The new Republican House brings chaos back to Washington

The Capitol Insurrection: What he Means to the Minority Leader after the Correspondence with Ms. Pelosi

He has mused publicly — purely in jest, his aides later insisted — about wanting to hit her with the oversized wooden gavel used to keep order in the House.

The steps McCarthy is taking to try and get the speakership and the future complexity that may arise are evident on Tuesday when he gave a pass to her latest effort to mock the trauma of the Capitol insurrection. The congresswoman said that if she had been in charge on January 6, the riot would have succeeded and the mob would have been armed. She insisted that she was sarcasm after the White House said her comments were not in line with US values.

At a news conference last week, when asked to respond to Mr. McCarthy’s claim that she was not allowing Democrats to speak out about what he described as a crisis at the border, Ms. Pelosi said of the minority leader, “I don’t even know what he’s talking about — and I don’t know if he does.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is vowing to secure the border, cut back on government spending and launch rigorous investigations into the Biden administration if Republicans win the House on Tuesday, reflecting a mix of priorities as McCarthy will be forced to contend with an increasingly hardline and pro-Trump conference that is itching to impeach President Joe Biden.

The Biden administration continues to rely on a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows border authorities to turn migrants away at the US-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, due to mass migration in the Western hemisphere, the number of US border encounters topped 2 million. Of those, more than 1 million were turned away under Title 42.

Reply to “Comment on Impeachment for Politics” by G. E. McCarthy after the Biden Referendum

McCarthy said that they wouldn’t use impeachment for political purposes. If something rises to the occasion, it would be used in the same way again.

“I’m very supportive of Ukraine,” McCarthy said. I think that there has to be accountability going forward. … You always need, not a blank check, but make sure the resources are going to where it is needed. It needs to be made sure that the Senate has the ability to debate it openly.

McCarthy has so far come up short in six rounds of voting. The sixth vote took place on Wednesday and McCarthy was the leader with a final GOP tally of 204.

The size of his majority and willingness to cut deals with the conservatives he courted after they denied him the speakership will determine his ability to round up 218 votes for speaker. McCarthy has not made any promises or given in their demands, but has been listening to potential holdouts, according to sources.

“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” he said, referring to the controversial policy where migrants were forced to remain in Mexico while they wait for their immigration proceedings in the United States.

To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”

The Republicans face bigger challenges now that they have a bruised ego, which led to their refusal to raise the debt ceiling. What kind of oversight will they exercise over the Biden administration? Will they block aid to Ukraine? And will McCarthy be able to effectively lead?

How much should I spend? When a speaker fails to keep order in the chamber as Biden explains the budget crisis, and whether to sue McCarthy

Wouldn’t it be better if you first said you shouldn’t keep raising and all the time, so you wouldn’t get a higher limit? he said. “You shouldn’t just say that I will let you keep spending money.” No household should do that.

The sight of an apparently weak speaker unable to keep order in the chamber as Biden spoke – a scene that encapsulated the collapse of civility in the Trump-era of GOP politics – bodes ill for the future. Tuesday’s performance seeded new doubts that – even if McCarthy could somehow reach a deal with Biden on cutting spending in return for lifting the government’s borrowing limit – the California Republican would be able to sell anything but an absolutist position to his members on a clash that threatens to pitch the US economy into a crisis.

When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You don’t risk a default.”

McCarthy has worked hard to court Greene, from having weekly meetings with her in his office to promising her better committee assignments after Democrats kicked her off committees for incendiary remarks.

When asked if he has any restrictions about which committees Greene can serve, McCarthy – who will have a direct say in doling out those assignments – said “no.” The House Oversight Committee will play a key role in GOP investigations in a majority, if Greene is granted a seat on the committee.

She will have committees to serve on, the same as every other member. Members request different committees and as we go through the steering committee, we’ll look at it,” he said. “She can put through the committees she wants, just like any other member in our conference that gets elected.”

Greene backs McCarthy: Why the Republicans need to stop blowing up the House of Representatives? Analogue of the Georgia House Speaker’s race

The Georgia lawmaker complained that the party was making things harder for itself by 19 Republicans blowing up the Speaker’s race. (Greene backs McCarthy).

“The first thing I’ll ask the president to do is not to call half the nation idiots or say things about them because they have a difference of opinion,” he said. “I think leadership matters, and I think it probably starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

He said that there needs to be a discussion about whether he should be the speaker. “I think we should have a very frank discussion internally about where we’re going to be going forward.”

Lauren Boebert of Colorado is a member of the Freedom Caucus and said it was a red line for her.

While hardliners have laid out a lengthy list of demands for GOP leadership, with a slim margin, moderate lawmakers – largely known as the party’s majority makers – know they can exert equal influence over everything from legislation to investigations. Moderates have accused McCarthys critics of creating chaos without finding their best options to counter conservative hardliners, so they want to flex their muscles in the speaker’s race, which they hope will set the tone for their new majority.

Lawmakers who are familiar with the situation said that during a recent meeting of Republicans on the same committee, there was a discussion about offering a resolution to remove McCarthy holdouts from their panel assignments if they did not back down. But at least for now, they agreed it might not be the best move.

CNN has yet to say which party will have control of the House of Representatives, as of Friday morning, the network projected that Republicans will have an advantage over Democrats.

The Never-Kevin Movement: Running the C team without a clue, but with a plan to run the next-generation chambers

Norman said the group hopes to formalize a lengthier list of all the rules changes they are seeking. They are also pushing to delay next week’s internal leadership elections, though there is no indication McCarthy plans to do so.

When asked whether McCarthy should get credit for delivering the majority, Norman responded: “The taxpayers that voted the representatives in deserve the credit.”

What can McCarthy do? Mr. McCarthy is trying to win over hard-liners, embracing measures that would weaken the speakership, as well as making concessions that he had previously refused to support. But so far the concessions have not been enough to corral the votes he needs.

With a slim majority, we shouldn’t start the C team. Our star players need to shine so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.

And yet, House Republicans are poised to kick off their new majority on Tuesday without a clear sense of who their leader will be – raising the prospect of a brutal, once-in-a-century floor fight that could delay establishing committees, conducting oversight or legislating. On Tuesday morning, the conference will gather one last time before the speaker vote, where McCarthy’s supporters are hoping for a last-minute resolution but are bracing for the worst.

After Democrats retained control of the Senate – with the possibility of picking up an additional seat in the Georgia runoff race in December – McConnell is facing far more anger in his ranks than previous election cycles, although he still has enough support to secure another term leading his conference.

Several Republicans have privately told them they would be interested in running, if McCarthy leaves, since the group known as the “Never Kevin” movement believes Kevin could not win a majority of the House. Their goal with voting for Biggs is to show that McCarthy is weak on the first ballot, which they hope would inspire other candidates to jump in.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is among those calling for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it “doesn’t make any sense” to have them this week.

It is important that the Republicans do not begin the new year by not having some clarity as to what they can achieve, said GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas. To show the American people that the trust and confidence they have given to us is a good decision, we need to hit the ground running.

Meanwhile, Trump aides and allies have been privately critical of Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, amid the GOP’s underwhelming midterm gains, especially on the House side. CNN has not yet projected which party will control the lower chamber, though Republicans appear on track to gain a narrow House majority. Emmer is competing against Rep. Jim Banks, an ally of Donald Trump Jr., for the position of House GOP whip.

“They’ve been measuring the draperies, they’ve been putting forth an agenda. Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union” that they have not won it yet. “After the election is concluded, depending on who was in the majority, there’ll be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward.”

Behind the scenes, the finger pointing has already begun, and those conversations are likely to accelerate as the full House and Senate return to Washington this week for the first time since the midterm elections.

But others in the party have placed the blame squarely on Trump, whose hand-picked candidates failed in key Senate races that determined control of the Senate. McConnell’s super PAC spent more than any other group in Senate races, even though Trump’s group spent a tiny fraction of that.

Pat Toomey said there is a correlation between big losses and candidates for the political party, called “Make America Great Again”. “I think my party needs to face the fact that if fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, we’re probably not going to do really well.”

McConnell and Scott have both been at odds with each other when it comes to strategy, with McConnell even sounding the alarm about candidate quality while Scott stuck to his guns during the primaries.

When pressed on whether he would challenge McConnell for the top spot, Scott didn’t rule it out — even though he would have little chance of succeeding.

McCarthy told Hugh that they’re still talking, but they have not moved. The only Republican entity that is stopping the Biden administration is us. But we’re also going to be the only ones that can move forward. It would cause a lot of delay, getting committees up and running, being able to do the things that we need to get done from the beginning.

“Basic political physics says you can’t appease the moderates and HFC all at the same time,” one senior Republican told CNN. If you straddle the fence, you have to hope it isn’t barbed wire.

A source from the GOP said that Trump asked to see which GOP lawmakers had endorsed him in the media. So far, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik has been the highest-ranking Republican to officially back Trump’s 2024 bid.

On the Freedom Caucus: After the Jan. 6, 2021 Reionization, Rep. Steve Scalise, and Rep. Matt Gaetz

Several members of the Freedom Caucus met with McCarthy in order to get concessions from him for their votes in the House of Representatives.

Bob Good said they have asked McCarthy to give them his plan for running the House.

Perry said that while their primary focus has been seeking rules changes that would empower individual members – and weaken the speaker – that is “not the limit” of their issues.

“We want to see this place change dramatically, to reflect the will of the people and to acknowledge how broken it is,” he said. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to do that to lay out how they will change their portion of it.

Republicans made promises to their would-be leaders and apologized for them. Representative Steve Scalise asked whether Mr. McCarthy would investigate Speaker Pelosi after Mrs. Taylor Greene said she would support Mr. McCarthy.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida asked Mr. Scalise about comments he made on a private conference call days after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in which he agreed with Mr. McCarthy that Mr. Gaetz’s comments about conservatives he deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump had been dangerous and “potentially illegal.”

Mr. Scalise apologized and said he should have waited until he had more facts to comment, according to two people familiar with the exchange who described it on the condition of anonymity.

Is It Time for a Republican Speaker to Run? A Call to the House of Representatives to VOTE FOR KEVIN (McKay)

The turmoil underscored how Republicans were toiling to find a path forward after disappointing midterm results, and still grappling with the influence of Mr. Trump and his election lies on their party, including the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack. It came as former Vice President Mike Pence made his most scathing comments yet about Mr. Trump’s actions during the assault on the Capitol, and as Mr. Trump himself, who has received an unusual torrent of internal blame for the string of midterm losses by candidates he had handpicked, geared up for an expected announcement on Tuesday night that he would run for president again.

“It’s going to be a narrow one,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma. It makes it very important that you have someone with great political skills. Somebody knows everything that’s happening in this conference.

McCarthy and his camp prepared for the first votes for speaker in a century. A GOP source told CNN that they were going to war.

“Some really good conversations took place last night, and it’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to VOTE FOR KEVIN,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post on Wednesday morning, after a Tuesday night call with Mr. McCarthy. He beseeched Republicans to avoid an “embarrassing defeat.”

“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). GOP lawmaker said that if there was a person that would be the guy he would be slayer.

Scalise has repeatedly vowed to support McCarthy and refused to speculate on whether he would jump into the race if the GOP leader can’t get the votes.

The congressman from Ohio, who was a hero of the right, tried to get McCarthy to be speaker but only for 19 of his peers to reject him because he insisted he did not want it. Jordan is interested in bashing the appointees of Biden as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He said that all this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

McCarthy needs to do a lot of work to get to 218, including a promise that leaders won’t play in the primaries, more conservatives on the committees, and restoring the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair.

The McCarthy holdouts, as well as a number of other members, are considering ways to diminish the threat from their right-wing colleagues. That includes weighing whether to oppose a rules package if it includes reinstating an arcane tool that would empower any member to bring up a floor vote to oust a speaker at any time, as well as the longshot idea of teaming up across the aisle with Democrats to elect a speaker if the race goes to multiple ballots and no one budges.

A majority of the House GOP voted against the idea of restoring the ability to leave the chair during a closed door meeting last month. McCarthy laughed when CNN asked if he would visit the issue.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. I know that wherever I go in my district, people want to get things done.

A kind of drama that was common in the House during the 19th century has almost vanished since. 13 times the House couldn’t get a speaker elected on the first ballot, before the Civil War. 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. The final speaker selection before the Civil War took 44 votes, and one speaker election required 133 ballots to be resolved.

If McCarthy wins the speakership or conservatives install an alternative to his right, the Democrats believe that the most militant members in the House will help define the party over the next two years.

The Democratic Conference on Capitol Insurrection, Cuellar, and Jeffries: The Case for a Rep. Bruce Westerman

Some Democrats have said they would be willing to listen to the proposal. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas, told CNN some Republicans have approached him about it.

Joyce also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. Kevin is the new speaker at the end of the day.

In a tense meeting in the basement of the Capitol with the full House GOP Conference, McCarthy and Gaetz got into a screaming match. McCarthy called out his detractors for asking for personal favors, including Gaetz, whom he said informed him he didn’t care if Democrat Hakeem Jeffries was elected speaker so long as he didn’t get the job.

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”

One of the possible consensus picks is retiring Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who voted for Donald Trump to be impeached for inciting the Capitol insurrection and co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

It would require agreement from all of the democrats and the help of five republicans. He has no plans of going to Washington that day but he will be skiing.

But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.

How President McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi have threatened to end the House Select Committee investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol

It is not feasible to form a congress and organize committees by January 3, so I am worried about that.

The discussion over House rules is good for the party, said Westerman. He said he wasn’t excited about any destructive movement.

If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not shared it with members of his leadership team, whom he has cut out of his deliberations about the speakership race in what some regard as a display of paranoia. He has been spotted around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters in recent days with a lobbyist who is close to him.

Mr. Norman, who has described himself as a “hard no” against Mr. McCarthy, declined to discuss his call with Mr. Trump, describing it as a “private conversation.” He said he was still undecided about whom he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not respond to requests for comment.

When Nancy Pelosi was short of the votes she needed to become speaker, she quietly picked off defectors and tricked them into voting for her. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to push, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, and picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering bipartisan legislating, as well as her lone would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship.

The California Republican handed hard-right House members with plum committee assignments, dumped several high-profile Democrats from key panels to please the conservative media universe, launched investigations into the “weaponization” of government against Republicans like former President Donald Trump and gave a pass to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address or suggested “national divorce” between red and blue states. He’s refused to demand the resignation of New York Rep. George Santos, a serial fabulist, who might be an embarrassment but whose seat remains critical to the GOP’s tiny majority.

He has threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. He is trying to win over the ultraconservative lawmakers. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

Republicans won control of the House in a fair election. The type of pro-Trump extremists many voters rejected in last year’s elections are getting more leverage because of their smaller than expected majority.

Are you afraid to surrender your way to victory? An apology to the California Senator Charlie Dent and the Republicans who hate to hear his plight

For years, the California Congressman has wanted to be speaker. He seemed willing to do a lot of things to get the job.

In order to Speaker McCarthy, the role has been weakened due to the reported concessions he made during this unseemly political shakedown, wrote Charlie Dent, a Republican. … It begs the question: Is surrendering your way to victory really winning? This appeasement only makes the extremist group stronger, and when will it end?

This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.

McCarthy shrugged them off as she said that she thought she was being facetious by saying she was being facetious. His attitude was unsurprising and consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility for.

The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.

CNN’s Raju and Melanie Zanona reported Tuesday that McCarthy had signaled at the White House meeting that he’d be open to a large bill. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.

The split raises possible tensions between Republicans in the House and McConnell, and it could make it more difficult for some Republican senators to vote for a spending deal.

As frustration inside the House GOP has grown over a small band of anti-Kevin McCarthy lawmakers, an idea to strike back at the rebellious group has been floated among some Republicans: kicking these members off their committees, according to multiple members involved in the conversations.

The rise of anti-establishment intransigence among a hard-right faction in the GOP can be traced with a straight line back to the Tea Party — and put on steroids by MAGA Trumpism.

Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, said that people need to realize we don’t need to double down on failed policies. “There’s a reason the midterms were the way that they were: people who are left of center, right of center were the most successful.”

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the handful of Republican lawmakers to come out in firm opposition to McCarthy as speaker, also acknowledged the reality of a narrowly divided House.

He said they are in a community of common fate. “We have to acknowledge that the ship isn’t going anywhere if five people won’t row in that direction. That is true on the budget, on the speakership vote, and on policy choices.

“Some of the questions that remain unanswered is what other deals are going to be cut, you know, what guarantees, what concessions are going to be made?” The man asked. “We got to be careful that we don’t give a lot of that leverage away.”

What Are the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? The Case Against Kevin McCarthy During High-Stakes Negotiations

There is still no resolution on the motion to leave the chair despite the fact that McCarthy held a forum in which his members could debate rules changes and other concessions.

Republicans huddled once again as a conference for the first time since the heated Tuesday meeting. McCarthy organized a conference call, which could be more managed, than an in-person session. McCarthy told his conference that the deal had not been finalized but progress had been made. He said thanks to Roy, a key holdout.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans are out there having conversations and talking about different points of view,” GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida told CNN.

Even amid the high-stakes negotiations, members from competing factions have had time to have some fun with one another. Some anti-McCarthy lawmakers attended a Christmas party hosted by Burchett in his office this week. While riding the skateboard of Gaetz’s wife, he rode amid the Mountain Dew fountain and “charcuterie plate” of Cheez Whiz and Ritz crackers.

Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican who identifies himself as part of the governing wing, said at the end of the day, the various factions actually agree on most things and dismissed the idea it would be tense next year.

Moore said that there is not an enormous amount of drama. “I’ve met with House Freedom Caucus members to chat on what we agree on. It is an enormous amount.

If the Republican leader cannot demonstrate progress when the House votes on Thursday, he will be in deep trouble. After just staving off what would have been a humiliating roll call vote on Wednesday evening, it emerged that McCarthy had made yet more concessions.

McCarthy said that this is a presidential year and that you only have a few months to govern. You want to hit the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. You do not get new, strong candidates. You don’t get more resources to be able to supply those candidates to get the message out.”

As five Republicans warn that they may vote as a bloc on January 3, McCarthy is issuing a dire warning.

Many people against Kevin are friendly with me. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. The example I used was the one between the John House and the Paul Ryan. You understand what I mean? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

Former Speaker John Boehner and Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and later Speaker Paul Ryan, were all tormented by a rejectionist wing of their own party on simple matters of governance. Funding the government, preventing default on the full faith and credit of the United States, providing emergency relief to states and communities ravaged by natural disasters, and reauthorizing essential programs all became dramatic, high stakes fights.

McCarthy and Trump had a brief fall out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, where McCarthy suggested on a private phone call that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy traveling to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just a few weeks later.

McCarthy said in an interview that they were still talking, but they had not changed their minds and that the basic decisions about legislating and investigating would be in jeopardy.

Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”

“This is a lot of unfinished business this year that they would have to take care of next year and I know from having been over there, that wouldn’t be easy, especially when you’ have a narrow majority.”

“We’re enduring the silly season of a campaign. For most of us, that’s over after you get elected. He said that the silliness is still evident because he is running for speaker of the House.

The role was weakened due to reported concessions that Speaker McCarthy made during the political shakedown. The hardliners exacted more than a pound of flesh from McCarthy and most of the House GOP conference that will make governing exceedingly difficult.

The five-person threshold is not high enough, according to some of McCarthy’s most outspoken critics, including Gaetz and Norman.

Some people within the party have privately suggested that a threshold of 50 people would be too low for the moderate wing.

A Conversation with Jimena Santos, Former Attorney General Michael McCarthy, and the Problem of Swalwell: State and Local Investigations in a Democratic Caucus

All of this will be a major topic of discussion during a crucial conference call on Friday afternoon that McCarthy scheduled with the various ideological caucuses in the House GOP, just four days ahead of the January 3 speaker’s vote.

Norman said that the devil is in the details as regards threshold and other rule concessions. In writing and sealed with social media posts, people can’t vote until the details are spelled out.

The host of a daily show on radio is a former attorney. Follow him on the social networking sites. The opinions he gives in this commentary are his. CNN has more opinion on it.

Multiple investigations over his finances and lying on his resume and biography are just some of the thingsSantos has to contend with. In November, he flipped a Democratic seat in a redrawn district, helping Republicans seize a narrow majority in the House.

A review of genealogy records undermined the claims ofSantos’ grandparents to flee the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium. (Santos’ campaign did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)

Adding to the firestorm are recent developments that federal and state authorities have launched criminal investigations into Santos over his finances and fabrications. When he first ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2020, Santos reported he had no assets, yet somehow he was able to lend his 2022 campaign $700,000.

Yet not a peep about the Santos story — which even caused an uproar on Fox News on December 27 when former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as a guest host confronted Santos about his fabrications, asking: “Do you have no shame?”

McCarthy has also criticized the Biden administration’s border policy and played up accusations on Fox Business that the FBI worked to suppress news stories hurtful to Democrats.

As for Swalwell, McCarthy is justifying himself by alluding to the case of a Chinese spy who had developed ties with California politicians, including Swalwell, a decade ago. After the FBI informed him, Swalwell says he cut ties with her. Two years ago, Schiff told colleagues that the matter was discussed with GOP leaders back in 2015, and they had no objection to Swalwell serving. That was before he became one of the Trump accusers.

Four days before the Speaker vote, he attempted to convince his critics that he would be a good Speaker, despite the fact that they were still not in favor of him.

But now with just one day to go, a group of at least nine Republicans have made clear that they’re still not sold – despite McCarthy’s warning and even after he gave in to some of their most ardent demands, which he outlined during a Sunday evening conference call.

“To be honest, we are preparing for a fight. It is not the way we want to start out in our new majority, but you can’t negotiate against the position that we will not guarantee anything in return. A member of the centrist Republican Governance Group, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, told CNN.

I give Kevin a lot of credit. He brought everyone with him and worked hard to figure out a way forward. This place can be made run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy worked the phones to find agreement on rules changes meant to win over the holdouts, during a week in between Christmas and New Year’s.

Deciding to adjourn the South Carolina House of Representatives despite the Roll-Call Voting Odd for the Speaker of the House Floor

At least five Republicans have already pledged to vote against him, despite the fact that he can only lose 4 votes on the House floor.

The Republicans decided to adjourn for the night instead of taking another speaker vote when the House came back into session. GOP leaders were hopeful that the ongoing talks would convince McCarthy’s opponents to vote for adjournment, but with just four votes to spare, the roll-call vote was tight.

McCarthy released the final rules package later that evening and also put out a “Dear Colleague” letter making one last pitch for the job, which included additional promises about how he’d govern as speaker – including ensuring that the GOP’s ideological groups are better represented on committees.

McCarthy’s negotiators were locked in talks late Thursday with hardliners on even more concessions – suggesting an extraordinary desire on his part to secure the glory of the speaker’s gavel, whatever the cost. It seems unlikely that he could create a political foundation that would promote any kind of stable governance with the current turmoil in the GOP and GaetzBoebert chaos caucus.

The group is still pushing for a single member to be allowed to topple the speaker, which is something it used to be before Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules.

The letter, obtained by CNN, states that there are no means to measure whether the promises are kept or broken.

McCarthy decided to delay races for committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have input in the process, but other members believe it was a way to insulate himself from potential criticism from members who end up losing their races.

An aide to Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said the South Carolinian’s district offices have been inundated with calls from constituents who have received robocalls and “been read a script” by someone warning what could happen if McCarthy isn’t elected speaker because of conservatives like Norman. Those campaigns, Norman’s aide told CNN, have done nothing to influence the congressman’s position, but it does reveal the lengths some McCarthy backers have gone to exert maximum pressure on detractors.

McCarthy’s defenders promised to him and the others they wouldn’t let a few people control their conference during the holidays.

McCarthy’s opposition, however, has also been working in tandem – and they are far more practiced in playing hardball, though the Freedom Caucus has been openly divided over McCarthy.

The Fighting Game of the Speaker: How Done is Steve McCarty Getting the Job done? The Case of the 118th House Republican Majority

The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week outlining the practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. Without an approved House Rules package, the memo outlined that committees won’t be able to pay staff.

A memo that was obtained by CNN warned that student loan payments wouldn’t be made if a rules package isn’t adopted by January.

The fight over the speakership, which began Tuesday on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House GOP majority into chaos and undercut the party’s agenda.

There were boxes from McCarthy’s office that were spotted by CNN being moved into the speaker’s suite, a sign that he is committed to seeking the job.

“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.

The prospect of a long and drawn- out floor fight in the House is complicating the situation, as is the fact that there are not enough votes to win the speakership.

“Steve is trying to be very supportive,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a McCarthy supporter and Nebraska Republican. “He has been public that he is supporting McCarthy. I think he would like to be a speaker. so he’s got to be tactful.”

He told CNN that their main focus was to have it resolved by January 3. Kevin had a lot of conversations with the members who have expressed concerns.

In a private House GOP call on Sunday, Scalise embraced his role as the incoming majority leader, by laying out the agenda and bills that would come to the floor this week, while mentioning McCarthy as the future speaker, according to a source on the call.

The problem of Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise: How many are you? A source of frustration and a challenge for the future of the GOP

The fear is that lowering the threshold for a vote to oust the speaker to one member will make governing on items like the debt limit and funding almost impossible.

One GOP member said if it becomes clear that no matter what, McCarthy won’t get their votes, people will become more against rule and operational changes.

Good said a new candidate would emerge on Tuesday and that they should be careful not to make a bad decision. He declined to specify the member and also declined to comment about Scalise.

“I’ll resist for just a few more hours what I’ve resisted for a few weeks, which is to comment on specific candidates,” Good said. Kevin McCarthy is a part of the problem.

Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said that he found it “incredible” that the same members pushing for a more “open and transparent” GOP conference are getting behind a “shadow candidate” they plan to “ambush” Republicans with at the start of the new Congress.

“I think members are growing increasingly frustrated with the intransigence of some of the holdouts,” Johnson told CNN, calling some of them “chaos agents who are trying to cause trouble.”

Folks should not believe this is a noble cause according to one Republican lawmaker. “No one should believe that this is anything other than self aggrandizement. They are trying to push procedures that no one in Washington cares about, so they can get more power.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/mccarthy-floor-fight-steve-scalise/index.html

The real show is going to be the extreme MAGA types: Sen.-elect Markwayne Mullin and the Congressional Integrity Project

Sen.-elect Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican and outgoing House member, met with McCarthy in his office on Monday. Mullin, who has been helping to lobby House members to back McCarthy, said he and others have been encouraging McCarthy with a simple message: “Stay put.”

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.

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.”

House precedent requires members to vote until someone gets the majority they need. But until Tuesday, the House had not failed to elect a speaker on the first roll-call vote since 1923, when the election stretched for nine ballots.

The party base will close their ranks because nothing happens until you have a Speaker, and that is what he is,” said Tom Davis, who served as chair of the National Republican. The vast majority of the Conference are loyal to him.

Dach is the senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, which is a group created to respond to House investigations of the Biden administration. The next couple of years will be cast by giving people the power and the podium.

The Democrats believe the House majority will reinforce the GOP’s image as the party because they want to make hardline Trump allies more visible and allow them to pursue conservative grievances.

“The real show is going to be these empowered, extreme MAGA types,” Dach insists. It’s a bad day for the entire Republican Party when they are on a committee and on television.

Michael Podhorzer is a former political director of the labor federation.

“When he made his inauguration speech [in 2017], there was only one Democratic governor in those five states, only four Democratic Senators, no speaker of the state assembly or majority leader in the senate in those states,” says Podhorzer, now chairman of the board of the Analyst Institute, a consortium of liberal groups. “In a month, four of the five states will have Democratic governors, 9 of the 10 Senators are Democrats, and three of the state legislative chambers are led by Democrats.” Democrats in those places have done nothing but win, since they don’t know enough about Republicans to vote for them.

Podhorzer argued that if you were in a place with a new bubble of Democrats that believed they had to come out again to beat Trump, it was two midterms happening at the same time.

The Battle of the House Speaker: Kevin McCarthy’s Unstable 15th Voting Day in the November 1822 Sesquished State Capitol

It is unlikely to cause many problems for Republicans in places they are already strong. In the midterm, Republicans, as I’ve written, mostly consolidated their control over red-leaning America, easily holding governorships and state legislatures in many of the states (such as Florida, Texas, Iowa and Tennessee) that pursued the most aggressive conservative agendas over the past two years.

The longest battle for House speaker in 164 years finally ended early Saturday, culminating with the GOP’s Kevin McCarthy being elected on the 15th ballot. It should’ve been the most stirring moment after days of Republican struggle on the House floor, but it wasn’t.

A senior GOP source tells CNN that McCarthy is going to war, while others say he is defiant. “Never backing down.”

The House is set to convene at noon ET on Wednesday after holding three rounds of votes to elect a speaker on Tuesday. Each time, McCarthy came up short, failing to hit the majority threshold needed to secure the speakership. The House adjourned in the early evening after the vote series stretched on for hours with no resolution in sight.

If all Democrats voted for Jeffries, McCarthy could only lose four of the 222 Republicans, since he needed a majority of the House. The clerk called out the names of all 434 members to vote in alphabetical order. McCarthy was denied a majority before the House clerk was through the “C’s,” and 19 Republicans voted for someone other than McCarthy – leaving him 15 votes short.

By refusing to give the GOP complete control of the House and allowing McCarthy to take over, the voters created a scenario that makes them disdain the instability that ensues.

What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.

Trump may no longer be in the White House but the circus-style politics that he built on a foundation of rebellion in the GOP is back and has tied Washington in knots again. The inability of the Republicans to take power because of the speaker impasse is a mark of how bad things are.

The 118th Congress opened with Republicans fighting each other, and Democrats rejoicing at their lost majority.

Some of McCarthy’s allies wanted to keep negotiating in order to adjourn the session, but they were unable to get the votes to do so. So McCarthy headed toward a fourth ballot.

McCarthy did not believe that continuing on the day would get them more productive. He insisted that he wouldn’t be quitting the race.

He thinks that he can get a group of members to vote present, which would reduce the threshold he would need to win.

On the floor on Tuesday, Gaetz questioned if the right person for the speaker of the House would be someone who has been selling shares in himself for more than a decade.

The End of McCarthy’s White House: Repalling the Ex-President and Returning the Intelligence Committee to a Leader that Regains the Trust of the American People

Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state – who voted to impeach Trump, lost a primary to a rival backed by the ex-president, who then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat – told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday the rebels were in it for themselves.

McCarthy is to blame for a spectacle of a legislative majority spending days trying to organize itself. McCarthy was in the early days after the January 6 attack. Trump bore responsibility for it but didn’t support his impeachment, and who helped usher conservative extremists into office and then protect them once there, is experiencing the all-too-predictable outcome of handing power to the unhinged,” wrote Filipovic, before Republicans finally elected McCarthy.

— And Democrats are already trying to make political capital out of it, seeing vindication for their claims that Republicans are still not fit for power and should be kicked out at the first opportunity in the next election. “I just watched House Republicans plunge into utter chaos on the House floor,” Jeffries told Democratic donors in a fundraising email. “This changes everything for Democrats. Now is the time to show what we can do.

“We have an agenda and we want to implement that agenda and we can either be the conference who comes together to do that or we can let a select few keep us from being able to do that,” Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday, arguing that McCarthy had been successful in leading his party back to power in the House.

How does this end? House precedent dictates members take successive votes until a majority is secured. Until a speaker is chosen, the House is essentially a useless entity. It cannot pass laws or even swear in its members.

In 2010, Republicans rode the Tea Party wave to win control of the House, but the cost was steep. Five years of inability to get anything done even with each other, and fights over raising the debt ceiling, frustrated John Boehner as speaker.

“[A]s we enter a new Congress,” McCarthy wrote to the Democrats’ leader, “I am committed to returning the Intelligence Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people.” Sadly, at the worst possible time, during a moment of rising global tensions, he is doing precisely the opposite.

What do Republicans really want to see in the House? And what will they do? The case of the Libya attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Libya

The Republicans decided not to hurt Clinton by investigating the attacks on the US embassy in Libya because four people died. Clinton was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, despite being in the Obama administration.

Trump maintained his power with the base and endorsed scores of candidates in the 2022 midterms. They did well in the primaries, but lost in swing districts.

He threatened the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments at the eleventh hour. That appears to have had the reverse effect on what he and his allies were intending.

The question now is – not just for McCarthy but for anyone with ambition and has to make choices between what they believe and what they’re willing to compromise – was it worth it?

At the end of the day, the speaker is supposed to be able to get things done with the help of other people in the room, but at the same time people are already cynical about what politicians are going to do in Washington and how it will affect them.

This is another example of the chaos that remains surrounding House Republicans, despite all the talk in Washington of Dem in disarray. With just a four-seat majority, how can they govern if they’re going through all this just to pick a leader?

The Teaser: Kevin McCarthy vs. Donald J. Trump: The First Day of the House Floor Reheating in California Revisited

Democratic sources say they would actively whip against a motion to adjourn, because voting to adjourn would require 218 votes. Some Republicans would likely vote against it as well.

The day before the vote, McCarthy allies tried to get the former president to reiterate his endorsement of the speaker, but he wouldn’t.

The opposition to McCarthy is personal so there may be little that he can do to turn the tide, according to another member.

“This changes neither my view of McCarthy nor Trump nor my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.

It seems very Personal for Mr. Gaetz, who declared the Republican leader “a desperate man” and promised that he would never vote for him. He voted for former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday.

Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, speaking to reporters in the Capitol. “I’m staying until we win,” he said.

Freshman Rep. John Brecheen of Oklahoma was the next to flip, prompting another round of Republican cheers. By the end of the roll call, 14 holdouts, including Norman, had called McCarthy’s name. The tide had turned and he had the votes he needed for speaker. Only seven McCarthy opponents remained.

The fourth-ballot vote signaled that Republicans were far from breaking the deadlock that has paralyzed the chamber, even after a direct appeal from former President Donald J. Trump, who had endorsed Mr. McCarthy but stayed silent on Tuesday throughout his humiliating series of defeats on the House floor.

The endorsement failed to move a single defector in Mr. McCarthy’s direction. With a fifth vote underway, the Republican leader and his allies still were working behind closed doors trying to secure the votes.

On Tuesday, right-wing Republicans coalesced behind Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founding member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, as an alternative to Mr. McCarthy, but Mr. Jordan, a onetime rival who has since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, pleaded with his colleagues to unite instead behind the California Republican.

The new GOP-led House made its debut on Wednesday with humiliations, after right-wing radicals blocked the California Republican’s bid for power.

The idea that a fresh new majority is riding into town to do the American peoples’ business is in tatters. The disarray that took place in the new House on Tuesday and Wednesday indicates that even the most difficult votes in the new House could be in jeopardy when there are too many small groups of members to pass a bill.

Cheers that erupted from Republican benches when the vote closed reflected the risible state of the House’s new GOP management, which is unable to perform the only task it currently has – choosing a leader – and is holding up the functioning of the chamber.

“The country or Kevin McCarthy. Which should have more weight?” said recently retired GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who is now a CNN political analyst.

Chaos and Power: What Do Right-wing Leaders Want in a Legislative Majority? An Analysis of Roy’s Decline

On the other side is a band of right-wing zealots, holding their party, the House and the country hostage – some with no clear objective other than to destroy the idea of governance itself. Chaos is the point for them.

There was a hint of a lifeline as a divide in the anti-McCarthy block began to open, but humiliation piled on for the California lawmaker.

Some lawmakers who want changes to the way the House works reported progress in talks with McCarthy. One of their number, Texas Rep. Chip Roy, predicted he could bring over 10 votes if the talks pan out.

The question is whether another day of pointless voting on Thursday will prompt members to begin to consider whether he should step aside for a more universally trusted colleague – perhaps Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for instance. Many Republicans complain that their hopes of quickly grabbing power and getting rid of Biden’s administration have been dashed.

While another Groundhog Day in the House didn’t produce a new speaker, it did offer hints on how an endgame in the battle for the speaker’s gavel may develop. It also provided insight into the new balance of power in Washington and how Congress will work (or won’t) in the months ahead.

It shouldn’t be about personality but the process, so it’s not as constructive. He told CNN that he didn’t have a good idea of how many people were in either camp.

The Demonstration of the House of Representatives: Demography, Politics and the Trump-McCarlenger Problem

The second vote on Wednesday made the atmosphere on the House floor buzzing. On Tuesday, the session was relatively quiet but the opposing sides gathered on the floor to hold talks in between the speaker votes.

The end of the year is when omnibus bills are often placed together, with funding bills for transportation, agriculture, defense and other areas lumped together. Multiple Republican members appeared on CNN on Wednesday making reasoned arguments about the need to mend a broken institution, to open the House’s business to the public and to conduct a proper appropriations process through committees with time for full debates, budget assessments and amendments.

“I really think this is democracy in action,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “If you are not satisfied with Washington as it is, then you can’t just be satisfied doing the same thing.”

Some Republicans accuse their colleagues of grandstanding and of using the spotlight to raise campaign cash and to drum up appearances on conservative media. If there’s a philosophical grounding to the opposition, it’s as the latest expression of the longtime anti-establishment wing of the GOP that seeks to neutralize government itself.

This politics of destruction was set into motion by Donald Trump, with his vow to drain the Washington “swamp.” And it was expressed most eloquently by Steve Bannon at the start of the Trump administration as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” The problem for McCarthy – who has cozied up to Trump and often appeased the zealots – is how to negotiate with someone whose main aspiration is chaos.

Early on Wednesday, Trump delivered the kind of full-throated endorsement of McCarthy that the Californian must believe he was owed after his obsequious support of the ex-president following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

The Republicans would have jumped into line in the past because of that social media blast. But no longer. It didn’t appear to change a single vote.

Her rebuke was the latest sign that after two years in political exile, a disastrous intervention in the midterms and a low energy 2024 campaign launch, Trump’s juice isn’t what it once was in GOP ranks in the House. While the ex-president’s rapport with the Republican base surely remains intact, this kind of insubordination is unlikely to have gone down well in Mar-a-Lago.

Biden and McConnell Hadroesses at the Kentucky House: What do they want to hear next? The debate goes directly to Roy, Roy, and Biden

The spectacle in the House on Wednesday had more in common with the chaos and recrimination that unfolds in parliaments in Europe or Israel, where it can sometimes take weeks or months to arrive at a leader or governing majority, than in the US House, where the vote for speaker is normally a formality.

“It’s embarrassing for the country,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, as he capitalized on the chaos in an event in Kentucky highlighting bipartisan political leadership over his massive infrastructure package, appearing with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Even after he offered concessions to his opponents, it is not certain if the California Republican will be able to win the 218 votes he needs to become the next Speaker.

McCarthy had been in talks with Roy, who told GOP leaders he thought he could get 10 holdouts to come along with him. McCarthy met with members who voted against him.

McCarthy said Wednesday evening that there was no deal yet to end the stalemate, but that there has been progress. “I think it’s probably best that people work through some more,” McCarthy said after the House had adjourned.

Texas Rep. Chip Roy, one of the conservatives who has voted against McCarthy’s speakership bid, told GOP leaders that he thinks he can get 10 holdouts to come along if ongoing negotiations pan out, according to GOP sources familiar with the internal discussions, and that there are additional detractors who may be willing to vote “present.”

“There were a whole bunch of members that were involved in this, and there are some folks now that are sitting down and talking about that discussion to see where they want to go with it next,” the Minnesota Republican said.

One moderate Republican told CNN Thursday morning that they aren’t happy about the concessions, though they are willing to have “discussions” about them.

I am willing to listen to discussions but not like the rules. I think they’re a mistake for the conference. These handful of folks want a weak speaker with a four-vote majority. The public will not like what they see of the GOP, I fear,” the member said.

The Democrat-President’s March on January 6, 2014: When the GOP Legislature Decides to End Its Role in the Crimes of Law Enforcement

In the past couple of years since leaving policing, some of the conclusions I’ve drawn have had to do with the former president who set the disastrous riot on January 6 in motion. I and my brother and sister officers were hurt that day and the emotional and physical trauma that we went through makes for a lot of negative opinions about him. The values I lived by, like “back the blue,” were thrown back at me by the same mob that was viciously trying to cut us down.

“This week marks two years since the most violent day of my law enforcement career, the same violent uprising that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and many others in his party continue to downplay,” Fanone noted. “The violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol two years ago, almost taking my life, ignored my pleas that I have kids.”

And that’s just to name a few examples. Without long overdue intervention by Republican top brass, the frightening trend towards violent rhetoric seems certain to continue.

The conspiracists have a large group of the public on their side in that they think the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency would be justified. This dangerous trend needs to be reversed.

The incoming GOP House leadership must find the backbone to condemn political violence and hateful rhetoric incited by members of their own party. The first step in that direction is finally condemnation of Trump, who remains to this day the Republican Party’s defacto leader. The incoming Speaker and the House leadership must demand that members of their party never again amplify language or take actions that put the lives of their constituents, their peers or law enforcement at risk.

Sanders spoke moments after Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was on her feet yelling “liar” at Biden, with the House chamber sounding more like a heckler-filled late-night comedy club than a solemn state occasion. Kevin McCarthy tried to impress the ruder lawmakers but that didn’t stop them from voting against certifying Biden’s victory over false allegations of fraud. McCarthy embraced Donald Trump after his baseless claims of a stolen election led to an unprecedented insurrection at the US Capitol. Last month, he appeased the untamed elements of his party in order to take power.

Since then, influential GOP House members have called the January 6 assault a “normal tourist visit.” Some have called for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s execution for treason and shared antisemitic messages on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Our leaders have consequences with their statements and actions. The January 6 insurrection would have been armed if she had planned it, similar to the rhetoric Trump used when he riled up his supporters before they barged into the Capitol. (She later claimed that she was being sarcastic, and that the comment had been made in jest.)

Many of her rightwing allies in the House have promoted the baseless, unhinged conspiracy theory around “grooming.” Small wonder, in the wake of such outlandish statements, that irate protesters are overrunning story hour at their local libraries, and calling for the banning of books from neighborhood schools.

The examples of recent acts of violence that appear to have been instigated by right-wing rhetoric are almost too numerous to name. The homes of three New York City council members were vandalized last month over their opposition to drag queen story hour at libraries in the city.

Rep. Matt Gaetz encouraged voters to arm themselves at polls, and armed intimidation did take place as voters cast their ballots. Research has even shown that MAGA Republicans are more likely than others – including GOP moderates – to endorse violence as usually or always justified to advance their political objectives. And after agents searched Mar-a-Lago, Twitter posts threatening the FBI saw a dramatic spike.

It’s troubling how much over-the-top rhetoric there is by GOP lawmakers. Unfortunately their extremist views also have been all-too-evident in their voting records. That includes the 147 members of Congress who voted against the results of 2020’s free and fair election and the 35 House Republicans who voted against the creation of the January 6th Commission.

And – what was for me a personal affront – there were 21 Republican members who, in an unconscionable action, voted against DC and Capitol Police officers like me receiving the presidential medal of freedom for our role defending the Capitol during the insurrection.

It might surprise some people who didn’t know me before January 6, but I’ve never considered myself to be a political person. I voted for Trump after being turned off by the anti- police rhetoric on the left.

And sure, I dipped my toe into the last election, to oppose a few Trump-inspired candidates who I thought posed a danger to democracy. But I’ve never believed in politicians; I believe in people. And that is why I’m supporting two new groups demanding sanity and accountability from our elected politicians.

This week, at an event calling on lawmakers to ramp up the fight against political violence, I’ll join veterans, members of Congress, and the group Courage for America, (which I’ve helped to found and have a leadership role in). Courage for America is joining forces with Common Defense to call for more vigilance against the kind of right-wing violence that nearly ended my life. The venue for the event is the Capitol reflecting pool, where just two years ago, protesters erected a hangman’s noose in order to intimidate Vice President Mike Pence.

Political Violence in the House of Representatives: A Compassionate Stand-Up for the People Who Make Byron Donalds a Recommender

As a kid growing up, I was always a bit of a troublemaker; law enforcement turned out to be the perfect landing spot for a rambunctious kid without a clear sense of direction. Being an investigator and cop taught me to keep revising and refining the conclusions I drew and to stand up for what is right.

At that moment, even though I was surrounded by violent, shouting protesters, all I could see were my kids’ faces: My four daughters are the ones I’m speaking out for.

I want them to be able to live in a country where elected officials are accountable to the people they serve. Condemning political violence is not a partisan issue. It is a moral one.

From left, Representatives Bob Good of Virginia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida applauded after Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania nominated Byron Donalds for speaker on Wednesday.

It is possible that the Republicans will support the people who elected them speaker and cause the economy to collapse if they try to give Biden that authority by using Democratic votes.

Ms. Boebert has also repeatedly gone on television to defend the stance against Mr. McCarthy, even as pressure has mounted from Mr. Trump and conservative allies outside of Congress. She didn’t like the idea that Mr. McCarthy’s concessions would get him the votes to become speaker.

Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, said on Thursday that he would not be swayed by Mr. McCarthy’s side.

The Devil is in the Details: Timing Donalds’ Conciliation with Rep. Mark R’onda and Mark R’andons

Mr. Donalds pointed out a provision which would allow for a single lawmaker to force a vote to oust Mr. McCarthy from the Speakership.

Representative Norman is open to haggling. When asked if he would be open to voting for Mr. McCarthy after the new round of concessions, he replied: “The devil is in the details.”

Several of the lawmakers who have not supported Mr. McCarthy did not answer questions about what would need to be done to convince them to back him.

One of the lawmakers who continued to vote for someone other than Mr. McCarthy, was Representative MattRosendale, along with representatives Mary Miller and Andy Harris.

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The War Between Democrats and the Republikacies of Trump and the Insurrection on the Hill: The Case for Ruling Down the Capitol

The leader who initially welcomed them into the fold has to be willing to demand more extreme demands from them over time. This is what led Boehner to later blast Republicans like Jim Jordan as “legislative terrorists.” They were the rebels and he was the establishment.

The rebels depended on Trump for his influence and his nihilistic attitude of political combat. He helped to spur a younger, more extreme cohort to step up and demand power. It seems these burn-down-the-house conservatives will do almost anything in pursuit of victory and believe – like Trump – that chaos, instability, and hyper-divisiveness have great political value. And now some of these Trump loyalists might be close to concluding that they no longer need him – or at the very least, they no longer need to follow his every move.”

But on Friday’s two-year anniversary of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he’s finding out that even that supposedly career-enhancing bet is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump’s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.

In another surreal scene on the Hill this week, one of those Republicans, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has downplayed the insurrection and said rioters would have “won” if she was in charge – is complaining about the extremism of some of her colleagues who oppose McCarthy.

There are strong political incentives for politicians to disrupt the ex-president’s image even after the attack on the US Capitol.

But that narrow margin – which will also put the majority in a precarious position on must-pass legislation like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling later on – is the direct result of voters being alienated by the ex-president’s incessant, false claims of 2020 voter fraud and the party failing to deliver the “red wave” many Republicans had predicted.

McCarthy turned 14 Republicans who had voted against him and set the stage for the 11th-hour chaos with the final six holdouts.

“This is not chaos. The republic is a constitutional one. Boebert said this is a really beautiful thing. The messiness on the floor is caused by rules and procedures that Trump had sought to disrupt with his efforts to overturn the certification of the Electoral College votes.

Matt Gaetz walked into McCarthy’s office in the age of the Trash: What does he want? Who wants to make the next president?

Her arguments are based on the reality of the rebels behavior. Many other Republicans have complained that it is not clear exactly what concessions the group around Gaetz, who have vowed to never support McCarthy, actually want.

“This ends one of two ways: Either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race, or we construct a straitjacket that he is unable to evade,” Gaetz, who cast his vote in the seventh round for Trump, told reporters on Thursday.

In other words, the most extreme hardliners will only accept a candidate that shares their no-compromise, Nihilistic form of politics that effectively makes governing impossible.

The 1994 Republican revolution unleashed anti-government forces that culminated in these demands. They were the progenitors of the anti-Washington Tea Party movement. The governing wing of the GOP was driven away by Trump as he worked to bring down the institutions of government inside as president.

The election was the most long of all the contests since 1859 and it took Mr. McCarthy three days to reach an agreement with the rebels.

What do they want? The right wing rebellion against Mr. McCarthy is not just about personal animosity, but about an ideological drive as well. The holdouts want to limit the size and scope of the federal government in order to make it simpler for Congress to do so.

Is there an alternative to McCarthy? No viable candidate has emerged to challenge Mr. McCarthy, so Republicans could coalesce around someone else. Steve Scalise, the second highest ranking Republican in the House, is seen as the most obvious backup.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz strode into House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office on Monday night with a list of demands. Among them: The chairmanship of a key House Armed Services subcommittee.

Nearby, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was trying to convince Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana, another McCarthy holdout, to take her cell phone and speak to former President Donald Trump, who was on the line.

The leader of the GOP removed Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland on the 13th vote. The House adjourned until 10 PM to give McCarthy supporters and others a chance to return to Washington and to make up for the remaining holdouts.

McCarthy denied Gaetz was offered the subcommittee gavel he had sought earlier in the week in exchange for his vote. McCarthy said that no one gets promised anything.

Afterward, the Florida Republican accused McCarthy of acting in bad faith by asking him for a list of demands – and then by later berating him over it.

The furious four-day battle began when Lauren Boebert of Colorado called out McCarthy and the other Republicans in a meeting for being too aggressive with each other.

The first day of pageantry in the U.S. House of Representatives (Vlasov): Breaking the Republican Rules

At noon, the House gaveled in the 118th Congress, and lawmakers swarmed the House floor, children in tow, for what was supposed to begin a day of pageantry. In a sign of the new Republican rules, the magnetometers installed by outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol were removed from the doors to the House floor.

Trump continued to keep the House drama at arms’ length until Friday, when he made calls to Gaetz and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona while they were on the House floor. Trump praised McCarthy on his site, after McCarthy won the speakership.

At the same time as the House was taking a vote on a new speaker, Biden was speaking in Kentucky with the Senate GOP Leader promoting an infrastructure bill McConnell helped pass. The White House and the Senate Republicans had a split screen during Biden’s speech. the vast contrast with the House Republican infighting.

But it wasn’t clear that the meeting would lead to a breakthrough. Gaetz pledged that the McCarthy dissenters could continue to hold votes “until the cherry blossoms fall off the trees.” When it comes to any future negotiations with McCarthy, Boebert said the boats are burned.

In another sign of a breakthrough, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, agreed to not get involved in open primaries in safe seats – one of the demands conservatives had asked for but McCarthy had resisted.

The dissidents of the GOP sounded good. “We’re making some progress,” Bishop told CNN as he was walking into a meeting Thursday morning with other GOP hardliners.

The Second Night of the House Speaker Election: Kevin McCarthy and his Dispatch with the Defendants in the Senate and the First Order of Business in the House

Instead, they followed the two tracks, voting after vote on the floor of the House, while negotiations continued behind closed doors.

The holdouts who weren’t in the “never Kevin” camp continued talks with McCarthy and his allies inching closer to a deal.

There was an offer on paper at the beginning of Thursday. Three of the key negotiators – Emmer, Roy and Donalds – huddled with McCarthy in his ceremonial office, following a session in Emmer’s office for one group to review the written agreement to break the stalemate. Another group huddled in the member’s dining room on the first floor of the Capitol to discuss a separate part of the written deal.

A number of Republicans were going to leave Washington due to family issues. Buck went for a medical procedure on Thursday. Rep. Wesley Hunt flew back to Texas to be with his wife and newborn, who had to spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

On Friday morning, House Democrats marked the second anniversary of the January 6, 2016 attack on the steps of the Capitol. There was one Republican at the event.

Gaetz and Boebert appeared to acknowledge the end of the speaker fight was near before the House returned to session, sitting for a joint interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity and expressing vague optimism for the rules changes the holdouts had won.

McCarthy was elected the speaker of the House early Saturday morning, a day after 14 losses and more than 84 hours after the beginning of the 118th Congress.

Before the chaos over the final vote, McCarthy earlier Friday had sounded an optimistic note that the lengthy fight over the gavel would actually help Republicans. “So this is the great part. McCarthy said that they learned how to govern because it took this long. “So now we’ll be able to get the job done.”

The House Speaker Election was a spectacle that laid bare the disagreements within the Republican conference. It went on for four days and 15 ballots.

But it’s worth noting that the House Speaker vote is the first – and typically the easiest – order of business. Kevin McCarthy was difficult to get the necessary votes to become speaker, and there are many more battles to come.

The GOP Conference Summary: Twenty Three Years of Voting in the Era of Chaos and Perturbation. The Case for a New Rules Package

Is surrendering your way to victory really winning? Is appeasement ever going to end, considering it makes the extremists more powerful?

Anyone surprised by the dysfunction this week should not have been; the House GOP conference has been growing increasingly dysfunctional over the past 13 years. The chaotic machinations witnessed by the world this week are simply a continuation of the dysfunction that began after the Tea Party swept the House in 2010.

In twenty three years time, we are here. The malcontents are still digging but the governing majority is smaller. Actually, there really is no GOP governing majority at all, and the world will learn that soon enough.

A paradigm shift is long overdue. Pragmatic and rational Republican members, who bristled at the concessions McCarthy handed to Gaetz and his ilk, must force a course correction and change the dynamics.

And if there aren’t enough GOP votes for a more reasonable rules package, then it’s time to try something novel – bipartisanship. Rational Republicans should work with Democrats to get enough votes for a rules package that rolls back some of the hardliners demands.

The hardliners also secured a promise that a McCarthy-aligned super PAC would not intervene in open, safe seat GOP primaries. Why allow fringe elements to be trained more in a way that will only make more members of Congress disinterested in governing? These are inexplicable acts of self-destruction.

It’s time to stop feeding the crocodiles. Rational Republicans must stand, fight and resist. Two people can play the game. Gaetz stated that he ran out of things to ask for, if the caucus didn’t upset them enough.

The ability to function is at stake. America’s authoritarian adversaries around the globe say democracy is outdated and unable to meet the needs of its people. It is time to remove the extremists who deny the results of free and fair elections and wish to wreak havoc on America’s ancient temple of democracy.

Hakeem Jeffries gave a memorable speech before giving the speaker’s gavel to McCarthy to show respect for the peaceful transfer of power.

The most unforgettable part of Jeffries’ address was when he paid homage to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and talked about achievements of the previous Congress. He began each line with the letter A from A to Z, passionately defending American values of democracy and compassion over fascist and hate.

Hakeem is an Arabic word that means wise or learned and Jeffries has lived up to it. (The lawmaker from New York City is Baptist, but as a Muslim, I wish he were Muslim!) His speech in Saturday’s early hours was the most recent example of his wisdom.

The Congress’ first Black leader told the chamber that America’s diversity is not a weakness. He said that he and the Republicans were going to try to find common ground on behalf of the Americans.

The last line was “zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation,” and Jeffries promised Democrats will always do the right thing by the American people.

He began by making it clear Democrats reject so much that has come to define Trumpism: “House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues … freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred. …”

Jeffries continued with an alphabetical recitation of what Democrats will defend and reject: “quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression.”

A reappraisal of Xenial: The man who didn’t accept losing the 2020 midterm elections shouldn’t be proud of his country

He sent people to a website to find out the definition of one word when he said that he wasn’t proud of his country. (In this context, xenial means “warm, welcoming, and hospitable.”)

The day after the two-year anniversary of the January 6 attacks was fast-forwarded. The speaker of the House paid tribute to the new president after leaving the house.

The man who didn’t accept losing the 2020 election and whose words and actions inspired his supporters to attack the Capitol is being thanked. The speaker of the House shouldn’t be saying that.

These words are meaningless given McCarthy’s history of flip-flops on key issues such as standing up to Trump and remaining silent over lies by new GOP Rep. George Santos, whose vote McCarthy desperately needed in the speakership battle.

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Frederick Huntington Gillett and the Legacy of Chuck Hughes, the NFL’s Greatest Player, and the Vicious Case of a New England Player

Frederick Huntington Gillett was the model of a New England gentleman. He was educated at Harvard Law School and went on to serve in the US House. Gillett was so calm and laid back that a reporter joked that he wouldn’t drink coffee for fear that it would keep him awake.

“Even if McCarthy manages to squeak out the leadership, a powerful and vocal contingent of his party has publicly humiliated him and expressed their lack of confidence in his control,” she observed.

Americans held their breath when Hamlin collapsed while tackling a rival player. When Hamlin was resuscitated on the field at the end of the week, he was able to speak and move his arms and legs.

Coy Wire, who played for the Atlanta Falcons before becoming a journalist, said that he is reminded of the brutal nature of the sport that he loves. I have a titanium plate and four screws in my neck. I had multiple concussions, including one in Buffalo where I had no recollection of what happened until I watched the game during film sessions the next day. I remember how dangerous injuries can be.

“That’s why, as the horrific scene unfolded on Monday night … and as tears came pouring down players’ faces as they prayed … mental wounds were reopened as haunting memories came flooding back in.”

Is a game that causes so much pain and suffering a reasonable pursuit in an enlightened society? Do you think we need to talk more about the Boston University study on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in 99% of brains obtained from NFL and college football players? Can we question the wisdom of grown men slamming into grown men? We can debate whether youth tackle leagues are life-affirming or insane.

Jeff Pearlman told the story of Chuck Hughes, the Detroit Lions wide receiver who suffered a fatal heart attack at Tiger Stadium in 1971 and became the only NFL player to die on the field during a game. Less than 10 minutes after Hughes’ body was taken off the field, the game was back on, Pearlman noted. But times have changed. “Fifty-two years after the Hughes tragedy, the Bills-Bengals game was rightly suspended after Hamlin’s collapse…”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-chaotic-victory-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Why Harry and Meghan left the Royal Family after the War of Water, or Why they want a Family. Not an Institution, but a Dynamical Puzzle

The school where the Russian troops were housed in the occupied city of Makiivka was hit by the Ukrainians at the start of the century. The Ukrainian military claimed there were hundreds of casualties; Russian officials put the number at 89. Regardless of the disparity, David A. Andelman noted, it was “Russia’s highest single-incident death toll since the war began more than 10 months ago.”

When his son asked him to see the sequel to “Avatar” he was hesitant until he realized that it was going to make more money than the original. “Though I’d recalled feeling like the 2009 original was more of a weirdly off-putting immersive experience than an actual motion picture,” Yang wrote, “Cameron’s masterful narrative instincts and intricate worldbuilding overwhelmed my reflexive cynicism…for the first half hour of ‘Way of Water”s epic three-hour running length, anyway.”

“Audiences and critics now and in the future will laud Cameron’s creativity and attention to detail, and they should – but they likely won’t know how much of the franchise’s incredible worldbuilding is simply an act of elaborate collage, snapping together elements pulled from scores of our world’s oldest civilizations, while ascribing them to fantastical cat people rather than resourceful human beings,” Yang wrote.

Prince Harry chose to title his new book, publishing Tuesday, “Spare,” after the adage that people in the line of succession need to have “an heir and a spare.”

According to Drexler, there is a contradiction in the continued saga of Harry and the royal family, even though the book is being called jaw-dropping.

Harry and Meghan quit the family “amid complaints that they preferred a private life as ‘regular people,’ no longer wanting the media attention that came with being royals, including being tabloid fodder. In an interview, Harry said that he wants a family. Not an institution.’”

“And fodder it is. Among the gossipy allegations Harry lobs at his brother in ‘Spare’ are details of a physical altercation between the two during which William knocked Harry to the floor and left him scratched and bruised, and claims that William and his wife, Kate Middleton, were the ones responsible for encouraging Harry’s controversial Nazi costume in 2005…”

“Competition between children is common, and sibling rivalry between brothers even more so, especially when there are just two of them,” noted Drexler, a psychologist. Most are born into families with set hierarchy that remind them of their place. Throughout the history of the world, brotherly interference has inspired works of art in all spheres. Harry is not special—his is one of the commonest dramas of human nature.”

Trump and the House GOP: The First Round of Rounds of 2021, 21 Years After the Insurrection at the Pentagon, 14 Years After, and in His Own Memory

Privately, however, White House officials acknowledge McCarthy’s close ties to former President Donald Trump – and his decision to not only stick by him but help resurrect his standing in the Republican Party in the weeks after the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol is not something Biden would ignore.

One developed his political acumen in the plodding and collegial Senate. The other in the brisk and often bare-knuckle House. Both overcame setbacks, doubts and an endless number of hurdles to reach the peak of their careers where they now find themselves circling one another like boxers in the ring, sizing up the dynamics of a relationship that will help define the next two years.

Even the meeting itself, which White House officials viewed as a traditional sit down at the start of a new Congress and McCarthy calls the opening of talks on the debt limit, has been subject to political wrangling and skirmishes.

“This is the first round of about 20,” one House Democrat told CNN of the months leading up to the June deadline to raise the debt ceiling. Settle in.

White House officials are aware that the House Republican proposal could be important for Democrats and have the potential for splitting the Republican conference.

It is irresponsible of the leader of the free world to say he won’t negotiate. McCarthy hoped that was just staff and not him. The most responsible thing to do is find a place where the American public can get savings during the period between now and June.

The speaker will be at Biden’s home again after he invited McCarthy to the Naval Observatory for breakfast eight years ago. Eight years later, a midterm election has once again thrust the California Republican to a critical place in Biden’s portfolio.

McCarthy points to Biden’s negotiation skills and deal making on the debt limit and budget issues as vice president as evidence his demands have precedent.

At a time when Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, the role of the House minority leader was responsible for that. The Senate had Biden’s major bipartisan legislative proposals requiring GOP votes, but Democrats were able to move the bills through the chamber without Republicans.

Biden said that McConnell was a man of his word. You can go to the bank if he gives you his word. He is willing to work with other people to get things done.

To the extent White House officials experienced a level of schadenfreude in the initial stages of McCarthy’s marathon effort to secure the Republican votes to be speaker, it shifted sharply to a palpable sense of bewilderment by the time McCarthy had suffered through 14 failed votes.

White House officials went to great lengths to not weigh in on the matter but they took the opposite view, and it’s reflected in how they treat the debt limit, where there are clear doubts about whether McCarthy can get 218 Republicans for anything at all.

It’s a position that runs headlong into Biden’s refusal to talk about anything but a clean increase – a position White House officials maintain is not a bluff or posturing. They’ve been deeply engaged behind the scenes in preparation for the long battle ahead, keeping a close eye on House GOP legislative proposals both present and past.

The View of Kevin McCarthy and the House Select Committee on Intelligence: How Kevin McCarthy reacted to the 2016 Ukrainian War and how Republicans attacked Gosar

A former CNN producer and correspondent named Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. She has views of her own in this commentary. CNN has more opinions on it. This piece has been updated to reflect the latest news.

With the war in Ukraine growing more tense by the day, and the United States playing a pivotal role in preventing Russia from succeeding in its efforts to win an unprovoked war, one might be excused for thinking the new leadership in the US House of Representatives would restrain its impulses to politicize some of the most sensitive areas of foreign policy. But no such thing is happening.

Anyone concerned that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would find it difficult to steer a moderate course after having to compromise with the most extreme members of the Republican Party to win the seat, had their fears confirmed this week when McCarthy announced he was barring key Democrats from the crucial House Select Committee on Intelligence.

He promised that if Republicans had control of congress, they’d take away committee assignments from Democrats like Pelosi and Swalwell.

True, Democrats had – with support from some Republicans – removed Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committees. But that was because of Rep. Greene’s incendiary and violent statements, such as supporting the execution of prominent Democrats, agreeing with comments calling the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting a “false flag,” among others. She said she was upset about things in the year 2018, and couldn’t trust the government. As for Rep. Gosar, the House voted to censure and remove him from committees over a photoshopped anime video he posted on social media showing him appearing to kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.

The assault on the US Capitol in January was caused by the social media accounts of Gosar and Green who have embraced all manner of conspiracy theories.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-house-intelligence-committee-schiff-swalwell-ghitis/index.html

Reply to McCarthy on Intelligence Committee Minority Report on Vladimir Zelensky and the investigation of Russia’s attack on Russian national security

The Intelligence Committee deals with some of the most delicate and sensitive matters of national and international security. It is not the right place to play partisan games.

It also had to delve into Ukraine’s desperate plea for more American weapons to defend against Russia’s assault. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine could possibly be in danger of being cut off of funding by Trump, who threatened to hold an investigation of Joe Biden if Zelensky did not do them a favor.

The topics that the committee discussed were legitimate. So much so, that Trump’s self-serving mishandling of relations with Ukraine resulted in his first impeachment.

Integrity is a word McCarthy should use sparingly, especially in the context of committee assignments. McCarthy is giving plum seats to his new ally, Greene, who made a name for herself initially with her embrace of the deranged ideas of QAnon, which she later distanced herself from, and has spewed an endless stream of outrageous statements, including suggesting that Jews have used space lasers to start forest fires. She later distanced herself from these comments as well. McCarthy is giving committee assignments to GeorgeSantos, a liar who is a new congressman.

Then, of course, there are the signs of his own brittle integrity. His contrite pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago followed his denunciation of Trump from the House floor. It calls to mind Groucho Marx and the famous quote, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”

He denied the New York Times report that he said Trump should resign in a GOP meeting after the January 6 attack. He said that the Times report was false and wrong. There was a tape of him saying that.

Schiff had dismissed stories surrounding the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the President’s son, as disinformation. The former intelligence committee chief had also come under fire for inartful paraphrasing of the call between Zelensky and Trump. But in his letter, the Speaker justified his decision by accusing Schiff of misusing his position as committee chairman and leaving the country “less safe.”

McCarthy has said that he would not run for Feinstein’s seat in the upper chamber in 2024. He was adamant that Kevin McCarthy will do the former president’s bidding, and that he was the reason for the impeachment of his master.

Because the Intelligence Committee is “select,” the rules allow the speaker to choose or remove members. He needs a majority of House Members to vote for him. That’s why his efforts to remove Omar – who has made statements many considered antisemitic, some of which she later apologized for – from the Foreign Affairs Committee, were more difficult, though ultimately successful.

The Politics of Left-Right Democrats: How Senator Romney and Senator Santos confront left-right extremists at the White House

A member of the House of Representatives witnessed the exchange between Romney andSantos in the chamber Tuesday night.

Romney said that he criticized the senator for standing in the aisle to shake the president’s hand because he is under ethics investigation.

“He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” he said, noting that Santos may have responded to his remark but he “didn’t hear.”

He says he embellished his record. The senator said that is saying you get an A when you get an A-. You should not be in Congress because you don’t even attend college, says lying.

“And they’re gonna go through the process and hopefully get him out. .. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

But after a wild week in Washington, it’s fair to ask who is on each side of the line the Arkansas governor drew in her Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

The GOP used the national television audience to recommit to the hardline “Make America Great Again” base strategy pushed by Trump, whom Sanders served as press secretary in the White House. But her strategy did not come in isolation. Liberal policies on social, economic and foreign policy may be viewed as crazy by many conservatives. And Democrats have had their own issues with extremists in recent years, including left-wingers who once called for “defunding the police” – a position that turned into a huge political liability for their party in successive elections.

New GOP-led oversight hearings, including one on Wednesday designed to prove that the FBI and Biden stole the 2020 election, are further changing the line between conservative opinion TV and governance. The all-day session featured the kind of histrionic questioning and posturing that delights the GOP’s base and runs on a loop with right-wing media. The New York Post story about the president’s son was never suppressed because there was no order from the FBI to do so. Another House hearing on Thursday, the first of a series into the alleged “weaponization” of the government against conservatives, will again fuel an impression the GOP is trying to build scandals from right-wing talking points.

While such showdowns allow party leaders to fire up vital base voters and cook up a general stench of scandal that, even if unproven, could harm the Biden administration, they risk highlighting the GOP’s most extreme, media-hungry personalities and alienating moderate voters.

Of course, political normality is in the eye of the beholder. Biden surrendered to the “woke mob” that can’t even tell you what a woman is and the country is in the grip of a left-wing cultural purge according to the argument made by sanders.

It would seem to fly in the face of lessons of the last election when voters in swing states rejected far-right extremism as part of a process that rewards rising stars in parties that often reward far-right candidates.

He used the tactic of using himself as the bulwark between moderate Americans and the excess of what he has called “ultraMuga” Republicans to his advantage in this year’s elections.

This is what happened after Biden told McCarthy’s most radical followers that Americans didn’t want to see fighting in Congress.

Even though she gave Democrats the exact image they most wanted to highlight, she wasn’t apologizing for her poor manners during Biden’s speech. She was upset and didn’t like clap for liars. Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Tuesday night that Greene’s antics encapsulated a choice for Americans between “chaos” and “stability.”

Not every Republican is tolerating the party’s incivility. Romney went to where McCarthy did not go and told him that he had no place in the House. LaLota, meanwhile, in his interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, stressed how the New York Republican had become a distraction from the party’s priorities.

The Republicans want to govern on things such as securing the border, hold the administration accountable and putting our economy back on the right track.

There are a lot of things for House Republican chairmen to take issue with. There is no reason why a federal investigation shouldn’t be involved with the Bidens’ finances as well.

House Oversight Chair James Comer warned of a “coordinated cover-up by Big Tech, the Swamp, and mainstream news” to suppress a story that could hurt Biden.

The misperception that a private company is breaching its First Amendment free speech protections if it does not carry certain content on its platform was partially to blame for the hearing. The Republican Party claims that the documents released by Musk prove there was a conspiracy between the company and the FBI. That contention doesn’t appear to be proved by the material. CNN has reported that the allegations are unsupported and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, also denied any such directive was given.

Instead, McCarthy opted to give the footage to a friendly conservative media network. Specifically, he opted to give the exclusive to Carlson, who has been one of the most vocal voices in conservative media calling for the footage to be released. Carlson has been a huge McCarthy critic – so this move could help win the speaker some favor with Carlson’s camp as McCarthy tries to hold together both the conservative and moderate wings of his Republican conference.

“I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. He told the Times that sunshine lets everybody make their own decisions.

CNN: Why Fox News should release security footage from the January 6 riots, or how McCarthy could have made the mistaken claim that Trump didn’t win

McCarthy and House Republicans could still end up taking the blame for this, because of it being reported in the media. Democrats have warned of a security risk as a result of the move by McCarthy.

McCarthy is hoping that outsourcing this work to the media will be a way to appease his right flank without upsetting his moderates and majority makers.

Carlson is a promoter of the January 6 conspiracy theories. Most notably, he has devoted significant airtime to the false claim that liberal “deep state” partisans within the FBI orchestrated the insurrection as a way to undermine former President Donald Trump. He has conducted sympathetic interviews with some of the rioters who were subsequently charged by the Justice Department.

After more than a dozen news outlets, including CNN, sued for access to the videos in 2021, the chief judge of DC federal court ruled that the public has a strong interest in seeing some security footage from the attack. However, these video releases haven’t been automatic or guaranteed. Video tapes can be released after they are played in open court on a case by case basis.

Except, he’s not giving them to the American people so anyone can see them, or releasing them to all media, at least yet. The speaker is specifically offering access to a conservative TV host who has made no secret of his agenda. McCarthy could have put them online or invited others to watch them, if he wanted to create that ray of sunshine.

The credibility of Fox News has taken a hit following revelations that some of the organization’s biggest stars and executives privately dismissed Trump’s claims about voter fraud. Just as McCarthy is apparently unwilling to challenge the power of conservative media, Fox appeared unwilling to alienate a conservative audience that wanted to believe Trump won. CNN asked Fox News about how security footage will be handled, but did not get a response as of Thursday evening.

Corrupt Border Security Sensitivity to the Opposition of Roy to McCarthy’s Proposal for a Second U.S. Senate

McCarthy’s border security bill that he planned to introduce early in the new Congress is now in limbo after moderates voiced fierce opposition to a three-page draft drawn up by Roy. The dispute underscores the fatal flaw in the GOP majority between right-wingers keen to appeal to the base and moderates who won seats in states like New York and California, where they could face difficult reelection bids in 2024.