GOP senator told Mike Johnson to 'watch your back' when dealing with Chuck Schumer

One leading Senate Republican reportedly warned House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) — who is still less than two weeks into his new job — to not get out-maneuvered by his more senior counterpart in the US Senate.

In a recent Politico report, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), who served as Senate Majority Whip in the 114th and 115th Congresses, was quoted telling the relatively inexperienced Congressman and newly minted Speaker of the House to carefully approach negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

"Watch your back," Cornyn said.

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In sending the Senate a dead-on-arrival bill to provide Israel with $14 billion in new funding following the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, Johnson notably excluded an additional round of funds for Ukraine to aid in its war with Russia. Schumer previously stated that he wouldn't hold a vote on any bill that didn't combine Israel aid with Ukraine aid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) also urged House Republicans to combine aid for both countries into a single legislative package.

"[Johnson's] first major legislative effort was not bipartisan at all. And I think he’s going to learn the hard way that that doesn’t work,” Schumer told Politico. "The president already said he’d veto it. I said I wouldn’t put it on the floor and McConnell didn’t go for it.”

The publication reported that Schumer made several efforts to encourage a bipartisan approach to governing in a recent conversation with Johnson, though the new speaker refused to accede to working with Senate Democrats in those talks. To underscore his point, the senior senator from New York pointed to a statement Johnson made earlier this year when voting to raise the debt ceiling, in which he posted to his website that "Republicans currently control only one house of Congress" and that their options were "unfortunately limited."

"I hope he remembers that sentence as he moves forward. I want to work with him. I want to try," Schumer said.

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Johnson's icy attitude toward Senate Democrats comes after Fox News' Sean Hannity hosted an event with House Republicans earlier this week in which the primetime host repeatedly emphasized unity among the Republican caucus. Future standoffs between Johnson and Schumer seem likely, given that a government shutdown will happen on the night of November 17 if Congress fails to pass a funding bill in time.