During an online fundraiser, Matt Gaetz denounced the Biden impeachment effort as unserious

As the House tries to replace Kevin McCarthy, the future of the impeachment inquiry could become a bargaining chip in the wrangling to win the speakership.

“I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz told Steve Bannon, a podcaster and onetime political adviser to former President Donald Trump, who was moderating the discussion.

“They’re trying to engage in a, like, ‘forever war’ of impeachment,” Gaetz said. “And like many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.”

As they fielded questions from high-dollar conservative donors, Gaetz and Rosendale were just days away from moving to end McCarthy’s speakership — and tipping the Republican caucus into its own protracted battle over who will lead the conference.

We know it. They know it. The public needs to know it.

News From The States:

How does a ‘frozen’ U.S. House function without a speaker? Everyone’s got an opinion.

Why does the role of speaker pro tempore exist in the U.S. House of Representatives, and what powers does that person hold?

Molly E. Reynolds, senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, said Wednesday during a panel discussion the role of speaker pro tempore was designed as a way to bolster continuity of government.

“The language of the rule itself isn’t entirely clear on what powers the speaker pro tem has — whether it’s all of the powers of the Office of the Speaker, or just authorities that allow him to effectuate a new election for speaker,” Reynolds said.

There are two schools of thought about how much power a speaker pro tempore holds, Reynolds said.

“I would put myself in the camp that the speaker pro tem, McHenry, has the full powers of the speakership with the possible exception of sitting in the line of succession.” Reynolds said.

“My logic there is that given how this rule was originally designed, which was to allow someone to act as speaker in the event of a real crisis, that you would not necessarily have wanted to develop a rule that would limit that person’s power in an actual emergency,” Reynolds said.

Other experts agreed with that view.

However, the power of the acting speaker is limited by what the members of a given Congress say it is. And if they say it’s limited, it’s limited.

Norm Ornstein/The New Republic:

How Kevin McCarthy Planted the Seeds of Kevin McCarthy’s Demise

Remember the “young gun”? He doesn’t want you to.

Of course, we can pinpoint the start of anti-Washington, anti-institution, tribal politics in the rise of Newt Gingrich, starting in 1979 and culminating in his achieving the speakership following the stunning GOP victory in 1994. We know that story well.

Less well known, though, is that the playbook that Gingrich used to achieve a Republican majority was repeated a decade and a half later. In 2010, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan published a book called Young Guns, a takeoff on the 1988 movie of the same name. Cantor, of Virginia, was then the minority whip, McCarthy the chief deputy whip, and Ryan the top Republican on the House Budget Committee. Subtitled A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, the book conspicuously failed to mention the Republican leader, John Boehner. The book was a springboard for the three to fan out around the country recruiting Tea Party radicals, hoping to exploit their anger after the financial collapse in 2008-09 and subsequent backlash against Barack Obama, promising to blow up the establishment in Washington with the hopes that they could use that anger to catapult themselves into the majority—and then co-opt the new members they brought into the House.

Lauren Gil/Bolts Magazine:

Western Pennsylvania Prosecutor Makes His County an Epicenter for the Death Penalty

Washington County accounts for about a quarter of the state’s active death penalty cases under Jason Walsh, who became DA in 2021 and is seeking a full term this month.

Ryan James, a lawyer for Christian, Sutton’s co-defendant, filed a motion in May arguing that Walsh should be disqualified from prosecuting the case because “there is more than just suspicion that the death penalty is being sought by this [DA] for political gain.” In his motion, James alleged that Walsh chose to seek the death penalty against Sutton to pressure her into giving information about her co-defendants. “[M]onths before being charged, Ms. Sutton was detained, badgered, and threatened by law enforcement,” James wrote, claiming police told her that if she didn’t cooperate she would lose custody of her child and go to jail, where she’d be brutally killed by a drug gang.

Since taking office in 2021, Walsh has made a name for himself because of how frequently he decides to pursue the death penalty. In his first year, he sought the death penalty in five out of nine of the county’s murder cases. To date, his office is responsible for 12 capital cases that have yet to go to trial, making up approximately a quarter of the total pending death penalty cases in Pennsylvania. Washington County only makes up approximately two percent of Pennsylvania’s population.

Walsh, a Republican who is seeking a full term on Nov. 7, has defended how often he seeks the death penalty, including in the case against Sutton. Last year he told KDKA News, “I’m very consistent and will seek the highest form of punishment for the most heinous crimes.” Walsh did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, but this week his office filed a motion for a gag order to bar lawyers on the Christian case from speaking about it as well as another motion seeking to punish them with sanctions over their attempt to remove him from the case. His motions also cite the inquiries he received from Bolts.

All elections matter, local ones especially.

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