October 3, 2023
Wow.
Today, House Republicans made history by being the first to throw out their own Speaker of the House, while the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination made history by being the first candidate to be gagged by a judge after threatening one of the judge’s law clerks by posting a lie about her on social media.
Ever since Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a deal with the extremists in his conference to win the speakership after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, he has catered to those extremists in an apparent bid to hold on to his position. From the first, he gave them key positions on committees, permitted them to introduce extreme measures and load up bills with poison pills that meant the bills could never make it through Congress, and recently to open impeachment hearings against President Joe Biden.
But the extremists have continued to bully him, especially since they opposed a deal he cut with Biden before McCarthy would agree to raise the debt ceiling, threatening to make the United States default on its debt for the first time in U.S. history. When their refusal to pass either appropriations bills or a continuing resolution to buy more time to pass those bills meant the U.S. was hours away from a government shutdown, McCarthy finally had to rely on the Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution on Saturday.
A shutdown would have hurt the country and, in so doing, would have benefited former president Trump, to whom the extremists are loyal. Led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, they were vocal about their anger at McCarthy’s pivot to the Democrats to keep the government open,
Yesterday, Gaetz challenged McCarthy’s leadership, apparently with the expectation that the Democrats would step in to save McCarthy’s job, although it is traditionally the majority party that determines its leader. According to Paul Kane of the Washington Post, McCarthy did reach out to Democrats for votes to support his speakership. But Democrats pointed to McCarthy’s constant caving to the MAGA Republicans—as recently as Sunday, McCarthy blamed the threat of a shutdown on the Democrats—and were clear the problem was the Republicans’ alone.
“It is now the responsibility of the [Republican] members to end the House Republican Civil War. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote to the Democratic caucus.
And so, when the House considered blocking Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair, the measure failed by a vote of 208 to 218. Eleven Republicans voted against blocking it. And then, on the voting over the measure itself, 216 members voted to remove McCarthy while 210 voted to keep him in the speaker’s chair. Eight Republicans abandoned their party to toss him aside, making him the first speaker ever removed from office.
The result was a surprise to many Republicans, and there is no apparent plan for moving forward. House Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK), who released a statement supporting McCarthy, called the outcome “simply a vote for chaos.”
Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speakers in case of emergency, so the gavel has passed to Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has power only to recess, adjourn, and hold votes for a new speaker. McCarthy says he will not run for speaker again. The House has recessed for the rest of the week, putting off a new speaker fight.
Until then, Republicans seem to be turning their fury at their own debacle on the Democrats, blaming them for not stepping in to fix the Republicans’ mess. One of McHenry’s first official acts was to order former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to vacate her private Capitol office by tomorrow, announcing that he was having the room rekeyed. Pelosi was not even there for today’s votes; she is in California for the memorial services for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
McHenry’s action is unlikely to make the Democrats more eager to work with the Republicans; Pelosi noted that this “sharp departure from tradition” seemed a surprising first move “[w]ith all the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting….” Pelosi might have been sharp, but she is not wrong. The continuing resolution to fund the government runs out shortly before Thanksgiving, and funding for Ukraine has an even shorter time frame than that. The House cannot do business without a speaker, and each day this chaos continues is a victory for the extremists who are eager to stop a government that does anything other than what they want from functioning, even as it highlights the Republicans’ inability to govern.
Phew. But that was not the end of the day’s news.
Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, who is watching the New York trial of Trump, his two older sons, two of his associates, and the Trump Organization, wrote that New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron said today that he had warned Trump’s lawyer that Trump must not continue his attacks on the justice system. Rather than heed the warning, Trump today went after Engoron’s own law clerk, posting a lie about her with a photo on social media. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” Engoron said.
Engoron ordered Trump to delete the post, and the former president did so. Engoron forbade “all parties from posting, emailing, or speaking publicly about any members of my staff” and warned there would be “serious sanctions” for those who did so.
The New York case strikes close to Trump’s identity as a successful businessman by showing that he lied about the actual value of his properties, and by dissolving a number of his businesses by canceling their licenses. Adding to Trump’s troubles today is that he fell off Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, a status that in the past he has cared deeply about.
In the midst of the Republican chaos, the Biden administration announced that the manufacturers of all the ten drugs selected for negotiation with Medicare to lower prices have agreed to participate in the program, although they are pursuing lawsuits to stop it. Several of the pharmaceutical companies have complained of being “essentially forced” to sign on; one says it is participating “under protest” but feels it has no choice given the penalties their products would bear if they are unwilling to negotiate prices.
According to the White House, the ten drugs selected for negotiation accounted for a total of $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for an estimated 9 million Medicare enrollees in 2022. The negotiations were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed without any Republican votes.
The Department of Justice announced eight indictments against China-based companies and their employees for crimes relating to street fentanyl and methamphetamine production, distribution of synthetic opioids, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals used to make street fentanyl. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) administrator Anne Milgram noted that the supply chain that brings street fentanyl to the U.S. starts in China, from which chemical companies ship fentanyl precursors and analogues into our country and into Mexico, where the chemicals “are used to make fentanyl and make it especially deadly.” Milgram promised that the “DEA will not stop until we defeat this threat.”
Finally, while the Republicans were making history on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, the Democrats were making history on the Senate side. Vice President Kamala Harris swore into office Senator Laphonza Butler to complete the term of Senator Dianne Feinstein, which ends next year. Before her nomination, Butler was the president of EMILYs List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic female candidates who back reproductive rights to office, and has advised a number of high-profile political campaigns, including that of Harris in 2020.
Butler is the first Black lesbian in the Senate. She and her wife, Nenike, have a daughter.
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/politics/drugmakers-medicare-price-negotiations/index.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-net-worth-forbes-400-2023/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-democrats-vote-speaker-house/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/politics/mccarthy-gaetz-vote-motion-to-vacate/index.html
https://cole.house.gov/media/press-releases/cole-supports-mccarthy
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laphonza-butler-senate-california-gavin-newsom-dianne-feinstein-seat/
Twitter (X):
S-C-H-A-D-E-N-F-R-E-U-D-E! A moment of snickers for our departed Quevin, the airheaded, insurrection-supporting, sex-offender-placating reverse-Machiavelli with the spine of a single strand of overcooked linguini. The first flip-flop to kick itself into the pool, and the first Weeble to actually fall down, he will be missed by over 200 colleagues who somehow can't find anyone better. His demise holds a lesson for the children: give up every last principle to the first bidder in order to get your dream job, and you will find yourself with nothing much to offer once you get it. History-makers with such hamartia are oft described as Shakespearian, but Quevin's story has been shorter and simpler than those on Aesop's reject pile. Can you imagine being Quevin, trying to lie down to sleep tonight, unable to tell if those whooshing sounds are the wind outside, or just the cosmic roar of your own hollowness? Yikes!
The political message to whoever is a big enough Nutter Butter to actually want this job next is clear: the only unforgivable sin is working with Democrats. This is a bit of an impossible commandment to uphold, considering the Democrats hold the Senate and White House (and came 7,000 votes or a redistricting case away from holding the House too). It is clear that Quevin viewed acknowledging this reality as the last resort, yet reality eventually came calling, and the punishment for recognizing it was predictably swift. The rabble-rousers who had it in for the now-former Speaker seem to think that they can force their way to victory through sheer intransigence and posturing, but the Democrats of 2023 will not let themselves be bullied, and why should they? What a gift of bright, shiny ammo they have now been given! See how it will soon gleam in the light of this weekend's news interviews!
Repubs: No Speaker, no platform, no mandate, no morals, no clue. And, if I have anything to say about it, no chance next year.
When a group of GOP fringe extremist arsonists are elevated to elected office, don’t be surprised when the result is an out-of-control fire.