Category: JimJordan

Republicans roiled as McCarthy likely faces first floor fight over leadership in a century

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy heads into this week on very shaky ground. The wannabe speaker will have a tiny majority—four or five seats, depending on the result in the last uncalled race un California’s 13th District. He’s already got five GOP opponents of his speakership, enough to scuttle it.

That could mean the first floor fight for speaker in exactly 100 years, when Republican Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts had to undergo nine votes over a number of days, with a lot of negotiations and many concessions along the way. The leader of the breakaway Republicans, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, challenged McCarthy in the full GOP conference vote for speaker earlier this month and isn’t going to stop fighting.

“He doesn’t have the votes,” Biggs, a leader of the Freedom Caucus, told NBC News. “Some of the stages of grief include denial, so there will be some denial, and then there’ll be the stage of bargaining where people are trying to figure out … will there be some kind of consensus candidate that emerges.”

RELATED STORY: It took House GOP just one day to show why Democrats need to bomb-proof everything while they can

Biggs and his cohorts—Reps. Bob Good of Virginia, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Matt Rosendale of Montana—are all publicly opposing McCarthy. Good told Politico that he thinks there are at least a dozen who are solid “no” votes. The tally from that secret balloting in the GOP conference was 188-31. That’s a long way from the 218 McCarthy’s going to need, and a lot of bargaining that Democrats are already branding as “corrupt.”

A nonprofit group called Facts First USA, chaired by former GOP Rep. David Jolly of Florida and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, has a memo circulating among Democrats to highlight just how much McCarthy’s going to cave to the maniacs in order to emerge victorious. The messaging in the memo could play to the Republican moderates, who could definitely play the spoiler role in this fight.

“Democrats should undertake a concerted messaging campaign over the next 5 weeks through January 3rd to brand McCarthy’s struggling campaign to win the speakership as a ‘corrupt bargain’ he is striking with ultra MAGA extremists in the Republican caucus to attain the 218 votes he needs to secure the job,” longtime Democratic activist David Brock wrote in the memo.

That’s not going to be hard, looking at what happened on Day One of the GOP majority. That was the day of the press conference from Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the expected Judiciary Committee chair, about their investigation into the Biden family and the whole QAnon Hunter laptop thing they’re into. Brock labeled it an “unhinged rant” in his memo, and he wasn’t wrong.

It’s not going to be at all difficult for Democrats to use this messaging, that McCarthy is going to make a “corrupt bargain with MAGA” maniacs and allow them to “run wild with any conspiracy theory investigation or impeachment in exchange for their vote.” We’re already there. He’s made the unofficial Q spokesperson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a part of his ad hoc leadership team and probably promised her a seat on the Oversight committee. Her pal Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, the white supremacist whisperer, is likely going to get his Oversight seat back—the one that was stripped in the current Congress because he is so dangerous.

Meanwhile, Democrats are in total array as the leadership passes from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to a new generation. They’re also relishing the prospect of watching the GOP civil war play out after McCarthy and crew did their best to derail Pelosi’s very slim—and very successful—majority of the past two years.

“They’re going to be fraught with fractures and friction and challenges and apostates. I wish them well in trying to manage that crowd,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia in a Politico interview. He predicted even worse problems for McCarthy than his predecessors faced. “Paul Ryan and John Boehner both had a bigger majority, and they couldn’t exercise control.” And they both were essentially forced out by the maniacs.

The good part, should House and Senate Democrats manage to get as organized and efficient together as possible, is that McCarthy and crew shouldn’t be able to create a lot of damage legislatively. “I don’t lie awake at night worrying about the bad legislation they are going to pass. Because I don’t think they’re going to pass it,” said Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia.

What’s going to make life even harder for McCarthy is his pledge to end proxy voting in the House. It’s been effect for almost all of this Congress because of the COVID-19 pandemic. McCarthy can’t not end it at this point—he had such a hissy fit over it he took it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to even hear it. He’s got to end it, and that means that on any given day, he would have even fewer votes available to accomplish anything.

Unless he strikes a bargain with moderates and Democrats, assuming he does end up with the speakership. It’s just possible that the corrupt bargain label sticks hard enough to McCarthy that moderates hold out and vote with Democrats on an alternative speaker. It’s not terribly likely, but it’s also not impossible.

Those 31 votes McCarthy didn’t get in the secret ballot aren’t all Freedom maniacs—a big chunk could be up for grabs to allow that 218 votes to go to a consensus candidate from Democrats and the few dozen GOP moderates. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

As the final results of the 2022 midterm elections came into focus this past week, the lack of clarity in the GOP’s leadership also became apparent. Kerry and Markos break down what this means for Democratic voters going forward and how Donald Trump’s campaign for president is a lose lose proposition for Republicans.  

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Democratic strategists launch ‘war room’ project to investigate and unmask GOP House inquisitors

Posted on by Dartagnan

If Hunter Biden’s alleged substance abuse issues, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 strategy and alleged relationship to China, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ immigration policies are fair game for exploration in House Republicans’ planned, upcoming Benghazi-style show trials, then it only seems fair that Rep. Jim Jordan’s alleged enabling of sexual predators, the ties of Rep. Paul Gosar and others in the Republican Party to virulent white supremacist organizations, even Rep. Matt Gaetz’s alleged afterparty cocaine antics get similar scrutiny. After all, the American people certainly deserve to be fully apprised of the character of the people most responsible for these hearings in order to best make an informed judgment.

Although they won’t have the ability to issue the subpoenas themselves, there is nothing stopping Democrats or their agents from researching public records or conducting detailed interviews with folks who have first-hand knowledge of the sterling character qualities of these House Republicans, all of whom appear so intent on highlighting their own moral authority in these hearings. It might also prove useful to understand exactly who funds their campaigns to satisfy American citizens that there are no hidden interests motivating them in their official duties.

Others appear to agree. As reported by Heidi Przybyla and Jordain Carney for POLITICO, Democratic strategists have launched a “war room” that’s dedicated to exploring, highlighting and publicizing the character and connections of the very Republican inquisitors (and their colleagues) who will be inflicting this investigation-o-rama upon the American people.

RELATED STORY: GOP holds first press conference after midterms and says it only wants to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop

As Przybala and Carney write:

The newly relaunched Congressional Integrity Project initiative, details of which were shared first with POLITICO, will include rapid response teams, investigative researchers, pollsters and eventually a paid media campaign to put congressional Republicans “squarely on the defense,” founder Kyle Herrig said in an interview.

The “multimillion dollar” effort is designed to create an effective counter-narrative that will be impossible for anyone to ignore (except, perhaps, Fox News).

It’s designed to serve as the party’s “leading war room” to push back on House Republican investigations, Herrig said in an interview. He added that the project would “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work, and hold them accountable for ignoring the urgent priorities of all Americans in order to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump and MAGA Republicans.”

The project (which, according to POLITICO, has been cleared by Democratic House leadership) will “immediately” target the chairpersons and lead participants of these investigations. That laudable goal notwithstanding, there appears to be no reason for this project to limit itself to merely unmasking Republicans on the Oversight Committees alone. Hunter Biden, for example, is a private citizen whose name Republicans (like Gaetz, for example) have seen fit to drag through the mud at every turn.

RELATED STORY: Let's look at the case against Hunter Biden and his laptop: A photo essay

Likewise, Fauci holds no elected post in government. If Republicans intend to score their political points at the expense of intruding on these people’s privacy and personal lives—or cast unfounded aspersions on their alleged motivations—they would appear to have forfeited the right to protest any counter-investigations and publication of the foibles of their own colleagues and associates: 

As the old saying goes, “What’s good for the goose …” 

One of the leaders of the project, Democratic strategist Brad Woodhouse, emphasized to POLITICO that their group will employ “every tactic available” in order to ensure that we Americans, forced to witness these spectacles, will have a clear picture of these Republican interrogators and their motivations. The project will also employ the services of former Obama administration officials, as well as senior aides and advisers from President Joe Biden’s transition team and former Senate office.

As Przybyla and Carney explain:

The Congressional Integrity Project is also aiming to raise funds for a paid media campaign, including dedicated websites, digital ads, mobile billboards, newspaper ads and, occasionally, TV ad buys. Its public opinion research will be shared with like-minded organizations and congressional allies to contrast GOP investigations with issues the American public cares most about, project leaders said.

Their overall goal is to ensure that the Republicans’ planned inquisition prompts a voter backlash from Americans dismayed at these pointless, staged fiascos, and specifically seeks to ensure there is no repeat of Republicans’ colossally wasteful, two-year “Benghazi” debacle.

So, by all means, let the games begin. No doubt there are some families of Ohio State alumni, at least, who might express an interest. 

As Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock prepares for his Dec. 6 Senate runoff against Republican Herschel Walker, Warnock and the people of Georgia need all the help we can give. Click here to donate $3 or more to Team Warnock today!

It took House GOP just one day to show why Democrats need to bomb-proof everything while they can

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

It’s going exactly how Republicans promised it would if they took the House: vengeance. Nothing but vengeance. Policy agenda? As if.

The first press conference of their majority Thursday, was from the Oversight and Judiciary Committee chairs laying out the number one target for their vendetta. It was all Hunter Biden’s laptop, all the time. A thing that is entirely not real.

On the second day of their majority, Rep. Jim Jordan’s Judiciary committee sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding the testimony of White House staff about the administration’s “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.” Another thing that never happened. All four of the people they are demanding testimony from are women, and some are women of color.

That was just the start. Jordan also sent letters to Justice, the FBI, Departments of Education, and Homeland Security telling them to “anticipate requiring testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews” from dozens more officials, many again of whom are people of color and women.

What about inflation? What about gas prices? What about fentanyl? What about violent crime? What about immigration? What about making sure everyone can afford to go to Disneyland?

As if.

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They are not interested in making government work. They won’t try to make government work. Which is why it is imperative that Democrats do all the stuff while they have the majority. That includes figuring out how to put the debt ceiling out of their reach, just for a start. That one’s a necessity.

So is doing the least they can on protecting the next presidential election by pushing the electoral count reforms through. We have some breathing room on that with the great results in some swing state elections, but fixing this is important, particularly now that larger election reforms can’t get done.

It would also be super smart to revive the child tax credit monthly payments from the 2021 COVID-19 relief bill Democrats passed, and generally do do everything they possibly can to help regular people and to make a very big deal out of it—the Democrats’ Christmas Gift to America—to start making the case for 2024.

Which will have to happen the week after next, because they’re already gone until after Thanksgiving. Oh, well. In the meantime, enjoy the Washington Post showing us what a fool Kevin McCarthy is, and relish how his red wave became a pink dribble.

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McCarthy hands the detonator to the bomb-throwers

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Republicans have been promising for weeks that if they took the House of Representatives, it would be payback time for Democrats. Sure, they had a big show around releasing their “Commitment to America” to attempt to show that they had some kind of intent to act like real responsible adults put in charge of a nation, but it was all show and no substance.

Now they have their teeny-tiny majority, they’re doing exactly what they said they’d do: seek revenge on Democrats for winning and doing popular stuff. This was the first public statement from the House GOP after securing their gerrymandered, tiny majority.

Hunter Biden's laptop is REAL.

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) November 17, 2022

That’s previewing the first official press conference where Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, the incoming chairs of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees respectively, announce their ridiculous probes into Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. They gave a preview—where else—on Sean Hannity’s show Wednesday. “We are going to make it very clear that this is now an investigation of President Biden,” Comer told Hannity. Because bogus investigations have worked out so well for them.

It is of course not just Biden, but also Anthony Fauci who is retiring this year. Jordan’s “FBI & DOJ politicization” allegations include his 1,050 page “report,” 1,000 pages of which are copies of the letters they’ve sent to the Biden administration. (This includes 470 pages that are all the same five-page letter sent to U.S. Attorneys.) There’s also Afghanistan and the border and, of course, impeachment investigations from Biden on down.

Speaking of investigations, The New York Times reports: “In a closed-door meeting of Republicans on Monday, right-wing lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia extracted a promise that their leaders would investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Department for their treatment of defendants jailed in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”

Over at NBC News, Scott Wong says: “McCarthy and other leaders will have their hands full as they try to keep their wafer-thin majority united and corral conservative bomb throwers who are clamoring to shut down the government and impeach President Joe Biden and his top allies.”

News flash: McCarthy and the other leaders are the bomb-throwers.

Oh, and that bit about taking the debt ceiling hostage to force Social Security and Medicare cuts? They mean that, too. Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, told Wong, “As it relates to the debt ceiling, Americans rightly expect that their elected officials will use every tool we have to fix whatever crises the country faces—whether it’s the spike in prices, an unsecured border, rising debt, you name it.

“Republicans will use every tool we have to bring relief to Americans and put the country back on the right track.”

They mean it. Which means it is imperative that Democrats use this lame duck to keep them away from the most dangerous weapons.

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House Judiciary Republicans release lie-packed, inflated 'report.' Will the media bite?

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We're now in the second week of election overtime and there are still plenty of major races yet to be decided—as well as tons more great news for Democrats to exult over on this week's episode of The Downballot. On the uncalled races front, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard dive into a pair of House races in California and several legislatures that could flip from red to blue, including the Pennsylvania House. Speaking of legislatures, the Davids also go deep on what the astonishing flips in Michigan will mean for progressives and particularly organized labor.

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House Judiciary Republicans release lie-packed, inflated ‘report.’ Will the media bite?

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

With four days to go before Election Day, the Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee have released a very serious report that is in no way a stunt. Now we get to see how much the media bites.

The report is supposedly about “FBI & DOJ politicization.” In translation: “The FBI and Department of Justice dared investigate Republicans, which can never be a legitimate thing to do.” For instance, it characterizes the FBI’s seizure of Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone, which was backed by a court-authorized warrant, as the FBI having “stalked a Republican Congressman while on a family vacation to seize his cell phone.” Basically, if the FBI does its job and that is inconvenient for a Republican, it becomes evidence of politicization, according to the report from the Jim Jordan-led Republican committee members.

RELATED STORY: As DOJ reveals Trump concealing national security documents, GOP response is ... pathetic

The document also dedicates space to complaints about the Justice Department investigating threats against school board members (portrayed by Republicans as the Justice Department investigating parents simply for speaking in nonthreatening ways at school board meetings), accuses the FBI and Justice Department of “Artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism” (while Republicans desperately need statistics about domestic violent extremism artificially deflated since it’s their people mostly committing this form of terrorism), and “Clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke, leftist agenda.” Haha, yes, the FBI is well known for its woke leftist agenda. Bunch of wild-eyed dope-smoking antifa hippies over there. (Fewer than 5% of FBI agents are Black, by the way.)

Here’s a measure of how seriously this report should be taken: The House Judiciary Republicans are promoting it as a “1,000 Page Report.”

1,000 of the 1,050 pages are copies of letters Rs have sent to the Biden administration — including 94 copies of the same five page letter to all US attorneys. https://t.co/I0Erhs2u9n

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 4, 2022

That’s 470 pages of the same letter out of the 1,000 pages that Republicans are bragging about to make this sound like a detailed, meaty report.

They got their headline from Axios, which ran with “Scoop: House GOP to release 1,000-page road map for Biden FBI probe,” although they also got an Axios “reality check” noting that “Trump himself sought to exert pressure on his own Justice Department throughout his presidency, beginning with his demands for ‘loyalty’ from former FBI director James Comey and culminating in his attempts to use the agency to remain in power after the 2020 election” and quoting former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman: “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”

But to House Republicans like Jordan, it’s justified and righteous if a Republican fires an FBI director for refusing to offer loyalty and politicized and corrupt if the FBI executes a search based on a court warrant on a Republican. Their position is really that simple.

Even given all the repetition, the document still contains a large number of falsehoods. Check this out:

The House Judiciary GOP's new report features a ... very charitable summary of Trump's level of cooperation in the MAL documents case pic.twitter.com/jJIFuQmXbl

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) November 4, 2022

In this account, the FBI and Justice Department’s efforts to get Donald Trump to give back the documents he stole become Trump graciously allowing them to try, and every so often coughing up a few more documents or adding security to the storage room where he was keeping the stolen documents.

This is the best part of that passage, though: “On September 13, a federal judge unsealed additional portions of the affidavit—although still largely redacted—that showed President Trump had returned even more documents to the Department than previously known.” So generous of him, right?

But! “Despite the publicly available level of cooperation, Attorney General Garland personally approved the decision to seek a warrant for excessive and unprecedented access to President Trump’s private residence. FBI agents spent approximately nine hours rummaging through President Trump’s personal belongings. They collected more than 11,000 documents, more than 1,600 press articles and printed materials, 19 items of clothing or gifts, and 33 books. They also collected about 100 documents with classification markings.”

I don’t know about you, but to me, following “Trump had returned even more documents to the Department than previously known” with a long list of the things he still had is not exculpatory. Sure, he had more than 11,000 government documents (because that’s a key word missing from their “more than 11,000 documents”—more than 11,000 government documents) in addition to the classified ones, but let’s give the man credit for having returned anything at all, eh? What this shows is that Trump took a damn lot of government documents. And about the “gifts” the FBI seized: Presidents and other government officials are not allowed to keep gifts they are given in their official capacity unless they buy them from the government. Otherwise, gifts are to go to the National Archives. It’s not like we’re talking about Valentine’s Day gifts from Melania and Ivanka.

This report is a political stunt intended to whip up the Republican base with days to go before the election. It’s more than that, though. If Republicans get control of the House and Jordan is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, “This report is a road map of where [Jordan] will go,” a Republican staffer told Axios. It’s a message about how Republicans will govern—through inflated claims about things as basic as how many pages a report has, baseless accusations, and insistence that any attempt to put limits on Republican wrongdoing is illegitimate.

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How should we be reading the 2022 polls, in light of shifting margins and past misses? In this episode of The Downballot, Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen joins us to explain how his firm weights polls to reflect the likely electorate; why Democratic leads in most surveys this year should be treated as smaller than they appear because undecided voters lean heavily anti-Biden; and the surprisingly potent impact abortion has had on moving the needle with voters despite our deep polarization.

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Lindsey Graham’s message in Georgia: ‘I want every liberal to be miserable come election night’

Posted on by Aysha Qamar

If you’re wondering how Republicans intend to fix the problems they keep complaining about—namely inflation, gas prices, and the downtrend in Americans’ overall financial stability—you’ll have to wait. Right now, they’re campaigning on complaining about those things, complaining about “the libs,” complaining about imaginary crime waves, and offering their own potential voters absolutely no relief from real problems. 

Take, for example, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s closing comments in Georgia. Now, it’s not new that Graham is saying something ignorant and controversial, but this week the Republican Senator has been on a real spree. Campaigning for GOP Senate candidate JD Vance, Graham joked about mass suicide on Tuesday, Business Insider reported.

"You got something really special here. This guy is going to change the Republican Party, change the Senate, all for the better," Graham said at a Republican-hosted dinner party, referring to Vance. "But here's some words that really rattle the Democratic Party. What's the worst thing the Democratic Party wants to hear? Chairman Jim Jordan. There are gonna be people jumping off bridges in San Francisco by the thousands. You know, New York City, they may literally shut down.”

According to News Nation, Jordan, currently the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, is the talk of the town since he has pledged to conduct investigations into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) if the GOP retakes the House.

It doesn’t really matter why Jordan plans to investigate the FBI and DOJ (it’s for investigating Trump); what matters is how little these hypothetical future investigations matter to everyday American families, and how little interest the GOP seems to have in actually alleviating the issues they claim Democrats have caused. 

And, worse, given the increase in mental health issues across the nation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this joke is especially cruel. According to The Los Angeles Times, the Golden Gate Bridge has seen the highest number of suicides on any bridge in the country—with an average of 30 people dying each year from taking the jump.

We all know Republicans hate Democrats, but that doesn't excuse jokes about suicide and violence, and it doesn’t solve problems voters need solutions for.

And, of course, it’s not only Graham. This week, though, it is mostly Graham. In response to allegations that GOP Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker pressured not one but two women to have abortions, Graham joined Walker in hosting a press conference. 

Not only did Graham take that opportunity to support his awful friend, but once again took the chance to slam Democrats.

Graham: They're scared to death of Herschel Walker because if Herschel walker becomes a Republican, maybe every other young child in America of color might want to be a Republican. pic.twitter.com/PRwuLMZ0EK

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 27, 2022

If Herschel Walker becomes a Republican? At the end of the day, Walker has consistently failed to offer plans for the primary topics of his television ads—inflation, supporting small businesses, and increasing clean energy. Graham, too, has failed to focus on the issues he promised Americans that he will uphold. Instead, he has taken to the tactic of creating fear. Americans need more than petty name-calling, and that seems to be the totality of Republican ideas. 

By emphasizing violence and encouraging pain, he is appealing to voters who are in favor of such methods—in addition to normalizing that such tactics are okay. Of course, just like he has done with other comments like this one on suicide, he will claim it was all just a joke. But how is hoping for individuals to experience violence and wanting ‘every liberal to be miserable come election night' a joke? And how does it fix inflation?

Graham: I want every liberal to be miserable come election night. pic.twitter.com/7c1o1au1sQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 27, 2022

Phrases of the same nature were called jokes before they led to events like Jan. 6, when individuals were hoping to harass, beat, and even kill Democratic members of Congress. 

Encouraging violence is not all Republicans have a trend of doing, though. Scapegoating names they know will rile up those who aren’t in tune with the news or truth is another tactic. Rep. Ralph Norman used this tactic this week when claiming that America was run by elitists—dragging Barack Obama’s name in and again revealing the only real plans Republicans have: Targeting Democrats with a barrage of baseless subpoenas. “We are going to subpoena as many people as we can,” he said, claiming that Biden was not running the country and that Obama and Eric Holder were. How are Obama and Eric Holder still living rent-free in his head almost 6 years after leaving office? What’s next? Will they drag Hillary Clinton in for questioning? (Probably, actually. Let’s not assume they have limits.)

Ralph Norman says a “cabal” led by Barack Obama and Eric Holder is secretly running the country: “Biden is not running this country. There is a cabal of unelected elitists who are running this country .. Barack Obama is involved .. Eric Holder ..” pic.twitter.com/J2fUxMtwHf

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) October 26, 2022

Norman said:

"And I think what he's saying is putting the country through impeachment, what you get could be even worse. We got our hands full. I don't — there’s no question about that. But we're going to subpoena as many people as we can: We are going to hopefully have consequences, starting with Mayorkas, Wray with the FBI, I mean a whole host of things. The whole administration is a rogue administration. And I guess we all know, Joe Biden is not running this country. There is a cabal of unelected elitists who are running this country. Probably Barack Obama is involved, probably Eric Holder and — but who knows. We know it's not Biden. But the impeachment deal is a long drawn out thing, and if there's anybody that was coherent they could take over, that would not ruin the country, but it's not possible with Kamala Harris."

Meanwhile, Democrats are again left to be the grown-ups in the room. Running campaigns and governing based on bipartisan ideals, even to the chagrin of the progressive left, and as usual, Democrats are tasked with the heavy lifting of creating legitimate policy positions and actionable ideas around health care, climate change, and national security. 

Related Story: Another woman has come forward with claims that Herschel Walker was involved in her abortion

If someone you know is struggling emotionally or having a hard time, you can be the difference in getting them the help they need. Dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Jordan is pushing for Mayorkas impeachment based on ridiculous lie that ‘we no longer have a border’

Posted on by Gabe Ortiz

Some of the worst of the worst of House Republicans are endorsing the impeachment of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) secretary should they take the chamber this November, CNN reports.

It needs to be stated first and foremost that these Republicans haven’t laid out any legitimate claims to justify the removal of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, because there are none. Yet Jim Jordan has falsely claimed that he should be impeached by the chamber “because we no longer have a border.” That’s news to all of us. Jordan could possibly chair the committee that would be tasked with impeachment proceedings should the GOP take the House.

CNN reports that while Jordan and fellow extremists say impeachment should go forward, “Kevin McCarthy supposedly hasn’t really taken a side yet.” His allies claim, at least right now, that there’s “little appetite” for the idea. But that’s a ridiculous thought. McCarthy has already gone in with the extremists, and he’s made it clear extremism controls the agenda.

CNN reports that “Democrats argue the talk is politically motivated,” but that’s exactly what it is. While the insurrectionist president was legitimately impeached (twice) for abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, and inciting a deadly insurrection, the CNN report itself plainly states the political nature of the push. Some Republicans “believe they’ll have an easier time convincing McCarthy and their GOP colleagues to go along with impeaching a Biden political appointee versus a President who was elected to his position, a more politically tenable move that still would throw red meat to the base,” the report said.

So, Mayorkas appears to be the likeliest target. While the GOP bill targeting him has just 31 signatures from the 200 plus Republican caucus, it’s the most out of the other impeachment bills they’ve pushed, CNN said. Plus, targeting him falls in line with their sloppy campaign lying about immigrants rather than talking about their extremist anti-abortion agenda. 

Any impeachment in the House requires conviction in the Senate for full removal, but in that chamber, just two senators are supportive of the idea—and it’s two of the ones you’d expect. The Texas Tribune reports that Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham wrote a letter that claimed the number of apprehensions at the border were “grounds for impeachment.”

But if they really believe that (and they don’t), both Cruz and Graham would’ve sent that letter to Chad Wolf, who was the unlawfully appointed acting DHS secretary under the insurrectionist president. On Wolf’s corrupt watch, the anti-asylum Title 42 policy that was pushed by noted white supremacist Stephen Miller and that used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers in violation of their rights led to increased encounters from April 2020 on, American Immigration Council said. 

But we didn’t see either Cruz or Graham calling on Wolf to resign after he was found by a nonpartisan government watchdog to have been illegally installed in office, did we? Nor did we see Cruz or Graham call on Wolf to resign when he presided over a blatantly political event that was later deemed illegal by the Office of Special Counsel. It’s almost like they’re just full of it. Shrugs.

Former aides of then-President Donald Trump say GOP lawmakers sought presidential pardons after the attack on the U.S. Capitol during Day 5 of the Jan. 6 committee hearings. https://t.co/BgG7aQdkrG pic.twitter.com/sC0qto0toY

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2022

“I believe Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” House Republican Andy Biggs claimed to CNN. “You might see some (impeachment pushes) on Biden, but certainly Mayorkas, what he has done, has just been unconscionable. I’m pushing hard.” Do you think he’ll push as hard as when he suggested to the insurrectionist president’s chief of staff some ways to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election? Or maybe as hard as when he sought a pardon from the insurrectionist president, according to Jan. 6 testimony. When Republicans scream about lawlessness, it always so much more about their own behavior than anything else.

Republicans suddenly claim to be the biggest allies of the nation they once denounced as corrupt

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

It’s taken Republicans a little while to figure out their approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but—for now at least—they’ve settled on pretending to be the best friends Ukraine ever had. It falls apart immediately if you look at the Republican record over the past few years, but it’s what they’re going with.

Most notoriously, of course, there are these 10 words: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” That’s what Donald Trump said as he withheld military aid in an attempt to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into manufacturing dirt on now-President Joe Biden for Trump’s personal political gain. And every single Republican other than Sen. Mitt Romney thought this was just fine. Great, really. Many actively defended Trump’s actions, which often meant trashing Ukraine. But that’s not all.

In the midst of trying to defend Trump, Rep. Jim Jordan called Ukraine “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet.” He also condemned efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine as themselves corrupt because Biden was involved.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise has pointed to the same ouster of a corrupt prosecutor in Ukraine as problematic because it involved then-Vice President Biden threatening to withhold aid if the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, wasn’t fired. “If you go back to when Joe Biden was vice president, he bragged about how he withheld a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, when Joe Biden was vice president, because he said he wanted a prosecutor to get fired, who ultimately from reports we saw was fired,” Scalise said Tuesday. The difference here is that Biden was, as a public matter of administration policy, talking about aid that would be withheld as part of an international anti-corruption effort, with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund also calling for Shokin’s firing. It’s kind of different from a secret phone call and an ask seeking personal benefit.

According to Scalise, “President Zelenskyy had called President Trump to thank him for the leadership that he provided.” In reality, it was part of Zelenskyy’s desperate efforts to get some kind of public show of support from the United States that might help ease the threat Ukraine faced from Russia, and the call came as Trump’s informal emissaries, led by Rudy Giuliani, were pressuring him to announce the very same corrupt investigation that Trump then asked for as “a favor” when Zelenskyy asked to buy Javelin missiles.

In their effort to rewrite how Trump’s first impeachment speaks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Republican view of Ukraine more generally, Republicans like Scalise are returning to an old talking point. “When President Zelenskyy was asking for things like Javelin missiles that the Biden and Obama administration said no to, President Trump said yes and actually helped Ukraine get those tank-busting missiles that they needed and frankly, they’ve been using,” Scalise said. In that, he echoed Trump's February statement claiming, “it was me that got Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins) when the previous Administration was sending blankets.” 

The Obama administration didn’t send lethal aid like Javelins in part because officials were concerned that the Ukrainian army didn’t have the capability to use them. But that changed over time—as we’re seeing, the Ukrainian military has dramatically improved since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. What the Obama administration did send was not blankets but UAVs, armored Humvees, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices, and more. And when Trump did send Javelins, it was only after his advisers convinced him that it would be good for U.S. defense contractors.

Now that Republicans have figured out that supporting Ukraine is their best bet, politically speaking, they are all in—to the point where you have to worry they’re going to do their best to provoke a nuclear war. Immediately after the invasion, Republicans were blaming Biden for not having stopped it. They’ve since moved on to blaming him for not doing enough to end it. “If Joe Biden won’t make him pay, the Republican Party must,” Sen. Tom Cotton said in a speech on Monday. But what does that look like when a no-fly zone would mean a world war? That’s the kind of question that needs to take precedence above making a president from the opposite party look bad. But putting anything above partisan concerns is not how Republicans operate.

Trump White House call record omissions raise eyebrows

Posted on by Brandi Buchman

As a congressional watchdog calls for a new probe into allegations that former President Donald Trump regularly destroyed presidential records, the Jan. 6 committee has simultaneously discovered on Thursday that a series of critical gaps exist in White House call logs secured from the National Archives. 

First reported by The New York Times, the gaps in the official White House telephone logs from Jan. 6, 2021, are not a complete surprise—Trump was well known to use his private cell phone or his staff’s cell phones when conducting affairs or speaking to aides, legislators, and others.

The Jan. 6 committee has not yet suggested that the omissions in the call logs are the result of any tampering on behalf of the former president. A committee spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment to confirm whether the logs it has received are all of the logs requested are just a portion of those records. 

White House call logs itemize who has telephoned the White House or who called out and will also include, generally, the date, time, and length of a call.

The Jan. 6 committee has received a plethora of documents and testimony already confirming that Trump spoke to several key officials throughout Jan. 6, including one call made to then-Vice President Mike Pence and legislators like Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. 

The call to Lee was meant for Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Lee passed his mobile phone to Tuberville and the Alabama lawmaker spoke to Trump for just under 10 minutes. Their discussion unfolded as the president’s supporters were storming the Capitol. 

That entire exchange, however, did not occur on an official White House telephone, making the committee’s findings on Thursday all the more concerning. 

CNN reported that sources who have reviewed a presidential diary from Jan. 6—also obtained by the Archives and shared with the committee—noted that it has “scant information and no record of phone calls for several hours” after Trump returned to the Oval Office up until he recorded a national address in the Rose Garden. 

In addition to calls to Pence and Senator Lee, Trump also had a tense phone call with House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Jan. 6.

During Trump’s second impeachment, McCarthy told a fellow Republican lawmaker that when he finally reached Trump by phone during the assault, Trump was insistent that “antifa” had breached the complex.

McCarthy told Trump it was his supporters and Trump hung up in a huff.

Since then, McCarthy has aligned himself completely with the former president, refusing to cooperate with a voluntary request from Jan. 6 investigators issued weeks ago. The probe is now weighing whether to officially subpoena the House leader.

Doing so would be a historic move and an outcome the California Republican has arguably long courted. McCarthy was opposed to the formation of a Jan. 6 commission from the outset unless it promised to review other, unrelated external security threats posed to lawmakers and focused on intelligence failures of the U.S. Capitol Police.

He later refused to negotiate with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over the committee’s membership. After his proposal to seat two staunch Trump allies on the committee, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio—who was, even then, considered to be a potential material witness to the overall probe—McCarthy took his ball and went home.

With negotiations killed, the House went forward and the committee was formed. The House Republican has since regularly opposed the committee’s work and has taken up keen alliances with the uber-conservative, pro-Trump, anti-Jan. 6 investigation House Freedom Caucus.  

Though the gaps in the White House call logs obtained so far may correlate to Trump’s prolific use of unofficial cell phones, sources who reviewed the logs did say Thursday that at least one entry positively confirms Trump attempted to call Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 before the siege.

The official record does not reportedly show Pence answering, and the source said, according to CNN, that there is also no record showing Pence returned Trump’s call. 

Interestingly, Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser at the time, informed the committee during recent closed-door testimony that Pence and Trump spoke on the phone on Jan. 6 and further, that the president’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, witnessed the call. 

This was the call in which Trump pressured Pence to stop or delay the certification. If the White House call records obtained Thursday show that a call was made to Pence but Pence did not pick up, then Kellogg’s testimony would seem to suggest that the pressure call to the vice president happened on another phone, and not an official White House telephone. 

Like the select committee, the Archives did not immediately return request for comment Thursday about whether all of the White House call logs have been remitted to the panel in full or if others are still on the way. 

The Jan. 6 committee has issued sweeping orders to telecommunications companies, including Verizon and T-Mobile, for the phone records of other Trump White House officials, family members, and orbiters. More than 100 people have been part of those requests; the companies have largely cooperated thus far, according to court records. 

Select committee chairman Bennie Thompson has aired his concerns about Trump’s prolific unofficial cell phone use in the past. 

Norm Eisen, a legal analyst for CNN, said Thursday that the gap of records in the White House call logs and related diaries “raises a set of very serious concerns, including questions of whether there was an intentional effort to circumvent the usual system and, if so, who directed it and for what purpose.” 

Jim Jordan isn’t happy about being called before the Jan. 6 Select Committee, but it could be worse

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan received a letter from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, inviting him to voluntarily appear before the committee and discuss “in detail” his communications with Donald Trump on Jan. 6. And Jan. 5. And every other date. The committee would also like to hear about Jordan’s communications with Trump’s campaign staff and legal team involved in planning the multi-stage coup.

This letter was phrased in a way that acknowledges the extraordinary nature of a House committee call for a member of the House to testify. It’s also phrased in a way that makes it clear the committee already knows Jordan was deeply involved in planning the attempted overthrow of the legitimate government. Mostly because Jordan can’t stop running his mouth when talking to right-wing media. It’s not so much that the letter is couched in a subtle threat that failure to cooperate will net Jordan a subpoena, even if the evidence comes out anyway. Because it’s really not that subtle.

On Wednesday evening, Jordan did what any Republican called to tell the truth before the nation does: He went on Fox News to whine and complain that the committee isn’t playing fair. But if Jordan thinks that he can just join the long queue of Trump advisers who are doing their best to delay until an expected Republican victory in 2022 can bail them out, he may be surprised. Jim Jordan could find himself arrested.

As The Hill reports, Jordan went on Fox to speak with Brian Kilmeade—who happens to have also sent texts to the White House on Jan. 6, and might be facing his own request to testify—and explain that he has “concerns” about the select committee. In particular, he alleged that the committee has been “altering documents.”

“We're going to review the letter, but I gotta be honest with you. I got real concerns about any committee that will take a document and alter it and present it to the American people, completely mislead the American people like they did last week,” said Jordan.

That reference to “altering documents” apparently refers to how Adam Schiff read part of a Jordan text earlier in the week, rather than giving the whole thing. The portion that Schiff read was repeating a portion of the coup plot indicating that Mike Pence "should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all." Because Schiff didn’t read the full text, Jordan is accusing him of altering documents.

The full text doesn’t make this better. If anything, it shows how serious Jordan was about backing the planned coup.

“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all—in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. ‘No legislative act,’  wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).  Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all.”

Nothing that Schiff omitted lessens the impact of what Jordan wrote in any way. In fact, the full text is much worse. The talk about “altering documents” is simply Jordan mulling an excuse not to appear—in this case, an excuse that was also regularly aired on Fox during Trump’s impeachment hearings.

But as MSNBC reports, Jordan might want to think twice about simply refusing to show up before the select committee. As one of six Republican representatives known to have worked directly with Trump and his campaign to overturn the outcome of the election, Jordan is of keen interest to the committee, and a key participant in events leading up to Jan. 6.

Rep. Scott Perry—who brought would-be attorney-general Jeffery Clark to the White House—has already refused to appear before the committee, If Jordan joins Perry in refusing to provide vital documents and testimony, the House could be entering unknown territory.

So what happens if Perry—or, for example, his fellow schemers Jordan and Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas—gets a subpoena? The short answer is that we don’t really know — there’s never been a situation like this before. “There is no established historical or legal precedent regarding congressional power to enforce subpoenas against members of Congress,” law professor Kimberly Wehle wrote in The Atlantic in August. “But if the bipartisan committee has to defend the subpoenas in federal court, it could make a strong argument that the Constitution allows a court to order compliance.”

Of course, Jordan, Perry, Gohmert, et. al, would be happy to join the long line of Republicans now facing court cases over subpoenas from the select committee. Stonewalling until the GOP rides in to save them on the back of an angry midterm is the bet they are all making. However, there is one thing that keeps getting mentioned, then carefully packed away again—the power of inherent contempt.

Congress’ ability to simply arrest someone directly, without going through a request to the DOJ and a long parade through the ladder of courts, hasn’t been trotted out in a long time. But a special case … could be a special case.

While the discussion is on on shakier ground with private citizens, the fact is that each house of Congress is explicitly allowed to make its own rules under the Constitution. It is also then allowed to enforce those rules as it sees fit, granting it the power of censure and expulsion. And courts have yet to rule on how long, say, a member of Congress could be held while defying a lawful subpoena.

The prospect that Jim Jordan will actually be locked up in some repurposed storeroom beneath the House chambers remains slim. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to start very visibly clearing out some space and testing some padlocks, just to make sure that Jordan, along with the other five Republicans at the top of the list, knows the possibility is still there.

If the Senate can be harangued for failing to end the filibuster even for the purpose of saving democracy, then the same pressure should be applied to the House when it comes to inherent contempt. No one likes the idea. That doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.