#USHouse of Representatives

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 19, 2024

I will not spend the rest of 2024 focusing on Trump and the chaos in the Republican Party, but today it has been impossible to look away.

In Trump’s election interference trial in Manhattan, Judge Juan Merchan this morning dismissed one of the selected jurors after she expressed concern for her anonymity and thus for her safety. All of the reporters in the courtroom have shared so much information about the jurors that they seemed at risk of being identified, but Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters not only ran a video segment about a juror, he suggested she was “concerning.” Trump shared the video on social media.

The juror told the judge that so much information about her had become public that her friends and family had begun to ask her if she was one of the jurors. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted jurors’ fear for their safety was a concern normally seen only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”

Nonetheless, by the end of the day, twelve people had been chosen to serve as jurors. Tomorrow the process will continue in order to find six alternate jurors. 

It is a courtesy for the two sides at a trial to share with each other the names of their next witnesses so the other team can prepare for them. Today the prosecution declined to provide the names of their first three witnesses to the defense lawyers out of concern that Trump would broadcast them on social media. “Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We’re not telling them who the witnesses are,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. 

Merchan said he “can’t blame them.” Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche offered to "commit to the court and the [prosecution] that President Trump will not [post] about any witness" on social media. "I don't think you can make that representation," Merchan said, in a recognition that Trump cannot be trusted, even by his own lawyers.

An article in the New York Times today confirmed that the trial will give Trump plenty of publicity, but not the kind that he prefers. Lawyer Norman L. Eisen walked through questions about what a prison sentence for Trump could look like.

Trump’s popular image is taking a hit in other ways, as well. Zac Anderson and Erin Mansfield of USA Today reported that Trump is funneling money from his campaign fundraising directly into his businesses. According to a new report filed with the Federal Election Commission, in February and March the campaign wrote checks totaling $411,287 to Mar-a-Lago and in March a check for $62,337 to Trump National Doral Miami.

Experts say it is legal for candidates to pay their own businesses for services used by the campaign so long as they pay fair market value. At the same time, they note that since Trump appears to be desperate for money, “it looks bad.”

Astonishingly, Trump’s trial was not the biggest domestic story today. Republicans in Congress were in chaos as members of the extremist Freedom Caucus worked to derail the national security supplemental bills that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has introduced in place of the Senate bill, although they track that bill closely. 

The House Rules Committee spent the day debating the foreign aid package, which appropriates aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately. The Israel bill also contains $9.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other countries. A fourth bill focuses on forcing the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company, as well as on imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran. 

At stake in the House Rules Committee was Johnson’s plan to allow the House to debate and vote on each measure separately, and then recombine them all into a single measure if they all pass. This would allow extremist Republicans to vote against aid to Ukraine, while still tying the pieces all together to send to the Senate. As Robert Jimison outlined in the New York Times, this complicated plan meant that the Rules Committee vote to allow such a maneuver was crucial to the bill’s passage.

The extremist House Republicans were adamantly opposed to the plan because of their staunch opposition to aid for Ukraine. They wrote in a memo on Wednesday: “This tactic allows Johnson to pass priorities favored by President Biden, the swamp and the Ukraine war machine with a supermajority of House members, leaving conservatives out to dry.”

Extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) vowed to throw House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of the speakership, but Democrats Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida have said they would vote to keep him in his seat, thereby defanging the attack on his leadership.

So the extremists instead tried to load the measures up with amendments prohibiting funds from being used for abortion, removing humanitarian aid for Gaza, opposing a two-state solution to the Hamas-Israel war, calling for a wall at the southern border of the U.S., defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and so on.

Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.

Finally, Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.” 

Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor.

The name of their response team seems likely to be their way to signal their disrespect for the entire Congress. Their fellow Republicans are returning the heat. Today Mike Turner (R-OH) referred to the extremists as the Bully Caucus on MSNBC and said, “We need to get back to professionalism, we need to get back to governing, we need to get back to legislating.” Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Juliegrace Brufke of Axios:  "The vast majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives...are sick and tired of having people who...constantly blackmail the speaker of the House.”

Another Republican representative, Jake LaTurner of Kansas, announced today he will not run for reelection. He joins more than 20 other Republican representatives heading for the exits.

After all the drama, the House Rules Committee voted 6–3 tonight to advance the foreign aid package to the House floor. Three Republicans voted nay. While it is customary for the opposition party to vote against advancing bills out of the committee, the Democrats broke with tradition and voted in favor.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[foreverlogical]

Peltola’s victory in the state’s first ranked choice voting election makes her the first Alaska Native to serve in the House

Democrat Mary Peltola won the special election for Alaska’s only USHouse seat on Wednesday, besting a field that included Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor.

Peltola, who is Yup’ik and turned 49 on Wednesday, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in the House and the first woman to hold the seat. She will serve the remaining months of the late Republican US Representative Don Young’s term. Young held the seat for 49 years before his death in March.

Continue reading...

[modellmc]

#Regram of a pic from @lamiabellamente - words from me: Oh so you mean in #LYME , Connecticut that this happened? Finally, #LymeDisease is being heard and fought for by #House representatives (specifically, #NewJersey #houseofrepresentatives speaker, #ChrisSmith). This is #GROUNDBREAKING. We #lymies THANK you!!!💚💚💚 #lymediseaseawareness #lymeawareness #lymie #hope #nytimesthisislyme #chroniclymeisreal #chroniclymedisease #chroniclyme #modellmc #butyoudontlooksick #thepentagon #ushouse #lymewarrior #lymewarriors #lymedontkillmyvibe (at The Pentagon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0CYTlzHzII/?igshid=t2nnnkgn39y5

[nextlivenews]

Biden’s $1.9tn Covid relief bill passes House vote

https://nextlivenews.com/world-news/bidens-1-9tn-covid-relief-bill-passes-house-vote/ Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package has been approved by the USHouse of Representatives in his first legislative win. The president’s plan to send emergency financial aid ...

[go-redgirl]

Maxine Waters Unfit to Chair House Financial Services Committee Judicial Watch ^ | November 20, 2018

Considering her record and documented history of poor ethical and moral fitness, it’s outrageous that Maxine Waters is up for chair of the ultra-powerful House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the country’s banking system, economy, housing, and insurance. With Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives, come January the 14-term California congresswoman is expected to head the committee, which also has jurisdiction over monetary policy, international finance, and efforts to combat terrorist financing.

Throughout her storied political career, Waters has been embroiled in numerous controversies, including abusing her power to enrich family members, getting a communist dictator to harbor a cop-murdering Black Panther fugitive still wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and accusing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of selling crack cocaine in black neighborhoods. A few months ago, the 80-year-old Democrat from Los Angeles encouraged violence against Trump administration cabinet members. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said at a summer rally in Los Angeles. Judicial Watch filed a House ethics complaint against Waters for encouraging violence against Trump Cabinet members.

Among her most corrupt acts as a federal legislator is steering millions of federal bailout dollars to her husband’s failing bank, OneUnited. Waters allocated $12 million to the Massachusetts bank in which she and her board member husband held shares. OneUnited subsequently got shut down by the government and American taxpayers got stiffed for the millions. Judicial Watch investigated the scandal and obtained documents from the U.S. Treasury related to the controversial bailout. The famously remiss House Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating and punishing corrupt lawmakers like Waters, found that she committed no wrongdoing . The panel bought Waters’ absurd story that she allocated the money as part of her longtime work to promote opportunity for minority-owned businesses and lending in underserved communities even though her husband’s bank was located thousands of miles away from the south Los Angeles neighborhoods she represents in Congress.

The reality is that without intervention by Waters OneUnited was an extremely unlikely candidate for a government bailout through the disastrous Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Treasury Department warned that it would only provide bailout funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending and OneUnited clearly didn’t meet that criteria. Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch detail the deplorable financial condition of OneUnited at the time of the government cash infusion. The records also show that, prior to the bailout, the bank received a “ less than satisfactory rating.” Incredibly, after that scandal Waters was chosen by her colleagues to hold a ranking position on the House Financial Services Committee she will soon chair. The only consequence for blowing $12 million on her husband’s failing bank was a slap on the hand to Waters’ chief of staff (her grandson) for violating House standards of conduct to help OneUnited.

Waters, who represents some of Los Angeles’ poorest inner-city neighborhoods, has also helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper. While she and her relatives get richer (she lives in a $4.5 million Los Angeles mansion), her constituents get poorer. The congresswoman was also embroiled in a fundraising scandal for skirting federal election rules with a shady gimmick that allows unlimited donations from certain contributors. Instead of raising most of her campaign funds from individuals or political action committees, Waters sells her endorsement to other politicians and political causes for as much as $45,000 a pop.

It wouldn’t be right to part without also noting some of Waters’ international accolades. She has made worldwide headlines for her frequent trips to communist Cuba to visit her convicted cop-assassin friend, Joanne Chesimard, who appears on the FBI’s most wanted list and is also known by her Black Panther name of Assata Shakur. Chesimard was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted by a jury of the 1979 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. With the help of fellow cult members, she escaped from jail and fled to Cuba. Outraged U.S. lawmakers insisted she be extradited but Waters always stood by her side, likening the cop-assassin to civil rights leader Martin Luther King. In fact, Waters wrote Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro a letter to assure him that she was not part of the group of U.S. legislators who voted for a resolution to extradite the cop murderer. Waters told Castro that she opposed extradition because Chesimard was “politically persecuted” in the U.S. and simply seeking political asylum in Havana, where she still lives.

In the 1980s Waters accused the CIA of selling crack cocaine to blacks in her south-central Los Angeles district to raise millions of dollars to support clandestine operations in Latin America, including a guerrilla army. During the infamous 1992 Los Angeles riots the congresswoman repeatedly excused the violent behavior that ironically destroyed the areas she represents in the House. She dismissed the severe beating of a white truck driver by saying the anger in her district was righteous. She also excused looters who stole from stores by saying they were simply mothers capitalizing on an opportunity to take some milk, bread, and shoes.

Should this ethically and morally challenged individual, who has repeatedly displayed behavior unbecoming of a federal lawmaker, be at the helm of an influential congressional committee that oversees the financial sector?

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California

KEYWORDS: blackpanthers; california; cia; corruption; criminal; cuba; ethics; financialservicescom; hangher; joannechesimard; judicialwatch; jw; lariots; losangeles; madmax; madmaxine; maxinewaters; murderer; oneunitedbank; reginalddenny; ushouse

[instatrack]

FT Photo Diary 📸: Democratic Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York talks with reporters on Capitol Hill as she arrives for a photo with incoming newly-elected members of the US House of Representatives in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2018. 📷: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque #ft #financialtimes #photooftheday #picoftheday #photo #photography #photographer #onassignment #capitolhill #ocasio #aoc #ocasiocortez #newyork #nyc #queens #House #ushouse #politics #political #election #midterm #elections #alexandriaocasiocortez https://ift.tt/2DEnIhC

[bitcoinmastersclub-blog]

. . 🇺🇸 US House Unanimously Passes Bill to Help Fight Illicit Use of Cryptocurrencies - The U.S. House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill to help prevent the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, dash, zcash, and monero. This bill follows a testimony by ... read more . 🌍 https://news.bitcoin.com/us-house-unanimously-passes-bill-to-help-fight-illicit-use-of-cryptocurrencies . . 🇩🇪 US-Haus verabschiedet einstimmig Gesetz zur Bekämpfung der illegalen Verwendung von Kryptowährungen . . 🇮🇹 La Camera degli Stati Uniti approva all'unanimità un disegno di legge per contribuire a combattere l'uso illecito delle criptovalute . . 🌍 www.bitcoin-masters.club . 💬 bit.ly/bitcoinmasterschat . #️⃣ #bitcoinmastersclub . . #investment #invest #financialfreedom #bitcoin #etc #btc #investor #cryptocurrency #dash #ripple #blockchain #mining #ethereum #crypto #investors #entrepreneur #krypto #finanziellefreiheit #kryptowährung #investition #investimento #cripto #investimenti #libertafinanziaria #criptovaluta #criptovalute #ushouse #bill #illicituse

[civilrightsadvocacy]

US House Attempting to Make the Hyde Amendment Permanent

#USHouse set to vote on #HR7 to make #HydeAmendment permanent. Oppose this bill. Call Rep. RT

The US House of Representative is expected to vote on the ” No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” aka known as HR 7 of 2017. This is a bill that attempts to block all women from accessing health insurance that covers abortion care.

The Feminist Majority posted information about this bill at 11:50 am ET this morning giving background to what this bill does and how it threatens women’s lives. I’m…

[ehwright]

Two important numbers and one important date. I love seeing how people are coming together to let their voices be heard in light of recent events and flexing their rights but now we have to proactive to enact change in places of power. Whether your a democrat, republican, independent, green, conservative, liberal, etc. there has to be an understanding of what the people that put in these positions are doing. Are they representing you or looking out for best interests when they are pushing bills and polices or blocking measures that can directly affect your way of life. 33 seats are up grabs in the senate and 39 in the house along with other elections. Find out who these people are and hold them accountable by not your voice and actions but also your vote. If they don't represent you then YOU CAN RUN, you have that right as a citizen. You can work on enacting the change you want to see. #womensmarchonwashington #itstime #change #payattention #ushouse #ussenate #nov28th

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 3, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Wow.

Today, House Republicans made history by being the first to throw out their own Speaker of the House, while the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination made history by being the first candidate to be gagged by a judge after threatening one of the judge’s law clerks by posting a lie about her on social media. 

Ever since Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a deal with the extremists in his conference to win the speakership after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, he has catered to those extremists in an apparent bid to hold on to his position. From the first, he gave them key positions on committees, permitted them to introduce extreme measures and load up bills with poison pills that meant the bills could never make it through Congress, and recently to open impeachment hearings against President Joe Biden.

But the extremists have continued to bully him, especially since they opposed a deal he cut with Biden before McCarthy would agree to raise the debt ceiling, threatening to make the United States default on its debt for the first time in U.S. history. When their refusal to pass either appropriations bills or a continuing resolution to buy more time to pass those bills meant the U.S. was hours away from a government shutdown, McCarthy finally had to rely on the Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution on Saturday. 

A shutdown would have hurt the country and, in so doing, would have benefited former president Trump, to whom the extremists are loyal. Led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, they were vocal about their anger at McCarthy’s pivot to the Democrats to keep the government open, 

Yesterday, Gaetz challenged McCarthy’s leadership, apparently with the expectation that the Democrats would step in to save McCarthy’s job, although it is traditionally the majority party that determines its leader. According to Paul Kane of the Washington Post, McCarthy did reach out to Democrats for votes to support his speakership. But Democrats pointed to McCarthy’s constant caving to the MAGA Republicans—as recently as Sunday, McCarthy blamed the threat of a shutdown on the Democrats—and were clear the problem was the Republicans’ alone. 

“It is now the responsibility of the [Republican] members to end the House Republican Civil War. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote to the Democratic caucus.

And so, when the House considered blocking Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair, the measure failed by a vote of 208 to 218. Eleven Republicans voted against blocking it. And then, on the voting over the measure itself, 216 members voted to remove McCarthy while 210 voted to keep him in the speaker’s chair. Eight Republicans abandoned their party to toss him aside, making him the first speaker ever removed from office. 

The result was a surprise to many Republicans, and there is no apparent plan for moving forward. House Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK), who released a statement supporting McCarthy, called the outcome “simply a vote for chaos.”

Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speakers in case of emergency, so the gavel has passed to Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has power only to recess, adjourn, and hold votes for a new speaker. McCarthy says he will not run for speaker again. The House has recessed for the rest of the week, putting off a new speaker fight. 

Until then, Republicans seem to be turning their fury at their own debacle on the Democrats, blaming them for not stepping in to fix the Republicans’ mess. One of McHenry’s first official acts was to order former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to vacate her private Capitol office by tomorrow, announcing that he was having the room rekeyed. Pelosi was not even there for today’s votes; she is in California for the memorial services for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). 

McHenry’s action is unlikely to make the Democrats more eager to work with the Republicans; Pelosi noted that this “sharp departure from tradition” seemed a surprising first move “[w]ith all the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting….” Pelosi might have been sharp, but she is not wrong. The continuing resolution to fund the government runs out shortly before Thanksgiving, and funding for Ukraine has an even shorter time frame than that. The House cannot do business without a speaker, and each day this chaos continues is a victory for the extremists who are eager to stop a government that does anything other than what they want from functioning, even as it highlights the Republicans’ inability to govern. 

Phew. But that was not the end of the day’s news.

Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, who is watching the New York trial of Trump, his two older sons, two of his associates, and the Trump Organization, wrote that New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron said today that he had warned Trump’s lawyer that Trump must not continue his attacks on the justice system. Rather than heed the warning, Trump today went after Engoron’s own law clerk, posting a lie about her with a photo on social media. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” Engoron said. 

Engoron ordered Trump to delete the post, and the former president did so. Engoron forbade “all parties from posting, emailing, or speaking publicly about any members of my staff” and warned there would be “serious sanctions” for those who did so. 

The New York case strikes close to Trump’s identity as a successful businessman by showing that he lied about the actual value of his properties, and by dissolving a number of his businesses by canceling their licenses. Adding to Trump’s troubles today is that he fell off Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, a status that in the past he has cared deeply about.

In the midst of the Republican chaos, the Biden administration announced that the manufacturers of all the ten drugs selected for negotiation with Medicare to lower prices have agreed to participate in the program, although they are pursuing lawsuits to stop it. Several of the pharmaceutical companies have complained of being “essentially forced” to sign on; one says it is participating “under protest” but feels it has no choice given the penalties their products would bear if they are unwilling to negotiate prices. 

According to the White House, the ten drugs selected for negotiation accounted for a total of $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for an estimated 9 million Medicare enrollees in 2022. The negotiations were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed without any Republican votes.

The Department of Justice announced eight indictments against China-based companies and their employees for crimes relating to street fentanyl and methamphetamine production, distribution of synthetic opioids, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals used to make street fentanyl. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) administrator Anne Milgram noted that the supply chain that brings street fentanyl to the U.S. starts in China, from which chemical companies ship fentanyl precursors and analogues into our country and into Mexico, where the chemicals “are used to make fentanyl and make it especially deadly.” Milgram promised that the “DEA will not stop until we defeat this threat.” 

Finally, while the Republicans were making history on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, the Democrats were making history on the Senate side. Vice President Kamala Harris swore into office Senator Laphonza Butler to complete the term of Senator Dianne Feinstein, which ends next year. Before her nomination, Butler was the president of EMILYs List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic female candidates who back reproductive rights to office, and has advised a number of high-profile political campaigns, including that of Harris in 2020.  

Butler is the first Black lesbian in the Senate. She and her wife, Nenike, have a daughter.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Duck & Cover http://Newsday.com/matt

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 4, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Yesterday, eight extremist members of the Republican congressional conference demonstrated that they could stop their party, and the government, from functioning. Indeed, that’s about all those members have ever managed to do. Political scientist Lindsey Cormack noted on social media that Representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have managed only to name a single facility each; Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT) have each sponsored no successful bills; and Bob Good (R-VA) has sent one thing to the president, who vetoed it. 

They are not interested in governing; they are interested in stopping the government, apparently working with right-wing agitator Steve Bannon to sink the speakership of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Indeed, the only two significant legislative achievements the Republicans have made since they took control of the House in January 2023 were raising the debt ceiling and passing a continuing resolution to fund the government for 45 days. In both of those cases, the measures passed because Democrats provided more votes for them than the Republicans did. 

The former House speaker was one of many Republicans who tried to turn this internal party debacle into the fault of the Democrats, although he apparently offered them no reason to come to his support and made it clear he would continue to boost the extremists. 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “The idea that D[emocrat]s should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R[epublican] bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and D[emocrat]s managing the consequences of that behavior is a given.” Journalist James Fallows agreed that this understanding “is so deeply engrained in mainstream coverage and ‘framing’ of DC that it doesn’t need to be said out loud.” 

Aaron Fritschner, the deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), was more specific, calling the idea the Democrats were refusing to support McCarthy out of spite “silly nonsense.” He noted that on Saturday, the House was preparing to shut down when McCarthy sprung on the Democrats a vote on the continuing resolution the Democrats had never seen. “My immediate read was he wanted and expected us to vote against [it] so we would be blamed for a shutdown,” Fritschner wrote. The Democrats instead lined up behind it. 

Then, after it passed, McCarthy said to a reporter that the Democrats were to blame for the threatened shutdown in the first place. “People want us to give the guy credit for stopping a shutdown but it is still not clear to me right now sitting here writing this that he *intended* to do that,” Fritschner wrote. 

Meanwhile, Fritschner continued, McCarthy was making it clear that he would “steer us directly back into the crazy cuts and abortion restrictions, the Freedom Caucus setting the agenda, breaking his deal with Biden, and driving us towards a shutdown in November,” refusing to make any reassurances that he would try to work with Democrats. As Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported: “Mccarthys allies say they will NOT negotiate with democrats. Even as some house Dems privately say they want to help the California Republican.” 

“This came down to trust, and that's the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that,” Fritschner wrote. 

Adam Cancryn, Jennifer Haberkorn, Lara Seligman, and Sam Stein of Politico confirmed that both McCarthy’s allies and opponents found him untrustworthy, noting that when negotiating with President Joe Biden on “a particularly sensitive matter,” the speaker privately told allies that he found the president “sharp and substantive in their conversations” while in public he made fun of Biden’s age and mental abilities. That contradiction “left a deep impression on the White House,” the reporters said. 

But who will now be able to get the votes necessary to become House speaker? 

It seems reasonable to believe that the Democrats will continue to vote as a bloc for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), leaving the Republicans back where they were in January, when it took them 15 ballots to agree on McCarthy. Now, though, they are even angrier at each other than they were then. "Frankly, one has to wonder whether the House is governable at all," Representative Dusty Johnson (R-SD) told Andrew Solender of Axios. 

Two Republicans have thrown their hats into the ring: Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Both are significantly to the right of McCarthy, and both carry significant baggage. Jordan was involved in a major college molestation scandal and refused to answer a subpoena concerning his participation in the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Scalise has described himself as like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “but without the baggage.”

Republicans from less extreme districts, including the 18 who represent districts Biden won in 2020, are not going to want to go before voters in 2024 with the kinds of voting records Jordan or Scalise would force on them. 

The fight over the speakership is unlikely to be quick, and there is urgent business to be done. Congress must fund the government—the continuing resolution that made Gaetz call for McCarthy’s ouster runs out shortly before Thanksgiving. Even more immediate is funding for Ukraine to help its military defend the country against Russia’s invasion. That funding is very popular with members of both parties in both the House and Senate, but Jordan has said he is against moving forward with that funding, believing the extremists’ wish list is more pressing. 

Today news broke that Ukrainian attacks have forced Russia to withdraw most of its Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. This is a serious blow to Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. It is an unfortunate time for the U.S. to back away from Ukraine funding, and legislators are urging the House to pass that funding quickly.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Walt Handelsman, New Orleans Times Picayune

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Only one path forward for Republicans.

October 13, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

   Each additional day that Republicans fail to elect a Speaker of the House is a “never-before-in-the-history-of-our-nation” event. Kevin McCarthy was the first speaker to be ousted on a motion to vacate. Steve Scalise is the first “post-motion-to-vacate” nominee for speaker to withdraw his candidacy before a floor vote on his nomination. We are in uncharted constitutional waters.

          The “Speaker of the House” is one of two legislative officers mentioned in the Constitution. (Art I, Sec 3, Cl. 5: “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker.”) The Speaker is second in the line of succession prescribed in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. The power of the House to act is dependent on a speaker who manages the calendar, controls debate, and calls for votes on motions to advance and approve legislation.

          The inability of Republicans to elect a speaker is due, in part, to their narrow margin of control—four votes. But Nancy Pelosi accomplished great things with a four-vote margin during the 117th Congress (2021-2022)—the first two years of President Biden’s historic legislative run.

          The dysfunction in the Republican House is a direct consequence of MAGA’s election of extremist candidates in gerrymandered districts (e.g., Jim Jordan). Those MAGA extremists constitute one of several independent federations operating under the umbrella name “Republican Party” in the House. But as is plain, the term “Republican Party” is a notional concept in the House with no operational consequence.

          The atomism of the House GOP will not be overcome no matter how many times the fractious Republican caucus votes for a speaker. Nor will it change if Republicans elect a speaker subject to removal by a motion to vacate made by a single member.

          The consequences are real; some Republicans understand that fact. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul said the following after Scalise withdrew his name from consideration:

We are living in a dangerous world; the world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do — and quite frankly, they like it. I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in the [GOP caucus] room, because we can’t unify as a conference and put the speaker in the chair . . . .

          There is only one path forward. It is staring Republicans in the face. But they have yet to debase themselves enough or humiliate enough of their wannabe leaders to accept the inevitable: They do not have a governable majority and must join with Democrats to elect a consensus candidate with support from both parties.

          Or, as Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, the only path forward is for

traditional Republicans break with the extremists within the House Republican Conference and partner with Democrats on a bipartisan path forward.

          Some Republicans understand that fact but have yet to find the courage to speak that truth out loud. The time will come; it must. The only question is how long before Republicans accept that truth—and how much drama and disruption the GOP will inflict on the American people before they surrender to reality.

          Addendum: Republicans are floating the notion of an “acting speaker” with expanded powers to allow passage of limited resolutions and specific bills. No such creature exists under the Constitution or the rules of the House. If Republicans can agree on expanding powers for an acting speaker, they can elect a speaker. (For a discussion of the limited powers of acting Speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry, see House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House - Chapter 34. Office of the Speaker (govinfo.gov))

          Further addendum: On two occasions, the House has elected a speaker by a plurality vote. But a plurality vote to elect the speaker requires a rule change that would, in turn, require a majority vote. There is only one path forward: A bipartisan governing coalition.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Not much spookier than the GQP. :: [The Daily Don]

* * * * *

House Republicans declare defeat, go home for vacation.

          Earlier this week, I asserted that the talk of impeachment was designed to conceal the disarray of House Republicans. I wrote:

        Like the Wizard of Oz—who created distractions from behind a curtain to conceal his impotence—House Republicans must distract the public’s attention from their inability to legislate. Republicans hold the majority in the chamber of Congress that must originate all spending bills, but the GOP caucus has been rendered impotent, riven by petty feuds, outsized egos, and monumental ignorance. What better way to distract attention from their shortcomings than to chase wild conspiracies that forever recede into the distance like mirages, conveniently disappearing when Democrats demand evidence to support baseless charges?

          On Thursday, Speaker McCarthy sent House members home for a six-week vacation (which they call a “work period”) even though the GOP has passed only one of twelve funding bills it must pass before the October 1, 2023 date for a government shutdown. See Politico, House GOP bails on funding fight amid conservative impasse.

          The failure to pass eleven of the twelve funding bills prior to the shutdown date is a function of the internal fights in the GOP caucus. Per Politico,

House Republican leaders on Thursday punted a second government funding bill and dismissed lawmakers for a six-week break from Washington, hamstrung by conservative demands for more spending cuts and internal division over social issues like abortion. Speaker Kevin McCarthy ’s leadership team hoped to pass as many of their 12 annual funding bills as possible on the floor this month, aiming for a show of Republican unity that might bolster the House in a coming standoff with the Senate over federal funding. Now House GOP lawmakers are leaving the Capitol on a note of disarray rather than cohesion, with a single passage vote to tout on a veterans funding bill and two spending measures still stuck in committee.

          All Americans should be concerned about the dysfunction in the GOP Caucus in the House—which may cause a government shutdown in October. Tens of millions of Americans would be injured by such a shutdown. But we should also recognize that the vehement attacks on President Biden and Hunter Biden are part of an effort to distract attention from the GOP’s inability to govern.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]