McCarthy facing ‘perfect storm,’ warns Freedom Caucus member

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing a “perfect storm” of complications when the House returns to work Tuesday, Rep. Ken Buck said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” on Sunday. The Colorado Republican should know—he’s a member of the extremist Freedom Caucus, the group that is gleefully making McCarthy’s life miserable.

McCarthy has promised a lot of different things to a lot of different people, Buck said, including suggesting that he’s open to the idea of impeaching President Joe Biden. Buck is not an impeachment believer and has taken on radical GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying that "the idea that that she is now the expert on impeachment or that she is someone who should set the timing on impeachment is absurd." He added that it should only happen if there is “evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn’t exist right now.”

As for the “perfect storm” brewing in the next three weeks, Buck lists a continuing resolution that has to be passed to keep the government operating, the massive funding cuts the Freedom Caucus is demanding before they’ll allow that continuing resolution, and the impeachment. “So you take those things put together, and Kevin McCarthy, the speaker, has made promises on each of those issues to different groups. And now it is all coming due at the same time.”

Time for the voice of experience to weigh in—namely, former Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader during the 2013 shutdown. You might remember Cantor as one of the “Young Guns” trio, who were, according to the press copy for their book, “changing the face of the Republican Party and giving us a new road map back to the American dream.” The other “guns”? McCarthy and former House Speaker Paul Ryan. In retrospect, how hilarious is this video?

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That’s two down so far: Cantor was soundly and shockingly defeated in his primary in 2014, and Rep. Paul Ryan retired in 2018, after a thankless stint as speaker. He took over from former Speaker John Boehner, who resigned in 2015 after the Freedom Caucus seemingly wore him down.

You might think, given that experience, that Cantor would tell the last Young Gun standing to finally cut off the Freedom Caucus and work with the majority of Republicans—along with Democrats—to avoid a shutdown. In a new interview with Politico, he doesn’t do quite that. He told them that he learned the lesson from 2013 that “individuals would be willing to embark upon a plan that was so poorly conceived that there was no exit strategy at all — and that that would be appealing.” He added, “A lot of people were just fine with being able to vent their anger and frustration, go into the shutdown and leave it to leaders to figure out how to get out of it. I think that politically, that’s not a winner — but perhaps that will be what happens again.”

So Cantor’s advice to McCarthy is basically to find an “exit strategy.” That’ll work!

Buck is a little more realistic about it. McCarthy likely will have to pass the continuing resolution with Democratic votes, which will enrage the Freedom Caucus and almost certainly result in their trying to oust McCarthy with a motion to vacate the chair. That’s not something that Buck says McCarthy should be too worried about, though. “I think there will be challenges, but I don’t see anybody stepping up and say, I’ll take Kevin’s job,” he said. “So I think that’s really what saves Kevin is the lack of enthusiasm from anybody else to do the job.”

Gosh, what a ringing endorsement for keeping the House in Republican hands.

Can Senate Republicans stop House extremists from helping Putin?

McCarthy can't decide if he is Team Putin or Team Ukraine

Why does it seem like Republicans have such a hard time recruiting Senate candidates who actually live in the states they want to run in? We're discussing this strange but persistent phenomenon on this week's edition of "The Downballot." The latest example is former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who's been spending his time in Florida since leaving the House in 2015, but he's not the only one. Republican Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Montana, and Wisconsin all have questionable ties to their home states—a problem that Democrats have gleefully exploited in recent years. (Remember Dr. Oz? Of course you do.)

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House Republican extremists look like they want a government shutdown

Posted on September 5, 2023 by Joan McCarter

We are in September now, which means the government-shutdown stopwatch is ticking. This congressional calendar is even more fraught than usual because there’s just so much that Congress needs to do—and yet, House Republican extremists remain intent on creating chaos. Making matters worse, the House remains on vacation this week, and has scheduled only 12 legislative days before the fiscal year ends and government funding expires on Oct. 1.

Government funding isn’t the only thing that’s supposed to be accomplished in the next three weeks. The end of September is also the deadline for the high-stakes farm bill and a reauthorization bill—the legislation that governs how funds are supposed to be spent by agencies—for the Federal Aviation Administration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of money and needs a cash infusion to keep responding to the recent disasters in Hawaii and Florida, much less what the remainder of hurricane and wildfire season may bring.

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A few weeks ago, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floated a possible deal with Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to keep the government running while Congress continues to work on the regular appropriations bills. At least one hard-line Republican, Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has declared she won’t vote for it unless the House first votes to begin impeaching President Joe Biden.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is joining in, not necessarily on impeaching Biden as a condition of funding the government, but more so in opposition to having a functioning government. On Monday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn tweeted about the impending shutdown, obliquely chastising the House Republicans for being “universes” apart from Senate Republicans on funding government. Roy quickly responded by saying that Republicans shouldn’t fund “the things they campaign against - and then just shrug… border… DOJ weaponization… DOD wokeness… IRS abuse… COVID tyranny.”

That’s left McCarthy weakly arguing that if they shut down the government, then they won’t be able to keep investigating Biden. “If we shut down, all of government shuts down — investigation and everything else. It hurts the American public,” he said.

The White House has asked for a short-term continuing resolution, which is the only viable solution at this point to keep the government open. The Senate—Democrats and many Republicans—are on board. So now it all boils down to whether McCarthy will finally buck Republican extremists and work with Democrats on a stopgap bill to extend current levels of funding and likely add additional funding for disaster relief and Ukraine support.

The far-right justices on Wisconsin's Supreme Court just can't handle the fact that liberals now have the majority for the first time in 15 years, so they're in the throes of an ongoing meltdown—and their tears are delicious. On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard drink up all the schadenfreude they can handle as they puncture conservative claims that their progressive colleagues are "partisan hacks" (try looking in the mirror) or are breaking the law (try reading the state constitution). Elections do indeed have consequences!

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Moderate House Republicans: We’re ready to fight back. House Democrats: Sure, Jan

Posted on August 5, 2023 (Updated August 7, 2023) by Joan McCarter

This time they really mean it, swing district House Republicans tell Punchbowl News. They’re ready to start working on bipartisan issues and legislation and beat back the extremist Freedom Caucus so they don’t have to keep taking miserable, unpopular votes that will hurt them.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for bipartisanship,” said Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Garcia of California said his group can have real leverage. “The majority is only five seats, so really every faction has the same amount of power, it’s just a matter of strategy and tactics we choose to deploy as a result of that,” the Republican said. “At some point, we need to ease up some of our positions to get to solutions.”

Both are among the 18 Republicans representing districts where a majority voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

Moderate House Democrats will believe it when they see it.

“For 11 years I have worked in a bipartisan way on bipartisan bills on important issues,” Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, told Punchbowl News. “Now, I find it very difficult because if I try to approach them on a bill that I know we’ve worked on together for years, we get to committee and someone wants to throw a [controversial] amendment on there,” Kuster added.

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The part she didn’t say is that the so-called moderate Republicans don’t fight to keep those amendments out of bills—and worse: They vote for them.

Consider the traditionally bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act that passed in the House last month. It includes amendments to: ban books in military base school libraries; end the Pentagon’s policy of allowing service members leave to obtain abortions; ban gender-affirming health care for people serving in the military and their families; and ban race, gender, religion, political affiliations, or "any other ideological concepts" as the basis for personnel decisions. Those amendments all passed, with votes from most of these same GOP moderates, known as the Biden 18.

Moderates are also apparently shocked that the Freedom Caucus, the extremist Republican group currently running the show, is “selfish and short-sighted and only care about pushing their own agenda in the media instead of working with us to govern.” That quote is from Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia. He’s mad that the extremists are “taking advantage” of the small Republican House majority to force their will on the rest of the conference.

And it only took him seven months to figure that out. By the time we get through August and Congress is back in session, he might have done the math to figure out 18 is bigger than five, so his team can do the same thing.

He and the rest of the Republican moderates will have a chance to put all that tough talk into action when they return in September. If they really want to help themselves and act like real representatives, they’ll figure out how to leverage that bipartisanship they long for and keep the government from shutting down.

It’s a joyous week in Wisconsin, where Janet Protasiewicz’s swearing-in means that the state Supreme Court now has its first liberal majority in 15 years. We’re talking about that monumental transition on this week’s episode of “The Downballot,” including a brand-new suit that voting rights advocates filed on Protasiewicz’s first full day on the job that asks the court to strike down the GOP’s legislative maps as illegal partisan gerrymanders.

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House bails early for August, and the old guard and newbie Republicans are cranky about it

Posted on July 27, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The Republican-controlled House had two jobs to complete this week before taking off until Sept. 11. Two appropriations bills were slated to go to the floor and the House was supposed to spend the full week getting them through. Passage of the bills was necessary to give Congress a start on the job of funding the government before the Sept. 30 deadline. Instead, the extremists in and around the Freedom Caucus completely derailed one of the bills, and the House decided to just leave mid-afternoon on Thursday to get an early start on the long break.

That means the bills that are traditionally the easiest to pass—military housing and veterans benefits—will be done and the second easiest—agriculture—will not. The military construction and veterans bill, however, made it to the floor by the skin of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s teeth, and what he had to concede to the hard-liners could very well jeopardize every other spending bill. That’s got the old guard of Republicans spitting mad, particularly the “cardinals” who head up the powerful Appropriations subcommittee. At the other end of the tenure spectrum, the sizable group of vulnerable freshmen in swing districts are angry over the anti-abortion votes they’ve been forced to take.

The military and veterans bill narrowly advanced to the floor on Wednesday when the procedural vote for it passed with no votes to spare, 217-206. One of the conservative hard-liners, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, claimed his team agreed to allow the bill to move forward because leadership promised to cut the spending levels in the remaining appropriations bills. That got a flat denial from McCarthy.

McCarthy says there is no new deal on spending toplines (also says he hasn’t talked to Norman)
— Jordain Carney (@jordainc) July 26, 2023

But the machinations have finally gotten to the old guard, who are getting pretty sick of this shit and are willing to say so on the record. That includes the Appropriations subcommittee chairs—the “cardinals,” like Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, who chairs the Interior-Environment subcommittee. The cuts the extremists are demanding, he told Politico, “won’t pass the House.” He went on to make a remarkable threat for a senior member and appropriator: “I won’t vote for them.”

"Right now, small groups of members can exercise an extraordinary amount of power," Rep. Tom Cole groused. He should know—he has three of them on his powerful Rules Committee, the panel that determines what bills do or don’t make it to the floor. His committee spent hours trying to work through the agriculture bill and ultimately failed.

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There are so many Republicans like Simpson who represent farming districts that getting this bill done is usually pretty easy. It’s a huge priority. While there are always fights about food assistance funding from the extremists, there are enough farm state Republicans that the old guard can fight them off, work with the Senate, and get it done. Maybe this is why the old guard is finally saying, “Enough.”

It’s not just the old-timers who are unhappy with what’s been happening in these bills, though. There’s a brewing “revolt” over the anti-abortion poison pills that these funding bills are being loaded up with. In the case of the agriculture bill, which also funds the Food and Drug Administration, it’s the inclusion of an amendment to force the FDA to withdraw approval for abortion pills to be provided by mail.

There are about a dozen of these members, some of them freshmen in swing districts, who are trying to get that provision removed. Axios quotes three of them:

"Some states allow [mifepristone] to be mailed, some states don't, but that should be a decision with the states and the FDA, not Congress," said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).

"If that language stays as is, we won't be able to vote for that appropriations [bill]," said Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.).

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said he told voters he "wasn't looking to disrupt the existing policy" on abortion being a state's issue, adding, "I intend to fulfill that commitment."

Maybe over the long, 47-day “August” recess, the two groups can get together and figure out how to break the Freedom Caucus’ hold over McCarthy. They’ve got the numbers to do it if they’re willing. It’s in their best interest. And unless they get this figured out, the government will shut down.

Freedom Caucus: ‘We don’t fear the government shutdown’

Posted on July 26, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Hapless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed his gavel over to a group that can’t even decide whether shutting down the government is a good thing to do. On Tuesday, members of the Freedom Caucus held a press conference hosted by Freedom Works, the Koch-funded dark money organization that basically created the far-right caucus. They were there to make more of their incoherent and ever-changing demands for government funding. The “demands” boiled down to basically no government funding.

But don’t worry, said Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona: “I don't believe you’re looking at a government shutdown.” Instead, Biggs said that some of the 12 necessary appropriations bills will go to the floor, and then “what we call a minibus” will combine the rest, and “then you’ll see a short-term continuing resolution to continue spending.” Never mind that one of the things the caucus demanded McCarthy agree to was that no appropriations bill could get a vote until all 12 were approved by the committee. And that there wouldn’t be any kind of “omnibus” that combined the bills.

Then Rep. Bob Good piped up. “We should not fear a government shutdown,” he said, because, “[m]ost of what we do up here is bad anyway.” Bring it on!

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“Most of the American people won’t even miss if the government is shut down temporarily,” Good continued. McCarthy, he said, “has an opportunity to be a transformational historical speaker that stared down the Democrats, that stared down the free spenders, that stared down the president and said no.”

So that’s what Good wants out of all this: for McCarthy to just say “no.” Add that to all the other constantly moving goalposts these guys have erected:

Funding levels at fiscal year 2022 levels.
Funding levels at FY22 and also no emergency funding bills.
Funding levels at FY22 and no emergency funding bills and lawmakers have to claw back money handed out last year.
Pre-COVID funding levels for everything but defense.

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The demands from the caucus as a whole are never-ending, and then there’s what the individual members want. For example, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said Monday that he would only “consider” passing funding if Congress reduces spending to pre-COVID levels, ends the border “invasion,” defunds the FBI, ends federal diversity policies, ends Ukraine support, and ends the “War on Reliable Energy,” whatever that is supposed to mean. What Roy wants matters because McCarthy gave him a seat on the powerful Rules Committee, the one that decides what goes to the floor for a vote.

These are not people who are going to be happy to go along with stopgap funding bills to keep the government open until somehow they work this all out. It will take just five Republican House members to stop one unless McCarthy decides to work with Democrats to pass it, which would only enrage the Freedom Caucus anew. It’s going to take a miracle, or McCarthy becoming an actual leader (which would also be a miracle), to avoid a shutdown this fall, which is bad for the country and worse for Republicans.

“What would happen if Republicans for once stared down the Democrats and were the ones who refused to cave and to betray the American people and the trust they put in us when they gave us the majority?” Good asked Tuesday. “We don't fear the government shutdown.”

What would happen is that Republicans would lose that majority in 2024. And the Senate, and the White House. But you do you, Congressman Good.

How far can McCarthy bend for extremists? Not far enough

Posted on July 25, 2023 (Updated July 25, 2023) by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had a steep learning curve when he got hold of the gavel in January and so far, he seems to have learned nothing about negotiating. Specifically, he seems clueless about the most important lesson: Don't negotiate with terrorists.

Whatever he does to appease the extremist members, it’s not enough. They simply come back with more demands. A strong leader might recognize that he would have numbers on his side if he chose not to let a dozen or so House members dictate what the rest of the 435 can do, and that he could work with the majority to shut the Freedom Caucus down. Kevin McCarthy, however, is not a strong leader.

At the moment, the biggest challenge he faces is finding a way to keep the government from shutting down, which at this point seems nearly impossible. McCarthy bowed to the extremists on government funding levels, reneging on the deal he made with President Joe Biden to resolve the debt ceiling crisis. He and his leadership team agreed to make sharp cuts to the previously agreed-upon numbers, and the Freedom Caucus came back with a demand for more cuts, leading to a delay in committee work on the spending bills that are required to fund the government.

With the House ready to attempt passage of two of those appropriations bills this week, Freedom Caucus ringleader Chip Roy of Texas is upping the ante. The congressman’s demands: “1) Return Federal Bureaucracy to Pre-COVID, 2) End Border Invasion & fed attack on Texas, 3) End FBI Weaponization, 4) End Racist DEI Govt Policies, 5) Make Europe Handle Ukraine, 6) End War on Reliable Energy.”

There’s so much nonsense to sift through, but don’t miss the part where he’s threatening continued U.S. aid to Ukraine.

That would be on top of the wide-ranging culture war matters the extremists are forcing into every spending bill, with a particular focus on abortion. It’s just like what they did with the National Defense Authorization Act after McCarthy insisted to the rest of the Republican conference he was going to make sure they had a clean bill and not a “Christmas tree” of a bill, chock-full of poison pill amendments on every branch. He didn’t stop the extremists from adding extraneous amendments to that bill, so now they’re proliferating through every appropriations bill.

While the Freedom Caucus is itching for a showdown in order to get what they want, McCarthy’s trying to keep his head above water on these spending bills and he’s fighting the hard-right wing of his party over a promise he may or may not have made to expunge Donald Trump's two impeachments. This just might be the lamest thing McCarthy has done to date, all to appease Trump’s fury after mentioning that the indicted former guy might not be the strongest presidential candidate.

McCarthy denied making that promise, which only gave the story more legs and also made the MAGA crowd in the conference even more intent on forcing that expungement vote. For what it’s worth, expunging an impeachment isn’t a real thing. Trump was impeached—twice. There were votes. They were recorded. They were put in the Congressional Record. There are no take-backs. There aren’t going to be thousands of people hired to go through every copy of the Record with their bottles of Wite-Out, erasing the evidence. But here’s McCarthy, setting up what is quite possibly the most absurd legislative push ever, and getting himself in a jam over it.

Whatever McCarthy does, it will not be enough to appease the extremists. They have no reason to back down—not when they’re getting what they want and being rewarded mightily for it. Now the Club for Growth is backing all the rabble-rousers who have opposed McCarthy all these months. The conservative organization says it is planning to spend millions to reelect the 20 members who opposed McCarthy’s bid to be speaker through 15 rounds of balloting. That, the group insinuated, is to keep McCarthy and his allies from backing any of their primary opponents.

McCarthy is going to bumble the country into a shutdown, making the House of Representatives look more ridiculous and dysfunctional along the way. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi nailed it this weekend on CNN when she said, “These people look pathetic.”

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Nancy Mace and the myth of the moderate Republican

Posted on July 14, 2023 (Updated July 15, 2023) by Kerry Eleveld

One of the supposed "moderates" in the House Republican caucus railed on Thursday against several right-wing amendments to the military budget bill. First, she did so privately.

“We should not be taking this fucking vote, man. Fuck,” Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina fumed, venting to her staff about an extremist measure overturning Pentagon policies to facilitate abortion access for service members. “It's an asshole move, an asshole amendment,” she added, according to Politico.

But once on the House floor, the 'moderate' Mace voted to pass the very amendment she had privately blasted. The anti-abortion measure is now attached to the National Defense Authorization Act House Republicans approved Friday, 219-210, with the help of four Democrats.

Since the Democratically controlled Senate will never agree to the GOP's radical provisions, House Republicans' poison pill amendments risk delaying the must-pass funding bill, which includes raises for service members, among other critical needs. In other words, House Republicans are threatening national security and military readiness in order to advance their wildly unpopular culture warring.

Yet after voting in favor of the forced birther measure, Mace got on her public soap box, telling reporters, “We got to stop being assholes to women, stop targeting women and do the things that make a real difference.”

If she felt so strongly about it, reporters wondered, why had she voted for the amendment?

Mace offered the rather thin reasoning that, because the military doesn't reimburse travel expenses for service members getting elective procedures, it shouldn't reimburse troops traveling to get abortion services. She was, in her telling, trying to be "consistent."

Mace justified her decision to vote for the amendment by insisting it is not “military policy” to reimburse for travel expenses for an elective procedure and she is just trying to be “consistent.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 14, 2023

Kudos to Mace for the spectacular mental gymnastics. To her credit, she is consistent. But Mace isn't alone as a so-called "moderate" who continues to vote for measures advanced by the most radical members of her caucus.

In fact, all but three of 18 Republicans who currently represent districts Joe Biden won in 2020 voted along with Mace to deprive service members of both time off and reimbursement if they have to cross state lines to access standard reproductive care. The three Republicans who balked were:

Rep. Brandon Williams (New York’s 22nd) abstained from voting.
Rep. John Duarte (California’s 13th) voted against the anti-abortion measure.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania’s 1st) voted against the measure.

For reference, here's a chart of the Republican Biden 18, compiled by Daily Kos Elections.

Per @DKElections' calculations, these are the 18 House Republicans who sit in districts that Joe Biden would have carried (Why "would have"? Because of redistricting. We've recalculated the 2020 presidential results for the new districts that have since been adopted) pic.twitter.com/SRjbjUcE5B
— Daily Kos Elections (@DKElections) July 14, 2023

It's worth remembering those 18 because, like Mace, they are often referred to as moderates yet they vote completely in sync with the Republican extremists now running the House. There is little, if any, daylight between them and the far-right extremists in the party when it comes to their votes.

Certainly, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wanted the public to remember the five GOP members of the New York delegation who failed to vote in favor of preserving service member access to reproductive care. At a Friday press conference regarding the NDAA and the GOP’s poison pill amendments, Jeffries had a helpful visual display of each Republican, in keeping with a specific New York Democratic strategy to unseat every one of them next year.

Jeffries presser prop has an eye towards 2024, singling out NY Rs in Biden-won districts who voted for NDAA amendment on abortion pic.twitter.com/5wTptrppc0
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) July 14, 2023

But again, poisoning the NDAA with an anti-abortion measure (along with anti-transgender and anti-diversity provisions) certainly isn't an isolated incident for endangered Republicans in moderate districts.

Last month, all but one of the 18 Biden-district Republicans voted to refer a completely baseless resolution to impeach President Biden to a pair of committees for further investigation. The only Republican in the Biden 18 club who didn't support referring the resolution was Rep. Marc Molinaro (NY-19), who skipped the vote altogether.

Any of those so-called moderates could have voted against referring the resolution, sponsored by extremist Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Voting against referral would have been a vote to kill Boebert's harebrained antics, but none of them did.

The fact of the matter is that GOP extremists are now running the House Republican caucus, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hopelessly trying to mitigate the damage. Because McCarthy owes his gavel to the extremists, he can't risk shutting down any of their maneuvers, no matter how radical, ridiculous, or ruinous they are to the Republican majority.

It follows that the Republican "moderates" exist simply to cast votes in support of the extremists' agenda and complain to reporters while doing it—a role the traditional media clearly relishes. But voters in those moderate districts should take note, because the Republican Party gets more extreme every cycle. There's no room for Republican moderation anymore, except in name only.

Republican House ‘moderates’ talk big, fail to step up

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The attempted impeachment of President Joe Biden is now a thing House Republicans will have to spend actual time on, thanks to Colorado wingnut Rep. Lauren Boebert. Whatever procedural moves leadership takes now to get the issue off the floor won’t matter because the Freedom Caucus and other hardliners have decided this is how they will hijack the House. That’s a big headache for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, one that the would-be moderates could exploit to the benefit of the country, if only they could be bothered.

Those so-called moderates are talking big about their few “accomplishments” thus far. For instance, last week they voted against some amendments to legislation intended to make it harder for the federal government to regulate stuff. It’s a dangerous and ridiculous bill that every single Republican voted for, but these guys are crowing to Politico about how they voted against Freedom Caucus amendments to it. “We were sending a signal,” one of them said, calling it their strategy to hold the MAGA wing “accountable” but not hurt leadership.

The lawmaker, who insisted on anonymity to discuss how tough they were, bragged about how they told Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia congressman who thinks the Republican-appointed FBI director should be impeached over the Trump classified documents case: “You want Good bills passed, [then] put another name on it.” So, so anonymously brave. They’re admitting that they don’t have a problem with the content of any Freedom Caucus bill, just the sponsor, with one exception: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said his votes against the amendments were policy-based. As for the rest of them? Their claims of moderation are about as valid as their claim on family values or being pro-life.

They disproved that again Wednesday when nearly all of them voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his role in Intelligence Committee investigations and the impeachments of Donald Trump. This group voted against the first censure vote last week because it came with a ridiculous $16 million fine. Once that was dropped, they were happy to pile on in this proxy vote for Trump. Because that’s what this is. They’re all still mad about both Trump impeachments, the Jan. 6 investigations conducted by House Democrats, and the ongoing investigations surrounding Trump. Schiff is their scapegoat.

There’s a lot these not-Freedom Caucus Republicans could do to force McCarthy to throw over the extremists. There’s a hell of a lot more of them. If they acted as a bloc, they could take over the House the same way 11 assholes did a few weeks ago, when they shut the House down with a procedural vote. Will they muster the courage?

Probably not, Main Street Caucus Chair Dusty Johnson of South Dakota says. “I’ve heard people talk about that tactic, you know, out of frustration,” he told Politico, but suggested it’s not likely. He said that, in his group, “people understand that the best way—the most productive way—to move forward is try to stick together.” In other words, seeking safety in numbers, cowering in fear while their feral colleagues take all of them down in a spiral of nonsense.

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McCarthy is screwing over swing-district Republicans

McCarthy isn’t happy with Boebert’s impeachment shenanigans

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was not a happy camper in the Republican conference meeting Wednesday morning, thanks to the latest antics of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Colorado’s contribution to the debasement of Congress. On Tuesday evening, Boeber introduced a privileged resolution to impeach President Joe Biden on the made-up charge that he violated his oath by not stopping illegal immigration. The charge isn’t important, it’s the mechanism that’s got McCarthy’s knickers twisted.

Under House rules, privileged resolutions bypass the regular process—and leadership’s ability to determine what goes to the floor—and have to be voted on within two legislative days. There are only two legislative days left this week before Congress heads out to celebrate July 4 for the next 19 days. So this eats up time and energy that the House can’t really afford, not that they were going to accomplish much of anything in these two days. It also exposes the whole Republican conference as a clown car, and McCarthy’s weak leadership for what it is.

Democrats said they would move to table the motion, which puts McCarthy in the position, again, of having to rely on Democrats for help, which only serves to piss off the Freedom Caucus maniacs and their allies more, which will lead to exactly what is happening now: escalation.

.@RepMTG says she will speak to McCarthy later today on her push to impeach Biden, others. She says she addressed the conference about impeachment telling them it’s “the right thing to do.” She plans to convert all her articles to privileged resolutions.
— Mica Soellner (@MicaSoellnerDC) June 21, 2023

Greene has a raft of impeachment resolutions, and if she makes them all privileged, there’s another two weeks of work eaten up. She’s mad that Boebert upstaged her on this one, calling Boebert a “copycat.”

At the same time, Rep. Adam Schiff’s stalker colleague, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Freedom Caucuser, is pushing a second privileged resolution to censure him. Luna has sponsored six resolutions so far this year. Five of them are about Schiff. The first privileged one failed last week when 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to table it.

Which leads to the question of just how orchestrated all this is. It doesn’t seem likely, but the Freedom Caucus might just be organized enough to be planning this in another effort to gum up the works in the House and just to harass McCarthy.

The week before last, 11 of them shut the House down by blocking a rule vote—the first time that had happened in 21 years—and refusing to agree to let it pass until McCarthy sufficiently appeased them by agreeing to renege on the debt ceiling deal he had negotiated with Biden. It’s hard to credit those people with enough organizational skills or procedural knowledge to look at what Boebert and Luna are doing as strategy, but stranger things have happened.

All of which McCarthy brought upon himself. For one thing, he’s amplified and encouraged the border hysteria. That’s despite a substantial decline in actual illegal border crossings in recent weeks. He greenlit bogus investigations of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to determine whether he should be impeached. There are at least four impeachment resolutions out there against Mayorkas, one of them from Greene. This latest from her and Boebert will likely encourage all these yahoos to make their resolutions privileged too.

Which is what got McCarthy worked up. “There was a discussion about regular order in January,” he reportedly said in Wednesday morning’s conference meeting. “And going through committee—but now we have members doing privileged motions without going through committee or even speaking with the conference.”

“What majority do we want to be?” he said. “Give it right back in 2 years or hold it for a decade and make real change. How are we going to censure Adam Schiff for abusing his position to lie and force an impeachment and then turn around and do it ourselves the next day?”

Welcome to the bed you made, Kev. Enjoy the fact that you’re going to have to rely on the Democrats to bail you out again.

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Posted on May 31, 2023 (Updated June 1, 2023) by Joan McCarter

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 1:34:30 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Yep. They hate it.

Biggs is not happy that debt deal passed with more Democrats than Republicans "We were told they'd never put a bill on the floor that would take more Democrats than Rs to pass. We were told that."
— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) June 1, 2023

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 1:26:52 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The deal passed easily, 314 to 177, with more Democratic than Republican votes. The best thing about a vote that big is that it will make Mike Lee and Rand Paul look more ridiculous when they try to hold it up in the Senate. Also that McCarthy owes so much to the Democrats. The Freedom Caucus guys are going to HATE that,

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 12:39:59 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Ugh. Yeah, they’re still yammering.

Mike Lee is on the House floor, huddling with Andy Biggs and Chip Roy
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 1, 2023

UPDATE: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 · 10:12:12 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The closed rule—no amendments allowed, passed pretty easily 241-187. There were 52 Democratic yes votes, and 29 Republican noes. There might not be as many Dems in support when it comes to final passage, and they’ll probably hold out, letting Republicans go first and then determining how many of them will be needed to help pass it. The House is scheduled to pick up again at 7:15 PM, ET to proceed to final passage.

The debt ceiling/budget bill worked out between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will hit the House floor Wednesday afternoon, in a massive blow to the Freedom Caucus maniacs who have been rooting for the nation to default on its debt and for economic catastrophe. Their short rebellion fizzled, and McCarthy may get at least 150 Republican votes on the plan.

The major part of the drama was over once Rep. Tom Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said he would vote the bill out of the Rules Committee. Freedom Caucus Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina couldn’t convince him to play spoiler, despite histrionics from Roy throughout the day and his dire warning that “The Republican conference has been torn asunder.”

SIGN: End the Debt Limit game of blackmail. Pass real reform.

What has been torn asunder is the control the Freedom Caucus thought they had over McCarthy. That was clear once members of the group started downplaying their one big card: the motion to vacate the chair. It takes only one member to start the ball rolling on ousting McCarthy from the speakership, and it became clear quickly that there was little appetite among the rebels to even try. Even “firebrand” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will likely vote for the bill in the end.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likens raising the debt ceiling to a “shit sandwich” but is a lean yes. “I'm a dessert girl. Everyone loves dessert and that's impeachment, someone needs to be impeached,” she adds.
— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) May 30, 2023

The deal pretty effectively neuters the Freedom Caucus and limits the damage House Republicans can do between now and Jan. 1, 2025. They can’t take the debt ceiling hostage again in the next year and a half, and they can’t shut down the government by refusing to complete spending bills without doing serious political damage to themselves.

From a progressive perspective, the bill isn’t great, and most in the Progressive Caucus probably won’t support it. They don’t have to. There will be enough Republican votes and votes from other Democrats to pass the bill. From a political and economic stability perspective, the bill is fantastic. It averts economic catastrophe and neutralizes the Freedom Caucus in one go. In other words, Biden wins in a big way.

House Freedom Caucus neutered by debt ceiling deal

McCarthy's speaker deals come back to haunt him

We have Rural Organizing’s Aftyn Behn. Markos and Aftyn talk about what has been happening in rural communities across the country and progressives’ efforts to engage those voters. Behn also gives the podcast a breakdown of which issues will make the difference in the coming elections.

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