamber, recently began “giving private briefings to the administration’s political appointees on how to best prepare for congressional oversight.”

The same article added that the roughly 30-minute briefings “have included a PowerPoint presentation about how congressional oversight works and best practices for handling it.”

From House Speaker Mike Johnson’s perspective, the priority is to prevent this from becoming a problem for the White House in the first place.

Johnson: If we lose the midterms, these Democrats will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the cabinet, his donors, friends, half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. We’ll take care of you.

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2026-06-26T17:05:26.409Z

....And what was on his mind was a near future in which a possible House Republican majority spends 2027 and 2028 shielding the president, his team and their allies from the kind of scrutiny that Congress has a responsibility to do as a matter of course.

This isn’t altogether surprising, given everything we’ve seen from Capitol Hill over the past year and a half, but it was nevertheless remarkable to hear a sitting House speaker declare, out loud and in public, that he wants and expects to run a “protection program” — a phrase more commonly associated with organized crime — on behalf of the White House.

Usually, GOP leaders are a bit more subtle about their anti-oversight posturing.

As for the prospect of Democrats turning “every committee of Congress into an investigative body” starting next year, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee promoted Johnson’s comments via social media alongside a message that read, “We are the Homeland Security Committee Democrats and we approve this message.”