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Joan McCarter

Hapless Oversight Chair Keeps Digging 'Dirt' On Biden

The Biden impeachment resolution the House GOP unanimously approved last December has hilariously collapsed (Russian moles, sawdust “cocaine”), but that’s not stopping the utterly inept Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, from throwing spaghetti at the wall to make something stick. The chair of the House Oversight Committee made it clear that his intention is to amass as much “evidence” of alleged wrongdoing as he can, with an eye toward setting up criminal prosecutions for a hypothetical Trump presidency.

“Since January 2023, we’ve launched investigations into President Biden’s border crisis, energy crisis, federal pandemic spending, federal agency telework policies, abuse of power at the FTC, the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes, the federal government’s efforts to combat CCP influence, and more,” Comer told Politico.

Those investigations, he promised, “will culminate in reports with our findings and recommended solutions to prevent government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.” Expect that to be as solid as all the previous work from him and his fellow MAGA zealot Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The “and more” Comer referred to includes such burning questions as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic (which occurred under Trump) and the administration’s use of theStrategic Petroleum Reserve. Comer has made it clear that this volley of attacks is designed to generate criminal referrals.

“I want to hold the Biden family accountable. I believe the best way to hold the Biden family accountable is through criminal referrals. We’ve proven many crimes have been committed,” Comer told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy. “If the Merrick Garland Department of Justice will not hold this family accountable, then maybe if Trump is president, a Trey Gowdy Department of Justice can hold this family accountable.”

The Comer oversight overreach extends to a threat to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt if he doesn’t turn over the audio tapes of the interview special counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in his classified documents probe. That’s after the disastrous hearing Jordan and Comer held last month, intended to show that Biden is too old and doddery to be trusted as commander in chief.

That backfired when the Justice Department released the transcript of the Biden interview, which showed that Biden’s memory was not failing, and in fact Hur remarked on Biden’s “photographic understanding and, and recall of the house” in Delaware where documents were found. But Comer and Jordan—who have been given free rein by GOP leadership to continue to embarrass them all—are sure that they can find some nugget of a cover-up on the part of Garland in all of this.

Mostly, though, they want to help Trump in his revenge plots. So they’re just going to keep burrowing into the hole they’ve dug. They could quit while they’re behind, but the need to avenge Trump just won’t let them.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Watch Margie Struggle To Explain Her 'Motion To Vacate' House Speaker

Georgia’s main contribution to the degradation of competent government, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, just put Speaker Mike Johnson on notice with a motion to vacate the chair, the process that some Freedom Caucus Republicans used to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last fall. It’s filed, but she hasn’t yet activated it to force a floor vote. That was probably a smart move on her part since she’d definitely lose if she tried to derail the two-week recess the House is ready to set off on.

Watch her try to justify her action to reporters:

“I filed the motion to vacate today,” she said, “but it's more of a warning and a pink slip.” (Note to Marge: A pink slip is not a warning.) “I respect our conference,” she continued.

“I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the throw the House in chaos, but this is basically a warning, and it's time for us to go through the process take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.”

In other words: It's time to oust him, but I'm not doing it yet, but it's time, but I don't want to cause chaos. Sure, Marge, sure. Greene went on to say that she’d move forward with it if Johnson puts Ukraine aid on the floor.

This is reminiscent of what then-Freedom Caucus member Mark Meadows did to former Republican Speaker John Boehner in 2015. Meadows filed a motion to vacate but didn’t activate it. The move from Meadows and his fellow maniacs ultimately contributed to Boehner’s resignation. That probably won’t be the result Greene gets this time around, but it complicates Johnson’s precarious hold on his conference, particularly since his margin on votes is now so slim.

At the moment, Greene doesn’t seem to have any takers. Several of the members who voted to oust McCarthy aren’t on board this time around, not yet anyway. Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett told CNN, “Marjorie is my friend, but honestly, if the Republicans do that, they know they'll be handed it over to [Democratic leader] Hakeem Jeffries, and that's the bottom line.”

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of the eight who voted to boot McCarthy, is also a no as is the ringleader of that previous fight, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. At least one of those eight—Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina is playing coy. “We’ll see,” he told reporters.

Johnson has essentially no votes to lose on a motion to vacate—a situation made even more dire by the just-announced early retirement of Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), as soon as next month. Johnson’s also in a singularly weak position in the conference right now, and that showed in Friday’s government funding vote. Not only did Johnson have to rely on Democrats again to pass it, but also the majority of Republicans voted against it, 112 to 101. That’s hardly a vote of confidence from his conference.

The uncertainty for Johnson, and the fact that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Jeffries could win a majority if another speaker vote comes up, Democrats are in a good position to extract some concessions from him, and that’s just what they’re preparing to do. That concession: the Senate’s supplemental funding bill to aid Ukraine.

“I think Speaker Johnson should demonstrate a willingness to govern in a way that is helpful to the plight of democracy and our allies across the world,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, told Politico, saying she’d vote to table the motion to vacate.

“It's not a question of saving Mike Johnson,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said. “I’ll make a common cause and an alliance with anybody in Congress who will try to save the Ukrainian people at this point.”

Through all 15 of the votes it took to elect McCarthy speaker last year, Democrats held firm behind Jeffries. They did it again during the arduous process this past fall, when Republicans couldn’t figure out how to replace McCarthy. Now that the Republican majority is next to nonexistent—depending on absences and no votes on any given day—Johnson’s survival as speaker is Democrats’ hands.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

No Labels Has No Takers For Its Spoiler Campaign Against Biden

It looks like it’s time for No Labels to give up the ghost. The ostensibly centrist organization has long been floating a presidential “unity ticket” to bridge the partisan divide. However, when you can’t count on either Sens. Joe Manchin’s or Kyrsten Sinema’s ego to keep you afloat, you’re toast.

On Tuesday, NBC News published a rundown of all the potential presidential candidates besides Manchin and Sinema whom No Labels has tried—and failed—to secure for their third-party folly:

Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
Former GOP Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp
Former GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Former GOP Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
GOP New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley
Former Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick
Businessman Mark Cuban
Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven
Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

The latest person to brush off No Labels is former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, an anti-Trump Republican. He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that while “it was an honor to be approached,” he wants to spend his time on fixing the Republican Party.

Even former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory—who sparred with Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas on NBC’s Meet the Press last August—has jumped ship. McCrory, a Republican, had the group’s national co-chair until resigning last week. “I gave it my all for over a year as volunteer co-chair, but it is now time to move on,” McCrory told NBC News. That came after the group decided it was going forward with running its own presidential ticket—if they can find someone to head it up, that is.

No Labels announced last week that it was forming a vetting committee to identify their candidates for president and vice president, which means scraping the bottom of the barrel to find someone willing to associate themselves with the group. Their process, like just about everything else in the organization including who’s financing it, is being kept secret.

The organization has bled high-level staff in the past year, including its “vice chair, two vice presidents, two national co-chairs, the head of its digital operation, the director of its political field program and more,” according to NBC News. Its staff appears disgruntled too, with one anonymously telling NBC, “You are constantly being asked to sign NDAs in that organization.”

Former allies are turning on the group as well, including one of its influential early supporters, “No Labels seems to have become the victim of its own arrogance,” attorney Richard J. Davis wrote on Tuesday. Davis served as assistant secretary of the Treasury Department in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and as an assistant special prosecutor during Watergate. “Its leaders are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they developed a dangerous tunnel vision,” he said.

No Labels’ latest plan is to play this farce of a third-party run into August, at which time they’ll pull the plug on it if it hasn’t gained serious traction. But this plan is even being mocked by the centrist think tank Third Way.

“No Labels nominates their presidential ticket in March. Over the next four months, the candidates pour their heart, soul, and millions of dollars into gaining ballot access and persuading voters, all the while not knowing whether their party will submit their names into nomination,” Third Way pointed out in a blog post this past Thursday.

“The candidates would be running with one foot in the door and one foot out. And the No Labels Party leaders would retain an unprecedented amount of power to pull the rug out from under their campaign.”

No wonder No Labels can’t find any takers. But at least they have another four or five months to grift their high-dollar donors, which seems to be the primary motivation for No Labels’ co-founder and CEO Nancy Jacobson, who holds the key. It’s her ego trip.

“This is Nancy’s decision, and her decision alone,” a source told NBC News. “If she wants a ticket, we’re getting a ticket.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

During State Of The Union, Biden Put Supreme Court On Blast Over Abortion

President Joe Biden’s fiery State of the Union address on Thursday was made even stronger with some near-seamless ad-libs. None were more unexpected or more effective than when he directly took on the Supreme Court justices over their 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Biden’s prepared remarks included a reference to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, quoting Justice Samuel Alito’s excuse that the matter of abortion access should be handled at the ballot box in the states: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” Biden extemporaneously turned that passage into a direct attack on the high court.

“In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote the following—and with all due respect, justices—‘women are not without electoral or political power,’” Biden said, directly addressing the six judges attending. “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.”

“Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women, but they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and we will win again in 2024,” Biden continued. “If you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

That’s an “astonishing” moment in a state of the union, said Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC commentator and former Senate aide. “There was that moment that I think we all remember of the way he attacked—I guess, is the word for it—the Supreme Court to their faces, where the camera then goes to this shot of the six SCOTUS justices, three of whom he was very specifically attacking,” he said.

Three, that is, because Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the author of the horribly momentous Dobbs decision, didn’t bother to show. “That’s never been done before, to the extent that a president has a disagreement with the Supreme Court expressed in the State of the Union address,” O’Donnell continued. “That was just astonishing.”

It’s not just astonishing. It’s a critical admonishment to the Supreme Court, which still has some democracy-defining decisions to make this term, not the least of which is whether an insurrectionist ex-president is above the law.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Kari Lake Appears To Welcome White Nationalist Into Her Senate Campaign

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake has been cozying up to a well-known white nationalist and QAnon-adjacent operative, the Arizona Mirror reports. Wade Searle has been called one of neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes’ “strongest soldiers.” Searle lost his job working for the extremist Rep. Paul Gosar after Talking Points Memo exposed his ties to Fuentes.

So of course Searle has been welcomed by Lake, the biggest election denier of 2022 after she lost her gubernatorial bid to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake continued to claim she was the “lawful governor”—even as she was filing papers to run for the Senate seat currently occupied by Kyrsten Sinema, who announced Tuesday that she will not seek reelection.

Like the true Donald Trump fanatic she is, Lake filed repeated lawsuits to challenge the election outcome. Like Trump, she just kept losing those suits. Also like Trump, she’s embroiled in a defamation lawsuit over her attacks on an election official.

Searle has been showing up at Lake’s campaign events, even standing prominently behind her when Sen. John Barrasso—a member of the Senate GOP leadership—recently gave her his endorsement.

Lake’s campaign and Searle boost each other’s social media posts, and Searle seems to be involved with two Arizona groups, Students for Kari and Students for Trump, the Mirror reports. Lake, Searle, and the groups didn’t respond to the Mirror’s request for comment and clarification about his role in her campaign.

That endorsement from Barrasso isn’t a one-off from Senate Republican leadership or the GOP establishment. They’re coalescing behind Lake’s bid—never mind the MAGA-spouting white nationalist neo-Nazi lurking just below the surface of her campaign. A whole mess of senators are holding a fundraiser for her in Washington this week, including wannabe Senate Minority Leader John Cornyn, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines, and Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Joni Ernst.

Is it official now? Has the Senate GOP just declared themselves the party of Trump and white nationalists? Sure seems like it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Democrats Focus IVF Fire On Vulnerable GOP House Incumbents

Republicans continue to flounder when it comes to protecting access to IVF, and Democrats are intent on making it even worse for them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign organization designed to elect House Democrats, released a scathing memo Monday, blasting “so-called moderate House Republicans” who seek “political cover by backing non-binding House resolutions that do nothing to actually protect access to this vital health care.”

“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is poised to make House Republicans’ blatant disrespect for women and families a defining campaign issue,” the memo continues. They’re taking particular aim at members of the Biden 17—the 17 House Republicans who occupy districts that Joe Biden won in 2020—who have rushed out competing House resolutions to say how much they love IVF, but have refused to actually protect the treatment. They are empty promises, and Democrats won’t let them get away with it.

Democratic contender Derek Tran is using the DCCC’s message and running hard at GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th District, which Biden won by 6 percentage points in 2020. Steel is cosponsoring one of the nonbinding resolutions expressing support for IVF, but she is still a cosponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which declares that fertilized eggs have all the protections of actual human beings.

Steel is a “fraud,” Tran told NBC News. “She continues to spill out lies,” Tran said. “Just three weeks ago, she signed on to the Life at Conception bill. This is the second time she’s done that. And now she’s saying that she’s pro-IVF when the Life at Conception bill is anything but. So she still is just spilling out lies in order to get voters.”

Those vulnerable House Republicans sure aren’t going to get any guidance from their leadership. Here’s mushy Speaker Mike Johnson trying to have it all ways: “Look, I believe in the sanctity of every human life. Always have,” he told NBC. “And because of that I support IVF and its availability.” Oh, and he has “many close friends” who have used IVF.

“It needs to be readily available. It needs to be something that every American supports. And it needs to be handled in an ethical manner,” he said, complaining that there is “a lot of misunderstanding” about where Republicans stand on it. That’s no misunderstanding at all—that’s Republicans refusing to say whether they believe IVF needs to be statutorily protected.

This is a potent issue for Democrats, and they know it—from the Biden-Harris reelection team down to the DCCC. In a new CBS News/YouGov poll, a whopping 86 percent of Americans said IVF should be legal. The message from Democrats is simple: “House Republicans are flagrant hypocrites who have spent their entire tenure in the majority attacking reproductive rights at every turn,” Courtney Rice, a spokesperson for the DCCC, told HuffPost. “Now, they are hiding behind toothless resolutions and empty public statements because they know their relentless attacks on reproductive freedoms will cost them at the ballot box.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Senate Republicans Reject IVF Protection They Promised To Support

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois asked Wednesday for unanimous consent to pass her bill granting federal protections to IVF and other advanced fertility treatments, to prevent more states from doing what the Alabama Supreme Court did to shut the practice down.

All Republicans had to do was to not object to that. They wouldn’t have even had to take a roll call vote on it. But as soon as Duckworth asked her Senate colleagues across the aisle to put their money where their mouth is, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippiobjected, proving that all of the recent insistence from Republicans about wanting to protect IVF is nothing more than lip service.

It’s not that they don’t want to protect these key reproductive rights, most Republicans argued this week. It’s just not their job to do it. No, they say, the states will take care of all that, because the Supreme Court said so.

For example, Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said: “I don’t see any need to regulate it at the federal level … I think the Dobbs decision puts this issue back at the state level, and I would encourage your state legislations to protect in-vitro fertilization.”

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana joined in on the buck-passing. “The Dobbs decision said that abortion is not part of the Constitution,” he said, “and they said we’re sending the issue back to the states, and I think that’s where it belongs.”

“Alabama will pass a law to protect IVF,” said Alabama’s Sen. Katie Britt.

Right. Here’s what Alabama is doing to “protect” IVF: proposing legislation that does not challenge the state supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are children, leaves IVF clinics open to lawsuits if they destroy those embryos (a regular part of the process), and automatically expires early next year—after the election. So much for that idea.

Other Republicans are trying to flip the script, saying that this is just about Democrats playing political games on the issue. “It’s idiotic for us to take the bait,” said Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. Apparently taking the “bait” is making sure IVF is protected.

This all shows once again the trap Republicans created for themselves, claiming that life begins at conception and abortion is a crime but IVF—a process in which many fertilized eggs are going to be destroyed—is different somehow, but still not worth protecting from government restrictions. And they know very well that they’ve dug themselves a hole.

Iowa’s Sen. Joni Ernst says she supports access to IVF, but “I don’t want to say they’re not children.” And Wyoming’s Sen. Cynthia Loomis insists “we desperately want to protect in vitro fertilization,” but, you know, there’s stuff that has to be figured out first.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida attempted to be thoughtful about the mess they’re in.

“How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?” he said. “No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life,” he said. “Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then you’re now in a quandary.”

So to recap: Republicans love IVF and want to protect it, but letting a bill pass that would do just that? Nope. Not their job.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Poll Shows Even Republicans Don't Trust GOP To Protect Social Security

A new survey from Navigator Research doesn’t just show how strongly voters feel about protecting Social Security and Medicare, but it also shows how much voters don’t trust Republican lawmakers to do it. And that’s including a solid majority — 61 percent —of Republicans.

The survey finds that 75 percent of registered voters are either somewhat or very concerned that congressional Republicans “passed a tax plan that gave record-breaking tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and biggest corporations, but would result in cuts to programs that people count on like Social Security and Medicare.” Supporting tax breaks for the wealthy at the cost of Social Security and Medicare are the most concerning positions of Republicans in Congress on the issue of taxes.

Voters have good reason not to trust the GOP. Right now, House Republicans are plotting yet another fiscal commission that could fast track Social Security and Medicare cuts, in the name of deficit reduction, and they want to include that commission in the 2024 funding package. We’ve seen this ploy from Republicans before, with the Bowles-Simpson commission in 2010 and a congressional “super committee” in 2011. These committees are how Republicans have tried to cut Social Security and Medicare without dirtying their own hands. In this ploy, a committee would be responsible for coming up with the plan, and then Congress would have to pass it in order to save the country from the deficit.

This time around, however, the majority of Democrats aren’t going to play the deficit-peacock game, and they’re calling this plan what it is: “They should probably call this commission the Commission to Slash Benefits,” Rep. John Larson of Connecticut said at a recent press conference. “It’s tantamount to passing a death panel, because that will be the impact on so many Americans.”

Social Security doesn’t have to be cut to be saved. Democrats have legislation to shore up the Social Security trust fund by raising payroll taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year. The cutoff for payroll taxes this year is $168,600. Earnings beyond that aren’t subject to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.

This new commission is “undemocratic” Larson said, because it would all be in the hands of the committee, leaving lawmakers out of the process—just as Republicans want it. “We need hearings out in the open on specific proposals so the public can see what’s going on,” he said.

Judging by the Navigator survey results, the public knows exactly what Republicans have planned, and they don’t like it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Shutdown Clock Ticking As GOP Plays Games With State Of The Union

Five months into the 2024 fiscal year, House Republicans still can’t agree on how to fund the government, with a partial shutdown deadline on Friday. While they’re nearly half a year behind on this fundamental task, some of them are playing games with President Joe Biden, agitating House leadership to disinvite him from giving the State of the Union address if he doesn’t send them a 2025 budget beforehand.

Seriously. Here’s Freedom Caucus member Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania telling Fox News that Biden’s speech should be blocked until he sends his proposed budget: “He comes at the invitation of Congress. Republicans are in charge of the House. There’s no reason that we need to invite him.”

They even have a bill in the works to prevent future presidents from delivering the SOTU if they haven’t submitted a budget by the first Monday in February. That’s the deadline set by law, though there’s no enforcement mechanism in the law, and presidents missing the deadline is common. The law wouldn’t apply until next year, but Republicans seem to think it makes them look serious to have a bill, and they will use it to argue for blocking Biden’s speech this year.

“This is irresponsible,” Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia said to Fox News. “Until Congress receives the president’s national security strategy and budget, he has no business delivering a State of the Union address.”

While Republicans are trying to shift the budget mess onto Biden, they’re facing a Friday deadline to stop a partial government shutdown this year, and they are foundering. The House isn’t even back from the Presidents Day recess until Wednesday, and Speaker Mike Johnson clearly doesn’t have a handle on the situation. Johnson whined about it to members of the GOP conference in a call Friday night, complaining that they are undermining his bargaining position with their constant infighting and chaos.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, are refusing to back down from their demands that a slew of poison-pill policy riders be included in the funding package and for more border security funding—after Republicans killed the Senate’s bipartisan border security bill.

"The only money we're giving to America is to secure our border,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) told Fox on Monday.

House and Senate negotiators were aiming to release a bipartisan agreement Sunday night, but the talks broke down over the House hard-liners intransigence. “Unfortunately, extreme House Republicans have shown they’re more capable of causing chaos than passing legislation,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to his colleagues Sunday night. “It is my sincere hope that … Speaker Johnson will step up to once again buck the extremists in his caucus and do the right thing.”

To that end, Biden has entered the fray, setting up a meeting Tuesday with the top four congressional leaders—Biden, Senate leaders Schumer and Mitch McConnell, Johnson, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries—where hopefully the combined forces of Biden, Schumer, and Jeffries can strengthen Johnson’s spine against the extremists.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Speaker Follows Impeachment Charade With Call To End 'Political Posturing'

House Speaker Mike Johnson has plenty of excuses for not taking up the Ukraine aid package the Senate passed early this week, saying that he’s just got too many serious issues on his plate to help in the fight for democracy against Russian totalitarianism. He told reporters Wednesday morning that “we have to address this seriously, to actually solve the problems and not just take political posturing as has happened in some of these other corners.”

— (@)

Yes, he seriously accused Ukraine aid proponents of “political posturing” just hours after he led House Republicans in their second—barely successful—sham impeachment vote of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. By the way, that reporter’s question was spot on. Johnson effectively killed the original Senate bill that included a border security package by saying it would be dead on arrival in the House. Now he complains that the aid bill “has not one word about the border.”

Johnson also insists that he’s too busy figuring out how to avoid a government shutdown on March 1 and that it will take time for his team to “process” the Senate’s package. Guess what’s not on the House schedule this week? That’s right: Any appropriations bills to fund the government ahead of the looming deadline. Again, he was able to carve out more time to impeach Mayorkas and to force the Senate to deal with that just days before the government funding deadline.

The Senate is out until Feb. 26 and is going to have to deal with the Mayorkas impeachment as soon as they return. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the process in a statement, indicating that the House impeachment managers will “present the articles of impeachment to the Senate” as soon as they’re back in, and “[s]enators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day.”

Which means two days of valuable Senate time will be wasted on this because the Senate will never vote to convict Mayorkas, but they have to deal with it anyway. They’ll dispense with it as quickly as the Senate can do anything, but they need every hour for the long process of passing the bills to keep the government from shutting down.

That process between the House and Senate is going nowhere fast because of all the poison-pill riders about abortion, contraception, and trans issues the House Republicans crammed into their spending bills.

On top of all that, Johnson—who just spent an embarrassing week and a half of floor time impeaching one of Biden’s cabinet members—is now demanding that Biden take him seriously and have a face-to-face meeting with him on the Ukraine bill. A White House spokesperson told NBC that Johnson “needed to wrap the negotiations he has having with himself and stop delaying national security needs in the name of politics.” Biden is not included to help Johnson out of this one.

“That body language says: ‘I know I’m in a tough spot. Please bail me out,’” one Democrat involved with the supplemental aid package told NBC.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Kevin McCarthy Is Taking Revenge -- On House Republicans

From primary challenges to getting blackballed from House Republicans caucuses, the eight Republicans who ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are feeling the blowback. His allies—and he has many of them—are making sure of that.

The Republican Main Street Caucus and Republican Governance Group have quietly booted Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, whose attention-getting stunts seem to be wearing thin with her colleagues. “She really wants to be a caucus of one. So we obliged her,” one House Republican told CNN.

Mace is facing a serious primary challenger, as is Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, the new chair of the Freedom Caucus and one of the anti-McCarthy eight. “A well-connected GOP outside spending group is planning to play in the [primary] races,” CNN reports, and McCarthy is likely to be directly involved on behalf of the challengers as well.

Where the real hammer is falling on this eight is in their fundraising. Others, including Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Eli Crane, acknowledge that the big donors aren’t taking their calls anymore. Burchett told CNN’s Manu Raju that he “absolutely” had seen his donations dry up. “Some very wealthy folks, and they’ve been very kind to me in the past,” Burchett said of donors who had dropped him. “And I hope that we can mend the fences,” he added. Good luck to him on that one.

Crane of Arizona told Raju he was feeling a fundraising hit. “Yeah, that’s definitely a reality,” he said. “And I think anybody that participated in that knew that going forward.”

He’s right. They knew what they were doing, and they asked for this. Booting McCarthy meant ousting their most effective fundraiser. Ousting him meant pissing off all those big donors he’s been cultivating all these years. They’re friends of Kev, and they are happy to help him get his revenge.

Speaking of revenge, that’s what the ouster was all about. The spearhead of the chaos, Rep. Matt Gaetz, admitted it to a colleague in private correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast. According to the outlet, “Gaetz indicated to a friend that his effort to undercut, isolate, and ultimately remove McCarthy was, indeed, payback for the ethics probe.” That would be the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz for alleged sex crimes, drug use, and campaign finance violations, to name a few.

Do any of Gaetz’s pals blame him for putting them in this position? Of course not. “I’m too busy working for the Lowcountry and helping elect President Trump to worry about Kevin McCarthy’s puppet,” Mace told CNN. “The DC swamp doesn’t want me back—too bad. I don’t work for them, I work for the people of the First Congressional District and no one else.”

The rest of the GOP conference loves to see McCarthy’s revenge. “If I’m those folks, one of the things that would scare the crap out of me more than anything else is an unhinged McCarthy,” a Republican lawmaker told CNN. “The guy’s the most prolific fundraiser, you’ve got a massive group of donors across the country that are pissed off about what’s happening, and you’ve got these boneheads that have caused it.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Koch Billionaire Network Secretly Funding Legal Scheme To Gut Government

Far-right judicial activist Leonard Leo, the force behind the Trump-packed Supreme Court, and billionaire megadonor Charles Koch have combined their networks to back yet another dark-money-fueled effort to gut the federal government. Bloomberg Law has uncovered their involvement in the New Civil Liberties Alliance, “a top US Supreme Court litigator” that’s behind the challenges the court heard last week to the federal government’s power to regulate corporate America.

The group’s purported goal is to protect individual rights from “the administrative state” which they see as “an especially serious threat to constitutional freedoms,” according to the group’s website. You know, that “deep state” that ensures we have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, that ensures our food is safe to eat and our prescription medications won’t harm us.

Bloomberg notes that while the New Civil Liberties Alliance “identifies as nonpartisan,” it is “backed by groups tied to powerful sources of conservative funding, including billionaire Charles Koch and entities linked to legal activist Leonard Leo, who’s had direct influence over the court’s conservative makeup.”

The group received $2.06 million from Donors Trust Inc., a “community foundation for liberty,” from 2020 to 2022, according to Bloomberg. Donors Trust, in turn, received $175.6 million in those two years from The 85 Fund, yet another Leo group. In the same time period, the 85 Fund was also getting money back from Donors Trust “to help finance various conservative groups,” according to CNBC.

“The 85 Fund, which paid Leo’s public affairs firm CRC Advisors $21.4 million for services in 2022, is led by Carrie Severino, the president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions on ad campaigns to get Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the bench,” Bloomberg reports.

That’s combined with the more than $5 million the New Civil Liberties Alliance has received since its beginning from the Charles Koch Institute and the Charles Koch Foundation. A nonprofit associated with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Cause of Action Institute, filed one of the challenges to federal rule-making, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Cause of Action received $200,000 from Americans for Prosperity in 2022, according to records reviewed by Bloomberg.

This is all much less about individual rights than corporate rights. It’s about giving corporations free rein to gamble with public health and safety, dressed up as “liberty.” The New Civil Liberties Alliance’s efforts extend to bringing upcoming Supreme Court cases that would reverse the criminal ban on bump stocks—accessories that turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns—and would prevent administration efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Republicans Only Want To Campaign On Border Crisis -- Not Solve It

The Senate has essentially one job this week: Get a bipartisan immigration/Ukraine aid supplemental bill to the floor. The lead Democratic negotiator is bullish on progress, but Republicans are throwing up roadblock after roadblock, keeping one of their most critical election issues alive for November.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters Tuesday, “Our work is largely done. The conversation has really moved over to Appropriations. So, there's no reason why we couldn't begin consideration this week."

There’s every reason on the other side of the aisle. Take MAGA Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example.

— (@)

Never mind that lawmakers have been talking about immigration reform for two decades. Now they don’t have enough time? Now the Senate needs to spend another month reviewing it and coming up with poison pill amendments? A reminder as well about the “last time” the Judiciary Committee came up with a big immigration bill: House Republicans killed it and pointed the finger at President Barack Obama for its murder. That was another election year, 2014, in which the GOP wanted to ride a wave of fear of immigrants to the ballot box.

That’s the perennial story of immigration reform in Congress. There’s two decades’ worth of supposed bipartisan history on immigration that’s been killed by the Republicans. This is too salient a political issue for them. They don’t want to secure the border with new funding and new policy directives. They want to keep the so-called border crisis in the headlines, just like they’ve done since 2001.

Thus, Republicans keep throwing up roadblocks to this effort. There’s Lee and his “regular order” argument above. Now that they’re getting close, Republicans have manufactured another block: opposition to Palestinian aid that Democrats want to include in the other part of the bill, the supplemental funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Senate Republicans are also arguing that the House GOP wouldn’t pass it anyway. “I’m positive the Senate can do its job and I’m positive the House will do its job,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Punchbowl News. “I’m not sure those are the same thing.”

As far as Republicans are concerned, it is the same job: keeping the issue alive for Donald Trump. He rules their world, after all.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Biden Marks Roe Anniversary With New Abortion Protections (And A Stinging Ad)

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are commemorating the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, kicking off what will be a year-long campaign to put abortion and reproductive health rights at the forefront in 2024. That includes the White House announcing new steps to strengthen protections and access to contraception, abortion medication, and emergency abortions at hospitals, facing Donald Trump and his packed Supreme Court head on.

It also includes blasting out this 60-second ad featuring Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB/GYN and a mother of three, who fled the state to get an abortion. The fetus she was carrying had a fatal deformity and carrying it potentially threatened her life.

“In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy, and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Dennard says in the ad. “The choice was completely taken away. I was to continue my pregnancy, putting my life at risk,” she continued. “It’s every woman’s worst nightmare, and it was absolutely unbearable.”

Biden’s statement on the anniversary of Roe makes the stakes of this election clear: Abortion opponents want women in every state to be subjected to what Dennard faced. “Even as Americans—from Ohio to Kentucky to Michigan to Kansas to California—have resoundingly rejected attempts to limit reproductive freedom, Republican elected officials continue to push for a national ban and devastating new restrictions across the country.”

It also puts forced birth advocates on the spot. They want a national abortion ban, but they know that saying that out loud is a political suicide. Even at Friday’s March for Life, prominent lawmakers and activists steered clear from talking about abortion bans, or even from taking a victory lap at having finally succeeded in overturning Roe. Instead, many talked about efforts to divert federal funding to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, trying to put a caring face on forcing people to carry unwanted, often dangerous, pregnancies.

“This is a critical time to help all moms who are facing unplanned pregnancies,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the rally. “To work with foster children and help families who are adopting, to volunteer and assist at our vital pregnancy resource center and maternity homes, and to reach out a renewed hand of compassion and to speak truth and love.” Right, it’s all about compassion and love with the GOP.

Biden and Harris aren’t going to let Republicans get away with that, rhetorically or in terms of policy. The measures the White House unveiled expanded access to contraception, guaranteed access to the abortion pill, and a new task force dedicated to enforcing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals to provide “stabilizing” health care for patients in emergency situations, including labor. That care, the Biden administration maintains, includes abortion.

That puts the administration at loggerheads with the Trump-packed Supreme Court, which will hear a proposed law from the state of Idaho prosecuting emergency room doctors who provide abortions in the course of stabilizing patients. The Justice Department is preparing to argue the law at the Supreme Court later this year.

Biden is also taking the court on by announcing he is “directing further efforts to support patients, providers, and pharmacies who wish to legally access, prescribe, or provide medication abortion.” The court will decide on restrictions on that access—even in states where abortion remains legal—later this year.

Meanwhile, Harris is kicking off her “Reproductive Freedoms Tour” of swing states starting Monday in Wisconsin. She’s taking the fight to Trump in a speech previewed by Politico: “He made a decision to take your freedoms, and it is a decision he does not regret. Just two weeks ago, he said, that for years, ‘they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated.’ And then he bragged, ‘I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.’”

“He is proud,” Harris continues. “Proud that women across our nation are suffering? Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Is Bossing House Speaker On Border And Ukraine Legislation

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been getting his marching orders directly from Donald Trump (and by extension Vladimir Putin) when it comes to funding for Ukraine and the immigration policy bill it’s tied up with. Johnson told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Wednesday that he and Trump “have been talking about this pretty frequently. I talked to him the night before last about the same subject.”

Trump’s position is no secret. “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!” he yelled on Truth Social Wednesday.

Then he exerted some extra pressure: “Also, I have no doubt that our wonderful Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, will only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER,” Trump wrote. “Remember, without Strong Borders and Honest Elections, we don’t have a Country!!!”

The timing of Trump’s outbursts wasn’t random. Johnson, along with Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, met with President Joe Biden Wednesday. The three likely ganged up on Johnson to push the agreement, though no one is saying that. Biden, Schumer, and McConnell are all deeply committed to Ukraine assistance, and the only path for it to happen now is through an immigration agreement.

What Senate Republicans are saying is that Johnson and House Republicans need to step up on this, because they are unlikely to get a better deal. “To my Republican friends: To get this kind of border security without granting a pathway to citizenship is really unheard of. So if you think you’re going to get a better deal next time, in ’25, if President Trump’s president, Democrats will be expecting a pathway to citizenship for that,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters. “So to my Republican colleagues, this is a historic moment to reform the border.”

Because it is such a good deal for Republican senators, plenty of Democrats in the House will not feel compelled to support it. Johnson would need a united Republican conference, but he’s unlikely to get it. The House Freedom Caucus has made their position clear: It’s their draconian anti-immigrant bill or nothing, and so far Johnson has been catering to them.

That might be because his speakership could be on the line. As Trump exerts more and more pressure, so do the MAGA members of Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has already threatened to bring a motion to oust Johnson if he brings this Senate bill to the floor. “It’s really an amnesty deal where Democrats are going to bring in millions and millions of illegals and turn them into Democrat voters,” she told Fox.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Demands That Networks 'Lose Licenses' For Displeasing Him

In a speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Donald Trump hit on a familiar (and fascistic) theme: his desire to suppress unfriendly media.

“Last night, it was amazing,” Trump said, referring to what was actually an underwhelming victory in the sparsely attended Iowa caucuses. “NBC and CNN refused to air my victory speech—think of it—because they are crooked, they’re dishonest, and, frankly, they should have their licenses, or whatever they have, taken away.”

Unsurprisingly, that was a lie. Both networks aired portions before cutting away to the other candidates’ speeches, which is how these things are typically covered. But Trump insisted he’d been unfairly singled out. “They put on Nikki Haley. She came in third, a distant third—like, I mean, a distant third,” Trump continued. “And they put on Ron DeSanctimonious [DeSantis], who came in a boring second.”

This type of dictatorial rhetoric isn’t new for Trump. For years, he’s been railing against the “fake news” and calling the free press “the true Enemy of the People,” the “opposition party,” and “a bunch of very dishonest, crooked bastards.” He has threatened to open a “treason” investigation into Comcast, the owner of MSNBC, for what he said is their “endless coverage of the now fully debunked SCAM known as Russia, Russia, Russia, and much else,” calling it “one big Campaign Contribution to the Radical Left Democrat Party.”

Coincidentally, on MSNBC Monday evening, Rachel Maddow explained why MSNBC and other networks “stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to remarks by former President Trump.”

“It is not out of spite. It is not a decision that we relish,” Maddow said. “It is a decision that we regularly revisit,” she continued. “And honestly, earnestly, it is not an easy decision, but there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. And that is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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