Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said impeachment articles targeted at President Joe Biden and other administration officials would lead to “dead ends” during a TV appearance Friday.
Ivey, a House Judiciary Committee member, said Republicans’ efforts to impeach Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas “damaging” to their party. During his appearance on "The Hill" on NewsNation, Ivey said he sees “no case” against the current president and that Republicans are unclear in what they think his wrongdoing is.
“I think they’re heading in the wrong direction,” Ivey said.
Ivey, also said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given “way too much ground” to Freedom Caucus members. He said he thinks they “definitely” want "one or maybe all three" administration members impeached.
“I think the Speaker's struggling to give them enough to keep them on board, but without destroying the party as a whole in the upcoming elections,” Ivey said.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips (D) is toying with a potential 2024 primary challenge against President Biden, a development likely to bring additional scrutiny to the incumbent’s reelection campaign.
A well-placed Democrat in the state confirmed to The Hill that Phillips is talking to various people about possibly mounting a White House challenge to Biden.
“True in that he is talking to folks,” said the Minnesota Democrat on Friday, who hedged that Phillips hasn’t “definitively” decided to run.
He would be the first Democratic lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to run against Biden this cycle.
The idea Biden may have to face a Democratic competitor from Capitol Hill is notable. For one, Phillips is a moderate, bucking Democrats' more common concern that a progressive could primary him from the left.
He’s also not a household name, like fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), whose contemplation of a presidential run has been viewed with frustration by the party’s establishment.
But a potential primary campaign from Phillips wouldn't entirely be a surprise. He’s at times been critical of Biden, even going as far as to say he shouldn’t run for a second term due in part to his age. At 54, Phillips is 26 years younger than the 80-year-old president.
A campaign spokesperson for Phillips did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden already has a handful of marginal primary challengers, including political heir Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and author Marianne Williamson. Neither has gotten enough traction to cause more than just headaches, though Democrats have recently gone after Kennedy more harshly for his inflammatory rhetoric.
Democrats are also grappling with the unknowns that could come from philosopher Cornel West’s third-party presidential bid, which has frustrated those who see him as a potential spoiler candidate in the general election.
A congressional challenger would add another layer of uncertainty to the race.
"Not sure what the upside is," the Minnesota Democrat said of a possible Phillips bid.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) mocked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call for decorum at a House subcommittee hearing Thursday, pointing to the congresswoman’s presentation of sexually explicit posters on a separate panel last week.
“Marjorie needs to remember she showed us a d‑‑‑ pic last week,” Garcia tweeted Thursday after Greene interrupted his remarks at a hearing on COVID-19 vaccine mandates to call for decorum.
The California Democrat displayed a tweet from Greene at the hearing, in which she compared vaccine and mask mandates to the yellow Star of David that Jews were required to wear by the Nazis in the lead-up to the Holocaust.
“We have seen this tweet behind us before,” Garcia said Thursday, gesturing to a poster of the tweet. “And this person, of course, sits on this very committee, who just actually gave some very irresponsible facts to our witnesses and the committee as well.”
“But just like [Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] and other conspiracy theorists, members of this committee continue and continue to attack vaccines,” he added.
Greene interrupted Garcia to make a point of order and asked that members “be reminded of the rules of decorum.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who serves as the chairman of the Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, appeared to read off a pre-prepared statement on decorum in response to Greene’s request.
“While vigorous disagreement is part of the legislative process, members are reminded that we must adhere to established standards of decorum and debate,” Wenstrup said. “It is a violation of House rules and the rules of this committee to engage in personalities regarding other members or to question the motives of a colleague.”
Garcia later recalled Greene’s display at a House Oversight Committee hearing with two IRS whistleblowers last week. The Georgia Republican held up posters featuring graphic sexual photos from a laptop hard drive that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden.
Several committee members, including Garcia, questioned whether such images should be displayed at the panel, which was hearing allegations about the government’s investigation into the president’s son.
“Today’s hearing is like most of the majority’s investigations and hearings: A lot of allegations, zero proof, no receipts — but apparently, some d‑‑‑ pics,” Garcia said at the time.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday said he plans to talk to Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) about his expletive-laced confrontation with teenage Senate pages early Thursday morning.
“I haven’t been able to speak to him yet. I’ll call him today. I don’t know the situation, I saw what was reported,” McCarthy told reporters Friday.
“That’s not the norm of Derrick Van Orden,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy said that he had spoken to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about the incident with the pages, who assist Senate operations. The two congressional leaders had a pre-planned meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss government funding.
McCarthy said the whole incident might be a “misunderstanding.”
"I guess the interns have some ritual laying down, or something like that. I think it's a misunderstanding on all sides from what's going on,” McCarthy said.
A transcript written by a page minutes after the incident, and obtained by The Hill, recalled Van Orden calling a group of 16- and 17-year-old pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑” for lying in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning. The rotunda is a common spot for pages to relax when Senate business goes late.
Van Orden did not dispute the account of him cursing at Senate pages, telling The Hill that he thought the Capitol Rotunda should be “treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead” because it was used as a field hospital during the Civil War.
“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?” Van Orden said.
“I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” Schumer said.
“I can’t speak for the House of Representatives, but I do not think that one member’s disrespect is shared by this body, by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] and myself.”
McConnell said he agreed with Schumer.
“Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Punchbowl News first reported that Van Orden had yelled at the Senate pages.
A $1.17 million settlement with a former Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General employee who flagged issues with embattled Inspector General Joseph Cuffari is raising a fresh set of questions from Congress.
The settlement, signed earlier this month but revealed by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on Thursday, admits no wrongdoing by Cuffari's office but makes a substantial whistleblower reprisal payment to Jennifer Costello, the employee.
The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) investigation into the matter surfaces a number of bizarre clashes between the two employees, including a beef over Costello’s refusal to print thousands of pages of documents she asserted Cuffari could read online to his initial plan to try and assign her to a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dealing with countering weapons of mass destruction.
But lawmakers are also raising questions over whether Cuffari misled Congress about the need for a $1.4 million contract to investigate Costello and others.
The settlement received by Costello is the largest known settlement for an employee of an inspector general office and among the largest ever given to a federal employee.
A joint letter from top Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee and House Oversight and Accountability Committee obtained by The Hill indicates lawmakers plan to probe the deal, as well as why Cuffari’s deputy was able to sign off on the agreement without alerting other officials.
A deposition in front of the board “raises serious concerns about your possibly retaliatory actions and lack of candor, improper use of taxpayer dollars, and lack of truthfulness in your communications with Congress,” Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) write in the letter to Cuffari.
Costello in 2019 made disclosures about Cuffari to both Congress and the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which is now investigating Cuffari. He likewise complained to the organization about her.
Costello’s complaints included that Cuffari delayed a report on DHS’s struggle to track children and parents separated at the border under a Trump administration policy, according to records Costello supplied to the POGO.
Costello was dismissed in June 2020, but Cuffari told the MSPB his plan to assign her to the Office for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction — despite her lack of relevant experience — was made before an investigation into her conduct.
“Your testimony appears to show that at least one of the allegations brought against Ms. Costello as a basis for her proposed removal was frivolous,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Specifically, the deposition transcript reveals that after you requested that Ms. Costello print thousands of pages of DHS OIG policies, she expressed concern to you that it was not a ‘valuable use of the staff resources or appropriated funds.’ You then decided that this suggestion was grounds for removal because she ‘was making a determination on whether or not [the printing] was appropriate.’”
The POGO report indicates Cuffari made other inaccurate claims to justify his firing of Costello, including that she ordered a criminal review of his travel shortly after taking the job — a review that was initiated by another employee.
Cuffari spent $1.4 million on a contract with law firm WilmerHale to investigate Costello and others, one that lawmakers contend “did not substantiate any illegal conduct.”
They say Cuffari also failed to disclose to Congress that other inspectors general he asked to probe the conduct of Costello declined to do so.
“Your omission of this important information raises questions about your intentions when you informed Congress that you conferred with other Inspectors General and whether or not you accurately reflected the events preceding your decision to hire WilmerHale,” they wrote.
The settlement with Costello was signed by his chief of staff, Kristen Fredricks, something Thompson and Raskin say should have prompted an alert to ethics officials, as federal regulations require that they be consulted when the conduct at issue involves the head of the agency.
“It is unclear whether you raised concerns regarding your subordinate’s approval of the $1.17 million settlement to resolve allegations pertaining to your misconduct. It is also unclear whether or not you sought an opinion from a DHS ethics officer,” they wrote.
“However, it is deeply troubling that the individual who approved the settlement is someone whom you directly oversee and promoted to the position of Chief of Staff. This decision raises a potentially serious and flagrant abuse of your position.”
Cuffari’s office did not respond to request for comment over the POGO report or the letter from Democrats.
An attorney for Costello said she was pleased with the result of the years-long battle.
“My client stood for what she believed was right. Time has revealed that she was indeed right. And now she has a balm for the sacrifice she made to preserve the integrity of the work of the faithful civil servants of DHS OIG,” Costello attorney Eden Brown Gaines said in a statement.
The matter adds to the growing complaints about Cuffari, who has earned the ire of lawmakers after failing to notify them that Secret Service text messages from Jan. 6 were lost in software migration.
He most recently came under fire for saying that he routinely deletes text messages from his own government phone — an action that appears to violate record retention laws.
Lawmakers are also reviewing reports he censored findings of domestic abuse and sexual harassment by DHS employees.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) argued Thursday that the classified documents case against former President Trump is now "a lot stronger," after the Justice Department (DOJ) announced new new charges in the case.
“Trump apparently asked for Mar-a-Lago security footage to be deleted. After getting a subpoena to produce it, no less,” Schiff tweeted Thursday. “The case against him for illegally retaining classified information and for obstruction just got stronger. A lot stronger.”
In Thursday's superseding indictment, the DOJ accused Trump of attempting to delete surveillance footage at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. The new charges claim the former president acted with a new co-conspirator, Carlos De Oliveira — the property manager of the Mar-a-Lago hotel — and aide Walt Nauta, who has already been charged in the case, to try and get rid of the footage.
House Republicans voted to censure him late last month for “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives.”
“Today, I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor,” Schiff said at the time. “Knowing that I have lived my oath."
"Knowing that I have done my duty, to hold a dangerous and out of control president accountable," he continued. "And knowing that I would do so again — in a heartbeat — if the circumstances should ever require it."
The Senate on Thursday night passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), teeing up a looming effort to find a deal on a compromise bill that satisfies the Democratic Senate and Republican House.
Senators voted 86-11 on the bill, which authorizes a topline figure of $886 billion for fiscal 2024, the total that was included in the debt ceiling deal struck between the Biden administration and House Republicans.
The package passed with little drama after the Senate kicked off consideration of the bill and amendments early last week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly called on the chamber to move the process along in a bipartisan fashion.
Six Democrats — Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — voted against the bill, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Four Republicans also opposed the package: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.) and JD Vance (Ohio).
Schumer was trying to avoid anything resembling what took place in the House, when Republicans passed a version of the bill that included a number of GOP-led provisions, turning the normally bipartisan annual affair into a near-party-line vote.
Among them are items that would block the Pentagon's new policy that covers travel costs for military members who seek abortions, take aim at military diversity programs and bar funding for surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops.
“We’ve had an open and constructive amendment process for the NDAA, with both sides … working together in good faith. This is exactly how the process for the NDAA should look: bipartisan [and] cooperative,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday morning.
“What’s happening in the Senate is a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House,” Schumer said, noting that many of the items they included have little chance of being included in a final version later this year. “House Republicans should look to the Senate to see how things get done. … They are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing. The contrast is glaring.”
Included in the bill is a 5.2 percent pay increase for military personnel, $9.1 billion for various measures aimed at competitiveness with China and $300 million for Ukraine.
Schumer on Thursday evening locked in a time agreement in order to finish work as lawmakers were champing at the bit to start the August recess, which will begin Friday and last through Labor Day weekend.
Senators wrapped up work Thursday and voted on a series of amendments, having OK’d 25 amendments overall for the NDAA. Lawmakers also greenlighted a second manager’s package that includes 49 more amendments.
While the process went smoothly this time around, the real show will be in the coming months, as both chambers attempt to reconcile the two proposals and pass an overall NDAA package that can emerge through the Senate with the requisite 60 votes.
Already, things are tilting in the Senate’s direction, as provisions related to abortion and the culture wars are expected to be watered down. A final bill will need to be nailed down by the time members leave for Christmas.
However, the process did not go off without any hitches. An effort led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to attach an item to give permanent residency to roughly 80,000 Afghans who’ve come to the U.S. following the country’s fall two years ago failed over opposition from top Republicans.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) maintained a hold on Klobuchar’s bill, with Senate Republicans arguing that while they support the idea generally, the Minnesota Democrat’s proposal was too broad. Cotton has a bill of his own he is pushing that would create a pathway to residency for Afghan evacuees, but it would hamper the ability of the president to grant humanitarian parole.
“This is our moment,” Klobuchar said on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “We have had two years to show the world whether or not we’re going to stand with those that stood with us. … The decision we make right now of whether we live up to the covenant we made to our Afghan allies is going to reverberate militarily and diplomatically for longer than any of us will serve in this body,”
One Senate Republican told The Hill that while Klobuchar’s Afghan Adjustment bill was unsuccessful this go-around, a limited version will likely make its way into the final NDAA product later this year.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) demanded further information from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) about its plan to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule 1 drugs during a House Judiciary hearing Thursday.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance during which she informed committee members that the agency has "not been given a specific timeline” to review and reevaluate marijuana’s classification.
President Biden put out a marijuana reform statement in October 2022 that called on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the attorney general to reevaluate the federal law’s scheduling of marijuana.
The DEA must receive HHS’s review and recommendation to conduct its own evaluation process before coming to a scheduling decision, according to Milgram.
To Gaetz’s dismay, the DEA has yet to receive any such materials from HHS.
“That's unsettling, isn't it? When you don't even know a timeline, it doesn't really make it seem like something's front of mind,” Gaetz said to Milgram after she disclosed the status of this procedure.
Cohen supported Gaetz’s stance on the matter, forming a rare bipartisan agreement in the House.
Cohen claimed that the federal discourse around marijuana has always been “governmental gibberish,” and that “the government has messed this up forever.”
Drug scheduling is used by the DEA to create lists of substances ranked by their acceptable medical use and the level of use considered abusive.
Marijuana currently stands on the Schedule 1 list, the classification meant for the world’s most dangerous drugs. Other substances on this list include heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
“What I will say to you, not specific to marijuana, but just overall, is that I am committed on trying to move things as quickly as we can,” Milgram said in response to Cohen’s question whether the department can do anything to speed up the process.
After hearing Milgram’s answer, Cohen told the administrator that he would help her out by calling his former colleague, the HHS secretary, today.
“We’re going to get this moving,” he added.
Gaetz also mentioned that marijuana’s current status provokes opioid dependencies and accidental fentanyl overdoses.
The Florida Republican explained that without medical marijuana, patients with chronic pain are more likely to turn to opioids to manage their symptoms, which is often the gateway to an addiction.
Fentanyl, which Milgram said is one of the deadliest drugs to exist, was not classified as a Schedule 1 substance when Biden put out his marijuana reform statement in 2022.
Fentanyl related substances were moved to the Schedule 1 list in 2018, but fentanyl itself remains under a Schedule 2 classification on account of its medical value.
“I really hope we get this done,” Gaetz told Milgram. “We're two years into the Biden administration. And I honestly had hoped that by now, we would have already descheduled marijuana from the Schedule 1 list.”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is in hot water after he cursed out a group of teenage Senate pages in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning.
According to a transcript written by a page minutes after the incident and obtained by The Hill, Van Orden called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑,” and told them he didn’t “give a f‑‑‑ who you are.”
The pages are a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations, and when the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on National Defense Authorization Act amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda.
“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.
“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”
“You jackasses, get out,” he added.
The incident, which occurred just after midnight, outraged members of the upper chamber, with one calling the string of remarks “horrible.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) later on Thursday took to the Senate floor to defend the pages.
“I understand that late last night, a member of the House majority thought it appropriate to curse at some of these young people — these teenagers — in the rotunda. I was shocked when I heard about it, and I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” he said.
“I can’t speak for the House of Representatives, but I do not think that one member’s disrespect is shared by this body, by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] and myself.”
Van Orden did not dispute the exchange and defended his actions when asked by The Hill.
“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.
“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?”
This is not the first time Van Orden has flashed his temper. Van Orden reportedly threatened a 17-year-old library page in his home state over a gay pride display and demanded to know who set it up. The page in question had set the display up, and she told her parents she did not feel safe to return to the library for work.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) yelled at House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on the House floor on Thursday, calling Republicans’ funding bills “racist,” after GOP lawmakers passed the first of 12 annual appropriations bills.
“Your bills are racist,” Bush yelled out, as Scalise touted the passage of the legislation allocating funding for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs and related agencies.
The comment was met with outcries from Republican lawmakers in the chamber and calls to strike Bush’s words from the official record.
However, the Missouri Democrat remained unapologetic about the outburst, tweeting, “I said what I said,” with a shrugging emoji shortly after the incident.
The Milcon-VA bill passed in a 219-211 vote Thursday, with every Democrat and two Republicans — Reps. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Ken Buck (Colo.) — voting against the measure.
The House legislation is virtually dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where appropriators are marking up their own spending bills.
With Congress set to adjourn this week for its monthlong August recess, lawmakers are facing a tight deadline to pass legislation funding the government by Sept. 30 and avert a government shutdown.