Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) emphasized on Saturday that “any interaction” former President Trump has with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol will be “under oath and subject to penalties of perjury.”
Cheney, who serves as the vice chair of the committee, has remained tight-lipped about many aspects of the panel’s investigation into the Jan. 6 riot, as have her fellow committee members.
In a Saturday interview with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Cheney declined to specifically say whether the panel would like to hear from the former president, instead noting that if it does he will be required to tell the truth.
Cheney, a prominent Trump critic, did not otherwise hold back in speaking against the former president, however, calling him “fundamentally destructive” for the Republican Party. The congresswoman pointed to responses from her fellow members of the GOP to presidential records being recovered from the former president's Mar-a-Lago home as the latest example.
“You look at how many senior Republicans are going through contortions to try to defend the fact that the former president had stored in a desk drawer apparently, in an unsecure storage room, in a resort … documents that had the highest classification markings,” Cheney told Smith at the Tribune’s annual festival.
Despite her views on the former president, Cheney told Smith she does not regret voting against Trump’s first impeachment based on the evidence. She also noted that those proceedings have informed her current work on the Jan. 6 Committee.
“They would have had more Republican votes if they had enforced their subpoenas, and that is certainly a lesson that we have taken into [the] Jan. 6 Select Committee’s work,” Cheney said.
The Jan. 6 Committee has taken a strong stance on enforcing its subpoenas, referring several Trump allies for criminal contempt of Congress.
Cheney said she would "do everything I can" to ensure Trump is not the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
"And if he is the nominee," she added, "I won’t be a Republican.”
Bad movies relax me. I still enjoy watching the early ’80s Christian paranoia film, Rock: It’s Your Decision. It’s an anti-rock music film featuring a boy who becomes warped by his fundamentalist parents into becoming a judgmental jerk. It’s not enough that he decides to no longer listen to what he considers “evil” music, like Barry Manilow, but he demands that all of his friends and classmates stop listening as well. He yells at them, calls them sinners, and then casts himself as a persecuted victim when they ignore him. (So, no, these people don’t ever change.)
The evangelical war on music seems ridiculous now, but it actually helped lay the groundwork for today’s nonstop culture wars. This initial foray into morality politics laid the template: Construct outrage around a perceived inherent evil force designed to disrupt the "traditional" family and national values.
Pornography is another issue popularized by evangelicals in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan even established a commission on pornography to try to “stamp it out.” The attacks more or less fizzled by the 1990s, when Republican moralists tried to take down Bill Clinton with an impeachment fixated on his sexual exploits. Instead, his popularity soared, and Democrats gained seats in the House.
The war on pornography limped along for the years that followed, being replaced by focused attacks on gay marriage and reproductive freedom. Then, in what has got to be the most egregious display of hypocrisy, evangelical leaders briefly suspended their fight against porn because they feared it would lead to attacks on Donald Trump. Trump was not only a porn aficionado who spoke in lustful terms about his own daughter, but had also used campaign money to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels, whom he slept with during his wife Melania’s pregnancy. Yet the religious right excused, and even justified, his behavior. (Just as they are doing right now with evangelical Republican Dennis Hastert and Rep. Matt Gaetz.) As a direct result of evangelicals’ glorification of Trump, pornography was able to “enter the political and cultural mainstream.”
Evangelical leaders were brutally mocked by late-night comedians for “normalizing porn” over Trump. The GOP had essentially given up on pornography as a culture war. In the 1970s, Jerry Falwell, who led the Moral Majority, went to war overPlayboymagazine, saying Jimmy Carter’s interview lent “credence and dignity” to what he considered a vulgar publication. Yet when Trump was campaigning in 2016, Jerry Falwell Jr. posed for a photo of himself and Trump in front of a framed cover of that exact same magazine with a provocative photo. (This was also long before Jerry Falwell Jr.’s own sex scandals became public knowledge.)
Even when Christian nationalists finally decided it was time to try to renew their crusade against pornography after Trump left office, they didn’t quite know how to do it. After all, most Americans now believe pornography is morally acceptable, and they don’t take kindly to being lectured on morality by hypocrites. Moralist lectures and propaganda films simply don’t work anymore, if they ever did, which is why we will never see a film with the name Pornography: It’s Your Decision. (Actually, there are a few low-budget Christian anti-pornography films, but they are really bad.) Instead, they did something much more sinister, but effective.
One of the biggest Christian anti-porn lobbies, Morality in Media, the one that pushed for Reagan to declare war on pornography, figured it was on the side of a losing battle. This is a group that has stated, falsely, that pornography is a public health crisis, and still classifiesCosmopolitanand the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue as “hardcore pornography.” However, they decided they could be effective if they managed to disguise their agenda, so that’s exactly what they did. Morality in Media completely rebranded into the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)—which was meant to sound similar to the legitimate nonprofit called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The NCOSE website was scrubbed of any mention of morality or religion.
Their rebranding ploy worked, as they are now often quoted by mainstream media, and even get an audience with Democratic politicians. Instead of preaching about general moral decay, this group succeeds by conflating consensual sexual expression with serious sexual crimes that everyone agrees are bad, such as sexual abuse and human trafficking.
By deceptively rebranding as an organization to fight sex crimes as opposed to policing pornography, their budget and spending have exploded. This has allowed them to host conferences, workshops, and seminars for other organizations so they can copy their model. They teach their questionable strategies about not disclosing religious origins, make false comparisons of porn to human trafficking and slavery, and constantly (and falsely) claim that pornography is a public health crisis. One of their apprentice organizations was a shady evangelical group called Exodus Cry.
Scene from “God Loves Uganda”
Exodus Cry started as a prayer group tied to a church in the Charismatic Christian community. Charismatic Christians believe people can manifest physical, supernatural experiences such as prophecy, spirit healing, speaking in tongues, and—within some factions—even snake handling. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett identifies as a Charismatic Christian, which some refer to as a cult within Christianity.
The church was called the International House of Prayer, or IHOP. (And yes, they were sued for that.) The church is famous for being featured in the documentary God Loves Uganda, which detailed a church leader’s pressure on Uganda to not just condemn homosexuality, but to promote the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that allowed the death penalty for gays and lesbians. Sadly, American evangelical missionaries have strongly pushed anti-gay messaging in Africa for decades, including prominent evangelical leaders like Rick Warren and John Ashcroft.
They were at their most effective when it came to supporting two laws, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which were sold to lawmakers as a way to fight sex trafficking. In reality, these laws amended the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to remove the protection granted to websites for the content of its users if that content is found to “promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.” In other words, under SESTA-FOSTA, any website with any sexual content could be feasibly held legally liable for sex trafficking, a term that is very broadly defined in the legislation. But what the laws don’t do is anything to target actual illegal sex trafficking.
The laws are written vaguely enough so that anti-porn groups have been successfully going after payments of creators using cryptocurrencies or credit cards. Legal internet videos and escort services have also been targets. Although the laws are supposed to focus on prostitution only, anti-porn activists were able to define pornography as "performance prostitution." This means a platform has to be worried about being sued if a striptease artist performs online.
These laws also mandate a 25-year prison sentence for anyone who “acts with reckless disregard that such conduct contributes to sex trafficking.” This is why personal ads disappeared on Craigslist.
Yet these laws were so bad that they damaged how the internet is governed, since the laws didn’t bother to differentiate between consensual and nonconsensual sex work. Taking down consensual sex work sites means sex workers could not vet or choose clients online, which is much safer than working on the streets. Platforms that had groups for sex workers, such as spaces where they could list dangerous clients to avoid, were also taken down.
FOSTA-SESTA also allowed NCOSE to go after OnlyFans. This is an online platform that allows people to create content in the form of photos, videos, and livestreams and sell them via a monthly membership. Most creators are fitness trainers and models, but some make “adult content.” The site exploded in popularity during the pandemic, as many unemployed people turned to the site to survive.
However, the new legislation nearly succeeded in shutting this site down by pressuring banks and payment processors to sever ties. Going after banks and payment processors is part of the latest coordinated anti-porn campaign by these Christian activist groups, and this tactic has proven extremely effective. After credit card companies dropped Pornhub, it removed over 10 million videos—over 80% of its content.
Joy Rider performs during a burlesque show at the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender in Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 16, 2022.
OnlyFans was temporarily forced to ban the posting of any sexual material, but was able to fight back and restore their status. Most people on OnlyFans use it to supplement their income, yet they suddenly found themselves targeted by the anti-porn crusaders. “Camming,” which is when someone is requested to perform certain activities (sexual or nonsexual) on a webcam for paying clients, is by far one of the safest types of sex work as it’s done in the safety of their own home. Shutting that down forces sex workers who need money to consider taking more risks, like going back to meeting strangers in public without being able to vet them. Going after people on OnlyFans doesn’t help anyone; It just takes away a safe environment and criminalizes sexuality.
Slate talked to a woman who was a burlesque performer, which generally includes provocative and creative stripping, but was locked down in her New York apartment during COVID-19. Not being allowed on sets or events, OnlyFans saved her from becoming homeless and greatly supplemented her lost income. Right-wing organizations and politicians are trying hard to ban people like her from working, but have never expressed interest in helping them if their ploy to ban these sites succeed.
The anti-pornography bills are part of a unique conservative strategy that was labeled Project Blitz, which is modeled after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC provides model draft legislation for conservative politicians to push through their respective state legislatures in order to pass a right-wing agenda. Project Blitz uses the same strategy, but for Christian Nationalism:
Chief on Project Blitz’s agenda—which they laid out in a 148-page 2018 “playbook”—was enabling religious-based discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, promoting the Bible in public schools and plastering the words “In God We Trust” across license plates and government buildings.
But they’re also expressly concerned with destroying all forms of porn, sex work and premarital sex. In their playbook, they claim that states would “benefit” from public policy that limits sexual intercourse to “only between a married, heterosexual couple,” and erroneously associate any other type of interpersonal gyrating with an undefined, yet “enormously expensive disease.”
I should mention that not all Christians believe pornography is evil. There’s the pastor who left her church because she felt called to become a stripper. One prominent OnlyFans Christian creator, Nita Marie, stated her belief that “Jesus would have loved sex workers.” There are also several Christian OnlyFans models, such as Lindsay Capuano, who makes over $200,000 a month, but insists she is a devout Christian.
Again, there are legitimate concerns about real sex crimes, such as human trafficking and revenge porn, that need to be addressed. Yet time, money, and resources are being devoted to attacking healthy, consensual sexual relationships.
The same people who want to tell you what books to read, what medicines to take, what films to watch, what states you can travel to, and what you can do with your own body are the same ones screaming about freedom. This is all about having power over people, and turning our democracy into an authoritarian Christian nationalist society. It’s why evangelical leaders openly embrace someone with such moral failings as Trump, because he promised them power.
There has never been much of an interest from the right in fighting sex trafficking, but there has always been an interest in a war on sex. That is all about control. More specifically, this is another front in the war on women. Just as Christian men have had no issues with abortion when it’s their mistress or wife, they also have no issues with pornography when they are using it or benefiting from those who do. It’s everyone else who is the problem.
As always, there is a misogyny angle in the religious right’s war on pornography. Whether you agree with pornography as an industry or not, you must admit that it is primarily female-dominated. Content creators, such as on OnlyFans, are mostly women making videos for their customers, who are overwhelmingly white, straight, self-identified Christian men. In fact, the top nine states for pornography are all in the Bible Belt.
If Republicans truly hate OnlyFans, which they don’t, they are free not to use it. One big reason that sites like OnlyFans are popular is that they provide the creator with a revenue stream they can use to either live off of or supplement their income. The creators have sole discretion over their content. They have power over their craft and their lives, and can make a living off it in a safe environment.
There is an argument to be made that many creators would prefer another line of work, but this would require a guaranteed living wage, affordable housing, food security, and access to health care. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called attention to this when conservatives, along with the New York Post, tried to shame a medic who used OnlyFans to literally make ends meet.
Leave her alone. The actual scandalous headline here is “Medics in the United States need two jobs to survive”
Yet the reality is there would still be people who do it because they want to, and that’s fine. Our religious, patriarchal society has been conditioned to treat sex like a dirty secret. Then, when men get caught watching porn, it feeds into that dirty-secret mentality. Too many religious leaders treat consensual sex like it’s a problem that needs to be eradicated. The problem has never been porn or sites that provide it, but the inability to deal with sex in a healthy way. Sadly, there is no law that can help with that.
President Biden's approval rating has hit a year-high in the third poll this week, driven largely by an increase in support from female voters.
An Emerson College poll released Friday found 45 percent of voters said they approve of Biden's performance, a 3-point increase since last month, while 49 percent disapprove, a two-point decrease.
“Biden’s increase in approval appears to be driven by women voters. Since July, women voters’ approval of the President has jumped 10 points, from 39% to 49%,” Executive Director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball said.
His approval rating in the Emerson poll has been increasing steadily since April, when it sat at 41 percent, but remains underwater in a difficult political climate.
Still, Biden has seen a series of positive polls this week. A Politico-Morning Consult survey, published on Wednesday, found that 46 percent of all respondents approve of the job Biden is doing as president, the highest level since December in that poll. And his approval hit 45 percent in an NBC News poll, the highest since October.
Responses to the generic congressional ballot remained largely unchanged since last month, with 45 percent of voters saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate and 45 percent saying they'd vote for a Republican.
“Women voters support the Democratic congressional candidate over the Republican candidate by 10 points, while men break for the Republican candidate by 12,” Kimball said.
A large swath of respondents (39 percent) ranked the economy as the most important factor in their vote, followed by threats to democracy (15 percent) and abortion access (10 percent).
There is also tight competition on whether voters would support Biden or former President Trump if they became the presidential nominees in 2024, with 45 percent opting for Biden and 44 percent for Trump. That difference of 1 percentage point is within the poll’s margin of error.
Six percent of those polled said they would vote for neither Biden nor Trump in the hypothetical contest, while 5 percent said that they are undecided.
In 2020, Democrats fantasized about defeating Donald Trump at the ballot box, retaking the White House, and finally ending the MAGA nightmare that had consumed the country for four years.
The hope was that once Trump had helped surrender both the House and the White House to Democrats, Republican Party leaders would realize that staying politically wed to him was a one-way ticket to Loserville and ditch him.
The reality was both better and worse. Trump lost the White House, then doomed Republicans in two Senate runoffs that handed full control of Congress to Democrats—but he also turned out more than 74 million voters for Republicans. Even as Democrats claimed a trifecta in Washington, Republicans whittled down Democratic control of the House by 13 seats while cementing their grip on state legislatures across the country. Republicans simply couldn't believe so many Americans had voted for them. State party officials were thrilled. And when it came time to cut Trump loose following the Jan. 6 insurrection, GOP congressional leaders demonstrated the valor of a groundhog confronting its own shadow before scampering for cover.
Fast forward to two months out from the 2022 midterms. After being told they were doomed for the better part of a year, Democrats are now in a competitive race to keep both chambers. On Thursday, Democrats rose to +1.9 points in FiveThirtyEight's generic ballot aggregate—their biggest edge all year. Out of the 38 polls taken in September, just six found a Republican advantage—five of them were from GOP-aligned groups.
As New Democrat Network President Simon Rosenberg noted, every one of the nine polls released this week (as of Thursday) shows movement toward Democrats, including Rasmussen and Fox News.
+3 toward Dems: Rasmussen, Fox News
+2 toward Dems: NBC News
+1 toward Dems: New York Times, Economist, Echelon Insights, Morning Consult, Democracy Corps, Navigator Research
Nothing is assured, but Democrats managing to keep both chambers of Congress is now more plausible than the emergence of the red wave we were assured was coming for most of this year. Perhaps the most likely scenario is a split decision with Democrats keeping the Senate (even though some specific races have been tightening) but losing the House.
Such a scenario would not only entirely stall President Joe Biden's agenda, it would consume the lower chamber with a ridiculous round of wackadoodle partisan exercises, including investigations of Biden, his son Hunter, and absolutely anything else Republican extremists can dream up. The only thing worse than losing the House would be losing the Senate on top of it, forestalling any progress on Biden’s judicial and government nominees for the next two years.
However, Democrats—having finally broken from their defensive crouch after consistently overperforming in this year’s special elections—have just begun to imagine a far sunnier outcome. Just maybe they could keep both chambers, build on Biden’s judicial advances in the Senate, and continue making legislative progress on a host of issues related to economic justice, racial justice, and the safeguarding of our democracy.
Certainly those would be several critical upsides of Democrats prevailing outright in November.
But if Democrats manage to do what we were told was impossible and keep both chambers, the most profound impact could come in the form of dealing a death blow to a Republican coalition that has been overrun by Trumpism—or what Biden refers to as MAGA Republicans.
When so-called establishment Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dislocated their spines during Trump's second impeachment trial, they gambled on the notion that they could keep Trump and his liabilities at arm's length while still benefitting from the slice of new voters he brought into the GOP fold in 2020.
Heading into this year, Republicans were so cocky about their takeover prospects that they declined to even outline an agenda for voters. When McConnell was asked in January about what Republicans planned to do with a congressional majority, he pompously replied, "That is a very good question. And I'll let you know when we take it back.”
Asked on Fox News Thursday about the heat he has taken from fellow Republicans for giving away the game, Graham responded, “We owe it to the American people to tell them who we are, and here’s who we are as a national party.” Sorry, Mitch.
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy plans to finally unveil a four-point plan Friday (it's never too late!), which will reportedly echo Scott's themes of slashing Social Security and Medicare, among other things. McConnell has insisted that Republicans will neither raise taxes nor sunset Medicare and Social Security. He has also promised they would never find the 60 votes necessary to pass a national abortion ban. That from the same man who nuked the filibuster on Supreme Court nominations so that he could steal three seats for Republicans under an entirely new regime.
In any case, Republicans in Washington are currently finishing out the final stretch of the campaign season in sloppier, more chaotic form than any party in recent memory. It is the epitome of disarray, mainly because GOP leaders quit leading, gifted their party to Trump, and he has gleefully tied them in knots.
Still, if Democrats manage to keep both chambers, even by the slimmest of margins, that victory would be an epically embarrassing defeat for a party that spent that last nine months fantasizing about the size of the red wave getting ready to wash over the country. In fact, coming up dry could potentially obliterate the coalition establishment Republicans embraced after Jan. 6 when they thought they could have their cake and eat it too.
If establishment Republicans are ever going sever ties with Trump's MAGA base, it will have to be on the heels of a defeat so stunning and agonizing that it leaves them no choice but to embark on the process of rebuilding their party. Losing the House, the Senate, the White House, and a slam-dunk midterm in three consecutive cycles to a pro-democracy coalition of Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans could quite possibly fracture the GOP base, finally severing Republican ties to the anti-democratic MAGA insurgency.
So when you think about the potential upsides of voting this November and getting every single one of your friends, neighbors, and family members to vote, don't just think about Democrats retaining congressional majorities. Instead, imagine crushing the MAGA extremists who seek to end America as we know it.
Since Dobbs, women have registered to vote in unprecedented numbers across the country, and the first person to dig into these stunning trends was TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, who's our guest on this week's episode of The Downballot. Bonier explains how his firm gathers data on the electorate; why this surge is likely a leading indicator showing stepped-up enthusiasm among many groups of voters, including women, young people, and people of color; how we know these new registrants disproportionately lean toward Democrats; and what it all might mean for November.
Senator Mitch McConnell was considering a vote to convict Donald Trump in the impeachment trial over his alleged role in the Capitol riot and said he was “done with” the “crazy” former President over the incident.
The revelations surfaced in excerpts published from the upcoming book, Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, written by Politico’s Rachael Bade and the Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian.
Explaining that the vote to convict Trump would represent “one of the most pivotal votes of his career,” the authors indicated McConnell (R-KY) was all but certain the GOP would purge themselves of the then-President.
“But while McConnell was ready to be done with Trump, his party, it seemed, was not,” they wrote.
Mitch McConnell called Trump ‘crazy’ after Capitol attack, new book says https://t.co/ewwLIOpSk4
The book excerpts provided by the Washington Post quickly put Mitch McConnell in AOC or Adam Kinzinger territory with his melodramatic reaction to the events of January 6.
They describe him as “stunned” at what “marauders” had done at the Capitol and illustrate a man “overcome with emotion at the trauma [his aides] experienced.”
The result was this promise: “We’ve all known that Trump is crazy,” McConnell told them. “I’m done with him. I will never speak to him again.”
“We don’t disagree on the substance; we just disagree on the tactics,” McConnell told Cheney as they conferred about how to free the GOP from Trump’s iron grip. “Let’s just ignore him.”
And while the Senate Republican leader may have been prepared to move on, it became clear that the GOP didn’t have the votes to convict Trump, despite efforts by Liz Cheney (R-WY) to convince him to take action in short order, circumventing due process.
“She pressed him in a series of phone calls to bring the Senate back from a congressional recess before the Biden inauguration and quickly convict Trump before he left office,” the authors reveal.
“Republicans would follow his lead, she insisted to McConnell. And besides, Trump still posed an ongoing threat to the country.”
On that last point, according to the book, McConnell “did not disagree” though he knew the logistics would make a quick conviction impossible.
“We don’t disagree on the substance; we just disagree on the tactics,” he allegedly told Cheney. “Let’s just ignore him.”
The latest book on the events surrounding the Capitol riot square with another previously published effort alleging Mitch McConnell admitted he was “exhilarated” that Trump had “totally discredited himself” over the entire ordeal.
He also took joy that Trump seemingly had ‘committed political suicide.’
“I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” McConnell said. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
McConnell, it seems according to a New York Times column from the authors of that particular book, thought the “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us.”
Hours after a mob ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described himself as “exhilarated” about the potential damage to then-president Donald Trump. https://t.co/61mcyKKcmT
Trump has repeatedly taken shots at Mitch McConnell ever since the Senate Minority leader vowed to be “done with” him.
Just a few short weeks ago, as reported by The Political Insider, Trump took to social media to blast McConnell as a “broken down hack politician” and even made remarks about his “crazy wife.”
Trump attacked McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, over the weekend after the Kentucky Republican suggested the GOP has a better chance of retaking the House than the Senate because its candidates are of poor quality.https://t.co/1gEI7ZpPCp
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is giving the confrontational right flank of the GOP conference a seat at the table as he aims to shore up their support for Speaker if Republicans take the chamber next year.
McCarthy is eyeing having to manage a conference next year that is expected to tilt further to the right with a higher proportion of allies loyal to former President Trump.
And he’s starting now by including controversial figures and members of the House Freedom Caucus in high-profile events in an effort to seemingly win them over — unlike some of his GOP predecessors.
Firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will be at a rollout event outside Pittsburgh on Friday for McCarthy’s Commitment to America policy platform, a list of policy priorities inspired by the 1994 Contract with America.
“I’m really happy with it,” Greene said of the plan. “The reason why I'm involved in — going to be actively involved is to make sure that we can push to get the right things in there when it comes time to put the bills to the floor.”
The rollout of the plan marks not just a formal statement of policy priorities aimed at wooing voters, but the culmination of McCarthy’s work to unify an ideologically and stylistically diverse conference around his leadership.
More than a year ago, McCarthy formed several task forces intended to craft policies that members could run on during the midterms. The vast majority of such Republican members were on the panels, including Greene and House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (Pa.), among others.
That has helped McCarthy gain buy-in from the right for his vision of a GOP majority.
McCarthy told reporters that the conference was “very much” unified around the Commitment to America plan, and that he “didn’t hear one negative word” about it.
“You know the conference, right? The different philosophical makeup. You could go from John Katko” — a more moderate New York Republican who is retiring — “to Marjorie Greene” he said, reflecting on the party’s political spectrum.
But some members have stopped short of giving full-throated support for the plan or his Speakership bid, raising questions about whether he would have enough votes should the chamber remain closely split in the new Congress.
“I think it's a pretty good start. We've got a plan. I think we’ve got to put some — a little more meat on the bones. But it gives us a place to land, and all be kind of on the same page as we go after the last month here,” Perry said.
Asked whether she would support McCarthy for Speaker, Greene told reporters that she was not thinking about the leadership election yet.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) expressed approval of the plan for uniting the conference around a midterm message, but hinted at keeping up pressure on House GOP leadership.
“As someone who's a conservative in the Freedom Caucus, part of my job is also accountability for the Republicans to do what we said we would do,” Roy said. “So, as we unite around a message to take our country back, I'll be making sure that there's some specificity and what that means should we win the majority.”
The plan also does not address some of the biggest demands from the right wing, like the potential of impeaching President Biden.
”I think the Republican controlled majority if they want to be successful, especially going at 2024, they'll definitely make that a priority,” said Greene, who has introduced multiple impeachment resolutions against Biden.
McCarthy has watched up close the right-wing turmoil that previously plagued GOP House leadership.
“I’ve learned from the other mistakes,” McCarthy, in a March interview with Punchbowl News, said of former GOP Speakers John Boehner (Ohio) and Paul Ryan (Wis.).
Boehner, for his part, was punished by those in the right flank who publicly challenged him, such as former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a founding member of the Freedom Caucus which was formed around that time. Meadows was removed from a subcommittee chairmanship after clashing with the Speaker on a procedural vote.
More procedural moves from Meadows helped propel Boehner to a surprise retirement in 2015, stunning Washington one year after former Virginia Republican Rep. Eric Cantor became the first sitting House majority leader to lose his congressional seat to a political newcomer, and eventual Freedom Caucus member, Dave Brat.
Ryan spent much of 2016 doing a delicate dance around Trump’s candidacy — despite at times getting hammered by the Republican presidential nominee over the course of the election and during his early tenure in the White House before Ryan himself retired.
The Wisconsin Republican often had to tread between voicing support of his party’s president while disavowing some of Trump’s more inflammatory remarks on immigration and minority groups.
That type of intraparty turmoil seems to have evolved under McCarthy, unlike other previous leaders of the GOP conference.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another founder of the House Freedom Caucus, challenged McCarthy to lead House Republicans four years ago. But instead of being banished by leadership, he has been elevated.
Jordan is now ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee and eyeing leading numerous probes as chair of the panel in a majority. He has repeatedly said he is supporting McCarthy for Speaker.
Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker who was the architect of the 1994 Contract with America that preceded a massive midterm win for the party, had high praise for McCarthy’s handling of the diverse caucus as he walked out of a House GOP meeting unveiling the plan to members.
“He's a much better manager than I was,” Gingrich said. “I was amazed at members who normally find some reason not to be together getting up and saying, ‘We're on the same team.’”
Mitch McConnell opposed conviction in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. He may yet help clean up the mess of Jan. 6.
Things are playing out differently in the Senate GOP after only nine House Republicans — all of them retiring from Congress — supported updating a 19th-century law that Trump’s allies sought to manipulate to keep him in power. Even as House GOP leaders whipped against the post-Jan. 6 legislation this week, McConnell has encouraged his members to seek a deal with Democrats and is himself leaning toward backing the effort, according to senators in both parties.
“I presume that if we get the bill that was negotiated by the bipartisan group, that he'll support it,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
So far, the Kentucky Republican is keeping tight-lipped publicly amid the tension in his party over how to handle a bill directly aimed at Trump’s push to overturn his 2020 election loss, as well as the GOP lawmakers who objected to President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. In a brief interview this week, McConnell said Congress does “need to fix” the 1887 law known as the Electoral Count Act. “And I’ll have more to say about my feelings about that later.”
He's likely to reveal his position Tuesday, when the Rules Committee votes on the Senate legislation. McConnell is a member of the panel, alongside Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who supports the effort.
McConnell’s potential OK for the post-Jan. 6 bill offers a window on the fraught political dynamic that informed his response to the Capitol siege and still dictates his approach to the former president. McConnell excoriated Trump for the attack, calling him “practically and morally responsible,” yet voted to acquit him in last year’s Senate impeachment trial.
McConnell also blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6 and has largely aligned with Trump’s preferences in Senate races. But he stays away from criticizing the House’s Jan. 6 select committee, observing last year that "it will be interesting to reveal all the participants who were involved" in the riot. He doesn’t speak to Trump and avoids talking about the former president publicly.
Senators involved in pushing changes to the electoral certification process say McConnell’s kept his distance while advocating to keep the bill as narrow as possible. But he’s also had a senior aide provide analysis to the group and connected them with at least one constitutional scholar to help them draft the bill, according to Maine Sen. Susan Collins, its lead Republican sponsor.
McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s likely divergent stances on the election law is the latest example of the chasm between the two Republican leaders and how they approach Trump. Lest his position on the Electoral Count Act modernization be forgotten, Trump said Thursday: “REPUBLICAN SENATORS SHOULD VOTE NO!”
“They’re in two different places. Mitch is, I don’t want to say he's at the end of his career, but he’s certainly on the downhill side of his career. Kevin is coming up on the summit,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “He’s got one more step to the peak, and that’s to be speaker of the House. That’s a pretty fragile journey.”
The Senate’s bipartisan bill already has support from 11 Republicans, more than enough to break a filibuster. Those Republican backers emphasize that there are key differences between their proposal and the House bill authored by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), both members of the Jan. 6 select panel.
Senate Democrats say they’d be surprised if McConnell opposes modest changes to the Electoral Count Act. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said that given McConnell’s “views on the importance of a peaceful transfer of power, and on making it clear that the mistaken view of the powers of the vice president is dangerously misguided, I would think he'd support it.”
Some Democrats also argue McConnell hasn’t done enough to rid the GOP of Trump’s influence and the corrosive effect of false claims that widespread voter fraud affected the 2020 election. Critics believe he should have more forcefully opposed Trump’s baseless claims well in advance of his decision to recognize Joe Biden's victory on Dec. 14, 2020 — weeks after every state had certified their vote totals. McConnellsaid at the time he wanted to give Trump space to exhaust his legal challenges.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the bipartisan Electoral Count Act group, asserted that “there’s no doubt Senator McConnell could be doing a whole lot more to purge this sort of spirit of insurrection from his party.”
At the same time, the Senate proposal probably wouldn’t have as much momentum as it does if McConnell opposed the effort.
“My guess is that this group wouldn’t have been so productive if Senator McConnell wasn’t supportive of it,” Murphy said.
The Rules Committee is scheduled to mark up the bipartisan bill Tuesday and is expected to make changes after receiving feedback from election law experts in August.
Under the current version, the Senate bill would increase the threshold for challenging presidential election results to one-fifth of members in both chambers. Currently, it only takes one member of the House and one member of the Senate to challenge an election result.
In addition, it would clarify that the vice president’s role overseeing the election count is ministerial; state that only a governor can submit slates of electors to Congress; and create expedited judicial review for challenging a governor’s certification of electors. The bill also eliminates the law’s reference to a “failed” election and clarifies that ballots have to be cast by Election Day, barring a catastrophic event.
The House version includes similar provisions but notably raises the threshold for challenging election results to one-third of members in both chambers of Congress. Those challenges would also have to relate to constitutional requirements about the eligibility of electors and candidates. In addition, the House bill defines what would qualify as a “catastrophic” event allowing a state to extend its voting period.
And the messaging around the two chambers’ versions is different. Lofgren and Cheney have put Trump at the center of their push for the House bill, while Senate Republicans are not explicitly focusing on the former president.
Nevertheless, the Senate’s legislation is expected to divide the Republican conference, much like other bipartisan bills this Congress on infrastructure, gun safety and the manufacturing of semiconductors. After all, eight sitting GOP senators supported objections to vote counts from at least one state.
The Senate GOP conference has yet to discuss the legislation in detail, but some Republicans made clear that it doesn’t matter what McConnell decides.
“It won’t make any difference to me, Mitch has one vote, I’ve got one vote. I want to see what the House has passed and hear a robust discussion of it,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who objected to Arizona’s election result on Jan. 6, 2021.
In interviews this week, some Republicans questioned the need for the legislation, noting that Congress ultimately certified the 2020 results. Others are arguing internally there are technical challenges when it comes to addressing the vice president’s role, according to a Republican senator.
“There's not gonna be unanimity,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is generally supportive of the effort. “Everybody knows the challenges that this entails.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is focusing on women candidates to boost her party's efforts to retake control of the House, predicting that the number of Republican women in the House will jump next year.
“We are building towards 50,” Stefanik said in a briefing Wednesday about the successes of her Elevate PAC, or E-PAC, that endorses female candidates, predicting that the number of House GOP women will “blow past 40 this cycle.”
The number of Republican women in the House dwindled to just 13 after the 2018 election. But that number more than doubled after the 2020 election, when 32 female Republican representatives won seats, plus two nonvoting delegates. In that cycle, 11 of the 15 seats that Republicans flipped were E-PAC endorsed candidates.
Democrats have 91 women in their House caucus, nearly three times as many as the GOP.
This cycle, Stefanik’s E-PAC has 23 endorsed candidates who are running in open races or challenging a Democratic incumbent. Those range from women in safe Republican seats, like Harriet Hageman, who defeated Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in a primary last month, to those seeking seats that will be harder for Republicans to win.
While some of the endorsees had broad support from outside Republicans in primaries, others had to put up more of a fight. Karoline Leavitt, a former staff member in the White House press office under former President Trump and then in Stefanik’s congressional office, recently defeated Matt Mowers in a New Hampshire primary race, despite a PAC aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spending more than $1.5 million in support of Mowers.
“Congresswoman Stefanik was instrumental in my decision to run. And in that early support, it really helped propel us in our primary to be victorious,” Leavitt said.
Stefanik announced last week that she will seek another term as House Republican Conference chairwoman, shutting down months of speculation that she might join the field of three candidates for House majority whip if the House flips to Republican control next year.
But her focus on E-PAC shows that she still has big ambitions, even if she would slide down from the third- to fourth-ranking House Republican in a majority.
Stefanik said experience helping lead Trump’s defense during his first impeachment, which shot up her national profile, helped her build up a national donor list. That helps her boost the E-PAC candidates — the group says it has helped raise more $1 million directly to GOP women candidates this cycle.
Stefanik’s post-2018 election decision to step back from a role at the National Republican Congressional Committee in order to try to elevate female candidates in primaries was met with some pushback at the time. She defiantly responded that she “wasn’t asking for permission.”
But now, Stefanik says, she has strong support for her cause from her male colleagues, including McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).
It is not just financial support that E-PAC brings. Stefanik lamented that while Democratic women get “outsized coverage in the media” and “magazine covers,” Republican women don’t get the same.
“They deserve glossy magazines as well,” Stefanik said, adding that E-PAC has booked more than 100 interviews for its candidates.
Increasing the number of Republican women in the House GOP, Stefanik noted, does not necessarily mean that the conference will move in any particular ideological direction. Women are prominent in both the conservative House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Republican Governance Group.
As the number of women in the conference has grown, Stefanik said they are having “a significant impact” on “both policymaking and policy proposals.”
Republican women have been outspoken on education issues, child care and the baby formula shortage, she said. And those GOP members are also hoping to see more Republican women voices next year.
“Getting more women in our Republican conference is critically important, and Elise is leading the way to make that happen. I know I’m here in Congress because of fellow GOP women like Elise who backed me from day one,” Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), who was elected to Congress in 2020, said in a statement.
“The road to take back the House has a lot of Republican women on it.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came closer than previously reported to voting to convict former President Trump in the impeachment trial that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to a new book set to be released next month.
The Washington Post released an excerpt from “UNCHECKED: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by the Post’s Karoun Demirjian and Politico’s Rachel Bade, that discusses how McConnell wrestled with whether to vote to convict Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
McConnell was pleased to see the wide range of Republicans who had turned against Trump following the riot and called on him to resign. But he was “stunned” by the speed at which the GOP turned back to support Trump, with only 10 House Republicans voting in favor of impeachment, the excerpt states.
McConnell knew many Senate Republicans would look to him for guidance on how to vote on a motion from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) about whether the conviction of a president who was no longer in office was constitutionally permitted.
The House voted to impeach Trump a week before the end of his term, but the Senate trial would not begin until after he left office.
The authors based the information in the excerpt on interviews with people familiar with McConnell’s thinking and deliberations. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to “speak candidly.”
McConnell was drawn to voting to convict Trump, an outcome that would have potentially barred him from running for office again.
“We’ve all known that Trump is crazy,” he reportedly told aides following the insurrection. “I’m done with him. I will never speak to him again.”
But McConnell did not know if he was up to leading a “rebellion” against Trump, according to the authors.
He was not convinced by an argument from conservative attorney J. Michael Luttig that the Senate was constitutionally unable to hold a trial for a former president. But other members of the Senate Republican Conference thought differently.
McConnell discussed the argument with fellow GOP senators who were skeptical.
His legal adviser from Trump’s first impeachment trial, Andrew Ferguson, advised him that some constitutional scholars do not believe that the Constitution allows an impeached president to be barred from future office. However, these scholars are in the minority.
Ferguson told McConnell that Trump could use that view to run again in 2024 and sue states that keep him off the ballot, turning it into a legal battle that could lead to a political comeback.
The authors reported that McConnell also feared turning Trump into a martyr if he was convicted.
The Senate Republican leader sent a letter to his fellow GOP senators the day after Luttig made his argument that he was open to voting to convict and firmly blamed Trump for causing the riot, according to the excerpt.
McConnell ultimately voted to acquit the former president.
President Biden’s approval rating has reached its highest level since last December in a new poll.
The Politico-Morning Consult survey, published on Wednesday, found that 46 percent of all respondents approve of the job Biden is doing as president.
Eight-five percent of Democrats surveyed currently approve of the job Biden is doing, while only 10 percent of Republican respondents agree with the sentiment.
Thirty-five percent of independents in the survey approve of the job Biden is doing as president.
A similar Morning Consult poll in early June showed that 39 percent of respondents approved of the job Biden was doing as president, which marked an all-time low for him.
Recently, Biden and his administration have seen a slew of legislative victories, which include the passing of his climate, health care and tax package, his signing of a bipartisan gun safety bill and the announcement of an initiative to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans.
When asked in the new survey about the upcoming midterm elections, 46 percent of registered Democrats said they will vote in November, compared to 41 percent of registered Republicans.
The new Politico-Morning Consult poll, which was conducted earlier this month, has a margin of error of 2 percentage points for all respondents and 4 points for party breakdowns.
