House Republicans rally around ‘idiotic’ plan to punish judges

Posted on March 19, 2025 by Emily Singer

Egged on by wannabe dictator Donald Trump, House Republicans are pushing GOP leadership to let them embark on impeachment proceedings against federal judges who dare to rule against their Dear Leader—a time-consuming and destined-to-fail effort that harms the rule of law and could even wound the Republican Party in elections moving forward.

Multiple Republican lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against four federal judges who recently ruled against the Trump administration.

“Congress has the constitutional power to impeach rogue activist judges—and we intend to use it,” Republican Rep. Brendan Gill of Texas, who filed articles of impeachment against a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes that were deporting alleged Venezuelan immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador, wrote in a post on X.

House Republicans are pushing for the impeachments to move forward even as Politico reported that some GOP lawmakers view the effort to be “idiotic.”

“You don’t impeach judges who make decisions you disagree with, because that happens all the time,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico in early March. “What you do is you appeal, and if you’re right, then you’re going to win on appeal.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

Even Chief Justice John Roberts warned that impeachment is not the way to handle disagreements with judicial decisions.

“We are going to keep the impeachments coming,” Republican Rep. Andy Ogles Tennessee wrote in a post on X. Ogles himself filed articles of impeachment against a judge who ordered the Trump administration to restore websites it had taken down to comply with Trump's executive order targeting “gender ideology extremism.”

But complicating things for Republican leadership is that Trump blessed the impeachment efforts on Tuesday, saying that the judge who tried to block his effort to deport immigrants without due process is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."

“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote in a deranged Truth Social post.

Co-President Elon Musk, who has threatened to fund primary challenges to Republicans who don’t do what Trump says, also wants judicial impeachments.

“This is a judicial coup. We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Tuesday after another federal judge ruled against the Trump administration, this time on its attempted ban of transgender troops.

Given that GOP leaders acquiesce to all of Trump's wants, no matter how immoral or unconstitutional, his demand puts them in a difficult place of having to choose what’s right or to make their Dear Leader happy.

“Everything is on the table,” Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, told Politico. An unnamed spokesperson to House Speaker Mike Johnson also told Politico that judges “with political agendas pose a significant threat” and that Johnson "looks forward to working with the Judiciary Committee as they review all available options under the Constitution to address this urgent matter.”

But as aides for Johnson publicly said all options are on the table, top GOP aides privately admitted the impeachment route is stupid and will take up time the House needs to pass the rest of Trump’s destructive and unpopular agenda.

“It’s never going to happen,” an unnamed senior Republican aide told Politico. “There aren’t the votes.”

Plus, forcing Republicans to vote on impeachment could be politically damaging for the GOP.

Polling from February—when Republicans began crowing about impeaching judges who ruled against Trump—showed that voters want Trump to follow court orders.

"This court issue is a big loser for Trump," CNN's Harry Enten wrote in a post on X, referring to a Washington Post poll from February. "The belief that Trump must follow court orders is more popular than Mother Teresa: 84% of all adults, 92% of Dems, 82% of Indies & 79% of the GOP."

Other polls have similar findings, including an NBC News survey released Wednesday. It found that a plurality of voters (43%) believe the president and executive branch have too much power, as opposed to the 28% who believe the Supreme Court and judicial branch have too much.

The cherry on top of this for GOP leaders is that their members would be taking potentially damaging votes on impeachment for nothing. The charges would be disposed of in the Senate, where there is no way on earth that two-thirds of the chamber would vote to convict and remove judges. Republicans have just 53 votes there. To impeach a judge, they’d need 14 Democrats to also join in.

But never put it past Republicans to do stupid things in the name of subservience to Trump.

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As shutdown looms, fringe Republican won’t let go of punishing Democrat

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Alex Samuels

To no one’s surprise, House Republicans can’t seem to get their priorities in line.

While some far-right Republicans are directing their attention to further punishing Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas—who was ejected from the chamber after dissenting during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress—the GOP caucus should really turn its attention toward preventing a federal government shutdown.

But leave it to the House Freedom Caucus to be too bogged down with scheming ways to show their fealty to Trump to work on averting a shutdown, which could furlough thousands of federal workers.

Both chambers of Congress only have until midnight Friday to pass a funding bill, and House Republicans only released their 99-page measure to avert a shutdown this past Saturday. The bill, which would fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, would increase defense spending and cut non-defense discretionary spending.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will bring the bill to the floor for a vote this week, likely on Tuesday, but we don’t know whether it will pass. Trump is publicly pressuring Republicans into voting for it, but Democrats will likely oppose it.

At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already said he’d oppose the bill. And given the Republican’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson can’t afford to lose another GOP vote. Given this, one might think that Republicans would be working to whip up votes for the bill, but some of the more hardline caucus members have other priorities.

Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas, dissents during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.

According to Punchbowl News, Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a member of the far-right House Freedom Conference, authored a bogus resolution calling Green’s actions “a breach of decorum” and suggesting that he “be removed from his committee assignments.”

Removal from committee assignments is usually a punishment reserved for the worst of the worst. In 2021, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has a reputation for sharing baseless conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, was stripped of her committee assignments after the discovery of her past statements endorsing the execution of Democrats, among other heinous things.

Later that year, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who made appearances at white nationalist events, also lost his assignments after he shared a violent animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

In comparison, this form of punishment is often used as petty retribution against Democrats. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Rep. Adam Schiff, both of California, were booted from the House Intelligence Committee in 2023 as punishment for voting to eject Greene and Gosar from their committees and for their roles in the impeachment of Trump.

Green’s worst offense is waving his cane in the air and declaring that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, which he and other Republicans are pursuing to help pay for tax cuts for the rich.

That’s not much different—or worse—than what happened in 2022 when Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado relentlessly heckled former President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address.

While Republicans certainly have a reputation for pettiness, there’s a sense that this new measure against Green won’t go anywhere. Johnson, for his part, reportedly thinks “that this measure should go away.”

That’s probably because he’s more focused on appeasing Trump and avoiding a shutdown. It’d be a bad look for Johnson, Trump, and the GOP at large if the government shut down less than two months into his second term.

The resolution against Green hasn’t formally been filed, but Republicans already feel like they won since they successfully censured him last week with the help of some traitorous Democrats.

In any sense, the move to further punish Green and pass a bill through the chamber at breakneck speed shows how far Republicans will go to ensure that Dear Leader gets what he wants.

But if anything, these moves don’t signify the GOP’s fealty to Trump so much as how truly terrified they are of him.

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Check out the GOP’s pathetic excuses for Trump’s lawlessness this week

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Emily Singer

Another week of Donald Trump's presidency is in the rearview. And like the two weeks before it, it was filled with lawless actions, lies, and ridiculous behavior that Republicans lined up to defend.

Trump threw Ukraine under the bus and appears likely to let murderous Russian dictator Vladimir Putin seize control of the sovereign nation. He also fired more independent watchdogs, let more corrupt politicians off the hook, slashed grants to medical research, and he even said he might ignore court rulings blocking his unlawful actions.

And like the pathetic lapdogs they are, Republicans defended every move.

After multiple federal judges of all ideological stripes blocked some of Trump’s executive actions, Republicans pushed the country further into a constitutional crisis by backing Trump when he suggested he’ll ignore those court orders and do whatever he wants.

“It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ So maybe we have to look at the judges. ‘Cause I think that’s a very serious violation,” Trump said on Tuesday.

Trump likely got this idea from his own vice president, who wrote in an X post on Feb. 9 that judges shouldn’t be allowed to stop the president’s executive power.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.

And other Republicans agreed with the false statement that the courts are not allowed to check the president’s power—when that’s exactly what the Constitution dictates.

“Of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order but there’s a lot of game yet to be played. This will be appealed, we’ve got to go through the whole process, and we’ll get the final analysis. In the interim, I will say that I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President JD Vance, my friend, because he’s right,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Later that day, he said that the courts should back off of Trump altogether.

“I think that the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out. What we’re doing is good and right for the American people,” Johnson told reporters, specifically referring to the cuts co-President Elon Musk is trying to make with his fake agency, the Department of Government Efficiency.

"I don't believe judges, courts have the authority or power to stick their nose into the constitutional authority of the president,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said.

“These judges need to back off and get out of the way of what the executive branch is doing to administer the government,” Roy said on Fox News.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah also expressed agreement that courts don’t have the power to challenge Trump’s executive orders.

“These judges are waging an unprecedented assault on legitimate presidential authority, all the way down to dictating what webpages the government has. This is absurd,” he wrote on X.

Rep. Darrel Issa, Republican of California, claimed that “nowhere in our Constitution is a single federal judge given absolute power over the President or the people of the United States.”

But, of course, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison case that the judiciary has the power to declare laws or actions unconstitutional.

On the other hand, Sen. Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota seemed to acknowledge that ignoring court orders is wrong, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to criticize Trump.

“I think what you're seeing right now is the natural give and take between branches of the government,” he said.

A handful of other Trump sycophants went a step further, saying that they would launch an impeachment effort against the judges who block Trump's actions.

“I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy. The left has done ‘irreparable harm’ to this country. President Trump and his team at @DOGE are trying to fix it,” Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona wrote on X, referring to the federal judge who blocked Musk from accessing Treasury data.

And Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia wrote on X that he is backing Crane’s efforts.

“The real constitutional crisis is taking place in our judicial branch. Activist judges are weaponizing their power in an attempt to block President Trump’s agenda and obstruct the will of the American people. [Crane] and I are leading the fight to stop this insanity,” he wrote.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called for the impeachment of another federal judge who blocked Trump’s freeze on congressionally appropriated federal funds.

“This judge is a Trump deranged Democrat activist. Below is proof he is not capable of making good decisions from the bench. He should be impeached,” Greene wrote on X.

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio backed those efforts, saying the judges blocking Trump’s actions “should be mocked and ignored while articles of impeachment are prepared.”

“These clowns are undermining every lower court, leaving the sole burden on SCOTUS. This is not sustainable. Sadly, excesses in judicial and executive authority are a symptom of the real problem: Congress keeps failing to take action. Time for #DeedsNotWords,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, once a fierce defender of watchdogs, was fine with Trump axing the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development who said that Trump's unlawful shuttering of the agency let hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food aid go to waste.

Grassley said that he "should have been fired," and gave Trump a workaround to make the firing legal.

"I'm just trying to make the president's job easier," Grassley said, completely ditching his past watchdog advocacy to bow down to Trump.

Other GOP lawmakers chose Trump over their own constituents, who are being directly harmed by the president’s actions.

Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio said that Trump’s decision to drastically cut back National Institutes of Health funding for medical research institutions is a good thing, even though it would decimate institutions in his own state and beyond.

“Well, I think what happens is the president is exactly right. I think if you ask the average American if we were spending a billion dollars to cure childhood cancer, how much of the billion dollars would go towards during childhood cancer? They’d probably say a billion. The idea that 60% goes to indirect cost and overhead is insane. And so I applaud the president,” he told the Bulwark

And Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri said that Trump's funding freeze, which is hurting farmers who are not being paid for contracts, is just a "little bit disruptive."

“But that's what this administration promised whenever they were coming to Washington,” Smith said on CNN, “is that they would be disruptive.”

Rep. Jason Smith dismisses farmers in his state who are getting stiffed by the US government not fulfilling contracts: "Right now it's a little bit disruptive, but that's what this administration promised whenever they were coming to Washington is that they would be disruptive."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-11T17:38:10.608Z

House of pain: GOP launches new civil war in last days of the election

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Emily Singer

Less than two weeks remain until the election that will determine which political party controls the House of Representatives, but House Republicans are already battling over how they would run the chamber come January 2025.

Control of the House remains a toss-up, with forecasting models giving Democrats a slight edge to regain the majority. But if Republicans do maintain control, it looks like they will have a difficult time even agreeing on how to govern themselves, Politico reported.

While Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies would gladly nuke the archaic “motion to vacate” rule, a small group of right-wing members wants to preserve the provision that allows a single member to force a vote to oust the speaker of the House, according to Politico. That same faction used this tool to boot Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, a mere 269 days after he was elected speaker following a humiliating 15-round voting marathon.

The latest report of infighting is just another embarrassing display from the GOP, which has barely been able to govern with a narrow majority.

When Republicans regained the House majority in 2023, the squabbling was so bad that barely any legislation was passed that year. The New York Times reported that the GOP majority passed just 27 bills that became law, far fewer than the 248 bills passed by a Democratic majority in 2022.

Republicans struggled to pass even basic messaging bills that reeked of partisanship. For example, it took multiple tries to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a sham impeachment that the Senate then rejected.

What’s more, GOP lawmakers have been fighting with each other—and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has been at the center of many of those fights.

Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado had a fight on the House floor, with Greene calling Boebert a “little bitch.”

Other Republicans then criticized Greene after she made an idiotic statement falsely blaming the government for creating Hurricane Helene to impact Republicans’ chances of winning the election.

Ultimately, the chaos and frustration GOP lawmakers created in the House caused a number of members on both sides of the aisle to announce their retirement earlier this year.

It’s time for adults to run the show and for voters to put Republicans back in the minority, where they belong.

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House GOP’s latest attempt to cling to power is just so lazy

Posted on September 25, 2024 by Morgan Stephens

Members of Congress are heading home for the final reelection sprint, and you can almost hear the scurrying footsteps as Republican lawmakers flee from their duties. They’re vacating the Capitol earlier than usual, and that’s not a shock. As Daily Kos reported, House Republicans have trouble with actual governing—but when it comes to vindictive “investigations,” their energy is endless

This exodus will take place after a Wednesday night House vote on a funding bill that will keep the government open through Dec. 20. The continuing resolution is expected to pass, but it’s worth keeping an eye on which Republicans vote against it—and why, other than to throw spokes in the wheels of legislative efficiency.

Congress will return after the November election to a long to-do list, including annual defense authorization funding, a farm bill that needs extending, and tax and health care provisions that need finalizing. As Punchbowl News writes, “all of this is being left undone as lawmakers head home to take care of their ultimate must-have—getting reelected.”

But instead of focusing on, you know, keeping the government running, the House GOP is going after President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and a Cabinet member.

On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced it is investigating the Biden-Harris administration for flying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 presidential election, alleging that he was in effect campaigning for Harris.

“If the Biden-Harris Administration attempted to use a foreign leader to benefit the Vice President’s presidential campaign, this is an abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer dollars,” the committee wrote in a statement on X.

Another misuse of taxpayer dollars would be to use them to fund futile investigations, hearings, and impeachment efforts.

The fractured and feckless House GOP has more lofty plans when Congress comes back in November: Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul on Tuesday announced a resolution to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for not appearing before the committee on days when Blinken was in Egypt, France, and at the United Nations General Assembly doing his actual job. The committee demanded that Blinken show up to testify on the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The full House could vote to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress, and kick it up to the Justice Department. That seems like an important objective when their efforts to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Biden all went nowhere.

Republicans’ focus on all the wrong issues highlights their struggle to show Americans that they are actually working to improve their lives. However, this hasn’t stopped them from resorting to familiar obstructionist tactics.

While Wednesday’s stopgap government spending bill may have the votes, the future remains uncertain. House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to torpedo the so-called Christmas omnibus bill, which has historically been used to fund the government in one fell swoop. His obstinance means Congress members may not be able to return home in time for the holidays. Bah humbug.

“There won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson vowed at a Tuesday press conference.

As Americans struggle with a housing affordability crisis, slashed reproductive rights, and high food costs, Republicans are running fool’s errands as they keep targeting Biden and administration officials who will be out of office come January.

Who needs to fund the government anyway?

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Democrats dare fractured House Republicans to impeach Biden

Posted on August 28, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Republicans released their bogus impeachment report on President Joe Biden on Aug. 19, hoping to distract from the display of joy and unity on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. GOP leaders—and plenty of Republicans in vulnerable House seats—wanted that to be the end of it, but the extremists in the conference don’t agree and could try to force a vote. That’s got Democrats popping their popcorn, ready for the show.

When the report was released, House Speaker Mike Johnson simply stated that he hoped everyone would read it and thanked the committees for their work. He didn't say anything about what would happen next, suggesting he just wants the partisan and sloppy attempt to nail the Biden “crime family” to go away. That way, Republicans won’t have to take an embarrassing vote to impeach Biden that would surely fail.

But Johnson immediately heard back from the peanut gallery. The House hard-liners are getting ready to raise hell, and the rest of the GOP is starting to freak out over the possibility that one of the troublemakers is going to try to force the vote when the House reconvenes in September.

It takes just one member to force a vote via a privileged resolution, a procedure that has been vexing leadership since Republicans took control of the House. The likeliest suspects to force a vote, Axios hears from its sources, are ultra-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.

The rest of the GOP accepts reality: Forcing a vote would be a distraction at best, and would more likely piss off voters. It could very well motivate progressive voters to turn out for downballot Democrats running against vulnerable Republicans, and would make MAGA voters mad at any GOP representatives who vote against it. It is absolutely a lose-lose scenario for Republicans, and Democrats are totally here for it.

"The whole investigation has been a debacle for them, they have egg all over their face," Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told Axios. Have the vote, he says, and “either prove that all of them are invested in this nonsense, or that they can’t even ... get all the Republicans in the House to vote for it.”

“If they actually take it to a vote, then individual [Republican] members are going to be politically punished,” he added.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida has one message for the House hard-liners: Bring it on.

"Call the vote. They should do that. That vote is a paved road to the minority," Moskowitz said, noting that there are plenty of Republicans who "have never wanted to do the vote." But if GOP House members do vote for impeachment, he continued, Senate Democrats should “call their bluff” and have a trial. “We should make them own it, every day on TV.”

"If they want to show that their top issue is impeaching Joe Biden, a lame-duck president, then we should make them own it. We're not going to go on the defense, we're going to go on the offense," Moskowitz said.

That’s just one more headache for Johnson. He’s already facing rebellious opposition from his own members to the one task Congress must complete in three short September weeks: funding the government. Having to vote on impeachment—and further roiling up his fractured conference—will only make his job harder.

September is shaping up to be a nightmare for Johnson, which is just what he deserves.

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The 5 best moments of the House ‘impeachment inquiry’ farce

GOP House digs for new Biden dirt as sawdust 'cocaine' and Russian moles fail

Freedom Caucus promises chaos when Congress returns next month

House GOP tries to rain on DNC parade with absurd impeachment report

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Joan McCarter

With all eyes on Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging campaign and this week’s Democratic National Convention, Republicans are trying to grab headlines Monday by releasing the report of their baseless, purely political impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.

To be sure, they’re getting those headlines. For example, in The New York Times: House G.O.P. Makes Impeachment Case Against Biden Without Proof of Crime.

And from there, it only gets worse for them.

With President Joe Biden leaving office in January, House Republicans’ inquiry is very unlikely to move forward, and as further proof that it was all politics all along, the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees released all 291 pages of this bullshit report on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

It’s been clear for months that the inquiry’s main drivers—Oversight Chair James Comer and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan—had nothing. In fact, in the report, Comer and Jordan basically admit as much while saying it feels like there should be something.

“An abuse of power may also be present even if, as some claim, the Biden family was only selling the ‘illusion’ of influence and access,” the report says, and adds, “It is not necessary for the House of Representatives to show that the dealings involved a quid pro quo to rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”

In other words, House Republicans have no evidence, but they don’t need no stinking evidence.

Except, of course, they do. They have to convince a majority of the House to impeach Biden and a majority of the Senate to convict him. And it’s been clear for months that they haven’t even been able to convince a majority of House Republicans to do it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson seems to know the votes aren’t there, and that the few weeks that Congress will be in session before the election will be all about passing a short-term government funding bill, which is going to be a big fight. House Republicans could come back after the election and try it, but that would really put the “lame” in “lame-duck session.”

On Monday, the White House gave the report the ridicule it deserves.

“After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase,” said Sharon Yang, a White House spokesperson. “This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories.”

“The American people deserve more from House Republicans, and perhaps now they will finally join President Biden in focusing on the real issues that American families actually care about,” Yang added.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland joined in, saying, "Their compulsive flailing about has not only proven, once more, that President Biden committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable crime, but has paradoxically vindicated Biden’s essential honor and decency."

Thus it appears that the ridiculous, monthslong probe into the supposed “Biden crime family” limps to a close. Not to worry, Comer has already found his next goose chases: going after Harris over the border and her running mate, Tim Walz, “a longstanding and cozy relationship with China.”

Voter turnout is VITAL in order to win the U.S. House this election. Click here to sign up to write postcards for key House districts and help strip Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority.

GOP House digs for new Biden dirt as sawdust 'cocaine' and Russian moles fail

The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

House GOP launches new BS probe against Harris

GOP House speaker finally finds a reason to remove a president from office

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Mike Johnson—an architect of Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election who had to be evacuated from the Capitol as the mob descended on Jan. 6, 2021, and who stood with Trump as a New York jury convicted the former president on 34 felony charges—says President Joe Biden should be removed from office because he had a bad debate night.

“I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts. … And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our duty to do best by the American people. These are fateful moments,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “If I were in the Cabinet … I would be having that discussion with my colleagues at the Cabinet level. I would. … We'll see what action they take. It’s a serious situation.”

This is the same Mike Johnson who voted against removing Trump from office after the Capitol insurrection. He’s for removing a president because he’s old, and he’s against removing a president who is old and who tried to overthrow the government. Good to know.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s guy stood on a debate stage and lied more than 30 times, according to CNN’s fact-checking guru Daniel Dale, including:

Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.

Trump stood on that debate stage and refused—three times—to say he will accept the results of the next election. That’s the guy Johnson wants to see back in the White House.

And what was Trump’s main takeaway from the debate? He’s a great golfer. So please spare us your thoughts on who is fit to be president, Mr. Johnson. Oh, and fuck you.

Don’t let either Johnson or Trump stay in power. Please give $10 to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates to take back the House and defeat Trump!

House Speaker Mike Johnson joins the clown show at Trump’s trial

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House GOP tries to save Steve Bannon from facing justice

Posted on June 26, 2024 by Mark Sumner

Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump, was convicted of contempt of Congress in July 2022. He lost his first appeal this past May. He lost his second appeal last week. He is due to report to prison on Monday.

But Republicans are doing everything they can to throw him a rope—and not the kind some of them offered to Mike Pence. Instead, Republicans in the House are making an extraordinary effort to repudiate a past Congress, disowning the whole investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in hopes this will somehow make Bannon’s conviction no longer count.

That House Republicans are willing to erase history—so long as it doesn’t involve a Confederate statue—should come as no surprise. After all, this is the same group that tried to unimpeach Trump. But what’s amazing is that they’re willing to go to such lengths for a third-rate podcaster who is likely to be in prison by Election Day no matter what they do.

If this Republican time machine is successful, it sets an amazing precedent for each Congress to examine and attack the actions of its predecessors—making it even more difficult for Congress to take any large legal actions since courts often move slowly and House terms are brief.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from going all in for Bannon.

On June 21, Bannon sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. In it, Bannon’s attorney suggested that the purpose of his imprisonment was to keep a key player off the stage in the days leading up to the election.

“There is also no denying the fact that the government seeks to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period immediately preceding the November presidential election,” attorney Trent McCotter wrote.

House Republicans seem to agree with the importance of preventing Bannon from suffering a single day behind bars so that he can keep on promising that Trump’s opponents will all be going to jail once Team Orange is back in power.

“You are going to be investigated, prosecuted, and incarcerated,” Bannon warned Democrats at a convention in Detroit earlier this month. “This has nothing to do with retribution. It has nothing to do with revenge. Because retribution and revenge might be another order of magnitude. This has to do with justice.”

But justice has a different meaning for Republicans. On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson made a mockery of the chamber’s Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group as it voted along party lines to send an amicus brief in support of Bannon to the Supreme Court.

A joint statement from Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said that the House will “withdraw certain arguments made by the House earlier in the litigation about the organization of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol during the prior Congress.”

The trio also disowned the entire Jan. 6 Select Committee, saying that they believed “Speaker Pelosi abused her authority when organizing the Select Committee.”

Johnson followed up with a Fox News appearance in which he told host Sean Hannity that “the Jan. 6 committee was, we think, wrongfully constituted. We think the work was tainted. We think that they may have very well covered up evidence and maybe even more nefarious activities.”

The speaker provided no evidence for any of these accusations.

In 2021, Senate Republicans blocked efforts to institute an independent investigation of the Jan. 6 assault on Congress. And in March, House Republicans issued a report seeking to exonerate Trump from any wrongdoing and discredit the findings of the select committee. That report made absolutely no mention of Trump’s role in the attack and instead blamed the Capitol Police for “a failure to provide proper security.”

Trump has already saved Bannon once by throwing him a pardon during his final hours in office. That pardon saved Bannon from facing the consequences for his central role in a border-wall-related fraud case, where one of his partners in crime is currently serving a four-year sentence in federal prison.

But Bannon faces a New York state trial in September over the same acts of criminal fraud. And Trump's pardon can't save him from a state charge.

Bannon’s trial was originally slated to be conducted by Justice Juan Merchan, the judge who presided over Trump’s recent hush-money trial. Bannon’s trial has now been reassigned to Justice April Newbauer because of a reported conflict in Merchan’s schedule. However, the date for the trial hasn’t changed.

Considering that others in the case have been found guilty, that’s a good indication that, no matter how much rope House Republicans unspool, it’s likely that Steve Bannon will be watching the election results on prison TV.

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House Republican wants to have attorney general arrested just because

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Walter Einenkel

GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, best known for fabricating her entire life story, told Fox News that she has a plan to get the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“Several months ago, I introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress. This is something that Congress has the authority to do, and it hasn’t been done since the early 1900’s,” she told host Maria Bartiromo on Monday.

Luna was responding to questions about the Justice Department’s announcement that it would not prosecute Garland for not turning over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

“And what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him,” Luna went on, “as well as the tapes, bring him to the well of the house and really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice.”

Like most of what Luna says, there are all kinds of facts being misrepresented here. For one, her assertion that she introduced her inherent contempt of Congress resolution “several months ago” is belied by the fact that she actually announced it on May 7. And while that is technically more than one month, it is far less than several months. Though, to be fair, her announcement could have been missed, since it came the same day that Stormy Daniels was testifying … in Trump’s criminal trial.

The sergeant-at-arms is "the chamber’s primary law enforcement official and protocol officer, responsible for maintaining security on the House floor and the House side of the U.S. Capitol complex.”

The case from the “early 1900’s” that Luna is referring to is something some legal scholars felt was more apropos to the unwillingness to comply with requests from Congress by the Trump administration.

The Teapot Dome scandal, which involved President Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall’s no-bid contract to lease federal oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, happened in 1922. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty was heavily criticized at the time for not more thoroughly investigating Fall, who was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe.

The scandal escalated to the Senate committee subpoenaing Mally S. Daugherty, the attorney general’s brother.

When Mally Daugherty refused to show up to testify before Congress, the Senate Sergeant at Arms David S. Barry deputized John J. McGrain to arrest him and bring him to Washington to testify.

The Republicans’ fixation on getting audio, despite having already received the entire transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, has been a transparently political endeavor. Hur, a Republican, released a 375-page report in February saying that no charges were warranted and that Biden had likely kept the documents as a private citizen by “mistake.”

Since then, House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt. Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to take the Garland contempt case to court after the DOJ announced it planned no further action. But whether Johnson will bring Luna’s resolution to a vote remains to be seen.

There has been very little tangible action that has come out of the GOP’s neverending political theater. This past year it spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Biden’s border security while trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a stunt that failed miserably.

Luna’s newest resolution is the GOP’s latest political stunt to create a cloud of doubt over Biden’s reelection campaign against convicted felon Trump.

Hopium Chronicles' Simon Rosenberg joins Markos to discuss the “red wave-ification” of the economy and how prepared Democrats are for November. There is still work to do but we have a better candidate—and we have the edge.

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