In another bid to woo holdouts, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC endorsed by McCarthy, and the conservative Club for Growth, which had initially signaled opposition to McCarthy as speaker, announced a deal Wednesday to stay out of open House primaries for safe Republican seats.
Monday Reads: The Boys from Brazil and Florida
Posted: January 9, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Accountability Trump Georgia Election Interference, Brazil junta, Fulton County DA Fani Willis, Jair Bolsonaro, President Biden Immigration Policy, Republican insanity, Steve Bannon, Three Amigos at the Border, Trump 28 Comments
The Sunny Orange Grove, Constancia Nery
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The United States Policy in South and Central American countries haunts us again. Two distinct events point to the actions of the past. We’ve never really been held to account for “the Banana Wars” of the early 20th Century, US Imperialism in the 1890s to the 1930s, and the resulting territories we took after the Spanish-American War.
Don’t even get me started on states like Texas, California, etc., that were clearly not US entities until they were taken by war. Our failed drug policies and the egregious, illegal actions of the Reagan administration poisoned the well.
We were active in ‘regime’ change by continuing to back right-wing juntas against leftist regimes like those of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and Niagara. The JFK and LBJ administrations backed actions that led to the 1964 Brazilian Coup. This weekend’s news resembles a lot of our activity in Brazil then. Vincent Bevins is a scholar on the US policy of toppling regimes. He considers the topping of João Goulart In Brazil to be a significant victory for the U.S. during the Cold War. It established a military dictatorship in Brazil. Brazil is the fifth most populous nation in the world. Bevins writes in his 2020 book The Jakarta Method that this action “played a crucial role in pushing the rest of South America into the pro-Washington, anticommunist group of nations.”
He also had an Op-Ed published in the New York Times in May 2020 expressing the opinion that “The ‘Liberal World Order’ Was Built With Blood. As the United States reckons with its decline, it should understand where its power came from in the first place.”
If you read the commentary coming out of New York and Washington, or speak with elites in Western Europe, it’s easy to find people panicking about the loss of “American leadership.” From Joe Biden’s campaign pledges to trans-Atlantic think tanks, exhortations to revive American supremacy and contain China are everywhere.
They have reason to be worried: This moment is shaking the foundations of America’s hegemony. It is painfully clear that the United States is ill-equipped to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, which does not play to American strengths (we can’t shoot it, after all). President Trump has for years been dismissing allies and antagonizing international institutions. And China is seemingly laying the groundwork for its arrival as a great power. American officials are now talking openly about a “new Cold War” to confront Beijing, and China now seems such a threat that Hal Brands of the American Enterprise Institute wonders whether the United States should get back in the business of covertly toppling unfriendly governments.
It’s unsurprising that establishment pundits, American policymakers and their allies would be alarmed about American decline. The United States and Western Europe have been the winners of the process that created this globalized world, the main beneficiaries of Washington’s triumph at the end of the Cold War. But a lot of people feel very differently.
Morro da favela, Tarsila do Amaral, 1924
I remember the Reagan years as a continuation of regime change policies, which meant installing right-wing and military dictatorships in places like Nicaragua as long as they weren’t communist and accepted American Economic expansion. The Reagan administration’s actions were against the law established to stop the Banana Wars. Once again, we have U.S. interests stoking a junta in Brazil. From the BBC: “How Trump’s allies stoked Brazil Congress attack.”
The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago – and there are deeper connections as well.
“The whole thing smells,” said a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, one day after the first round of voting in the Brazilian election in October last year.
The race was heading towards a run-off and the final result was not even close to being known. Yet Mr Bannon, as he had been doing for weeks, spread baseless rumours about election fraud.
Across several episodes of his podcast and in social media posts, he and his guests stoked up allegations of a “stolen election” and shadowy forces. He promoted the hashtag #BrazilianSpring, and continued to encourage opposition even after Mr Bolsonaro himself appeared to accept the results.
Mr Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, was just one of several key allies of Donald Trump who followed the same strategy used to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
And like what happened in Washington on 6 January 2021, those false reports and unproven rumours helped fuel a mob that smashed windows and stormed government buildings in an attempt to further their cause.
The day before the Capitol riot, Mr Bannon told his podcast listeners: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.” He has been sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to comply with an order to testify in front of a Congressional committee that investigated the attack but is free pending an appeal.
Along with other prominent Trump advisers who spread fraud rumours, Mr Bannon was unrepentant on Sunday, even as footage emerged of widespread destruction in Brazil.
“Lula stole the Election… Brazilians know this,” he wrote repeatedly on the social media site Gettr. He called the people who stormed the buildings “Freedom Fighters”.
Ali Alexander, a fringe activist who emerged after the 2020 election as one of the leaders of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, encouraged the crowds, writing “Do whatever is necessary!” and claiming to have contacts inside the country.
La rentrée, Anita Malfatti, 1927
The hubris of Trump allies is unbelievable. Bolsanaro is sitting in Florida. Terrence McCoy writes this in today’s Washington Post. “How Bolsonaro’s rhetoric — then his silence — stoked Brazil assault”
For more than four years, the most fundamental of questions has loomed over Brazil: Would its young democracy survive the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro?
Latin America’s largest country embarked on what amounted to a test of its democratic strength in 2018 when it elected the former army captain who openly lamented the collapse of the country’s military dictatorship, once threatened to reinstall its rule on the first day of his presidency and sought at every turn to sow doubt in elections.
During his time in office, he did little to soften his bellicosity. He warned of a government “rupture” like the military coup of 1964. If he were to lose his reelection bid, he said, it could only be through fraud, and Brazil would “have worse problems” than the United States did on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters assaulted the U.S. Capitol.
His son Eduardo, a federal congressman, once warned that “there will arrive a moment when the situation will be the same as it was in the 1960s.”
For many Brazilians, Sunday afternoon was the arrival of such a moment, when Bolsonaro supporters laid siege to the three pillars of the federal government — the presidential palace, the supreme court and the congress — bringing democracy here to a sudden standstill. The scenes of smoke and violence were at once both shocking and predictable, the tragic realization of a prophecy Bolsonaro has repeatedly uttered to mobilize his base and terrify his adversaries.
If I’m removed from power, he often hinted, violence will follow.
Bolsanaro remains out of the country having broken precedent by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration. Some reports claimed that he had fled to escape possible criminal charges over a range of alleged offences while in power. The former president turned up in Florida where, according to reports, he is due to meet Donald Trump at his home, Mar-a-Lago.
There have been immediate and predictable comparisons between what happened in Brasilia and the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters two years ago. The images from both assaults were similar: flag-draped intruders lounging on office chairs, ransacking and stealing property, assaulting guards.
Both sets of protesters were following authoritarian populist leaders who claimed they had been victims of electoral fraud. In Brazil, as in the US, the discontent has been fuelled by conspiracy theories in the social media.
As the Brasilia attack unfolded, well-known Trump supporters egged on the rioters, with Steve Bannon lauding them as “freedom fighters” who knew “criminal, atheistic, Marxist Lula stole the election”. Ali Alexander, a fringe activist who became prominent in Trump’s “ stop the steal” movement, exhorted: “Do whatever is necessary.”
The links between the camps of Trump and Bolsanaro, who revelled in his “Trump of the Tropics” moniker, began long before the Brazilian election and its aftermath, with Bannon one of the main conduits.
During the Brazilian election campaign, Trump wrote on his social platform: “President Jair Bolsonaro and I have become great friends over the past few years for the people of the United States… He is a wonderful man and has my complete and total endorsement
Members of the Democratic Party are asking President Biden to expel Bolsanaro from the US.
President Biden is headed to the border to signal his intention to ensure his immigration and asylum initiatives are fully implemented. Once again, Republicans are trying to equate the Asylum process with crossing the border illegally. Notice Caveman Kevin’s latest crusade. This is from Politico. “Migration issues cast long shadow over Biden’s visit to ‘3 Amigos’ summit. U.S.-Mexico border tension looms over trade, environment and other issues on the table for Biden, AMLO and Trudeau.”
Joe Biden has no shortage of topics to tackle in his first presidential trip to Mexico.
There’s the major shift in border policy that came just days before the trip. There’s the arrest of an alleged drug trafficker in Mexico long sought by U.S. authorities. And there’s the border itself, which Biden visited for the first time as president when he made a stop in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday evening.
All that casts a shadow over the president, who arrived in Mexico City hours after the El Paso swing. Biden’s Monday and Tuesday schedule at the North American Leaders’ Summit is packed: One-on-one discussions, trilateral meetings, working lunches, dinners and, of course, photo opportunities.
“We have a big agenda that ranges from the climate crisis to economic development and other issues. But one important part of that agenda is strengthening our border between our nations,” Biden said during a speech Thursday on border security at the White House.
Biden will be the first U.S. president to visit Mexico since Barack Obama in 2014. For decades, presidents traditionally made their first overseas trip to either Mexico or Canada as a sign of solidarity among the trio of leaders. Often, the “Three Amigos” would pledge to be a (mostly) unified North American front. But that informal tradition ended in 2017 when President Donald Trump opted to make Saudi Arabia his first international destination. And then, with the globe in the grasp of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden delayed his first foreign trip for nearly five months before traveling to the United Kingdom to meet with G-7 leaders in June 2021.
Since then, Biden has crisscrossed the globe to several world summits. But he had yet to make the trip south of the border. And while Biden has met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly, he’s spent far less time with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which has only added to the feeling in Latin America of being snubbed by the United States.
That has added another layer of pressure to this week’s long-awaited gathering, as the three leaders prepare to discuss key issues including border security, trade and economic development, and climate and energy.
The Biden administration rolled out several new policies to curb illegal migration last week, some of which rely on Mexico’s cooperation. Immigration will be atop the president’s agenda, but stopping the flow of fentanyl from Mexico will also be a priority as the drug and other lab-produced synthetic opioids now drive an overdose crisis deadlier than any the U.S. has ever seen. It’s a pressure point that Biden may be forced to address even as drug control advocates and experts say an anti-drug policy that relies on tighter border security is far from certain to work.
Adriana Varejão, Untitled, 1985
It’s easier for Republicans to scream lies and conspiracy theories than actually engage in policy. This is why they cannot govern. Zachary B. Wolf writes this for CNN. “The speaker fight is over but the chaos is just beginning.”
This week Republicans must try to coalesce around the concessions McCarthy made and pass a package of rules to govern the House for the next two years. It’s an open question whether the party’s moderates, such as they are, will all buy in to the cut, cut, cut mentality McCarthy has agreed to.
Unlike the Senate, which has standing rules that carry over from year to year, the House adopts a new rules package for each Congress. This year, in particular, as they take over from Democratic control, Republicans want to make their mark in the rules package. The Rules Committee has posted a text and summary of the proposed rule changes.
Some of the new elements include things that amount to framing – replacing “pay as you go” language for budget matters with “cut as you go.”
Other elements could have more concrete consequences, like forcing specific votes to raise the debt ceiling and enacting spending cuts before the debt ceiling is raised. That debate will come to a head in the coming months as the government runs out of authority to add to the $31 trillion national debt.
On Sunday, Republicans all said they would try to avoid cutting defense and Medicare spending, which leaves a relatively small portion of the federal budget – think the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory arms of the government – from which to carve out spending.
The other way, besides spending cuts, for the government to cut down on deficit spending, is to raise taxes. The proposed rules reinstate a requirement that a House supermajority of 3/5, rather than a simple majority, sign off on any tax increases.
Read more at the link. The last read I offer today is news from Georgia. This is reported by Holly Bailey at the Washington Post. “Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference completes probe.”
An Atlanta-area grand jury investigating efforts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia has concluded its investigation, according to the judge overseeing the panel.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney issued a court order Monday morning saying the special grand jury had completed a final report on its investigation. He said the report was accepted by a majority of the county’s judicial bench and that the 26-member panel was being officially dissolved.
The grand jury’s recommendations were not made public, including whether criminal charges should be filed. McBurney scheduled a Jan. 24 hearing to determine whether to release the report. His order noted the grand jury had “voted to recommend that its report be published” and appeared to make its release “mandatory” — though the judge said he would hear “argument” on the issue.
Fingers Crossed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
It’s January 6th. Do you know where our democracy is Headed?
Posted: January 6, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: January 6, Live Blog Speaker Vote 26 Comments
Aug. 28, 1963 — Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech
Good Day Sky Dancers!
When I started this blog as a file cabinet for my writing else blog, I knew I’d commemorate days of celebration and sadness. We’ve had both and other highly emotional anniversaries. For me, it’s the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall. For JJ, it’s undoubtedly September 11th. For BB, it’s likely the day of the Boston Marathon bombing. Most of us remember the assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK. We have memories of Watergate. Then, there are those passed on from our grandparents and parents, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We have days to commemorate our War dead and those who fought for our democracy and preservation of the Union, and for the abolition of slavery.
Today is the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. Everything dealing with that day and events before, after, and surrounding it stands out as the day a violent minority decided they’d prefer a tyrant to the democratic republic left to us by those who formed the country and those who have ensured we expand the dream of liberty and justice for all.
Abraham Lincoln gave his speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery before this crowd on November 19, 1863, at Gettysburg.
Today, one-third of our government is gridlocked because of that same obnoxious and toxic group of insurrectionists. This is happening even while our Justice System deals with the illegal acts from 2 years ago. States have made it harder for some people to vote in between events. We’ve also seen women declared incapable of making their own reproductive healthcare decisions. We’ve seen military-style weapons turn on children, grocery shoppers, and places built by the GLBTQ community as safe spaces. Anti-semitism is part of daily conversation. And, we have the return of Book Banning. ” More censorship. Florida No. 1 in prison book-bans. Even books about ‘Star Trek’ and flowers” This commentary is by Scott Maxwell, writing for the Orlando Sentinal.
It’s hard to keep track of all the things that have been banned and censored here in the “Free State of Florida” — from middle school math books to live entertainment.
But some of the most-banned commodities in the Sunshine State are the books allowed in prisons.
As the Orlando Sentinel’s Amanda Rabines recently reported, Florida’s prison system is a leading book-banner, restricting everything from issues of The Economist magazine to “Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cookbook.”
And when the researchers from The Marshall Project, a nonprofit focused on the U.S. justice system, describe Florida as a leading book-banner, they mean leading by a country mile.
In Georgia, they banned 28 books. In Kansas, it was 99.
In Florida, the number was 20,200.
Florida’s goal seems to be to keep incarcerated people bored and uneducated — a dangerous combination for correctional guards while prisoners are still behind bars, and for the public if and when they’re ever released.
Unless you believe society is better off when prisoners are prohibited from reading books like “How to Draw and Paint Flowers”?
The biggest question remains how resilient our institutions of governance are? It took decades to deal with Jim Crow laws in the South after the end of reconstruction. It took decades to extend access to voting beyond the original white, rich male landowners. It also took decades and a constitutional amendment to make the US Senate a democratically elected body.
Enemy troops did not storm our Capitol during the Civil War. We have a law that prevents insurrectionists from running for office. How can we deal with those holding public positions today if we can’t even block modern insurrectionists from the highest positions in the country? How is it that Trump can run for the office of President again?
President Joe Biden on Friday will commemorate the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol – the day he’s called “one of the darkest periods of our nation’s history” – as he seeks to elevate the law enforcement and election officials that held firm against the most serious effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in US history.
In a week defined by dramatic contrasts between a White House at work and a House Republican majority in chaos, Friday’s event will serve as an almost visceral coda. It will give Biden the opportunity to highlight the extremist risk to the nation and its politics that he sees as still very real – even as signs that the fever driven by his predecessor has started to break in concrete ways. That risk, in the view of some White House officials, will serve as a literal, if unintentional, split screen to Biden’s remarks.
Officials say Biden doesn’t plan to directly address the chaos on the House floor that has blocked Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy from the speakership the last four days. But the connection is unmistakable.
Many in the House commemorated the occasion with a moment of silence. We’re now back to live coverage of the next vote, where we will not have a congress or a Speaker of the House who is second in line to the Presidency. Will today change anything?
Texas Governor John Connally adjusts his tie (foreground) as President and Mrs. Kennedy, in a pink outfit, settled in rear seats, prepared for motorcade into the city from the airport, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.
Representative Clyburn is giving a heartfelt speech on “liberty, justice, and freedom” for all. He’s the Representative putting Jeffries’s name up for Speaker right now. He’s speaking about two years ago and the abnormal number of votes being held this week. “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, she will not be great.”
And Gaetz just nominated Jim Jordan. His speech was so vitriolic that some members walked out on it. Boebert is nominating Hearn of Oklahoma. They evidently attended a meeting last night. “House members blocking McCarthy speaker bid meet at offices of ex-Trump chief Mark Meadows.” This is reported by John Ward.
Several Republican House members fighting to stop Rep. Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker of the House met Friday morning at the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization run by Mark Meadows and Jim DeMint.
Meadows, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina, was chief of staff to former President Donald Trump and played a central role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He joined CPI as senior partner in January 2021, a few weeks after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6.
There just was one switch to McCarthy. It was from Dan Bishop of South Carolina. And now a second.
I’m opening this post now so we can be live.
March 17, 1973 — “Burst of Joy” Sal Veder, In this Pulitzer Prize–winning picture, released prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, as he returns home from the Vietnam War.
Here are some other suggested reads:
Alayna Treene / Axios: House Democrats connect Jan. 6 to GOP’s speakership fight
Alan Feuer / New York Times Judge Rules for Justice Dept. in Dispute With Trump Over Documents Search
Bloomberg: Trump Special Counsel Probe Adds Two Anti-Corruption Prosecutors
Jose Pagliery / The Daily Beast: How Trump’s Missing Call Logs Could Become His Nixon Tapes
CNN: Two years after US Capitol attack, investigation into Trump and insurrection enters new phase
Thursday Reads
Posted: January 5, 2023 Filed under: just because 38 CommentsGood Morning!!
We’re in day 3 of a non-functioning House of Representatives. It’s basically a government shutdown, since the Senate can’t legislate without the House participating. This morning, my Representative Katherine Clark had harsh words for the Republicans who have paralyzed Congress. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, followed up.
Nancy Pelosi had this to say on Twitter. The Hill: Pelosi: Republicans’ ‘cavalier’ attitude in Speaker election ‘frivolous, disrespectful.’
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is criticizing the GOP’s approach to the Speakership election as it reaches its third day, saying that Republicans’ “cavalier” attitude is “frivolous, disrespectful.”
“All who serve in the House share a responsibility to bring dignity to this body,” Pelosi tweeted late Wednesday. “Sadly, Republicans’ cavalier attitude in electing a Speaker is frivolous, disrespectful and unworthy of this institution.”
“We must open the House and proceed with the People’s work,” she continued.
The House has been brought to a standstill as the body has been unable to elect a Speaker during the first two days of its new session. The House is not able to conduct any additional business, including swearing in new members, until a Speaker is elected.
Kevin McCarthy is twisting himself into a pretzel with endless concessions to the terrorists in the “Freedom Caucus.”
The Washington Post: McCarthy makes fresh concessions to try to woo hard-right Republicans in speaker bid.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has made fresh concessions to a group of 20 GOP lawmakers in hopes of ending their blockade of his speakership ahead of votes Thursday, a stunning reversal that, if adopted, would weaken the position of speaker and ensure a tenuous hold on the job….
In a major allowance to the hard-right Republicans, McCarthy offered to lower from five to one the number of members required to sponsor a resolution to force a vote on ousting the speaker — a change that the California Republican had previously said he would not accept.
McCarthy also expressed a willingness to place more members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus on the House Rules Committee, which debates legislation before it’s moved to the floor.
And he relented on allowing floor votes to institute term limits on members and to enact specific border policy legislation.
It remained unclear early Thursday whether the concessions could move the holdouts, several of whom have said they will not support McCarthy no matter what. The House is scheduled to reconvene at noon Thursday for more voting. But some moderates have grown irate at the moves, after pledging last month they would never support a rules package that gives one House member the power to vacate the speaker….
“Kevin McCarthy has effectively led House Republicans from the Minority to the Majority and we want to see him continue to lead the party so we can pick up seats for the third cycle in a row,” Conservative Leadership Fund President Dan Conston said in a statement.
During the midterm elections, the McCarthy-endorsed group worked to elect more moderate Republican candidates considered more willing to govern, an intervention that alienated staunch hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus.
Club for Growth President David McIntosh said Wednesday that the agreement not to interfere with “safe-seat primaries” fulfilled a major concern they had pressed for.
Meanwhile the House is paralyzed. Imagine if this were a presidential year. Tomorrow is January 6, the anniversary of the insurrection and the day the Congress would need to meet to certify electoral votes.
From the Bulwark article:
As Kevin McCarthy repeatedly fails to secure enough votes to become speaker and the House of Representatives sits in limbo, Democrats say they are increasingly concerned about the risks to national security involved in a prolonged period without any active members or ability to conduct legislative business.
Currently, every elected member of the House has yet to be sworn in to office, leaving committee structures up in the air and creating a backlog of onboarding for freshmen and their staffs.
Lawmakers’ families who came to Washington for the pomp and circumstance of the first day, including the swearing-in of members, have grown exhausted waiting. House staffers have lamented they have no work to start until there’s a successful vote. Meanwhile, freshmen members have been prevented from accessing official House emails; some prematurely sent out press releases announcing their swearing-in, even though it has yet to happen.
A more serious matter is the committee work. Although most committees under a GOP majority are expected to shift the focus of their work, there is some committee work that should have continued over from the previous Congress and already been underway. Right now, however, members of Congress are unable even to view classified documents. This has some Democrats uneasy about the next few days—and if the speakership impasse drags out, potentially much longer.
“We can’t even do basic things,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Cal.) told The Bulwark. “We can’t conduct any oversight. You can’t have an entire branch of government simply not function. And we don’t have a House right now because no one’s even sworn in.”
“And the chaos on the Republican side is having real consequences for the country and it’s going to get very serious very fast,” he added. “Imagine if there’s some unexpected crisis either domestically or somewhere in the world and you needed Congress to act. We couldn’t right now because we don’t have a speaker.”
Lieu also painted a picture of a future speakership fight with even more disturbing consequences—if a dispute like this were to occur during a year in which Congress is charged with certifying a presidential election….
Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, joined Lieu in suggesting that Republicans are neglecting their duties and putting the country in a dangerous position.
“If God forbid there was a crisis we couldn’t respond to it in any way,” Nadler said. “Either [Republicans] do and they don’t care or they don’t understand it.”
From The New York Times: ‘Nobody Is in Charge’: A Ragged G.O.P. Stumbles Through the Wilderness.
After two days of chaos and confusion on the House floor, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who is leading their party: absolutely no one.
From the halls of Congress to the Ohio Statehouse to the back-room dealings of the Republican National Committee, the party is confronting an identity crisis unseen in decades. With no unified legislative agenda, clear leadership or shared vision for the country, Republicans find themselves mired in intraparty warfare, defined by a fringe element that seems more eager to tear down the House than to rebuild the foundation of a political party that has faced disappointment in the past three national elections.
Even as Donald J. Trump rarely leaves his Florida home in what so far appears to be little more than a Potemkin presidential campaign, Republicans have failed to quell the anti-establishment fervor that accompanied his rise to power. Instead, those tumultuous political forces now threaten to devour the entire party.
Nowhere was that on more vivid display than the House floor, where 20 Republicans on Wednesday stymied their party from taking control for a second day by refusing to support Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker.
“Nobody is in charge,” John Fredericks, a syndicated right-wing radio host and former chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, said in an interview. “Embrace the chaos. Our movement is embracing the chaos.”
That ideology of destruction defies characterization by traditional political labels like moderate or conservative. Instead, the party has created its own complicated taxonomy of America First, MAGA and anti-Trump — descriptions that are more about political style and personal vendettas than policy disagreements.
This iteration of the Grand Old Party, with its narrow majority in the House empowering conservative dissidents, represents a striking reversal of the classic political maxim that Democrats need to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.
“The members who began this have little interest in legislating, but are most interested in burning down the existing Republican leadership structure,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who embodies the party’s pre-Trump era. “Their behavior shows the absence of power corrupts just as absolutely as power does.”
Read the rest at the link.
The House will meet again this afternoon, and we’ll see if McCarthy’s concession make any difference. Even if they elect him, he will be an extremely weak speaker and the crazies will still be in charge. I just saw on CNN that Republicans are expected one or two more losing ballots and another adjournment. This is insane.
In other news, President Biden is showing real leadership.
Yahoo News: In bipartisan event with McConnell, Biden shows contrast with House Republicans.
“Total chaos.”
That was how President Biden described conditions on the frequently congested Brent Spence Bridge between Covington, Ky., and Cincinnati, where he arrived on Wednesday to tout implementation of his $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, of which $1.5 billion will be used to fix the notorious crossing.
But the phrase, uttered on the banks of the Ohio River, could have just as easily been used to describe the state of affairs on the Potomac, where chaos has reigned for the last two days, as Republicans failed to select a speaker of the House of Representatives. In what is turning out to be an increasingly acrimonious battle, a group of around 20 far-right conservatives are resisting what had once been seen as the all-but-certain elevation of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to the speakership.
Their resistance, which has resulted in six inconclusive votes since Tuesday, has embarrassed mainstream Republicans while providing the White House with a narrative almost too obvious in its juxtapositions.
Flanked by members of both parties, including Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, both of whom are Republicans, Biden was happy to bask in the contrast with congressional GOP members, who won control of the House in last November’s election. Two days into the 118th Congress, however, Republicans have managed only to lay bare their ideological and political differences.
“I just think it’s a little embarrassing,” Biden told reporters from the South Lawn of the White House before departing for Kentucky. “And the rest of the world is looking.”
The speakership fight seemed to validate Biden’s argument — made insistently in the months and weeks before last year’s midterms — that the Republican Party had fallen captive to a pro-Trump “MAGA” faction that was uninterested in governing. Inside the West Wing, staffers have been watching the GOP’s internecine fight with quiet relish, recognizing the scenes of intraparty acrimony as a kind of political gift that was best left to unspool on its own.
“I hope they get their act together,” Biden told reporters.
Read more at the Yahoo link.
Elon Musk’s Twitter is another embarrassment for right wingers.
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1610807705261805568?s=20&t=quuV4_fIn8Su3_wlj_mm3g
From The Washington Post: Hackers leak email addresses tied to 235 million Twitter accounts.
Records of 235 million Twitter accounts and the email addresses used to register them have been posted to an online hacking forum, setting the stage for anonymous handles to be linked to real-world identities.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: January 3, 2023 Filed under: just because 49 CommentsGood Morning!!
Today House Republicans will decide whether Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House in the new Congress. Right now, it’s not looking good for him. As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, a failure to elect a Speaker on the first ballot would be “history-making.” It has been 100 years since a vote for speaker went to a second ballot. The first vote could take place while I’m working on this post, so I’ll update with any results.
McCarthy met again with the right wing members and again, it didn’t go well. Lauren Bobert, who hadn’t been vehemently opposed to McCarthy so far, emerged from the meeting calling McCarthy’s presentation “bullshit.”
Here’s what the press is saying this morning.
The New York Times: McCarthy Remains Short of Support to Become Speaker as Vote Nears.
Only hours before the vote, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California was still laboring on Tuesday to lock down the support he needed to be elected speaker, with ultraconservative holdouts digging in for what could become a chaotic floor fight at the dawn of the new House Republican majority.
The standoff hung over what was supposed to be a day of jubilation for Republicans, exposing deep divisions within the party as it embarks on its first week in power. It all but guaranteed that even if Mr. McCarthy eked out a victory, he would be a diminished speaker beholden to an empowered right flank.
In a vote planned for around midday Tuesday, when the new Congress convenes, Mr. McCarthy must win a majority of those present and voting — 218 if every member of the House were to attend and cast a vote — to become speaker. Republicans are to control 222 seats and Democrats are all but certain to oppose Mr. McCarthy en masse, leaving him little room for defections from his own party.
With at least five Republicans vowing to oppose him and more quietly on the fence, Mr. McCarthy appeared short of the necessary votes, despite a series of major concessions he has made in an attempt to appease the far-right lawmakers. Republicans were set to meet at 9:30 Tuesday morning behind closed doors as Mr. McCarthy grasped for a last-minute boost of support.
But if anything, the momentum appeared to be headed in the other direction. Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, on Tuesday morning released a scathing statement saying that Mr. McCarthy had scuttled his own chances of becoming speaker by refusing to agree to the demands of the right wing.
Ronald Brownstein at CNN: The right has already won the House speakership election.
No matter how they resolve Tuesday’s vote choosing the next speaker of the House, Republicans appear poised to double down on the hard-edged politics that most swing state voters rejected in last November’s midterm election.
Stubborn conservative resistance to House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has put the party at risk of precipitating the first speakership election that extends to more than a single ballot since 1923 – and only the second since the Civil War. But even if McCarthy ultimately prevails, the show of strength from the GOP’s conservative vanguard has ensured it enormous leverage in shaping the party’s legislative and investigative agenda. And that could reinforce the image of extremism that hurt Republicans in the midterm election, especially in the key swing states likely to decide the next presidential contest – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona.
Whoever Republicans ultimately select as speaker “will be subject to the whims and the never-ending leveraging of a small group of members who want to wield power,” said former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, a CNN political commentator. “You’re going to have this group on the far right that is going to continue to push the leadership to go further right on issues.”
Tuesday’s vote may create a kind of drama that was common in the House during the 19th century but has virtually disappeared since. Before the Civil War, when party allegiances were more fluid, the House failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot 13 times, according to the House historian’s office. The most arduous struggles occurred in roughly the decade before the Civil War, as the existing party system crumbled under the pressure of the escalating conflict between the North and South, and the newly formed Republican Party supplanted the Whigs as the major competitor to the Democrats, then the dominant party. One speakership election during that tumultuous decade required 133 ballots (and two months of balloting) to resolve; the final speaker selection before the Civil War began took 44 ballots.
Since then, the only selection that has required more than a single ballot came in 1923, when Republicans holding only a narrow majority comparable to their advantage this year took nine ballots to select their speaker. Then the complication was that a minority of left-leaning progressive Republicans initially resisted conservative incumbent Speaker Frederick Gillett.
Today McCarthy faces resistance from the opposite pole of his caucus-a circle of hard-right conservatives who have pledged not to support him, at least on the first ballot. Many in the party establishment still believe that even if conservatives initially block McCarthy, he will ultimately succeed – largely because there is no other alternative likely to draw broader support across the party.
Again, as Dakinikat wrote yesterday, if McCarthy can’t get the votes, a possible candidate for Speaker would be Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise. Interestingly, Scalise has been very quiet lately. Right wing outlet News Max wonders why that is.
Phillip Elliott at Time: Why Kevin McCarthy Is So Bad at This.
When Rep. Kevin McCarthy left his downtown D.C. condo just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the first full day of work after the holiday recess, he was like the student who shows up for the final without doing all the studying, running solely on ambition and a confidence that everything would turn out fine in the end. Except for McCarthy, his proctored exam hall is the floor of the House of Representatives, and whether he passes will be determined by his classmates, most of whom may be cheering on his failure.
McCarthy, making his second bid to become the Speaker of the House, started his Tuesday undeniably short of the 218 aye votes he needs to claim the gavel and lead the lower chamber. Assuming every one of his GOP colleagues casts a vote for Speaker—and votes for a real person, and not just present—he can afford to lose just four votes. At least five of his fellow Republicans were in the Never Kevin camp, and another seven were Seldom Kevins. In other words, he potentially has three times that shortfall.
McCarthy’s team spent the holiday break working to lock down votes. They turned the calendar from 2022 to 2023 with ambivalence if not apprehension about Tuesday. They are starting with a majority that’s the narrowest for a new Speaker since 1931, and McCarthy’s polling numbers are mediocre at best among the party base. He has traded away just about everything he can, winning the likes of fringe voices like Marjorie Taylor Greene with promises of seats at tables, a move smartly predicted by TIME’s Molly Ball back in June. But McCarthy still can’t secure unanimous support among the firebrands inside the Freedom Caucus.
McCarthy, recognizing the need to feed the far-right base of his party, has already promised to allow his House to probe into Hunter Biden’s businesses, the treatment of those charged and detained for their alleged roles in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and how the Justice Department and FBI have possibly considered politics in their decisions. McCarthy is open to impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border, and hasn’t closed the door to other investigations that could embarrass President Joe Biden and his administration. As one Wall Street Journal columnist put it, McCarthy is offering up “a Committee on Censors and Snoops.”
Yet the holdouts still don’t trust McCarthy for any number of reasons: he’s seen as unreliably conservative; he has not embraced government shutdowns as useful tools to remake government or to cut off foes like Planned Parenthood; he is noncommittal about impeaching President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris; he is too weak in supporting ex-President Donald Trump’s Big Lie—and they don’t seem willing to bend, unlike McCarthy, who has proven to be entirely pliable.
Which brings us to this point: the House, before it can do anything else, has to elect a Speaker. Until that happens, the rules from the previous Congress guide the chamber, and precedent doesn’t really allow a new Rules package to come to a vote, nor does it provide for the House to move forward with seating of committee or subcommittee chairs—the people who actually write the laws. A paralyzed House as Republicans take control for the first time since the 2018 elections isn’t a good look for the GOP, regardless of who holds the gavel.
Meanwhile, McCarthy has already moved into the Speaker’s office. If he can’t get the votes, he’ll have to move out again. And now McCarthy has spoken his piece:
The Republican Party is very much disarray, no matter what happens.
Another problem for House Republicans is that George Santos will be sworn in today. Despite being caught in multiple lies about his own background, Santos is determined to join the Republican caucus.
Annie Karni at The New York Times: George Santos Comes to Washington. It Could Be Awkward.
Representative-elect George Santos has been hard to pin down.
“No one can find him,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the incoming minority leader, said at a news conference last week, pressing for answers on the geyser of falsehoods about Mr. Santos’s background that have been revealed since he flipped a Democratic seat on Long Island in November.
But beginning on Tuesday, Mr. Santos will not be able to hide anymore.
He is to arrive on Capitol Hill for what is shaping up as a chaotic opening day of the 118th Congress, perhaps as the most notorious member of a new House Republican majority that is toiling to overcome deep divisions as it assumes control and the speakership is still up in the air.
It will most likely be an awkward moment for Mr. Santos, who will get his first taste of navigating the Capitol and its all-permeating press corps in the midst of a scandal of his own making.
He is under the shadow of active investigations by federal and local prosecutors into potential criminal activity during his two congressional campaigns. Prosecutors told The New York Times on Monday that Brazilian law enforcement authorities intended to revive fraud charges against him stemming from an incident in 2008 regarding a stolen checkbook.
Santos is in hot water with both political parties.
Democrats are already calling for him to give up his seat, and members of his own party are demanding more detailed explanations of his conduct.
That includes making up claims about his résumé, his education, his ties to Wall Street firms and his charitable endeavors — all of which have been revealed as part of a fantasy persona created as the backbone of his pitch to voters.
In addition to his background, Mr. Santos has misrepresented parts of his finances and filed incomplete or inaccurate congressional disclosures. He has also claimed that he is Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. Mr. Santos is Catholic.
Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements.
Mr. Santos, the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, has yet to offer a full accounting to the voters who elected him based on a largely made-up biography. He has admitted to “embellishing” his résumé and to the fact that he did not graduate from any institution of higher education.
Read more at the NYT.
Santos is in trouble in Brazil too. The New York Times: Brazilian Authorities Will Revive Fraud Case Against George Santos.
When Representative-elect George Santos takes his seat in Congress on Tuesday, he will do so under the shadow of active investigations by federal and local prosecutors into potential criminal activity during his two congressional campaigns.
But an older criminal case may be more pressing: Brazilian law enforcement authorities intend to revive fraud charges against Mr. Santos, and will seek his formal response, prosecutors said on Monday.
The matter, which stemmed from an incident in 2008 regarding a stolen checkbook, had been suspended for the better part of a decade because the police were unable to locate him.
A spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office said that with Mr. Santos’s whereabouts identified, a formal request will be made to the U.S. Justice Department to notify him of the charges, a necessary step after which the case will proceed with or without him….
Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store in the Brazilian city of Niterói outside Rio de Janeiro. He spent nearly $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show.
Mr. Santos admitted the fraud to the shop owner in August 2009, writing on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, “I know I screwed up, but I want to pay.” In 2010, he and his mother told the police that he had stolen the checkbook of a man his mother used to work for, and used it to make fraudulent purchases.
A judge approved the charge in September 2011 and ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case. But by October, he was already in the United States and working at Dish Networkin College Point, Queens, company records show.
Right now, in the House, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik has just nominated McCarthy for Speaker. Now Democratic Rep. Peter Aguilar is now nominating Hakim Jeffries. I’m going to end right here and I’ll post updates in the comments.
Have a great day everyone!
Mostly Monday Reads: The Truth should set us Free
Posted: January 2, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2023 New Year's baby, Final report on January 6 insurrection, Ginnie "whackado" Thomas, Kevin McCarthy, Truthiness 29 Comments
Happy First Monday of the year 2023!
Out with the old and in with the new! Well, in some circumstances.
The truth will be hidden if you are a pregnant woman in Louisiana. Your truth will be that you are the state’s chattel, as are all other women. The state will still think you asked for every act of violence and violation of your personal rights because your truth is irrelevant.
Laws may cost your life and freedom if you are black in America. The truth will be wrapped up in perfidious stereotypes that may cost you everything. Chances are it will be the state that doles out this ending to you.
The truth may never translate to you if you seek asylum, refuge, or safety from the violence United States Drug and Foreign policy brings to your country. This will be especially true if you come from a “shithole” country or one that “never sends its best people” because you’re not of the ‘proper’ ethnic heritage.
The truth of Domestic Terrorism may never be entirely spoken if you were attacked in a religious space that isn’t respected by the group in power in this country. If you’re a member of the GLBT community, you’ve been told clearly that your truth must hide in a closet and never be seen in libraries, schools, or what was to be a safe space for your community.
There are others in this country where the truth of their lies is exposed, yet they get to keep at it in their everyday lives. They may ‘grab pussies’ and not be held to account in a court of law for sexual battery. They may be found out about their sexual misdeeds– many of which are illegal–and they still get to be the President of the United States. They may call for insurrection and actively plot with prominent political figures from many states and at the Federal Level, and they will be given a pass. They may even be the President, and they may run again. They may make up an entire life and work history, continue to hide the truth from their constituency, and still head to the District, where they will be welcomed by a power-hungry pol who just wants to be Speaker of the House.
This is the old stuff I’d really like to be rid of, and I wish the list wasn’t longer than I deal with in one blog post.
In the aftermath of that election, Ms Thomas personally lobbied White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to text messages obtained by the committee and leaked to journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” she wrote on November 10, after Joe Biden had been projected as the winner.
In an interview with the January 6 Committee, which took place on 29 September 2022, committee members repeatedly pressed Ms Thomas to reveal what evidence of election fraud had motivated her to approach Mr Meadows.
“I can’t say that I was familiar at the time with any specific evidence. I was just hearing it from news reports and friends on the ground, grassroots activists who were inside of various polling places that found things suspicious,” Ms Thomas said in response to a question from committee member Jamie Raskin about the most significant evidence she had seen.
Later asked by Republican committee member Liz Cheney to confirm that she had seen no list of fraud or irregularities, Ms Thomas replied: “Right. I know. I wasn’t very deep; I admit it.”
Ms Thomas’ lobbying effort raised concerns among Democrats about a conflict of interest in the Thomas household, as Justice Thomas may have been called upon to rule on cases involving the 2020 election — a matter on which his wife was a committed political activist.
In her opening statement to the committee ahead of her interview, Ms Thomas said the couple maintain an “ironclad” agreement to avoid discussing Supreme Court cases in their home.
There was a lot of Twitter Trash around the entire Insurrection episode and the follow-up fake electors. Here’s a good summary from The Daily Beast. “Hope Hicks, Ivanka Aide Fumed at Karlie Kloss’ Jan. 6 Tweets. The pair also worried the insurrection would wreck their reputations and careers, newly released text messages reveal.” How far do things go before you stop enabling lies and the rule of chaos and ego?
After a mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a top aide to Ivanka Trump and presidential adviser Hope Hicks fumed about tweets posted by supermodel Karlie Kloss, the wife of Jared Kushner’s brother.
That’s according to text messages released by the House’s Jan. 6 committee—which also reveal the aide, Julie Radford, and Hicks were worried that the insurrection would destroy their reputations.
After the riot, Kloss took to Twitter to write: “Accepting the results of a legitimate democratic election is patriotic. Refusing to do so and inciting violence is anti-American.” She also responded to a Twitter user who encouraged her to “tell your sister-in-law and brother-[in]-law” by replying, “I’ve tried.”
The newly released texts show that Hicks flagged the Kloss tweets for Radford, who responded, “Unreal. She just called me about it.”
Hicks then texted back: “I am so done” and added, “Does she get how royally fucked they all are now?”
Hicks and Radford also fretted that they would face fallout from the deadly Capitol riots.
“In one day, he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote, apparently referring to lame-duck President Trump.
“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed,” she continued. “I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
Radford wrote that she’d “been crying for an hour.”
The self-pity didn’t end there, with Hicks moaning that she and other Trump White House officials would be “unemployable” and “untouchable” after the violence aimed at overturning the election of Joe Biden
“God, I’m so fucking mad,” she wrote.
Radford, who was Ivanka’s chief of staff, said the backlash was underway. “Visa also sent me a blow-off email today. Already,” she said.
“Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked,” Hicks fired back—while privately admitting Trump White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin’s resignation made her look like a “genius.”
Of course, we see young women in the administration whining about the entire episode. This one slayed me. “Hope Hicks to aide on Jan. 6: ‘We all look like domestic terrorists now’.” You may find it at The Hill. See any existential angst from the good ol’ boys’ side, or am I missing something?
Former White House aide Hope Hicks told a fellow aide in text messages during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that “we all look like domestic terrorists now” as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
Texts released by the House select committee investigating that day show Hicks texting with Julie Radford, former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, as the violence unfolded.
If you’re the right person, you get to make up all kinds of shit and still serve in the beltway! . This is from the New York Times. “As His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus, George Santos Goes to Washington. Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues, and friends divulge more about his past.” The byline is shared by Michael Gold and
It remains unclear how the controversy might affect Mr. Santos’s debut in Congress, including his committee assignments. Mr. Santos told NY1 last month that he hoped to serve on the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, based on his “14-year background in capital markets” and a “multicultural background.” He has since admitted to misrepresenting his work in financial services, while aspects of his heritage have been called into question.
New reporting by The Times brings a clearer picture of his earlier life into view, including information about the gaps in his personal history, along with discrepancies in how he described his mother’s life.
Mr. Santos has said that he grew up in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become “the first female executive at a major financial institution.” He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died “a few years later.”
In fact, Ms. Devolder died in 2016, and a Brazilian community newspaper at the time described her as a cook. Mr. Santos’s friends and former roommates recalled her as a hardworking, friendly woman who spoke only Portuguese and made her living cleaning homes and selling food. None of those interviewed by The Times could recall any instance of her working in finance, and several chalked the story up to Mr. Santos’s tendency for mythmaking.
His apparent fabrications about his own life begin with his claims about his high school. He said he attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious private institution in the Bronx, and said he dropped out in 2006 before graduating and earning an equivalency diploma. A spokesman for Horace Mann said that the school had no record of his attending at all.
This guy lives on Fantasy Island. But, hey, he’s getting away with it so far!
So, I buried the lede or saved the last big act for the Center Ring. Your choice. Representative Kevin McCarthy is still struggling to attain the Speaker of the House position in the next Republican-led Congress. I have no idea why he wants to steer this ship of fools other than wanting to be The Speaker for some reason other than being able to accomplish anything in the position.
This is from POLITICO Playbook. It’s called “McCarthy on the brink,” with shared bylines by Rachel Blade, Eugen Daniels, and Ryan Lizza.
There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Seven years after his last, failed bid for the speakership, KEVIN McCARTHY’s dreams of wielding the gavel are again in peril. Despite years of political contortions aimed at winning over his critics on the far right, with just over 24 hours left until the critical floor vote, the California Republican’s math problem is getting worse, not better.
On Sunday evening, McCarthy announced on a private conference call that he would give his antagonists one of their top demands: The threshold to trigger a vote ousting a speaker would shrink from half the GOP conference, as had been agreed to by a majority of the members, to five dissatisfied lawmakers. But hours later, a group of nine House conservatives issued a letter saying that’s not good enough.
That’s in addition to the five “Never Kevin” lawmakers who have already declared they’re opposing McCarthy. (Remember: He can lose only four votes if all House members cast votes Tuesday.)
But this morning, we can report that that’s not even the worst of it. We caught up Sunday with one of the GOP fence-sitters, a member who has been in the room for these negotiations. And he told us that some of these undecided members won’t support McCarthy — even if he gives them everything they want.
“The problem is people don’t trust Kevin McCarthy and a number won’t vote for him. Those are just the facts,” this lawmaker told us. “The list [of demands] that we offered was not for guaranteed support but rather the kinds of things that might move some of his detractors.”
That’s a huge issue for McCarthy — one that his allies told us days ago they’re worried about. Notably, on the conference call Sunday, McCarthy repeatedly dodged questions from his own rank and file about whether his proposed “motion to vacate” change would even get him the votes.
It won’t, as the missive from the nine conservatives demonstrated Sunday night. And it’s unclear what more McCarthy can give them to change their minds before voting begins.
It will be history-making if his bid fails. These are some hints of who or what may come next if that happens. This is from the New York Times. “Here Are the House Republicans to Watch If McCarthy’s Bid For Speaker Falters. Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far faced no viable challenger for the speakership. But if he is unable to secure the votes, an alternative could quickly emerge.”
But the landscape could quickly change should Mr. McCarthy falter on Tuesday, when the new Congress convenes and lawmakers vote to elect a new speaker. House precedent requires that lawmakers continue voting on ballot after ballot if no one is able to win the gavel. If Mr. McCarthy is unable to quickly win election, Republicans would be under immense pressure to coalesce around an alternative, ending a potentially chaotic and divisive fight on the floor that could taint the start of their majority in the House.
The bad news is Sleazy Steve Scalise (also known as David Duke without the Baggage) is at the top of the list. Run for your lives!
Here are other items to read on tomorrow’s drama.
Farnoush Amiri / Associated Press: EXPLAINER: How the House of Representatives elects a speaker
Eileen Grench / The Daily Beast: Rep. Bob Good Teases Rival to Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker
Brendan Buck / New York Times: A Failed Speaker Vote for Kevin McCarthy Would Be a Historical Event
Politico: McCarthy relents on key conservative demand — but uncertainty remains over speaker bid
One last harbinger of evil tidings, I’m off to relax one more day before returning to student time. This is from Bess Levin, writing at Vanity Fair. “A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO WHY A RON DESANTIS PRESIDENCY WOULD BE AS TERRIFYING AS A TRUMP ONE. His bigoted policies and authoritarian behavior make him just as bad a pick for the top job in Washington.”
He thinks it’s okay to treat human beings like chattel
Remember when the state of Florida sent a bunch of planes to Texas; lured Venezuelan migrants onto said planes with the promise of housing, jobs, and basic services; told them they were headed for Boston; and then dumped them on the tiny island of Martha’s Vineyard? All so the governor could score some cheap political points with the gang at Fox News and anyone else who thinks it’s cool to treat people from other countries as subhuman? You should, considering it happened quite recently, it was absolutely stomach-churning, and it’s presumably the kind of stunt DeSantis would look forward to regularly engaging in on a mass scale as president.
He’s dangerously anti-science
After three weeks of taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously by declaring it a public health emergency and ordering a statewide lockdown, DeSantis apparently decided science was for suckers. “We will never do any of these lockdowns again,” he said in April 2020—as thousands of Americans were dying each day—lifting all restrictions on schools, businesses, and government buildings and banning local governments from enforcing their own public health measures, like mask mandates.
After initially telling people to get vaccinated against the virus, he reversed course, refusing to say if he’d gotten a booster shot. He enacted a law prohibiting businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, including in petri dish environments like cruise ships. He withheld pay from school board members requiring masks; held a press conference with a guy who claimed COVID vaccines change your RNA; and offered unvaccinated cops $5,000 to relocate to Florida. In September 2021, he appointed Joseph Ladapo to serve as surgeon general of the state, apparently having appreciated the flurry of op-eds the doctor had written promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, opposing masking and lockdowns, and questioning the safety of vaccines. Ladapo later recommended that healthy children not get vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics advising they do so and cited what experts said was a deeply flawed study that also recommended men between 18 to 39 not be vaccinated.
In December, DeSantis announced that he’d petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to investigate “crimes and wrongdoing” related to COVID-19 vaccines, and suggested in the petition that anyone who recommended people receive the lifesaving vaccine—like the CDC and Joe Biden—must have been financially compensated to do so. That announcement came approximately one month after the Palm Beach Post noted that “the coronavirus has killed more people aged 65 and over in Florida than any other state in the nation” and that “public health experts outside of the state attribute the trend to the DeSantis administration’s counterproductive COVID-19 policies,” which started when “the Governor began weaponizing health care.”
He wants to make it harder for people to vote and had Floridians arrested as part of another one of his political stunts
Like many a Republican, DeSantis is a big proponent of disenfranchising voters, and has signed a raft of laws making it harder for people to cast ballots for their candidates of choice, including ones limiting the use of drop boxes, hampering Floridians’ ability to vote by mail, and preventing the distribution or food or water to voters waiting on long lines. That a judge found such measures “unconstitutional and especially discriminatory toward minority voters,” according to USA Today, did not stop DeSantis from signing a bill this year creating the Office of Election Crimes and Security, and tasking it with investigating alleged voter fraud. During a press conference he held in August to brag about his work cracking down instances of supposed wrongdoing, the governor told reporters that more than a dozen people had been arrested on charges of voting illegally in the 2020 election and warned, “This is the opening salvo.”
But wait! There’s more! Go read the link and be aware if he decides to throw his black hat into the ring!
So, I hope you had a great New Years’ weekend! All hail to the Krewe of Crazy Cat ladies and to the Queen who carries the golden litter scoop! I joined my neighbors to wander the neighborhood and give treats to our huge feral cat community. Feral cat colonies are protected and fed by the city. Since we’re an international port and a tropical zone, cats really keep the vermin in check! We love them!! We also loved the free New Year’s buffets at the three bars in our Barmuda Triangle! I had two glasses of wine and napped the afternoon and night away like the super fun old lady I’ve become!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Recent Comments