On Dec. 18, 2019, for what was then the third time in U.S. history, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered a powerful speech invoking the late Elijah Cummings, a civil rights hero and former congressman.
Pelosi: As our beloved chairman Elijah Cummings, an oversight committee chair, our North Star, said when announcing his support for this action, “When the history books are written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny.” He also said, almost prophetically, “When we are dancing with the angels, the question will be what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?”
Elijah, as you know, has since passed on. Now he is dancing with the angels, and I know that he and all of us here are very proud of the moral courage of members who want to honor the vision of our founders for a republic, the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform to defend it, and the aspirations of our children to live freely within it. Today we are here to defend democracy for the people. May God bless America.
A few weeks later, the Republican-controlled Senate held Trump’s impeachment trial, where then-Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, delivered a similarly emotional message in his closing arguments.
Schiff: But here, right is supposed to matter. It's what's made us the greatest nation on Earth. No constitution can protect us if right doesn't matter anymore. And you know you can't trust this president to do what's right for this country. You can trust he will do what's right for Donald Trump. He'll do it now. He's done it before. He'll do it for the next several months. He'll do it in the election if he's allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.
Republican senators—many of whom voted to impeach then-President Bill Clinton—ultimately shirked their constitutional duties and acquitted Trump.
Terri McCullough, the first woman to serve in a formal role as chief of staff to a House speaker, worked alongside Pelosi on big policy wins and broke a marble ceiling of her own.
When Terri McCullough was a young college graduate in Northern California in the early 1990s, she knew she wanted to do good in the world somehow — and that she wanted to work for a woman. In 1991, she did just that when she landed an internship in the district office for a relatively new congresswoman representing San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.
It would mark the start of a decades-long partnership, during which she and Pelosi, now House speaker emerita, would shape public policy around women and LGBTQ+ people. They also made history, expanding the limits of what was possible for women in an arena long dominated by White men.
Pelosi rose through the ranks of the House before shattering the “marble ceiling” and becoming the first and still only woman elected as House speaker. The second time Pelosi took the speaker’s gavel, in 2019, McCullough, too, made history as the first woman to serve as chief of staff to a House speaker in an official, paid capacity.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi stands with members of her staff on the House floor as she announces her decision to step back from Democratic leadership in December 2022, a moment that marked the end of her historic two-decade tenure at the helm of the caucus.
(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's office)
“I would work for Nancy Pelosi for the rest of my days if I could,” McCullough told The 19th in an interview. “It’s time to make a change, reluctantly, because I love this work and I love this job so much.”
In an interview with The 19th in her office at the U.S. Capitol, Pelosi brimmed with praise for McCullough. Her legacy on the Hill, Pelosi said, is “one of effectiveness, getting the job done and doing it in a way that advances the cause of policy that's good for women.”
“People really like her, and they know the confidence I have in her and anyone who she worked for would have in her, because we know of her talent, her integrity, her judgment, her confidence she has,” Pelosi said.
Early in her career, McCullough said, she worked on expanding legal services for survivors of domestic violence and promoting global reproductive rights. During Pelosi's first stint as House speaker from 2007 to 2011, McCullough led her personal office and worked on historic and complex legislation like the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act.
She said she learned many lessons from Pelosi — a vaunted legislative and political strategist known for keeping Democrats united during tough fights — on listening and fostering relationships.
“She has a standard of excellence which she demands of herself, so we all demand that of ourselves, too,” McCullough said. “So certainly I thought about that in terms of excelling and doing well in my work. But I definitely thought about excelling and doing well as a woman in my work, because there's still not enough of us in these leadership roles.”
“I certainly came into this job as the speaker's chief of staff never anticipating I would need to be a health expert during COVID, I would need to be a security expert after January 6,” McCullough said. “These things, often you don't anticipate, but you meet the need, and you answer the call. And I feel very proud of so much of the work that we have done. And even in the most difficult times, it has been the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Terri McCullough (left) and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (right).
(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's office)
Democratic lawmakers and aides gave McCullough hugs and well-wishes at a send-off Thursday as they filed into the House chamber. An emotional Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top House Democratic appropriator and an early mentor to McCullough, was seen dabbing at her eyes. Rep. Dan Goldman of New York beamed as he snapped a selfie. McCullough crossed the aisle — literally — to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with House Speaker Mike Johnson.
When Pelosi took the floor to speak and honor McCullough, whom she called “a visionary, steadfast and deeply respected leader,” the Democratic side of the aisle erupted in a standing ovation.
“She epitomizes, as much as any member of the House, someone who always understood how extraordinary this institution is and how it can transform people's lives,” DeLauro told The 19th. “I worked with her in the last days when the Affordable Care Act was under fire, and it was touch-and-go. And sitting with her, working up our strategy, and working with the speaker — she is equally responsible for helping to get that bill passed.”
Chiefs of staff manage both a lawmaker’s office and their relationships with other members, staff and outside groups. McCullough said the job looks different every day — both “keeping the trains running” and setting an agenda.
“It's really being a translator, being a motivator, being a leader, but to me, the most gratifying thing is being the support that people need to do their job excellently,” McCullough said.
McCullough “had advancement of women prioritized,” in every policy she touched, Pelosi said.
“When you do a job like this, your priorities move the day,” Pelosi said. “And her priorities were: ‘How do we do this bill or this commission or this committee that we're forming … thinking about the women? It's not always the case around here.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi pays tribute to her departing chief of staff, Terri McCullough, on the House floor on November 20, 2025.
(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's office)
McCullough’s instincts and relationships were critical to the passage of many of the big bills passed when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress in the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term.
“People told her things because they knew she wouldn't betray a confidence, and they also knew she would make good use of what it was,” Pelosi said. “‘What does Terri think?’ was a very important not only question, but a challenge.”
As lawmakers put together the American Rescue Plan in early 2021 to provide relief to Americans during the pandemic, McCullough worked to direct funds to the state and local level, where many community leaders on the front lines of the crisis were women. In legislation boosting infrastructure and domestic manufacturing, she worked to ensure women would be represented in the jobs created in trades and technical industries where they’ve historically been underrepresented.
“I am still, frankly, in awe every day that I have had the opportunity to see and be part of things I could never even have dreamed of, both the glorious and the horrific,” McCullough said. “It’s hard to explain how meaningful it can be to do this work, especially in the dark times.”
One such dark time was when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters ransacked the Capitol on January 6 to thwart Congress’ counting of the electoral votes for Biden’s election victory.
“One of the proudest moments of my life,” McCullough recalled, was when the National Guard secured the Capitol and lawmakers returned to the Capitol to finish the job of affirming the election results. After Congress completed the count around 4 a.m., she walked back to her apartment to get a couple of hours of sleep before returning to work the next day.
“All of my colleagues and peers came back the next day and kept coming back, because this place mattered so much to them,” she said.
In the aftermath, Pelosi said, she didn’t want to direct the House’s response from the top down. McCullough worked with Jamie Fleet, staff director for the Democrats on the House Administration Committee, on forming the Select Committee on January 6. McCullough reached across the aisle to then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were among the few Republicans to speak out against Trump’s attempt to subvert the election.
Cheney, in her 2023 book “Oath and Honor,” credited McCullough and Fleet as “indispensable” to the committee coming together and carrying out its work. Cheney recalled how, on a night when she and a few staffers were working late to finalize the committee’s public report, McCullough came into her Capitol basement hideaway office with midnight snacks.
Terri McCullough (front row, third from left) gathers with members of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s staff in 2021.
(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's office)
“She knew we’d be there down around the clock, working to meet our deadline,” Cheney wrote. “I looked up from the pages of the report to see that Terri was sporting a ‘Team Cheney’ hoodie. It made me smile. It was a touching symbol of the unprecedented alliance we had formed, beyond partisan politics, to do what had to be done for our country.”
Pelosi spent her career recruiting more women to run for Congress and elevating women to leadership roles on committees. McCullough, too, was a mentor on the staff side.
“She not only is responsible in her job, but she takes responsibility for the opportunity here to make sure that she's not just the first woman … that there will be many others,” Pelosi said.
McCullough said she did feel the pressure and weight of being a first. “But it was a good pressure, and I hope that allows other women to take roles like this and not feel the pressure,” she said.
And women continue to achieve “firsts”: Tasia Jackson, chief of staff to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, became the first Black woman to serve in that role to a member of House leadership in 2023.
“I have been so proud to have been able to contribute in Speaker Pelosi’s office for the years that I have, and it is my greatest hope that other women feel as passionately as I do about this work, work as hard as I hope that I did and are able to achieve great heights in the House as a result,” McCullough said. “And I hope that they feel that they will love it as much as I have loved my experience here.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection to the U.S. House, bringing to a close her storied career as not only the first woman in the speaker's office but arguably the most powerful in American politics.
Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced her decision Thursday.
“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said in a video address to voters.
Pelosi, appearing upbeat and forward-looking as images of her decades of accomplishments filled the frames, said she would finish out her final year in office. And she left those who sent her to Congress with a call to action to carry on the legacy of agenda-setting both in the U.S. and around the world.
“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way.”
Pelosi said, “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tears her copy of President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in 2020.
The decision, while not fully unexpected, ricocheted across Washington, and California, as a seasoned generation of political leaders is stepping aside ahead of next year's midterm elections. Some are leaving reluctantly, others with resolve, but many are facing challenges from newcomers eager to lead the Democratic Party and confront President Donald Trump.
Pelosi remains a political powerhouse and played a pivotal role with California's redistricting effort, Prop 50, and the party's comeback in this month's election. She maintains a robust schedule of public events and party fundraising, and her announced departure touches off a succession battle back home and leaves open questions about who will fill her behind-the-scenes leadership role at the Capitol.
An architect of the Affordable Care Act and a leader on the international stage, Pelosi, who's 85, came to politics later in life, a mother of five mostly grown children. She has long fended off calls for her to step aside by turning questions about her intentions into spirited rebuttals, asking if the same was being posed of her male colleagues on Capitol Hill.
In her video address, she noted that her first campaign slogan was “a voice that will be heard.”
And with that backing, she became a speaker “whose voice would certainly be heard,” she said.
Last year, she experienced a fall resulting in a hip fracture during a whirlwind congressional visit to allies in Europe, but even still it showcased her grit: It was revealed she was rushed to a military hospital for surgery — after the group photo, in which she's seen smiling, poised on her trademark stiletto heels.
Pelosi's decision also comes as her husband of more than six decades, Paul Pelosi, was gravely injured three years ago when an intruder demanding to know “Where is Nancy?” broke into the couple’s home and beat him over the head with a hammer. His recovery from the attack, days before the 2022 midterm elections, is ongoing.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Pelosi faced a potential primary challenge in California. Left-wing newcomer Saikat Chakrabarti, who helped devise progressive superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political rise in New York, has mounted a campaign, and state Sen. Scott Wiener is also reported to be considering a run.
While Pelosi remains an unmatched force for the Democratic Party, having fundraised more than $1 billion over her career, her next steps are uncertain. First elected in 1987 after having worked in California state party politics, she has spent some four decades in public office.
Madam speaker takes the gavel
Pelosi’s legacy as House speaker comes not only because she was the first woman to have the job but also because of what she did with the gavel, seizing the enormous powers that come with the suite of offices overlooking the National Mall.
The first female speaker of the House.
During her first tenure, from 2007 to 2011, she steered the House in passing landmark legislation into law — the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms in the aftermath of the Great Recession and a repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against LGBTQ service members.
With President Barack Obama in the White House and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada leading the Senate, the 2009-10 session of Congress ended among the most productive since the Johnson era.
But a conservative Republican “tea party” revolt bounced Democrats from power, ushering in a new style of Republicans, who would pave the way for Trump to seize the White House in 2016.
Determined to win back control, Pelosi helped recruit and propel dozens of women to office in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats running as the resistance to Trump’s first term.
On the campaign trail that year, Pelosi told The Associated Press that if House Democrats won, she would show the “power of the gavel.”
Pelosi returns to the speaker's office as a check on Trump
Pelosi became the first speaker to regain the office in some 50 years, and her second term, from 2019 to 2023, became potentially more consequential than the first, particularly as the Democratic Party's antidote to Trump.
Pelosi regularly stood up to and defeated Trump during his first term.
Trump was impeached by the House — twice — first in 2019 for withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine as it faced a hostile Russia at its border and then in 2021 days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate acquitted him in both cases.
Pelosi stood up the Jan. 6 special committee to probe Trump's role in sending his mob of supporters to the Capitol, when most Republicans refused to investigate, producing the 1,000-page report that became the first full accounting of what happened as the defeated president tried to stay in office.
After Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Pelosi announced she would not seek another term as party leader.
Rather than retire, she charted a new course for leaders, taking on the emerita title that would become used by others, including Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California during his brief tenure after he was ousted by his colleagues from the speaker's office in 2023.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, will not attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, her spokesperson confirmed to Daily Kos.
Pelosi is the second big-name Democrat to announce that they won’t attend. Earlier this week, former first lady Michelle Obama said she also plans to skip the event, which will take place on Monday. Other Democratic lawmakers who will play hooky that day include Reps. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
News of Pelosi’s pending absence was first reported by ABC News.
Pelosi’s spokesperson didn’t elaborate on why she won’t make the pilgrimage to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.,this go-around. Her absence may be because Pelosi is still recovering from hip surgery she underwent in Germany following a fall in December. It’s also possible that, like most Democrats, she just hates Trump.
No one would blame her if that were the case. The two have long had a tumultuous professional relationship. Since Trump’s first administration, their disdain for one another has seemingly only increased. Pelosi famously spent the final days of Trump’s first term trying to oust him from the Oval Office after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, for his part, spent much of his first term avoiding Pelosi, even as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged states and lawmakers attempted to work together to deliver aid.
Since then, Trump has called Pelosi “crazy,” “crooked,” “evil,” and “sick,” among other abhorrent things. In November, he nearly called her a bitch during a campaign rally, though he stopped himself from saying the word outright.
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally on July 29, 2023, in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“She’s a bad person, evil. She’s an evil, sick, crazy—” Trump said at a rally in Michigan amid his 2024 campaign, sounding out the letter “B” but stopping just short of uttering the obscenity. “It starts with a ‘B,’ but I won’t say it. I wanna say it.”
Pelosi’s inauguration absence marks a break in tradition for the octogenarian. In addition to attending Trump’s first inauguration, in 2017, ABC News reports that Pelosi has gone to 11 presidential inaugural events.
Senior leaders of both parties typically attend presidential inaugurations, regardless of the incoming president’s party. But Trump has no room to complain about Pelosi’s absence: He famously skipped President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
In reality, Trump probably won’t notice that Pelosi’s gone. He’ll be too busy trying to impress his trio of tech-bro sugar daddies—Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—who have been rewarded with plum seats at the inauguration. (All three men also donated at least $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.)
Meanwhile, while they will attend Monday’s inauguration, former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama will skip Trump’s inaugural luncheon. According to NBC News, both Obama and Clinton were invited but declined. Bush’s office told the outlet that he never received an invite.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is asked at a press conference why he’s not fighting for the speakership since he claimed he would “never give up fighting.” His answer is absolutely bonkers.
McCarthy: You know what’s interesting? […] In today’s world if you’re sitting in Congress, and you took a gamble to make sure government was still open, and eight people can throw you out as speaker. And the Democrats who said they wanted to keep government open, I think you got a real divide. I think you got a real institutional problem.
Interesting, it was in this room, after we had won the majority and I had become speaker, Nancy Pelosi came to me, she was speaker at the time on the way out, and I told her I was having issues with getting enough votes. And she said, “What’s the problem?” I said, “They want this one person can rule you out.” She was the only speaker that changed that rule.
I had the power to call the vote on her, but I never would. I lost some votes because of it.
She said, “Just give it to them. I will always back you up. I made the same offer to [John] Boehner, and the same thing to Paul [Ryan], because I believe in the institution.”
I think today was a political decision by the Democrats. I think the things they had done in the past hurt the institution. They started removing people from committees. They just started doing the other things. My fear is the institution fell today, because you can’t do the job if eight people […] can partner with the whole other side. How do you govern?
Dear god, where to begin?
“You took a gamble to make sure government was still open …”
He wants a cookie for doing his job. This is the lowest freakin’ bar, and he considers it “a gamble.” Maybe that, right there, is why McCarthy failed. Maybe it was because he couldn’t do the most basic part of his job without expecting Democrats to hail him as some sort of conquering hero.
“[A]nd eight people can throw you out as speaker.”
Yeah, those were the rules he instituted. That’s his problem, not the Democrats. And it wasn’t eight people that threw him out. It was 216 members of Congress.
“I had the power to call the vote on her, but I never would. “
Sure, he could’ve challenged her speakership, and he would’ve lost. She was actually good at her job.
And to be clear, Democrats didn’t call this vote. They didn’t bust any norms that McCarthy supposedly upheld. They just sat back and voted the exact same way they voted when McCarthy was first elected speaker. Thinking they would do otherwise, absent an actual deal with the current Democratic leader, was sheer madness.
“I think today was a political decision by the Democrats.”
House Republicans are currently investigating Hunter Biden penis pictures and engaging in a sham “impeachment inquiry” of President Joe Biden, and yet he’s going to cry about “politics”? Of course Democrats played politics! So did Rep. Matt Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus. And so did McCarthy!
The problem is, McCarthy played his politics poorly.
Why would he expect Democrats to bail him out after McCarthy resuscitated a wounded Donald Trump post-Jan. 6 insurrection? Why would they help him when McCarthy did everything possible to undermine the Jan. 6 commission? What about all the bullshit investigations, all of them at the behest of the Freedom Caucus? And why would he go on TV this past weekend and blame the potential government shutdown on Democrats?
Even if he had a deal, he had a shitty way to uphold his end of the bargain, which was, quite obviously, to act in the best interest of our nation.
But there was no deal, and we know he’s full of shit because of one simple reason:
If Pelosi had truly inoculated him against the Freedom Caucus, why would McCarthy go to such great lengths to let the Freedom Caucus run the show? From investigations to Trump’s butt-kissing, McCarthy always acted in the interests of his unruly nihilists hoping that giving them what they wanted would pacify them. If he had any agreement with Pelosi, he would’ve told them to pound sand from the beginning, daring them to pull the trigger on the leadership challenge.
But he didn’t. He ran his caucus scared. And when the time came to protect his speakership, did he go to the Democrats to confirm he had a deal? No, because there was never a deal, and he was too arrogant to do anything about it.
Imagine if McCarthy went to Democrats and offered to uphold his original budget deal with Biden and end all the sham investigations through the end of this term? That would suggest that McCarthy was, indeed, putting country over his party, and they could’ve worked together on a bipartisan solution to the budget impasse. Given a bipartisan power-sharing deal, Democrats would’ve saved his ass.
But he didn’t try. Even when Democrats told him flat out that they were voting against him, he didn’t try. And crying about Pelosi is just about the most pathetic thing that this pathetic spineless man can do on his way out the door.
The day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s astonishing capitulation that allowed Democrats to once more save the day and keep the government funded, Rep. Matt Gaetz was in front of the cameras promising that he would move to oust McCarthy this week. It’s not clear how much support the Florida man has among the other hard-liners in the Republican conference, but it could be a dozen or more, according to House conservatives. That means McCarthy’s fate is absolutely in Democrats’ hands. He can survive only if Democrats help him, and as of now, they’re not inclined to do that.
President Joe Biden isn’t going to go out of his way to help, telling reporters that it’s up to House Democratic leadership to decide if they want to bail McCarthy out again. Biden then turned the screws on McCarthy with a direct statement telling McCarthy to step up on funding for Ukraine, which was left out of the stopgap government funding bill.
While the majority of Congress has been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, the bipartisan bill has no funding to continue it. We can't allow this to be interrupted. I expect the Speaker to keep his word and secure the passage of support for Ukraine at this critical moment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remains noncommittal. Last week, he told reporters his team hadn’t “given any thought to how to handle a hypothetical motion to vacate, because we are entirely focused on making sure that we avoid this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown.” On Sunday, Minority Whip Katherine Clark sent a letter to all House Democrats, putting them on notice that as soon as Gaetz drops his motion on the floor, there will be a “Caucus wide discussion on how to address the motion to best meet the needs of the American people,” and telling them to keep their schedules flexible so they “may be present for these important votes should they occur.”
It’s likely many Democrats will take their lead from House Speaker-emerita Nancy Pelosi, who has reportedly warned Jeffries and other Democrats against helping McCarthy, saying he can’t be trusted. Her advice has been to make the Republicans figure this out on their own. Democrats will, however, have to do something, even if it’s doing nothing.
Here’s how it works: Once Gaetz makes the motion to vacate, leadership has two days to schedule a vote on it. The motion to vacate is a privileged resolution, which means that it doesn’t have to go through the Rules Committee to be scheduled, and that it has to be considered once it’s put on the floor. There is an option, called the “Question of consideration,” that could be used to kill the vote. Any member can call for it, and if a majority votes to kill Gaetz’s motion, that’s how they’d do it.
At that point, Democrats would have the option of helping Republicans by voting for the question and killing the motion to vacate, not voting or voting “present,” or voting against the question and with Gaetz. The problem for Republican leadership with this option is that it doesn’t stop Gaetz from coming back again and again with his motion to vacate. Because of that, Republican leadership might just decide to go ahead with the vote on McCarty’s ouster.
So here’s where the potential dealmaking with Democrats comes in, and so far, Democrats are playing it pretty smart. Gaetz has reached out to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and at least one of them—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—says she’d “absolutely” vote for the motion to vacate.
However, she continued, there’s room for negotiation for Democratic help bailing McCarthy out. “I certainly don’t think that we would expect to see that unless there’s a real conversation between the Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don’t think we give up votes for free,” she said.
Another progressive, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, told CNN that McCarthy has to be held to account for “pushing an extreme agenda and enabling extremists in his party” and therefore, “by refusing to support a motion to vacate, we are endorsing this extremism, and that is something that the residents in my district will not stand for. The American people are tired of the fact that the GOP is incapable of governing.”
That’s leverage—with enough of the progressives saying they’ll help Gaetz, McCarthy will need to negotiate. He’s opened the door on cutting a deal, saying, “I think this is about the institution. I think it's too important.” He’s also suggested that he’d consider changing the rules package to try to keep Gaetz from bringing the motion repeatedly.
Opening up the rules package could mean some significant changes to help the Democrats, including giving them additional seats on the powerful Rules Committee, where the Republicans have an outsized majority. They could argue for rules that allow more power-sharing.
That’s a start, since McCarthy has opened the door. But it’s not sufficient. Democrats should hold out for the maximum they can: funding for Ukraine, adherence to the budget agreement McCarthy and Biden agreed to earlier in the year, and ceasing the ridiculous Biden impeachment.
House Democrats saved the day on Saturday when 209 of them voted to keep the government operating. Just 126 Republicans stepped up to join them. Those competing numbers have to be thrown in McCarthy’s face every chance Democrats’ get—it’s leverage they have to use to the maximum.
I just realized I’m the unwitting victim of one of the most fiendish long cons in the history of grifting. Here’s my story.
Several weeks ago, Jessica Sutherland, my wonderful editor here at Daily Kos, told me one of the muckety-mucks in the organization had suggested I write a fun and breezy weekly review of the Sunday morning political shows. What?! Hey, that sounds great. I love that idea, my wonderful editor! What an honor! I’m truly humbled.
And so I put together a formal proposal, the scheme plotters at Daily Kos accepted it with a scarcely audible cackle, and Sunday Four-Play debuted on July 30, just in time for a fresh wave of Donald Trump indictments.
Needless to say, I don’t have a crystal ball and didn’t know what was coming, but because I so eagerly accepted this plum assignment, I’m now essentially compelled to watch this unholy hippo fuck of a Trump interview on “Meet the Press” today instead of languidly pouring molten pig iron into my freshly voided eye sockets with a Hello Kitty glitter spoon like I’d originally planned on doing.
Thanks, guys! This column has been the opportunity of a lifetime. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to don my hastily jerry-rigged inside-the-shell Ronco Egg Scrambler helmet and beer-bong a pony keg full of Hibernol.
Ironically, here was the second paragraph of my very first Sunday Four-Play column, in which I betrayed a naïveté and callowness of youth normally associated with 5-year-old kids who are wheedled into eating earthworm pasta on their first day of kindergarten:
Of course, y’all know what happened next. After taking over the reins of the longest-running show in television history, Welker announced that her debut episode would feature an interview with … that guy. Him. The semi-ambulant tub of walrus butter who has never—not for one moment in the past 77 years—had anything interesting, coherent, or remotely truthful to say.
At first I thought, well, maybe she’ll utterly savage him. But even then her decision would be irresponsible, because it’s literally impossible to responsibly interview Trump. You’d have to fact-check him in real time, and if you did that, there’d be 10 times more fact-check than interview. Didn’t we learn that earlier this year from CNN’s ill-advised Trump town hall?
My hopes for a thorough dressing-down quickly faded, however, when the teaser clips started trickling in. For instance, there was this preview clip from NBCNews.com, which shows Trump bending Welker’s ear during a leisurely summer stroll as Welker demurely smiles and generally behaves as if she’s not standing next to a feral criminal who violently attempted to end American democracy. Yup, I pretty much knew this interview would suck from the drop when I didn’t see her wheeling him across the golf course on a dolly as Walt Nauta fed him Reese’s Pieces through the breathing hole in his ranch sauce-festooned Hannibal Lecter mask.
Then she asked him a question about the ringing endorsement he recently got from Vladimir Putin and—surprise, surprise—he lied through his teeth Kari Lake-esque filter of billowing brown meat sweats. For instance, Welker let him get away with saying nobody was tougher on Russia than he was. It’s a lie Trump repeats continually, even though Putin moved mountains to try to get him reelected and Trump planned to pull us out of NATO in his second term—which would have been the biggest gift Putin ever received. And Welker just sat there nodding her head.
Sigh.
I get it. Trump is running for president. He’s also an (alleged!) criminal who’s been indicted on 91 felony counts. Not that interviewing criminals is necessarily a journalistic no-no, but let’s face it, Charles Manson was a lot more interesting—and likely had no serious plans for invading Mexico.
So, yeah, I pretty much have to cover this, but I’m not happy about it. For those media leading lights who are still wondering how to effectively interview Trump, the correct answer is … don’t. It’s not worth it. After all, what can you really learn that we don’t already know? Do you think he has a fresh perspective on Kristen Stewart’s love life that he hasn’t yet shared? Because he sure as shit doesn’t have anything useful to say about domestic or foreign policy.
Seriously, why do we still have to pretend that Donald Trump is a real boy? Get a grip, media.
Okay, on to the barmy bullshit ...
1.
So, yeah, confirmed rapist and traitor to democracy Donald Trump was on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Let’s see how that went, shall we? One effing clip and then we’ll move on.
And it’s a doozy. Here Trump appears to acknowledge he lost the election before saying he won the election. Who knows? Maybe he has early-onset brain death. As it is, roughly 98% of his brain is devoted to digesting trans fats and screaming racial slurs at the brown people on “Sesame Street.” It wouldn’t take much to nudge it into oblivion.
WATCH: Former President Trump says he needed ’22,000 votes’ in each state to win in 2020, but falsely claims he still won KRISTEN WELKER: When you say you needed one-tenth of a point, you needed one-tenth of a point to win? FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I needed a very small — I… pic.twitter.com/zcLrTvS993
WELKER: “When you say you needed one-tenth of a point, you needed one-tenth of a point to win?”
TRUMP: “I needed a very small—I think somebody said 22,000 votes.”
WELKER: “To win?”
TRUMP: “Yeah. If you divide it among the states, it was 22,000 votes, something to that effect ...”
WELKER: “To win the election?”
TRUMP: “Yeah. If I would’ve had another 22,000 votes over the whole—but, look. They rigged the election. If you look at Pennsylvania ...”
WELKER: “But Mr. President, you’re saying you needed more votes to win the election, are you acknowledging you didn’t win?”
TRUMP: “Excuse me. If you look at all of the statistics, all of the votes, they say 22,000 votes. Over millions and millions of votes, 22,000 votes. So when they do Twitter Files, or when they have 51 intelligence agents come out and lie that the laptop from hell was Russia disinformation, and now they find out it’s not, but they knew that at the time. They cheated on the election in that way, too.”
WELKER: “I just want to be clear, though. Are you saying you needed those votes in order to win? Are you acknowledging you didn’t win?”
TRUMP: “I’m not acknowledging. No. I say I won the election.”
Ooh, Welker really thought she had him trapped. But no. It’s likely Trump’s left brain lobe doesn’t know what his right lobe is doing. Like, ever. Also, the so-called “laptop from hell” likely was Russian disinfo.
A largely genuine trove of stolen data is also the perfect place to hide forged or stolen elements, which enjoy unearned credibility because they’re packaged with real stuff. That’s why the victims of hack and leaks are advised never to confirm the authenticity of anything.
The attackers are counting on the public to draw the erroneous conclusion that, because some things are genuine, the whole package is real, and—most importantly—that it came from where the cover story says it came from, be that an imaginary collective of good-hearted “hacktivists” or a computer repair shop in Delaware. Anywhere but the GRU.
The GRU is notorious for hacking and leaking.
In other words, just because portions of Hunter’s laptop were real doesn’t mean all of them were.
But never mind that. Is Trump really trying to say an election win isn’t legitimate if one of the candidates or his surrogates lied prior to that election? Because that’s an extraordinary claim. The courts might have a real pickle of a time dealing with that one.
77-year-old Trump last night was so confused and incoherent that he suggested Obama was his opponent in 2024, also suggested he beat Obama in 2016, and seemed to think we were on the verge of Word War *2*. I can only imagine the headlines if 80-year-old Biden had said this. 🤷🏽♂️ https://t.co/8rP7qvqjFV
The rest of the interview was similar. He lied with every exhale; she didn’t push back nearly forcefully enough. He told “sir” stories. He talked over her while claiming she was talking over him. He claimed Democrats want to abort babies after they’re born. (She should have challenged him hard on that. She didn’t.) Of course, later, after saying Democrats want to abort born babies, he said they don’t want abortions in the seventh month and don’t want to be radical. He also confirmed he’d give Ukraine to murderous war criminal Vladimir Putin.
She kept calling him “Mr. President” instead of using the far more appropriate “traitor says what?” Halfway through she may have replaced him with a glazed ham. Still doing research on that one. I promise to release my findings in two weeks. You’ll know as soon as I do.
Let’s see if we can ratchet that rage down to 11, shall we? Here’s a nice palate cleanser. Nancy the Great joined Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC’s “The Saturday/Sunday Show” and made clear that Democrats stand behind the striking autoworkers—whereas Trump’s plan to help them is likely to cut their bosses’ taxes even more. It’s time for those proles, plebs, and peons to really feel that warm trickle down their necks, right?
But Rep. Pelosi sees it differently.
"One month pay for the CEO, a lifetime pay to the workers. It's just not fair" @SpeakerPelosi shares her thoughts on the historic United Auto Workers strike against GM, Ford, and Stellantis #SundayShowpic.twitter.com/4EtJa3Pspn
— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) September 17, 2023
PELOSI: “Let me just say that as we are here we have workers on strike in a number of industries in our country, but right now you said you’re going to have a show on ...”
CAPEHART: “The UAW president ...”
PELOSI: “UAW president. This is really something so important to all of us in the country. These workers, just think of this. The CEOs of these companies make probably, in one month, what these workers make in a lifetime. That’s just unjust. Years ago it was 20 times, now it’s 10 times that—over 200 times as much for the CEO as it is for the worker. Those profits that they say they are rewarding would not happen without the workers. So let us pray that they will make some progress on this respectful of the workers. [Sen.] Sherrod Brown says it’s over 300 times as much. But whatever it is, one month pay for the CEO, a lifetime pay to the workers. It’s just not fair.”
Pelosi was riffing a bit, but her numbers are in the ballpark. And any way you slice it, the gap between worker and CEO pay has grown out of control since Ronald Reagan first put billionaires on the endangered species list.
The average CEO of an S&P 500–listed company earned $16.7 million from their role in 2022, the AFL-CIO said—the second highest amount ever recorded in the organization’s annual Executive Paywatch report.
That’s 272 times the average salary of just under $62,000 for someone employed by an S&P 500 firm, according to the report.
Assuming an average career of around 45 years before retirement, that means an ordinary employee would have to work six lifetimes to earn the same as their CEO did last year.
So there you go. Pelosi may have been a bit off on her comparison of monthly vs. lifetime wages, but the actual numbers are still eye-popping. And it’s about time workers started clawing back some of the wealth that’s consistently been funneled upward for the past four decades.
Needless to say, Casper the Friendly Milquetoast (aka Mike Pence) had a somewhat different take on the UAW strike. He insists he stands with the working men and women of this country, and you can tell he’s sincere because he’s standing in front of two barns and isn’t wearing a tie.
The former vice president and one-time Trump colon polyp appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper. When asked about the autoworkers’ strike, he launched into his prepared talking points about Biden’s economy.
Pence on CNN on the fairness of the CEO of GM making 362 times what her employee makes: "I'm someone who believes in free enterprise" pic.twitter.com/9SXtEr75QH
TAPPER: “On this issue of general fairness, in 1965, during this era of the great middle-class expansion in the United States, CEOs made about 20 times what their typical workers made, but as I noted to you, the CEO of GM makes 362 times what her typical employees make. I just want to make sure I get an answer from you. Is that okay? Do you think that’s fair?”
PENCE: “Well, I think that ought to be left to the shareholders of that company. I’m somebody that believes in free enterprise. I think those are decisions that can be made by shareholders and creating pressure, and I’ll fully support how these publicly traded companies operate. I’m not interested in government mandates or government bullying when it comes to those kinds of issues. And I don’t think it's about the usual fault lines of the difference in salaries between white collar and blue collar. I think it’s that everyday Americans out there working hard are living in the midst of the failed policies of Bidenomics.”
TAPPER: “Inflation’s been horrible, no question, but their wages haven't gone up since the auto bailout in 2008. Meanwhile, the CEOs, their wages have gone up 40% in the last five years. That’s what the union workers say as to why they’re striking. I guess, just a question here. Do you side with the CEOs or do you side with the union here?”
PENCE: “I side with American workers, I side with all American families, I side with the people of this country, Jake, that are living under the failed policies of the Biden administration.”
In other words, Pence wants a laissez-faire economic system that punishes American workers—the real wealth creators—decade after decade while continuing to create opportunities for hardworking CEOs and majority shareholders who, under Biden’s economy, struggle every day to locate private islands for sale. But hey, get a load of those two barns. And that open collar. Mother is so turned on right now she wants to join her husband in a three-way—which, for the Pences, simply means eating lunch at Olive Garden with a woman they just met in the lobby.
Oh, yeah, Republicans want to impeach President Biden for—hmm, let’s see here—no reason at all!
GOP Rep. Michael McCaul appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he discussed impeaching the president while acknowledging there’s exactly zero reason to do so.
"We don't have the evidence now, but we may find it later" -- McCaul is what passes for a "serious Republican" these days pic.twitter.com/bPMX1YPOec
MCCAUL: “Well first of all, I’ve been tasked by the speaker to assist the Oversight and Government Reform. With respect to foreign policy decisions the president made—or vice president, at that time—with respect to money coming in to try to tie the two. We don’t have the evidence now, but we may find it later.”
Okay, have fun with that, Mike. Sounds like a case for Columbo. Or Scooby-Doo. Or maybe Son of Sam. His neighbor’s dog has some really tantalizing new details about Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she will run for reelection to another term in Congress as Democrats work to win back the majority in 2024.
Pelosi, 83, made the announcement before labor allies in the San Francisco area district she has represented for more than 35 years.
“Now more than ever our City needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery,” Pelosi said in a tweet. “Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection — and respectfully ask for your vote.”
First elected to Congress in 1987, the Democratic leader made history becoming the first female speaker in 2007, and in 2019 she regained the speaker's gavel.
Pelosi led the party through substantial legislative achievements, including passage of the Affordable Care Act, as well as turbulent times with two impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
The announcement quells any talk of retirement for the long-serving leader who, with the honorific title of speaker emeritus, remains an influential leader, pivotal party figure and vast fundraiser for Democrats.
●NC-AG, NC-08: Far-right Rep. Dan Bishop, an election denier who rose to prominence after spearheading North Carolina's transphobic "bathroom bill" in 2016 while in the state Senate, announced Thursday that he'd run for state attorney general next year. The congressman quickly earned an endorsement from the well-funded Club for Growth for his bid to become the first Republican to hold this office since 1975, though he currently faces former state Rep. Tom Murry in the primary.
Bishop, however, may not be the only sitting congressman who ends up running to succeed incumbent Josh Stein, the Democratic frontrunner in next year's race for governor. The very same day, Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson declined to rule out a bid of his own. Jackson told the News & Observer's Danielle Battaglia that he'd only start thinking about a campaign after the state's Republican-run legislature passes a new congressional map sometime this fall, which could leave the freshman without a seat he can win.
Jackson, however, was quick to make clear how he'd go after Bishop. "I did hear his announcement," he said, "and as a prosecutor, I don't think that anyone who supported overturning an election should be talking about law and order." The Democratic field currently consists of Marine veteran Tim Dunn and Navy Reserve veteran Charles Ingram, but both reported having minimal cash stockpiles at the end of June.
Bishop did indeed vote to overturn Joe Biden's win in the hours following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, a move the congressman justified by echoing Donald Trump's lies about mail-in votes. "In the 2020 election, the national Democratic Party carried out a highly coordinated, massively financed, nationwide campaign to displace state regulation of absentee ballots by means of a flood of election-year litigation," Bishop wrote just before the riot, and he's continued to spread the Big Lie since then. The congressman fired off an evidence-free tweet last year claiming that Jack Dorsey "and Twitter put their thumb on the scale in the last election to help Biden." (Unsurprisingly, Bishop has a far more favorable view of that site's new owner.)
Before Bishop devoted himself to enabling conservative extremists in Washington, D.C., he was a state lawmaker who indirectly helped cost the GOP the governorship in 2016. That year, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the Bishop-crafted House Bill 2, which required anyone using bathrooms at schools or public facilities to use the restroom associated with the sex on their birth certificate, regardless of their gender identity. That legislation sparked a national backlash that led several major corporations to cancel planned expansions in the state, and voters responded by narrowly booting McCrory in favor of then-Attorney General Roy Cooper.
Bishop's career, though, survived and thrived even after Cooper signed a law rolling back HB 2. The state senator unexpectedly got the chance to run for Congress in what was then numbered the 9th District in 2019 after the results of the previous year's election were voided because of election fraud carried out to assist Republican nominee Mark Harris. Bishop decisively won the primary and went on to narrowly defeat 2018 Democratic nominee Dan McCready 51-49 after an expensive campaign for a gerrymandered constituency that Trump had taken 54-43 in 2016.
But despite that underwhelming victory, as well as a new court-supervised map that made the 9th District a shade bluer, Bishop turned in an easy 2020 win in a contest that national Democrats didn't target. His constituency was soon renumbered the 8th District following the 2020 census and became safely red turf that Bishop had no trouble holding last year. The congressman then used the first days of the new Congress to cast 11 straight votes against making Kevin McCarthy speaker, but he eventually flipped; McCarthy rewarded Bishop afterward with a spot on the GOP's Orwellian-named "Weaponization of the Federal Government" subcommittee.
Republican legislators were recently given the green light to once again gerrymander to their hearts' content after the newly conservative state Supreme Court overturned a ruling by the court's previously Democratic majority that had banned the practice. They'll likely draw up another safe seat to replace the one Bishop currently represents, and there's already chatter about who could run to replace him.
An unnamed source tells the National Journal's James Downs that Harris and Dan Barry, who took a distant fifth in the 2012 primary for the 9th District several maps ago, are "names to watch." Harris chose not to run in the 2019 special election that Bishop ultimately won, but while the consultant responsible for the fraud that wrecked his campaign went to prison, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced the following year that she wouldn't charge the candidate as part of her probe.
P.S. While Bishop would be the first Republican to serve as attorney general in 50 years, the last member of his party to actually win this office was Zeb Walser all the way back in 1896. Republicans last held the attorney general's office in 1974 when GOP Gov. James Holshouser appointed James Carson to fill a vacancy, though Carson lost the ensuing special election a few months later to Democrat Rufus Edmisten.
●ND-Sen: Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer told KUMV this week that he hasn't decided whether he'll seek reelection, though the incumbent sounds like he's leaning strongly towards another campaign. "A second term for me would mean greater clout, probably a chairmanship as well," Cramer said. "Seniority matters in the Senate. That's where my thinking is today without telling you exactly what I intend to do. I guess I would be surprised if I decided not to run for reelection." The senator does not appear to have indicated what factors would push him toward retirement.
●WV-Sen: The Washington Post reports that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to direct money towards positive ads "to help prop up his poll numbers before he decides whether he'll run," but Manchin won't use his own $10.8 million war chest for this purpose because he "doesn't want to spark speculation that he's running for reelection by making an ad buy to boost his image." The Democratic group Duty and Honor did run commercials in the spring to counter a GOP offensive to damage the incumbent, but the paper says that Schumer doesn't want to make a big investment here before he knows if Manchin will actually run again.
Governors
●MS-Gov: Republican incumbent Tate Reeves seems to agree with Democrats that the state's $77 million welfare funds scandal could hurt him even in this red state because he's already up with a response spot two days after Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley launched his first commercial on the topic. The challenger may not mind too much, though, because Reeves' ad makers adopt the dubious strategy of repeating some of the very attacks Presley is leveling against him.
"Have you seen this ad attacking our governor, Tate Reeves?" asks the narrator as footage fills the screen of Presley's earlier piece, complete with on-screen text reading, "REEVES … PLAGUED BY WELFARE FRAUD SCANDAL." Reeves' narrator isn't happy, saying, "Tate Reeves had nothing to do with the scandal … it all happened before he was governor." It's rarely a good move to put your candidate's name in the same sentence as "scandal," but Presley's team is also disputing the idea that Reeves isn't to blame for something that occurred while he occupied the powerful lieutenant governor's office.
"[T]he reality is Tate Reeves used to brag about his watchdog responsibilities and overseeing the state budget," the campaign said in a statement, which included a quote from a 2019 ad where Reeves proclaimed he was "managing the government's money like it's your money―because it is."
●WA-Gov: Richland School Board member Semi Bird on Thursday pledged to continue his campaign for governor two days after the Republican appears to have lost a recall election along with two colleagues. The trio voted in February of 2022 to defy the state's COVID protocols and make it optional to wear masks in local public schools; school was canceled for two days as a result, and the group ultimately backed down.
Bird hasn't gained much traction ahead of a top-two primary contest where former Rep. Dave Reichert appears to be the GOP frontrunner, but he's hoping his likely ouster will change that. (The state is still counting ballots, but the pro-recall "yes" side was ahead 56-44 in Bird's race as of Thursday; the results were similar in the other two contests.) "The teachers unions and leftest activists may have won the recall battle, pouring 10's of thousands of dollars into the effort," Bird wrote Thursday in a fundraising email, "but when the people of Washington send me to Olympia, we will win the war."
House
●DE-AL: EMILY's List on Thursday endorsed state Sen. Sarah McBride in the Democratic primary for this statewide seat, declaring that it "was proud to support McBride when she made history in 2020 as the first openly transgender state senator in the country — and we are thrilled to once again help her make history and become the first openly transgender member of Congress."
●NC-??: State House Speaker Tim Moore announced last month that he will not seek another term leading the chamber after the 2024 elections, and he and his team are continuing to evade questions about whether he'd run for the U.S. House after his party passes a new gerrymander. Political advisor Paul Shumaker told the News & Observer, "We don't know what the maps are going to look like. We have all this speculation." Shumaker added that his client could also go into the private sector.
●PA-01: Anti-abortion activist Mark Houck announced Wednesday that he'd run to deny renomination to Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in this competitive suburban Philadelphia seat, a declaration that comes months after he was found not guilty of allegedly violating a federal law designed to protect abortion clinics. Houck became a conservative celebrity in the leadup to that January trial, where he was accused of intimidation by twice shoving a 72-year-old Planned Parenthood volunteer in 2021; Houck never denied he'd done this, though he successfully claimed that he'd only become violent after his son was insulted.
Houck launched his campaign by telling the far-right website The Church Militant, "We're running to protect the rights of families and defend traditional family values in our district. Unfortunately, Brian doesn't represent that." Fitzpatrick, who has made a name for himself as a pragmatist, has always run well ahead of the top of the ticket during his four campaigns, and Democrats would be delighted if Houck gave him a hard time in this 52-47 Biden seat. The well-funded congressman turned back a little-known primary foe 66-34 last cycle before pulling off a 55-45 victory against Ashley Ehasz, a Democrat who is running again.
●TX-28: Conservative Rep. Henry Cuellar on Thursday unveiled endorsements from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the rest of the chamber's Democratic leadership, as well as Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, in what's likely a move to deter another primary challenge from the left. Cuellar narrowly fended off immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros in 2020 and 2022, and her former spokesperson told the Texas Tribune back in March that she hadn't ruled out a third try. The Lone Star State's downballot filing deadline is Dec. 11, which is one of the earliest in the nation.
Attorneys General
●TX-AG: Thursday finally brought some action concerning Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton's long-stalled trial for securities fraud, with a state judge agreeing to a request from both prosecutors and the defense to delay scheduling anything until Paxton's separate impeachment trial concludes sometime next month. Both sides agreed that Paxton would be more likely to try to reach a deal concerning the eight-year-old security fraud indictment if two-thirds of the state Senate votes to remove him from office, with one of his attorneys explaining that this outcome would be "a kill shot to his political career, so it opens the door to a resolution that’s not open right now."
Ballot Measures
● OH Ballot: A GOP consultant tells cleveland.com that groups looking to beat Issue 1, which would make it much harder to amend the state constitution, have added $2.5 million to their media buys for the final days of the Aug. 8 special election. The story says the conservative pro "yes" side enjoys a small $5.9 million to $5.3 million edge in ad spending for the last week of the race: The GOP firm Medium Buying also tweets that the "no" side has outspent its rivals $12.2 million to $9.7 million on TV and radio for the entire campaign.
Meanwhile, organizers seeking to place a statutory initiative on the November ballot to legalize recreational marijuana say they've submitted 6,500 additional signatures to the secretary of state, and they only need about 10% of them to be valid in order to qualify: The campaign fell just 679 petitions shy of the 124,000 minimum last month, but state law granted them 10 extra days to make up the shortfall.
Because this proposal would not amend the constitution, it would only need to win a majority no matter how the Issue 1 fight ends next week. Issue 1 would also not eliminate the 10-day grace period for statutory initiatives like this, though it would end this rule for future constitutional amendments. Polling from Civiqs shows that two-thirds of Ohio voters believe "the use of cannabis should be legal."
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is on his way to once again making history with the full backing of Congressional Democrats. In all three roll call votes on Tuesday, Jeffries got 212 votes, at least 9 more than Republican Kevin McCarthy. Jeffries won't cross the vote threshold to grab the Speaker's gavel because Republicans still have an edge overall, but Democrats made it crystal clear that Hakeem Jeffries is the unquestionable leader of the Democratic Caucus. At a press conference on Tuesday, Jeffries showed exactly why Democrats are supporting him in force.
According to NBC News, by securing 212 votes, Hakeem made history as the first Democratic leader to win support from every single member of their caucus since 2007. Rep. Nancy Pelosi had won unanimous support from her caucus after helping lead the party back into the majority in 2007.
"We are gonna stay here to get this done. We are unified, and we're all gonna support Hakeem Jeffries for speaker, the lead vote-getter in the last ballot," Rep. Pete Aguilar, the new House Democratic Caucus chair, said of Jeffries’s nomination during the second round of voting.
But while Democrats were unified in voting for Jeffries, Republicans disagreed on who their next leader would be. The House adjourned Tuesday without picking a new speaker since McCarthy failed to win a majority on three ballots. According to CBS News, Tuesday's vote was the first time in 100 years that the House speaker seat remained unfilled after the convening of a new Congress. Additionally, it is also the first time in a century that the Speaker election has needed multiple rounds of voting.
During a speech Tuesday, Jeffries told reporters he is not willing to help Republicans elect a speaker.
“We are looking for a willing partner to solve problems for the American people, not save the Republicans from their dysfunction,” Jeffries said.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said it was a "sad day for democracy" after Republicans failed to choose a House speaker, preventing Congress from beginning its work. Follow @AP's coverage. https://t.co/RJYG9NzmdSpic.twitter.com/I6mCZyMbEx
He also nailed his introduction press conference by calling out the lack of organization Republicans have. He noted that while Democrats are “united, present, ready, willing, and able to get things done on behalf of the American people,” Republicans are dysfunctional.
JEFFRIES: The Republican dysfunction is what it is: Chaos, crisis and confusion, along with craziness. That's sad for the American people. They're going to have to figure out a way out of it. pic.twitter.com/jbwqa62SCR
Of course, while Republicans like McCarthy insisted to reporters that the party is "unified," the reality of the situation is clear.
"This isn't about me," McCarthy said, according to CBS News. "This is about the conference now because the members who are holding out … they want something for their personal selves."
Nevertheless, whatever reason it may be, Republicans seem to be confused now more than ever while Democrats are ready to make moves.
Jeffries comes with substantial leadership experience. He is not only considered the youngest member to serve as chairman of the Democratic Caucus, but was also part of a select group of lawmakers who were impeachment managers during the Senate trial of Donald Trump.
According to CNN, Jeffries is set to become one of the highest-ranking Black politicians in America, as the country makes history with a record number of Black members of Congress.
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) on GOP gridlock in the House Speaker race: "This is who they are: crisis, confusion, disarray. It's unfortunate that that's what the modern-day House Republican Conference looks like." pic.twitter.com/vmNTzLejFT
Democrats continue to show the country that they are united and able to get things done, and kudos to House Democrats for making that divide very clear.
