Republicans ditch McCarthy, first speaker ousted in American history

Posted on October 3, 2023 by kos

Holy crap, did we really just watch that happen? In a historic first, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to oust the speaker via a vote of the chamber. In the past, endangered speakers like Paul Ryan and John Boehner opted to quit or not run for reelection rather than face the ignominy of losing a vote by their peers.

But not former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who dared rebel Rep. Matt Gaetz to oust him. As “The Wire’s” Omar Little said, “You come at the king, you best not miss,” and Gaetz’s aim was true. With the help of gleeful Democrats, happy to pay McCarthy back for a legitimate list of grievances, McCarthy narrowly lost the vote 216-210, two votes more than the magic number of 214. It was only the second time in American history such a vote was attempted, and the first time it was successful.

This is, in the end, the ultimate Leopards Ate Face story.

It was clear from the very beginning of this House term that the Freedom Caucus was a nihilist group intent on tearing down the institution. They were ungovernable from the beginning, yet McCarthy, in a Faustian bargain, surrendered to them in order to achieve his big dream of holding the speaker’s gavel. And he did! He even got to stand behind President Joe Biden for a single State of the Union. But in the end, all it bought him was a historic humiliation.

Was it worth it, Kevin?

We are now in uncharted territory. Joan McCarter wrote about what could happen next.

One likely outcome is a vengeful effort by the majority of House Republicans to expel Gaetz from the House. Gaetz used Democratic votes to oust McCarthy. It would be hilarious if Republicans then use Democratic votes to oust Gaetz. That’s bipartisanship we can all believe in! Democrats will happily assist Republicans in ousting any Republican they want, making the slim Republican House majority even slimmer.

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But before we get there, Republicans will need to figure out how to elect a new speaker. Will McCarthy make another attempt? He certainly can’t do it with Republican votes, and if he didn’t cut a deal with Democrats to save his skin on Tuesday, why would he do so to get elected a second time? Is there another Republican that can unite the two Republican factions that clearly loathe each other?

Given the slim Republican majority, can Democrats somehow engineer a coup, getting Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries elected speaker with the assistance of rebel Republicans? Over two dozen Republicans represent Biden-won districts. They wouldn’t even have to vote for Jeffries; they could just be unavailable for a day.

Jeffries is clearly open to the possibilities, as his latest statement shows.

And heck, it’s clear that the Freedom Caucus longs to be in the minority. Their grift is so much more effective when facing off against a Democratic speaker, and as a bonus to the racist MAGA base, Jeffries is Black. They can raise a ton of money off being in the minority. It might literally benefit them to engineer a Jeffries speakership.

As for McCarthy, good riddance. Republicans are unable to take responsibility for their own actions, so the likes of former Rep. Tom Cole, Rep. Patrick McHenry, and Republican operative Brendan Buck were sure to claim it was Democrats that were sending our nation into turmoil because they wouldn’t bail McCarthy out. Democrats had no reason to help McCarthy, and he never offered them a deal to protect him. It’s always someone else’s fault with them!

Still, all Democrats had to do was point to McCarthy’s actions on Jan. 6, and his sucking up to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago days later, at a time when Trump was at his most politically vulnerable. McCarthy worked tirelessly to discredit the Jan. 6 committee, and he’s been complicit in the sham Biden impeachment inquiry—ironically designed to placate the same Republican nihilist caucus that ultimately ousted him. McCarthy also reneged on the debt-limit deal he made with Biden earlier in the year, and this weekend, he went on national TV to blame Democrats for wanting to shut down the government.

McCarthy is a pathetic man, groveling to the worst of his party, all in the raw pursuit of power. And in the end, he got exactly what everyone expected.

The Ukraine War is core to our American domestic politics

Posted on October 3, 2023 by kos

I attempted to run this story last Thursday, but a nasty site bug ate most of it, so readers only saw the first couple of paragraphs. Normally, I go into comments to check reaction and note any corrections, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do so that day. So ultimately, the comments were full of confused “this is the shortest Ukraine Update ever!” Sorry about that. Unfortunately, Ukraine is still a big factor in our domestic politics and the original story is still timely, so we’re running it in full.

It might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.

Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.

And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and destroy the world economy.

This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30. [Edit: the shutdown was averted, but only after all Ukraine aid was stripped from the legislation.]

In my list of Republican presidential debate winners and losers Wednesday night, I listed Ukraine as one of the few winners. It started with the running of this excellent ad from Republicans for Ukraine:

It got even better when the moderators adopted the ad’s narrative when asking the assembled candidates about Ukraine.

“So, Governor DeSantis, let me go to you. Experts say President Putin has ordered assassinations across Europe, cheated on arms control treaties with the U.S., and seeks to work with China to force our decline,” former White House press secretary and debate moderator Dana Perino asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “President Reagan believed that if you want to prevent a war, you better be prepared to fight one. Today the Republican Party is at odds over aid to Ukraine. The price tag so far is $76 billion. But is it in our best interest to degrade Russia’s military for less than 5 percent of what we pay annually on defense, especially when there are no U.S. soldiers in the fight?”

DeSantis, hack that he is, had nothing. “It is in our interest to end this war, and that’s what I will do as president,” he answered impotently, spewing empty words. “We are not going to have a blank check.” He then awkwardly pivoted to border border border. But it did open up the field to more forceful defenses.

“[O]ur national vital interest is in degrading the Russian military,” said South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. “By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home.” Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley added, “A win for Russia is a win for China.”

After tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy claimed that supporting Ukraine was “driving Russia further into China’s arms,” former Vice President Mike Pence made the obvious point that, “Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.” Remember, China and Russia declared they had a “friendship with no limits” right before Russia invaded. It would take an ignoramus conspiracy theorist like Ramaswamy, who has admitted to not knowing anything about foreign policy until six months ago, to think that supporting Ukraine would bring those two countries further together. They’ve been using the BRICS framework to try and balance out U.S. and Western power for years—since 2001, actually. China and Russia are already allies.

After that exchange, moderator and Fox Business host Stuart Varney teed up a softball for the rest of the pro-Ukraine candidates, asking, “[Former New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie, President Biden’s first two years have brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Are we focused too much on Ukraine, and not enough on this threat from the new world order?” Christie smashed it out of the ballpark: “No, they’re all connected, Stuart. They’re all connected. The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine. The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons, and so are the North Koreans now as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese. The naivete on this stage from some of these folks is extraordinary.”

He wasn’t done. “And the fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against. And we are not going to solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin,” Christie added. “Look, Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was brilliant and a great leader. This is the person who is murdering people in his own country. And now, not having enough blood, he’s now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 20,000 children.”

This isn’t hard. Ramaswamy is clearly trying to ingratiate himself with the MAGA seditionist crowd, so perhaps his willful ignorance makes sense. But DeSantis? This is one of the most momentous issues facing the world community today, and rather than deliver a forceful defense of the international rule of law and America’s clear interest in defeating Russia, he pulled a Trumpian “I’ll immediately bring peace” and tried to pivot to something else. His weakness permeates everything he does and says, and he can’t mask it with hateful attacks against trans and gay people. He is a small and scared man, and people see through him. That’s why he’s gone nowhere but down in the polls.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been on an on-again, off-again merry-go-round on whether to include new Ukraine aid in the defense budget, and it is currently out. The House Freedom Caucus’ MAGA-aligned nihilists wanted it stripped out, but there’s no indication that they’ll vote for the clean spending bill anyway, so no one knows how things will proceed without cutting a deal with Democrats.

One person losing patience is Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who must really regret not impeaching Trump when he had the chance. “We’re lined up here against China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” McConnell said while speaking at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank on Sept. 27. “That ought to tell you right from the beginning that you’re on the right side. If Putin is to win this, some NATO country will be next. And I think it’s a lot smarter to just stop this invasion, to push him back.”

It’s smart to message the new China-Iran-Russia-North Korea axis. The MAGA cult pretends that focusing on Ukraine and Russia somehow detracts from China, but they are all one and the same fight. Any future Chinese war against Taiwan would feature strong Russian support, if not outright participation. North Korea would similarly need strong Chinese and Russian support for any sustained war against South Korea.

It is U.S. and Western pressure, and the threat to China’s rickety economy, that is keeping them from overtly supplying Russia with military support. But make no mistake, those repressive expansionist regimes are all working to undermine Western democracies and national self-determination. And even if it refuses to provide direct (and overt) military aid to Russia, China has still offered a lifeline and sanctions evasion to keep Russia’s economy from completely collapsing.

At the other end of the Republican spectrum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone off the deep end into nutso conspiracy land. “And over in Ukraine, Charlie, by the way we haven't even talked about this, the country that Mitch McConnell and Schumer and Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton and everybody can't wait to give another 100 billion dollars to, Ukraine is one of the worst countries on the Earth for child sex trafficking and they're harvesting children's organs over there,” she said on Charlie Kirk’s radio show, amplifying one of the more bizarre Russian-spread conspiracy theories.

At some point, reason will likely prevail and Ukraine aid will pass through both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support. But that doesn’t mean the issue will be domestically dead. Expect the MAGA crowd, fueled by an aggrieved Trump, to keep agitating against Ukraine and building more opposition to further U.S. assistance. How it plays in the 2024 presidential election remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t assume it plays to President Joe Biden’s advantage, particularly given how reluctant he and many of Ukraine’s European allies are to provide Ukraine everything it needs to win quickly and decisively.

Slow-rolling Ukraine aid hasn’t served anyone’s interests except for Russia’s, using the delays to further entrench itself in occupied territory.

Live coverage: The government shutdown clock is ticking

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy blinked Saturday morning, doing an about-face on government funding. He abandoned the hard-right provisions in his last government funding bill and offered a stripped-down version of the Senate’s proposed continuing resolution. The new CR includes 45 days of continued funding, but strips out Ukraine funding.

That all sounds fine, except that McCarthy dropped this bill on House Democrats and told them the vote would be held immediately, and Democrats have found multiple issues in the short bill during a delay they created by asking for the House to adjourn. Democrats continue to object to being jammed by McCarthy, and the House is now delaying a vote, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holding the floor using his “magic minute,” the unlimited debate time afforded to leadership. The Senate was supposed to have started work on its CR at 1 p.m. ET, but is also in a holding pattern, waiting to see what the House does.

As a matter of tactics, Senate and House Democrats should defeat this continuing resolution. McCarthy has already blinked, deciding a government shutdown is more damaging than a vote on his leadership. They should push their advantage.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 7:00:13 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Democrats just saved McCarthy’s butt, by the way. The vote was 335-91, with 209 Dems and 126 Republicans voting for it, 90 GOP noes. Now comes the fight over McCarthy’s speakership, and Democrats need to use this to get some concessions from him before they help. First, he has abide by the debt ceiling agreement on appropriations and a mechanism to avoid another shutdown fight next year. Second, no more impeachment crap.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:47:44 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The emerging Dem narrative. It’s true as far as it goes, and the defeat of the draconian cuts and racist border policies the GOP pushed yesterday is significant. The Senate could still fight for Ukraine.

MAGA Republicans have surrendered. All extreme right-wing policies have been removed from the House spending bill. The American people have won.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) September 30, 2023

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:43:50 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Smattering of applause on the floor as it hit the 2/3rds threshold of 290. So the question now is whether the Senate will prioritize Ukraine over having the rest of their weekend free, and swallow it. Judging by the response there so far, they’ll vote for their weekend. We’ll see if they have any objections to the other stuff the House stripped out from/snuck into their bill.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:35:03 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

And that’s that. This is bad news for Ukraine.

NEWS: Jeffries telling Dems to vote for the CR
— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) September 30, 2023

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:33:32 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

McConnell reportedly pushed his conference to hold out for their bill, with Ukraine aid. He was overruled.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:31:15 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The House is voting now on the new funding bill. It needs 2/3rds to pass. Expect the majority of Dems to hold out on voting until they see how many Republicans oppose it.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:25:57 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

One hangup here for everyone, a provision regarding member pay that looks like a really sneaky move by the GOP to get a raise.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:23:02 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Senate GOP is now saying they won’t vote for the CR they negotiated, because they want to give McCarthy a chance to get this through. Majority Leader Schumer is reportedly postponing the next procedural vote to see what happens in the House.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:19:01 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Jeffries wrapped, after an impassioned speech. “You dropped this bill at the eleventh hour today and gave the American people minutes to evaluate it. That's unacceptable,” he told Republicans. General debate is now continuing. It’s under suspension of the rules, so it needs 2/3rds to pass. It’s not at all clear right now what the majority of Democrats will do.

House Republicans vow shutdown won’t stop impeachment inquiry

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are on the brink of shutting down the government. The Senate is moving forward with a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open into November, but House Republicans are busy with a "pissing match" between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and obstructionist Rep. Matt Gaetz. That doesn’t mean the House isn’t doing anything, though. No, Republicans are getting their bogus impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden moving, saying they see no reason it couldn’t continue through a government shutdown.

“We’re going to keep going,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told CNN on Tuesday, saying that a shutdown wouldn’t affect the members or staff involved in the impeachment inquiry. That would be a great look for Republicans—showing voters that they weren’t focused on keeping the government open, and offering a constant reminder that members of Congress were still being paid while government workers weren’t.

Comer has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, which his office told Fox News “will examine the value of an impeachment inquiry.” Apparently, even Comer isn’t confident that he and his fellow Republicans have made that case to the public. The hearing will rehash the findings of Comer’s months of investigations—investigations that notably haven’t turned up any real evidence that Biden has engaged in corruption or profited from his son’s business dealings.

Like Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan told CNN a government shutdown wouldn’t stop him. “Every week there’s a whole roster of folks” scheduled for committee interviews, he said.

The committee staff conducting the interviews wouldn’t be paid in the event of a shutdown, but could be deemed “essential” by Congress members and forced to work. A source told CNN, though, that there was still question about whether a court reporter, necessary for transcribing interviews, would be considered essential, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted that a shutdown could affect the ability of government agencies to respond to subpoenas. (Take note: Greene seems to be more clearheaded about the outcomes of a shutdown than Comer or Jordan.)

Going ahead with a baseless impeachment inquiry while shutting down the government out of sheer spite would be an impressive one-two punch, even by Republican standards. What could they possibly do that would more clearly display how far their priorities are from what voters want Congress to deliver?

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Putin Republicans ready to rebuff Zelenskyy on aid to fight Russia

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, holding meetings with President Joe Biden, Pentagon officials, and Congress. He first met with the bipartisan leadership of the House, followed by a briefing with the Senate. In both chambers, Zelenskyy’s request for further assistance depends on the ability of Congress to overcome the Republican dysfunction in the House of Representatives.

The signs aren’t auspicious. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went into the meeting with a bad attitude, starting with his refusal of Zelenskyy’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress. “We just didn’t have time,” McCarthy told reporters. “He's already given a joint session.” Then he reiterated that he would demand Zelenskyy justify his request for continued assistance. “What is the plan for victory? Where are we currently on the field? The accountability issues that a lot of members have questions, just walk through that."

Zelenskyy could very well turn those questions on McCarthy, who has no plan for victory over the dozen or so members of his own conference who are refusing to do their one basic job: keep the government funded and functioning.

The Senate provided a more receptive audience. Zelenskyy has powerful allies there, including the Democratic majority, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the majority of Republican senators who realize the stakes in this war.

Zelensky inside the historic old Senate chamber briefing Senators on the state of the war. Two standing ovations so far. pic.twitter.com/mysq5afJKE
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) September 21, 2023

Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas spoke to the concern that the dysfunction in the House and the threat of the government shutdown fight is delaying assistance. “Am I worried that might be the case? Yes,” he told Politico. “It’s a terrible message, as we struggle to take care of assisting Ukraine in this war. Just even the process is damaging to the view of the stability of the United States and being an ally.”

That’s not to say there aren’t problems in the Senate, as well. The usual suspect, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, threatened to help the House shut the government down Wednesday, by saying he would not allow the Senate to move a stopgap government funding bill through quickly if it included Ukraine aid. Not to be outdone, freshman Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio piled on with a letter to the Biden administration, rejecting the request. He had just five other senators on board, plus a bunch of House Freedom Caucus jerks.

That attitude is deepening the divide in the Senate, where one Democrat is ready to blow. “These guys need to get goddamn with the program,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana exclaimed. “These guys don’t want to protect democracy in the world? What the hell have we become?”

That’s what the world is probably wondering now, watching one half of the Congress being held hostage by just a handful of nihilists.

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Republican Party has to make a choice: Putin or democracy

Does would-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy still think Putin pays Trump?

Kerry and Markos talk about what is happening in Ukraine, what needs to be done, and why the fate of Ukraine is tied to democracy’s fate in 2024.

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What does shutdown 2023 look like?

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The House of Representatives blew up again Tuesday afternoon, when leadership had to pull back a procedural vote on their only existing proposal for averting a government shutdown at the end of next week. Compounding that failure, a handful of hard-liners voted against advancing the defense appropriations bill for a floor vote.

Those were two monumental losses for Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He has no control over his conference and no plan for combating the nihilism of the Freedom Caucus and its allies. They want the government to shut down, and are happy to advertise that fact.

Less government isn't a bad thing. pic.twitter.com/r8GdmDeocn
— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) September 19, 2023

Since a shutdown appears to be inevitable, what does it mean for the nation?

Nothing good, other than a pissed off electorate potentially driving Republicans out of office in 2024.

There are more than 2.1 million federal employees, hundreds of thousands of whom would likely be furloughed without pay for the duration of a shutdown. As early as this week, federal agencies will start deciding which employees are “essential” and which will be put on ice for the duration.

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The White House outlined what that could mean for various operations of government in a memo Tuesday. That includes “all active-duty military personnel and many law enforcement officers” being forced to remain at work without being paid until a funding agreement is made. It would increase the “risk that FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund is depleted and would complicate new emergency response efforts if additional catastrophic disasters occur.”

It would mean “10,000 children across the country would immediately lose access to Head Start.” The EPA would mostly stop inspecting drinking water facilities, hazardous waste sites, and chemical facilities. The Food and Drug Administration “could be forced to delay” food inspections. The Small Business Administration wouldn’t approve new loans.

While Medicare would be funded and people would still get their Social Security checks, new enrollees could see delays in getting their applications processed. People receiving food assistance—already threatened by Republican efforts to slash budgets—might have a struggle to get those benefits. Customer service for many of these programs would likely suffer without funding.

Economic analysts are warning that it looks like this stalemate could be a long one. Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, said he projects a “70% chance of a shutdown, perhaps a long one lasting into the winter.” Terry Haines, founder of Pangaea Policy, said this “won’t be at all like the one-off short ‘shutdowns’” that had minimal effect on markets, and believes it “will take months to resolve.”

That’s a worst-case scenario. But Goldman Sachs economists reckon that the nation’s gross domestic product growth would be reduced by about 0.2 percentage point each week it lasts, but would recover at a similar rate once the money was flowing again.

There are also the intangible effects of the damage to the government’s credibility at home and abroad when half of one of its three branches is melting down, burning the rest of the government along with it. The potential damage isn’t of quite the same magnitude as the debt limit fight the House extremists waged on the country earlier this year. That threatened to upend the global economy, which is why McCarthy and team eventually blinked.

This time around, they truly believe that “less government isn’t a bad thing” and that the government should be shut down, as Republican Rep. Andy Ogles tweeted. What Ogles isn’t telling us is that he’ll still be getting paid, with our tax dollars. The silver lining is that he’ll also be getting the blame.

Poll shows how misguided House Republicans are about a government shutdown

Senate Republicans now saying it's up to McCarthy to avoid a shutdown

House hard-liners brag about 'chaos' as government shutdown looms

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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McCarthy’s Putinist arrogance on display in Ukraine aid negotiations

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Joan McCarter

This is the absolute height of Putinist arrogance from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy: He won’t commit to continue providing Ukraine aid ahead of a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until he personally gets answers. “I have questions for him,” McCarthy told reporters. “What’s the accountability in the money we already gave? What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American people want to know.”

He’s demanding to know Ukraine’s strategic battle plans? Coming from the guy who can’t even lead his own party conference, that’s pathetic and embarrassing. McCarthy did follow up with a weak acknowledgement that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an “atrocity” and that “we want to make sure that ends,” but he added, “I want accountability for whatever the hardworking taxpayers spend their money on.”

Ukraine’s plan for victory is slogging this out until they have driven Russia out of their country and restored their territorial integrity. There can be no other plan. This is real war. And that plan is going to require assistance from the U.S. and allied nations. It’s going to require McCarthy putting on his big-boy pants and standing up to the likes of Putin-boosters like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. As of right now, he’s failed there, still refusing to attach Ukraine aid to the must-pass government funding bill the House is currently struggling over.

This is what real leadership looks like.

Zelensky looks on as Biden at the UN says "Russia alone bears responsibility for this war" and "Russia alone [stands] in the way of peace" "The US together with our allies and parters around the world will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, he adds to applause pic.twitter.com/kqpJn8jFlJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2023

“The United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine,” President Joe Biden declared at the U.N. Tuesday. That message—not to mention the status of the U.S. as a world leader—is being undermined by the circus that McCarthy is letting flourish in the House. That’s something Senate Republicans have to reckon with as well.

The entire Senate will be meeting with Zelenskyy on Thursday, whereas in the House only McCarthy, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and a few other members are currently scheduled to meet with him. That Senate meeting is vital because there’s some wavering now among Republicans in that body, despite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unceasing support for aid and warnings against Republicans going “wobbly” on it.

The best outcome of the Zelenskyy Senate meeting is Republicans finally coming together to save Ukraine—and their party from themselves. Supporting a government funding bill, with Ukraine aid attached, and presenting it to the House as a done deal is the best way they can do that.

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

McConnell warns fellow Republicans not to 'go wobbly' on Ukraine

Can Senate Republicans stop House extremists from helping Putin?

Kerry and Markos talk about what is happening in Ukraine, what needs to be done, and why the fate of Ukraine is tied to democracy’s fate in 2024.

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Motion to vacate: Should Democrats help or laugh?

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in a Catch-22, and he has only himself to blame for it. He’s got until the end of next week to figure out how to keep the government from shutting down—and save his own political skin. So far, he has proven incapable of doing either and created a dynamic in which one of two things is inevitable: a shutdown or a vote calling for his ouster as speaker. At this point, it seems both are likely.

The solution for averting a shutdown is pretty simple: McCarthy has to accept the reality that the Senate and the White House are in Democratic hands, and there is no way that the demands the hard-liners are making on funding will be enacted. If he doesn’t find a compromise and get Democrats in the House to help him pass a stopgap funding bill by the end of next week, the government shuts down and Republicans will get the blame. Because he’s in charge (at least nominally), McCarthy will get the lion’s share of it.

If he does get Democratic help and manage to keep the nation from looking like a banana republic, the nihilists will try to oust him via Rep. Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair. Someone wanted to make that threat abundantly clear, leaving a copy of that resolution in a restroom near the House chamber, where a reporter would be likely to find it—and did find it.

“The thing that would force the motion to vacate is if Kevin has to rely on Democrat votes to pass a CR,” Freedom Caucus Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado told Punchbowl News Tuesday. “I don’t think it has legs until Kevin relies on Democrats.” On the other hand, he said, “I don’t see how we can pass the bill [a CR] without Democrat votes.”

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Wheeee!

Where does that leave Democrats? In a position to let McCarthy dangle.

Since the last time House Republicans took the nation to the brink of disaster on the debt ceiling, a group of conservative Democrats in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus offered to help out by providing enough votes to protect McCarthy from a move to boot him.

That offer is off the table now, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips told reporters, thanks to McCarthy’s capitulation to the worst people in his conference and his greenlighting a toxic impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. There’s no condoning or rewarding that, even from the most conservative of Democrats.

As of now, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is meeting with his various Democratic groups, including the Problem Solvers, and seeing what it is they want. But that will not include capitulating to Republicans. “Leader Jeffries has been very clear,” Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar reiterated Tuesday morning. “They have to get rid of these ideological riders [on appropriations,] they have to fund the government at existing … levels and we need to meet the needs of the Ukrainian people fighting for freedom and the urgent disasters that we have had across this country.”

That’s where Democrats are and that’s where they need to stay so that McCarthy comes to them. They need to leave him stranded and friendless unless and until they extract concessions, like a commitment to realistically fund the government and put any impeachment nonsense on the back burner. McCarthy has a lot more to lose than Democrats do.

Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

Gaetz attacks McCarthy in wild House speech

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

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Former GOP skeptics now support impeachment probe

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Laura Clawson

Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry without a full House vote, at a time when he didn’t appear to have the votes. Republicans have a four-seat House majority, and currently, more than four Republicans indicated that they didn’t see grounds for an inquiry. But McCarthy spoke the support he needed into existence. The kind of ostensibly moderate Republican who didn’t want to see an impeachment inquiry will nonetheless go along with leadership for the sake of partisan advantage.

See, for instance, Rep. Don Bacon. In August, Bacon told NBC News, “We should have more confidence that actual high crimes and misdemeanors occurred before starting a formal impeachment inquiry.” Last week, as McCarthy announced his voteless inquiry, Bacon said, “As of now I don't support” an inquiry, because it “should be based on evidence of a crime that points directly to President Biden, or if the President doesn't cooperate by not providing documents.”

Less than a week later, Bacon’s position has shifted to cautious support. “I don’t think it’s healthy or good for our country. So I wanted to set a high bar. I want to do it carefully. I want to do it conscientiously, do it meticulously," Bacon said. "But it’s been done. So, at this point, we’ll see what the facts are.”

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No person who has observed House Republicans over the past eight months could possibly believe that they will proceed carefully, conscientiously, or meticulously. But Bacon has shown how much his opposition is worth—and how much it will be worth if he ever has to decide how to vote on impeachment.

Similarly, Rep. David Joyce said in August, “You hear a lot of rumor and innuendo … but that’s not fact to me. As a former prosecutor, I think there has to be facts, and I think there has to be due process that we follow, and I’ve not seen any of that today.” Now? In a statement, Joyce said, “I support Speaker McCarthy’s decision to direct the House Committees on Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.” What’s more, he’s “confident” that the committee leaders conducting the inquiry—Oversight Chair James Comer, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith—“will conduct thoughtful and thorough investigations into allegations against the President, which I will carefully review.”

Saying you’re confident Comer and Jordan will be “thoughtful and thorough” is kind of a tell that nothing you’re saying should be believed.

People like Bacon and Joyce know there’s no there there, but once McCarthy said the inquiry was happening, they fell in line. Because they’re Republicans, and the only principle in the Republican Party is power. The problem for them now is that if the inquiry wraps up quickly (not likely—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for it to be “long and excruciatingly painful”), they’ll have to take a vote on it. But if it doesn’t wrap up quickly, it runs the serious risk of alienating voters and showing that House Republicans are unserious about governing.

Strikingly, the House Republican who is speaking out against the impeachment inquiry most loudly is Rep. Ken Buck, a Freedom Caucus member who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post calling the current inquiry a “flimsy excuse for an impeachment.” In the politics of today’s Republican Party, being a member of the far right entitles Buck to take that kind of stance, while Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020 have to regularly show their fealty to the party by supporting extreme positions.

And let’s be real—Buck is likely to end up voting for impeachment, too, if the House ever gets to that point rather than engaging in a dragged-out show trial.

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Republicans ‘in the middle of a civil war’ as shutdown looms

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Who could have predicted it? The trial balloon a handful of House Freedom Caucus members floated with a few “establishment” Main Street Caucus members was shot down Sunday before it even started to rise.

The proposal consisted of a one-month continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through Oct. 31 but slash spending on nearly everything but defense, veterans programs, and disaster relief by more than 8% for the next month. The proposal also featured elements of a racist border funding/policy bill that passed the House in May. Every element of this—the cuts, the racist border bill, and the short time frame—would no doubt have been rejected by the Senate, even if it could pass the House.

However, it won’t pass the House because enough of the hardest hardliners have said no, and there’s no way Democrats would vote for it.

Florida man Rep. Matt Gaetz immediately rejected it. “I will not support this 167 page surrender to Joe Biden,” he said. Freedom Caucus Reps. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Eli Crane of Arizona, and others piled on. That included Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s good pal Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. That’s more than enough to bring the bill down.

According to The Washington Post, House leadership nevertheless has a “goal of uniting all flanks of the conference to support passing the deal.” McCarthy was a bit befuddled by it all Monday morning. "If you're not willing to pass appropriations bills and you're not willing to pass a continuing resolution to allow you to pass the rest of the appropriations bills and you don't want an omnibus, I don't quite know what you want,” he told reporters, summing up all the things the extremists have said they won’t do.

He reportedly did give a hint about how he might try to force his conference together on this: terrorists on the border! He has asked for a classified briefing on the issue. While the Department of Homeland Security has reported that the number of people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list that border agents encountered has increased in the past several months, the key part of that is that border agents stopped them from crossing.

McCarthy intended to bring this proposal to the floor in tandem with the defense appropriations bill the extremists derailed last week. “I gave them an opportunity this weekend to try to work through this, and we’ll bring it to the floor win or lose,” McCarthy said on Fox News’ Sunday morning.

That’s likely to be a “lose” if he tries to ram the bills through together. Democrats will almost surely not help. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl that the House Republicans are "in the middle of a civil war.”

"It's unfortunate,” he added. “But as House Democrats, we're going to continue to try to find common ground with the other side of the aisle. … Hopefully the House Republicans will come along so that we can work to make sure we are funding the government."

The House Republican conference, and thus the whole House, remains in chaos, with just 12 days left for McCarthy to figure out how not to shut the government down.

Sign and send the petition: Pass a clean funding bill. No GOP hostage taking.

House Freedom Caucus plans to shut down the government, blame it on the Senate

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