Sunday, January 08, 2023
Saturday, January 07, 2023
What we learned from the McCarthy's struggles to become speaker - The Washington Post
What we learned from the McCarthy imbroglio
Kevin McCarthy is finally speaker. But not before he endured 15 ballots — the most in a speaker election since the Civil War — made a series of major concessions and dealt with some ugly scenes overnight on the House floor.
With those wild four days now over, it’s worth taking stock of what all this showed and where we go from here.
It’s not the end of McCarthy’s headaches; it’s the beginning
The good news for McCarthy is that he now has the position he’s been striving for dating back to last decade. The bad news is that he will now assume a diminished speakership (thanks in part to his own concessions) leading a very fractured and unwieldy conference, in a way that might make him regret ever taking the job.
And you only need to look to the final hours of this week’s events late Friday and early Saturday for proof.
McCarthy expressed confidence that he had the votes heading into Friday night. Asked how he was so sure, he said, “Because I counted.” But he wound up actually failing on the 14th ballot, when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) voted “present” and left McCarthy at exactly 50 percent of the vote. This led to a near-physical altercation in which Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.) confronted Gaetz and was restrained.
After narrowly losing a fourteenth ballot for House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy confronted Rep. Matt Gaetz on the House floor. (Video: The Washington Post)
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) remarked of the scene: “People shouldn’t be drinking, especially when you’re a redneck, on the House floor.” He added of Rogers, “I would drop him like a bag of dirt.”
Regardless of the alleged role of alcohol, the dynamics that led to this scene and these words aren’t going anywhere.
When John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) took over as speaker in 2011, he later recalled in his memoir, he quickly realized that he had effectively become “mayor” of “Crazytown.”
Well, Crazytown now puts significantly more levers of power in the hands of its most extreme denizens, thanks to the second-smallest GOP majority in the past 90 years and the major concessions McCarthy chose to grant his holdouts during negotiations.
They’ll have significant say on the hugely important House Rules Committee. They reportedly will be able to demand budget cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling (which heightens the odds of a debt default). And just one member can move to oust McCarthy if they don’t like what he’s doing — what’s known as a “motion to vacate the chair.” That’s a situation which contributed to Boehner’s resignation and which former speaker Paul D. Ryan’s team compared to a “weapon pointed at [the speaker] all the time.”
The Post’s Paul Kane had a great piece on Thursday running down all the reasons McCarthy might have set himself up for failure. And indeed, the fact that he was giving away so much was cause for some consternation among his allies.
But McCarthy wanted the job — badly. Now we get to see what he can do with what’s left of it, and while fending off a contingent of holdouts who seem bent on making his tenure torturous.
He said early Saturday that he was “1,000 percent” certain he wouldn’t be booted from the job over the next two years, but getting voted out is not the only possible negative outcome.
The next big hurdle is passing a rule package, which leadership hoped to do early Saturday but wound up postponing until Monday. One McCarthy backer signaled he’ll vote against it and others have reportedly expressed concerns about the concessions it contains, raising the prospect of yet another fraught battle at the very outset of McCarthy’s speakership.
It was posturing, but it worked
It’s often true in politics that situations can appear unresolvable, until they’re resolved. And the speaker election was certainly one of those.
A prohibitive number of Republicans had asserted that they would oppose McCarthy, who could afford to lose only four GOP votes if everyone cast a ballot for another candidate. The question was whether they were posturing or whether they would hold strong. It turned out to be the former.
Republicans pause infighting to pick Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker in historic 15th round of voting (Video: The Washington Post)
We understand that politicians often say things they might or might not believe. But when their earlier statements later prove wrong, it’s always worth taking stock of that (lest we take them at face value in the future). And this week’s standoff featured plenty of promises that ultimately fell by the wayside:
- Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) assured that McCarthy would never become speaker — including as recently as Friday. Gaetz also dismissed the idea that he wound vote “present” — “Never voted present in my life. Don’t plan to start now” — but he and five others’ present votes wound up handing McCarthy the speakership by lowering the threshold he needed to cross.
- Reps. Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.) and fellow McCarthy holdout Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) also said they wouldn’t vote present, before they ultimately did.
- Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) called himself a “hard no” and said, “I’m not going to support Kevin McCarthy,” but did so starting on the 12th ballot. (Gaetz also rejected the idea that Norman and Rosendale would ever flip for McCarthy, saying, “Those people don’t know Ralph Norman and Matthew M. Rosendale.”)
- McCarthy had indicated that the motion-to-vacate-the-chair change was a non-starter, before giving the Freedom Caucus what it wanted.
Of course, nobody in politics ever wants to admit their hand isn’t as strong as they’d like it to be. But the week’s events all reinforce that in such unpredictable situations, every proclamation should be viewed with the necessary skepticism.
Just because a conflict appears unreconcilable doesn’t mean it is, especially when various incentives push in favor of a resolution. This has happened over and over again when Congress confronts deadlines on must-pass legislation, often waiting until the very last minute (or blowing the deadline but eventually getting its act together).
What this week also showed is that politicians who would draw things out have plenty of incentive to do so, particularly when their opponent is over a barrel. Gaetz repeatedly remarked overnight that he was struggling for things to ask forbecause McCarthy had given away so much — comments surely intended to twist the knife.
Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) initially helped deny the House speakership to Rep.-elect Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Jan. 6, until he changed his mind. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Those concessions might have been enough to save McCarthy’s speakership bid. But it sure sends a message to others who might try something similar in the future.
Time heals wounds — somewhat
It was a little more than seven years ago that McCarthy unexpectedly bowed out of the running to succeed Boehner as House speaker, despite being next in line. The reasons for that withdrawal were complicated — including a gaffe in which McCarthy had suggested the House’s Benghazi investigation was a deft political win — but it basically boiled down to the fact that the House Freedom Caucus didn’t like him and didn’t trust him, and the math apparently didn’t work.
Now McCarthy has won the speakership, though the GOP holds a much smaller majority and he could afford to lose significantly fewer Freedom Caucus votes.
What has changed since then? Certainly, McCarthy has proved willing to do what it takes to appeal to the hard right, even when it is embarrassing and transparent. That includes when he showed up suspiciously late on a list of House Republicans seeking to challenge the 2020 election results — an effort he had previously declined to publicly support. It also includes when he went to Donald Trump, hat in hand, shortly after blaming the former president for what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
He also made an effort to mend fences with the co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who stood by his side throughout this fight — a move that arguably proved very important. While the effort to thwart McCarthy included about 20 members at the outset, it lacked a real leader. If the likes of Jordan rather than Gaetz had headed up the opposition, it might have been a very different ballgame.
But beyond that, there’s the question of why McCarthy was acceptable now when he apparently wasn’t then. Perhaps if he had soldiered through in 2015, the votes would have turned up eventually. Perhaps, in the intervening years, the Freedom Caucus has simply worn down the establishment so much that McCarthy’s concessions were more acceptable today than they would have been in 2015. (Plus, there’s the fact that McCarthy could scarcely bow out twice and harbor any hopes of becoming speaker — which perhaps lent him extra motivation to press on this time.)
But it’s also true that sometimes you need to wait for enough people to forget why they didn’t like you. Part of McCarthy’s calculus in bowing out early in 2015 was surely that it would allow him another shot down the road.
He finally got that shot, and after plenty of drama he pieced together a speakership — or, at least, a semblance of one."
Thursday, January 05, 2023
Wednesday, January 04, 2023
Kevin McCarthy faces open GOP revolt as House fails to elect speaker - The Washington Post
Kevin McCarthy faces open GOP revolt as House fails to elect speaker
"The House will come back into session Wednesday after McCarthy’s bid was thwarted on three ballots on the first day of the new Congress
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) faced open revolt in the House chamber Tuesday, failing in three rounds of balloting to earn enough votes to capture the speakership in a once-in-a-century showdown that will now spill into a second day.
The stunning failure of the House to elect a speaker on its first round of voting came after McCarthy and his allies spent weeks working to secure the 218 votes needed for him to take the gavel. Republicans won back the House in November’s midterms, but with a slim, four-vote majority, requiring near-consensus among the conference to move votes forward.
By early Tuesday, it became clear that hard-right GOP holdouts had not been swayed. The failure was the culmination of an internal divide that had in the past helped bring down the speakerships of Republicans John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), with members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus asking for a range of demands in exchange for their votes.
Nineteen Republicans remained dug in against McCarthy, voting for four other Republicans on the first ballot before switching their support to Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) during the second and third ballots. Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) joined the group on the third and final round of voting, bringing McCarthy’s opposition to 20.
“We do not reward not being able to close deals. I don’t know where we got that, where we thought that was a cool thing,” Donalds said. “But in the real world, you got to close.”
Still, McCarthy remained steadfast, telling reporters late Tuesday night that he will become speaker.
“It’s going to happen. … Is it the day I wanted to have? No. There’s a lot of things we wanted to do,” he said. “You come back and continue doing what we’re doing right now — talking — and you solve the small problems.”
McCarthy also said he spoke to former president Donald Trump on Tuesday evening and still has his support.
“I think from his perspective, he wants to see Republicans united to accomplish the exact things we said we’d do,” McCarthy said.
The reasons for the holdouts’ opposition were varied, from claiming that McCarthy’s proposed House rules package, which would dictate how the chamber functions over the next two years, does not go far enough in giving members leverage to simply wishing McCarthy was someone else.
Unable to break the stalemate, the House adjourned without a speaker on Republicans’ first day back in the majority. McCarthy spent Tuesday evening huddling with allies to devise a plan that could break the opposition and help him be elected as speaker when the House convenes again Wednesday afternoon.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said the adjournment was like “calling a time out” so that the caucus can have “a family meeting.” He said the message will be, “Hey, kids, let’s all get together on this and let’s stop fighting each other.”
McCarthy’s inability to clinch the necessary 218 votes to become speaker in one day — something that hadn’t happened since 1923 — led members into uncertain territory and undermined Republicans’ goal to govern now that they have the majority. As a result, the GOP’s intraparty fighting only grew more fervent and transparent as the day went on, with many no longer holding back insults toward the detractors.
“I think that we have to make a choice today: Are we going to be the party of the radical 2 percent?” said Rep. Kat Cammack (Fla.), visibly frustrated after a morning conference meeting in which McCarthy made his case once more to his colleagues. “Because that’s what it comes down to, the 2 percent that are being the most vocal.”
McCarthy said he was not surprised by the 20 defections, since he knew where the vote tally stood. But it is unclear what he will do now to win over those opponents.
Immediately after the House adjourned, McCarthy met with multiple allies but not with any lawmakers opposing him. Several of his allies have for months acted as liaisons with members of the Freedom Caucus and were expected to continue meeting with them through Tuesday evening.
Allies emerged from McCarthy’s office late Tuesday stressing that the problem the Freedom Caucus has is much larger than McCarthy and would require a full conference conversation about the damage their demands could do to the institution.
“He has 90 percent of the House Republican support. That is a slam-dunk nomination for any position,” Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) said about McCarthy.
McCarthy still has several maneuvers he could make to win over holdouts, including withholding committee assignments. But he will no longer negotiate on changing the “motion to vacate” rule to allow one House member to recall the speaker at any point. He had already broken his pledge to keep the current rule — which former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had changed to allow a member of leadership to oust the speaker — when he proposed in his House rules package that five members could call for a vote to remove him from the top spot.
McCarthy remained vague about exactly where the negotiations stood and what demands remained. Nor did opponents show their cards about what more they wanted to see happen before voting for McCarthy.
“I’m not going to talk about where we go on candidates, because that’s premature,” said Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.), who nominated Jordan on the House floor after voting for Donalds on the first ballot.
The unfolding drama is due to the dismal election results for House Republicans, who had expected to win scores of seats in the midterms. Voters instead handed them a four-vote majority, jeopardizing key decisions since any small group of Republicans could derail any negotiation.
After months of talks with members who made their opposition known after House Republicans’ disappointing midterms performance, McCarthy has made numerous concessions in an effort to win his detractors over. But the discord only grew over the holiday weekend, with some members who had been leaning against McCarthy now coming out as firm opponents.
Those voting against McCarthy said early Tuesday they had myriad reasons, primarily that they consider him an “establishment” figure who has contributed to the problems that have long plagued GOP leadership. McCarthy has been in House Republican leadership for a majority of his congressional career, 14 out of 16 years.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said he entered negotiations with McCarthy and other Republicans early on in an effort to influence House rules. The group’s sway only grew after the midterms, given the razor-thin margin McCarthy has to work with.
“Under pressure from members who said we won’t accept the status quo, we have been able to force rule changes to make things better,” Perry said.
Over the weekend, McCarthy unveiled a final rules package before holding another conference call with members to discuss it. Shortly thereafter, Perry and Roy led seven other Republicans in opposition, saying the package didn’t go far enough in restoring power taken by leaders over time from members.
In a last-minute meeting Monday evening, Perry said, objectors provided McCarthy a list of final demands that included desired committee assignments, subcommittee chairmanships and immediate votes on border security legislation, as well as a bill that would institute term limits on members.
McCarthy began and ended the day defiant, telling the Republican conference in a meeting Tuesday morning that he was done negotiating and had “earned” the speaker’s gavel, according to multiple people in the room.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said at a news conference that McCarthy told the lawmakers Tuesday morning that he would not entertain detractors’ “personal wish list” any longer. “Here we are being sworn at instead of being sworn in,” Boebert said.
Throughout the meeting, McCarthy allies suggested that detractors would not be seated on committees if they defected on the House floor. Roy asked McCarthy if that was true, and McCarthy wouldn’t deny it.
McCarthy finds himself stuck in the middle of the first decision Republicans must make to officially convene the 118th Congress. Without a speaker elected, the House cannot swear in all members to vote for the rules package. Any further delay will also affect committee work, hampering Republicans’ desire to jump-start investigations into the Biden administration and create a new select committee that would look into the “weaponization of government,” as McCarthy promised Sunday.
New members are facing the brunt of the delays since they cannot access basic office functions like email until they are sworn in.
The irritation among Republicans grew more visible as the day went on. During the second ballot, four lawmakers from Texas convened off the floor to discuss the stalemate. Rep.-elect Wesley Hunt, Reps. Dan Crenshaw and McCaul confronted Rep. Michael Cloud about why he continued to defect and support Jordan, who himself had repeatedly endorsed McCarthy.
Crenshaw asked Cloud what other concessions McCarthy could make to win over his opponents — and then demanded to know why Freedom Caucus members are considered more conservative than him.
“What about them is more conservative?” a frustrated Crenshaw asked Cloud. “I’m not f---ing joking!”
As each vote dragged a full hour and the detractors refused to budge, members began to grow exasperated in public view as well.
“Because I’m interested in governing: McCarthy,” Rep. Bill Huizenga (Mich.) said as he cast his vote on the third ballot.
McCarthy’s allies were hoping not to adjourn Tuesday, in hopes that continually voting would pressure the holdouts to cave or tire Democrats from returning to the floor, according to multiple people familiar with last-minute negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Abstentions can benefit McCarthy since they help lower the 218-vote threshold.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said he’s “not scared” of the balloting lasting days.
McCarthy refused to entertain the idea that Jordan, the detractors’ pick, would actually become speaker. He noted he’s a “very big fan” of Jordan’s but said he does not have enough support.
It’s a sentiment the “Only Kevin” crowd echoed after leaving the House floor. Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.) said that while Jordan is a “nice man” and “made a good team with Kevin McCarthy,” it’s not worth accommodating “a small group that essentially have you hostage, and that’s what’s going on here.”
In response to Bacon jokingly telling reporters that the defectors should be called the “Taliban 20,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) tweeted, “Well….as hurtful and false as that is….I too am prepared for an extended battle that I will ultimately win.”
At the beginning of the day, Rep. Steve Womack (Ark.) reflected on the vitriol that had flared dramatically, and publicly, within the Republican conference. Asked how a staunch conservative and institutionalist like him felt, he became visibly emotional.
“I don’t know how to answer the question. Really. I just hurt for the institution. It’s painful,” he said.
Liz Goodwin and Dylan Wells contributed to this report."
Monday, January 02, 2023
Sunday, January 01, 2023
Strife in the Schools: Education Dept. Logs Record Number of Discrimination Complaints
Jan. 6 Transcripts Reveal Disagreements That Divided Trump Camp
“Interviews revealed that people in President Donald J. Trump’s orbit had very different views on seizing voting machines, the Proud Boys and each other’s roles.
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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Friday released more than 40 additional transcripts of its interviews, bringing the total number of transcripts published to more than 160.
So far, the transcripts have added details to the public’s understanding of how police intelligence failures contributed to the Capitol attack, how former President Donald J. Trump considered “blanket pardons” for those charged, and how Trump-aligned lawyers allegedly tried to steer witness testimony.
The committee is rushing to publish more interviews before Jan. 3, when Republicans will take control of the House. Though the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, many of them were informal; only a few hundred were transcribed sessions.
Here are some takeaways from the thousands of pages released this week.
Giuliani thought seizing voting machines could be an impeachable offense.
At a chaotic meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020, outside advisers urged Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines in a bid to rerun the election.
That was too much for even Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer who had encouraged baseless election fraud claims but told Mr. Trump that the plan could be impeachable behavior.
“This may be the only thing that I know of that you ever did that could merit impeachment,” Mr. Giuliani recalled telling the president.
In his interview with the committee, Mr. Giuliani refused to discuss his role in many aspects of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, though he said he had rejected Mr. Trump’s idea of granting him a pardon.
“The president asked me what I thought of it,” he said of the pardon. “And I said I thought it would be a terrible mistake for him.”
Mr. Giuliani was less forthcoming when asked if Mr. Trump had ever thought of pardoning himself. “That would be privileged, actually, if he raised that with me,” he said.
The Secret Service was concerned about the Proud Boys leader’s White House visit.
On Dec. 12, 2020, hours before hundreds of members of his far-right group took part in a pro-Trump protest, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, posted a photo of the White House steps on social media.
“Last minute invite to an undisclosed location,” Mr. Tarrio wrote on Parler, a right-wing social media app.
Newly released emails and testimony suggest that some Secret Service agents were concerned about how a prominent far-right extremist had so easily gained access to the White House.
Committee investigators later determined that the White House visit had been a public event that was likely arranged by a friend of Mr. Tarrio, Bianca Gracia, the founder of a group called Latinos for Trump.
In an email obtained by the committee, Ron Rowe, the chief of staff to the Secret Service’s director, asked Bobby Engel, a Secret Service agent: “Can we get some specifics on who submitted him for the tour? Why didn’t we pick up on his role/membership in the Proud Boys?”
Anthony Ornato, a former Secret Service agent who was Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations, told the panel that he did not recall if he knew who the Proud Boys were at the time of Mr. Tarrio’s visit. The group’s name notably came up during a 2020 presidential debate.
Mr. Tarrio is one of five members of the Proud Boys who are now on trial in Washington, where they are facing charges of seditious conspiracy. Opening arguments are expected to begin next month.
Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas tried to play down her role in contesting the election.
In a wide-ranging interview, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who is known as Ginni, sought to play down her role in attempts to challenge election results.
Ms. Thomas acknowledged that she had exchanged text messages after the election with Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, in which she recommended that he support Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who was pushing false accusations that foreign governments had hacked into the country’s voting machines.
Ms. Thomas denied that she had discussed her activities with her husband. But she did acknowledge that she had been referring to Justice Thomas as her “best friend” in texts with Mr. Meadows, in which she said a talk with her “best friend” had cheered her up while she was distraught over Mr. Trump’s loss.
“My husband often administers spousal support to the wife that’s upset,” she told investigators.
Ms. Thomas also acknowledged taking part in a project called FreeRoots that had sent mass emails to state lawmakers in key swing states saying they had “power to decide if there were problems in their election.”
In a tense exchange with Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and vice chairwoman of the panel, Ms. Thomas said that she still believed that the election had been marred by fraud. When questioned further, Ms. Thomas could not come up with any specific instances of fraud.
C.I.A. staff had a ‘suicide pact’ to resign if Trump fired the director.
New details also arose this week about plans to replace the director of the Central Intelligence Agency with a Trump loyalist in the final stages of the administration. The committee received testimony about a mass resignation plan at the C.I.A. in opposition to Mr. Trump’s attempt to replace Gina Haspel as director with Kashyap P. Patel, a lawyer and staunch supporter of the president.
According to Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House communications director, Ms. Haspel had a “suicide pact” in place, in which the entire intelligence community would resign if she were removed from her post.
“Allegedly, for about 14 minutes, Kash was actually the C.I.A. director,” Ms. Griffin said.
Trump’s White House was marked by constant infighting.
One theme throughout the transcripts is the intense infighting that was a constant feature of the Trump White House. Lawyers fought with lawyers. Communications staff fought among themselves. The president berated aides of all ranks.
Some examples: Ms. Griffin provided a scathing assessment of Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary: “I am a Christian woman, so I will say this. Kayleigh is a liar and an — She’s a opportunist.”
The Trump adviser Jason Miller told investigators he was “pissed off” when he learned that Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer, listed his name as the official to contact on a document she circulated denying that President Biden had won the election. “I called Cleta and said, ‘What the hell?’” Mr. Miller said. “And she said, ‘Yeah, you guys weren’t moving fast enough, so I just put your name on it and sent it out.’”
Trump didn’t want to do ‘a big PR push’ for a Capitol Police officer who died after Jan. 6.
The transcripts also show the conditional nature of the former president’s support for law enforcement. Mr. Trump agreed at the urging of his staff to lower the flag over the White House to honor a Capitol Police officer who died after Jan. 6, but “was adamant that we not do a press release or a big PR push,” Mr. Miller wrote in a text message.
“We want to make it clear nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump but we don’t want to blast it out,” Mr. Miller wrote.
A furniture executive bankrolled private jets for Trump’s circle.
Testimony released Friday detailed how Patrick Byrne, a former chief executive of the furniture retail company Overstock, took on the role of a financier who chartered private jets for people in Mr. Trump’s circle as they fought election results.
Trips included bringing Trump supporters and members of the Proud Boys to attend rallies in Washington before Jan. 6, taking lawyers and cyberexperts to investigate voting machines and transporting people who signed affidavits about election fraud.
Mr. Byrne also attended a White House meeting in which participants urged Mr. Trump to seize voting machines. In his deposition, Mr. Byrne said he had called for the meeting and asked the president to “put us in, coach.”
In one telling, the fake electors scheme originated from a senator.
According to Ms. Mitchell, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, came up with the idea to submit alternate electors to cast their ballots for the former president instead of Mr. Biden.
“It was actually Mike Lee’s idea,” she told investigators.
Mr. Lee has said he was eager to fight alongside Mr. Trump, but backed off when evidence of a stolen election did not appear. Mr. Lee ultimately voted to certify the election for Mr. Biden.”