Tag: Rep. Kevin McCarthy

…meanwhile…

Jeffries Elected House Democratic Leader – House Democrats have elected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (above) their leader, replacing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who announced she would step down after two decades (but remains in Congress for at least two more years). Jeffries, 52, covers New York’s 8th District which includes large parts of Brooklyn and a section of Queens, and becomes the first Black congressional leader from any party, replacing Pelosi, 82, who was the first female congressional leader from any party. Younger Democrats in Congress have been clamoring for more youthful leadership for the last few years. 

Other Leaders: Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-MA), 59, replaces Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), 83, in the House Democrat number-two spot while Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), 43, replaces Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), 82, for the number-three leadership position. Until the 118th Congress takes over in January, the outgoing top-three Democratic House positions are held by representatives older than President Biden, who just turned 80.

Meanwhile: Current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) faces some inner-party opposition as he tries to skate the line between condemning ex-President Trump’s dinner with an antisemite and a white supremacist (see right column) and actually condemning Trump himself. McCarthy cannot afford to lose five Republicans from the incoming House of Representatives to take the speaker’s gavel he long has coveted – which gives Democrats an outside chance of voting Jeffries into the speakership. 

Nobody, but nobody, really expects the GOP majority to let that happen, but it will make for an interesting January on Capitol Hill. 

--TL

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Oath Keepers Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy – Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Florida chief Kelly Meggs were found guilty in federal court of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Tuesday (The Hill). The Justice Department victory marks the first such conviction for seditious conspiracy since 1995, according to CNN.

All five Oath Keepers defendants were found guilty in the trial of obstruction of an official proceeding. Four Oath Keepers were found guilty of tampering with evidence – the fifth member of the far-right organization was not charged in this count. 

Rhodes and Meggs face potential prison sentences of up to 20 years for each.

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Senate Votes to Codify Same-Sex Marriage – The Senate voted, 61-39, to codify federal recognition of same-sex marriage, with religious liberty protections securing the bipartisan support, Roll Call reports. Lead sponsor Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told reporters the bill would ease concerns that the Supreme Court could revisit precedents that protected same-sex and interracial marriage. SCOTUS in 2013 found the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act largely unconstitutional.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the House could take up the bill as early as next week.

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Good Economic News – Various signs are appearing that the Federal Reserve is succeeding in capping inflation without triggering a recession. It’s early yet, but here’s a big piece of such evidence: the national average price of a gallon of gasoline was $3.521 as of Tuesday morning, AAA reports. That’s lower than the average price before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

The Speaker McCarthy Question Arises Again

Strong Republican backlash against Donald J. Trump had pundits convinced the former president was finally out as leader of the GOP, two years after he lost his own re-election. Until … Politico reported over the weekend on a backlash to the backlash. 

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) already faces Republican opposition to his bid to become Speaker of the House – and that’s assuming his party picks up the six more seats necessary for him to qualify for the job. 

So what do you think? Should McCarthy be next Speaker of the House? Should Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remain the Senate’s minority leader? Let us know what you think in the Comment box in this column, or in the left column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and list your political leanings in the subject line.

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Liz Cheney and The Great Task

(WED 8/17/22)

Expected defeat…Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman beat incumbent Liz Cheney, 65.8% to 29.5% in Tuesday’s Wyoming GOP primary election. That’s 106,322 votes for Hageman to Cheney’s 47,615 in a state with about 580,000 residents. 

Cheney will continue to fight to keep former President Donald J. Trump from retaking the White House by running for the 2024 nomination for president, Politico, which reported those numbers above, speculates Wednesday. The three-term congresswoman, who now leaves the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection by January whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker and gets a chance to dismantle and investigate it or not, has launched The Great Task, a political action committee devoted to keeping Trump out of office, NPR reports. 

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 75% of the vote,” Cheney said in her concession speech Tuesday night (per The Guardian video). “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. …

“It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundation of our republic. That is a path I could not and would not take.

“No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles we were all sworn to protect and I well understood the political consequences of abiding by my duty. The primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Irony alert: Hageman, for her part, also nationalized the Wyoming primary for the House seat (as recorded by NBC News). 

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone across this great country who believes in the American Dream … who believes in liberty and recognizes that our natural rights; Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection and due process come from God.” 

They do not come from politicians, she said, “and the government cannot take them away."

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them," she continued. "And what Wyoming has shown today is that while it cannot be easy, we can dislodge entrenched politicians who believe they have risen above the people they are supposed to represent.”

Meanwhile, in Georgia: Former Trump attorney and America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to testify Wednesday before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. Giuliani is a target of the investigation.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire: Attending a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast in the state holding the first presidential primary again in 2024, ex-Vice President Mike Pence said he would testify before the House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, MSNBC’s Morning Joe reports Wednesday. His statement came in the form of an answer to a question posed at the event. 

The count, so far: Of 10 House Republicans who voted for then-President Trump’s second impeachment after the January 6 Capitol attacks, four have lost their primaries this season to pro-Trump candidates and two have won, according to the Associated Press. Three, including Cheney’s only fellow Republican on the House Select Committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose not to run for re-election. One primary race is still to be determined; Rep. John Katko’s New York seat.

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Alaska’s non-partisan ranked-preference primary … Preternatural MAGA politician and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s shot at the state’s single, at-large House seat remains alive. Palin came in second with 32.2%, to Democrat Mary Peltola’s 34.5% and ahead of Republican Nicholas Begich’s 27.1%. A third Republican, Tara Sweeney, also advances to the general election, with her 3.2% of the vote.

Because of the ranked-preference vote, a candidate who gets more second-place votes could beat the first-place candidate. 

Alaska will determine the winner among these three for the special election to serve out the remainder of Republican Don Young’s seat, by the end of August, NPR says. (Young died in office earlier this year). Peltola, Palin, Begich and Sweeney face off in the ranked-preference general election November 8.

For U.S. Senate: Moderate Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski edged Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka, 42.% to 41.8%, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro at 6.2%, and Republican Buzz Kelley at 2.3% to advance to the general election. The four beat 15 other candidates for the chance to compete in another ranked-preference race for the Senate seat November 8.

--Todd Lassa

...meanwhile... (TUE 8/16/22)

Tuesday’s primaries… Wyoming’s and Alaska’s primaries are quite probably Donald J. Trump’s most important so far and coincide with a resurgence of support for the former president coming a week after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Politico calls the Wyoming primary “Liz Cheney’s day of reckoning” as she faces Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman for the state’s at-large House seat. Cheney is about 30 points behind in the polls thanks to her voting for ex-President Trump’s second impeachment and sitting as vice chairwoman of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, though there has been some hope that she would make up that deficit with sympathetic Democratic and independent voters in the open primary. There will not be enough.

In Alaska, preternatural Trumpian Republican Sarah Palin faces Democrat Mary Petola and Republican scion of prominent state Democratic family Nicholas Begich in a special election to replace Don Young, who died in office earlier this year. Alaska has a new ranked-preference system, which means that if no candidate gets at least 50% of the vote for the at-large House seat, the second and third rounds are counted. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also faces Democratic and Republican challengers in the non-partisan primary for her seat (per Ballotpedia).

Upshot: Cheney could flip Tuesday’s likely loss into a serious challenge to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

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Biden to sign Inflation Reduction Act… President Biden is scheduled to sign the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sweeping climate change, health care and tax bill at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates no effect on inflation – why should it? – for 2022 and ’23, its scoring says the reconciliation bill will reduce the federal deficit by $300 billion, NPR reports.

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Giuliani a ‘target’ in Georgia probe… Prosecutors in Georgia have informed former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani he is a ‘target’ in its “wide-ranging” criminal investigation into election interference involving his former client as attorney, ex-President Trump, in the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reports. A federal judge in Atlanta also has rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) efforts to avoid testifying in the investigation being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Graham’s attorneys say the senator has been informed he is a witness, not a target.

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Enduring Immigration Issue: Can it be Fixed?

By Todd Lassa

Four-and-a-half years ago, candidate Donald J. Trump promised that if he were elected president, he would “build the wall” on the Southern border, and “make Mexico pay for it.” President Trump ended his single term in office with about 365 miles of new fence that replaced existing dilapidated and outdated fencing, about 40 miles of new primary wall, plus 33 miles of secondary wall where there was none before, factcheck.org reports, quoting the Customs & Border Protection service. This means 73 miles new build. The price tag is an estimated $15-billion. Mexico paid for none of it.

Now President Biden is actually negotiating a own border deal with Mexico. The U.S. is offering excess supply of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in exchange for Mexico “moving to help the U.S. contain a migration surge along its southern border,” The Washington Post says, citing “senior officials” from both countries. (The U.S. also will extend the vaccine deal to Canada, though obviously without any quid pro quo on help with border security.)

The deal is being negotiated as the Biden administration tries to stem the flow of children and teenagers trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico and other points south. Biden signed numerous executive orders his first few days in office to reverse President Trump’s strict border control measures.

Republicans are quick to connect this latest crisis to Biden’s laissez-faire immigration policy and reversal of Trump executive orders. Immigrant children are arriving at the southern border without their parents. Under the Trump administration, more than 600 children and teenagers were separated from their families as their parents were thrown out of the U.S. in 2018, explicitly to deter illegal immigration.

On Monday, March 15, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, led a bi-partisan delegation to the border at El Paso, Texas, to call attention to the latest flood of illegal immigrants trying to cross the border, a scene that Democrats criticized as a “photo op.”

The numbers of immigrants amassing at the border has, indeed, reached its highest monthly level, NPR reports, since 2019. Immigrants are flowing north primarily from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, NPR reporter Carrie Kahn said, fleeing “high levels” of violence, gangs and poverty, with promises made by human smugglers, while relatives already in the U.S. advise on whether they can find jobs here. The Biden administration seeks $4 billion in aid for these countries to spend on police training and judicial reform.

Proponents of a comprehensive immigration and asylum plan lament legislation proposed during George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s administrations, neither of which had a chance to make it through the Senate. Obama’s proposal was essentially an updated variation of the Bush plan. 

Now, following an administration that sought to heavily restrict immigration via executive orders and to appease American workers fearful for their jobs, instead of the traditional Republican constituency of farms and businesses seeking low-cost labor, the Biden administration is working on a new asylum process.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-CA, have introduced bills that seek …

•An eight-year path for undocumented immigrants to become citizens.

•Increases in the number of visas issued to immigrants per-country.

•Changing the term “alien” to “non-citizen.”

The House of Representatives began to take up this proposed legislation March 18. A bill offering legal status to “Dreamers” and migrants admitted for humanitarian reasons, Politico reports, passed by 228-197 vote. A bill offering similar protection to about 1 million farm workers -- estimated to be about half the nation’s agricultural workers – who have entered the U.S. illegally passed 247-174. The Senate will be a steeper climb. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, introduced a bi-partisan immigration bill in early February, but has more recently told Politico he won’t support “legalizing one person until you’re in control of the border.”

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