Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 169
January 7, 2023
January 6, 2023
Two years ago today, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral ballots that would put a Democrat in the White House. There was no doubt Joe Biden had won: his majority in the popular vote was more than 7 million and he won the electoral college by 306 votes to 232, the same margin that the incumbent Republican had called a “landslide” four years earlier when it favored him. But supporters of that incumbent, Donald Trump, believed that Democrats could not possibly have won fairly and that if they had, it simply meant their voters were illegitimate.
Their worldview had its roots in opposition to the New Deal of the 1930s when Democrats, led by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, created a new kind of government in the United States, one in which the government worked to level the playing field between workers and employers and to provide a basic social safety net. Their new government included—imperfectly, but included—Black and Brown Americans and women. And it paid for the new programs with higher taxes on the wealthy.
When the new system shored up the economy, preserved democracy, and enabled the U.S. to help destroy European fascism, most Americans—Republicans as well as Democrats—supported the new system. Over time, they expanded it, and they also began to use the government to protect civil rights. The shared belief in this active government became known as the “liberal consensus” and was so popular that most Americans never imagined it might be dismantled. Social Security, for example, the Voting Rights Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency were all simply part of the air we breathed.
But from the start, those who hated the New Deal argued that it was essentially socialism because it took money from wealthy people and redistributed it through government programs to poorer Americans, especially Black people, people of color, and women. They warned white men that they were losing control of the country as they were being outvoted by lazy minorities and demanding women.
Gradually, those people who wanted to go back to the world of the 1920s took over the Republican Party. They purged it of those Republicans who believed in the liberal consensus, calling them “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only, even though it was Republicans who had put in place many of the crucial pieces of the liberal consensus, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
As the old racist wing of the Democratic Party, those who hated civil rights laws, swung to the Republicans, the Democrats increasingly became the party of minorities and women, and they defended the laws that had made the government more responsive to the needs of all Americans. As they did so, Republicans, determined to destroy the liberal consensus, turned the generic word “liberal” into something close to “communist,” which actually refers to someone who believes the government should take over the means of production.
They worked to convince voters that Democrats were leftists using the government to steal from hardworking white men, and warned that letting them have a say in the government would destroy the country. When voters still elected Democrats, Republicans started to manipulate the electoral system, restricting the vote and gerrymandering districts. After 1993, when Democrats made it easier for people to vote by enabling them to register at their local Department of Motor Vehicles and other government offices, Republicans began to insist—without any evidence—that Democrats won only because they cheated.
The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the logical outcome of this rhetoric. The rioters believed they were saving the country from what Trump called “emboldened radical-left Democrats” who had stolen the election. They believed they were patriots defending the country and the Constitution from Democrats, whose policies, Trump told them, “chipped away our jobs, weakened our military, threw open our borders, and put America last.” Biden would be an “illegitimate president,” “voted on by a bunch of stupid people.” “[Y]ou'll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump told them. “You have to show strength and you have to be strong…. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”
The rioters did not act alone. They were aided and encouraged by radicalized Republican leaders who had bought into the idea that the liberal consensus must be destroyed. Late on the night of January 6, 2021, after the riot, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to contest the slates of electors, reinforcing the idea that the election was fraudulent, although they knew as well as anyone that election officials, judges, and even Trump’s own campaign and White House staff had dismissed those claims.
After the insurrection, Republican leaders—including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy of California—initially condemned those who participated in it, but quickly came around to protect those who had simply taken their own ideology to its logical extreme.
And now, two years later, voter suppression and gerrymandering have enabled their voters to give those same people control of the House of Representatives, where their quest to dismantle the liberal consensus has been on display. Twenty of the most extreme Republicans refused to back McCarthy for House speaker until he gave them enough power essentially to make up a third bloc in the House. McCarthy could easily have reached out to the Democrats rather than cave to the extremist right, but he refused to compromise the quest to get rid of the very legislation the Democrats—and most Americans—want.
Today saw the number of House roll call votes for speaker rack up to an astonishing 14, as McCarthy gave the extremists more and more power. By midnight, after the 14th failed vote had led Mike Rogers of North Carolina to lunge at extremist ringleader Matt Gaetz of Florida, it was clear McCarthy’s bargaining would win him the seat he so badly wanted in a 15th ballot early the next day. Scott Perry (R-PA), who was a key figure in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, told CNN’s Manu Raju that among the many promises McCarthy made to get them on board was that he would not agree to raise the national debt limit without significant concessions.
The extremists wanted this control because they seem to believe that if the U.S. stops funding the government, the programs they hate will die. To kill off the government built by the liberal consensus, they are threatening to do as Trump has advocated: take the government into default.
That is, a few extremists are willing to take our government hostage to get their way, just as extremists did on January 6, 2021.
On that day the rioters attacked law enforcement officers, hunted down elected officials, and smeared feces in the building that symbolizes self-government in order to overturn an election and overthrow our right to choose our leaders, the principle that sits at the heart of democracy, and they did it believing that they were the ones defending America. “We have overwhelming pride in this great country,” Trump told them. “Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
But they were not the ones defending democracy that day. Those defending democracy were the law enforcement officers who held back the mob even at the cost of their health and even their lives, people like Daniel Hodges, Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn, Caroline Edwards, Aquilino Gonell, Eugene Goodman, Howard Liebengood, Jeffrey Smith, Billy Evans, and Brian D. Sicknick.
Those defending democracy were the election workers who protected our system even at the cost of their jobs, their safety, and their peace of mind, people like Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss, and Albert Schmidt. They were elected officials who refused to cave to pressure to throw the election, people like Jocelyn Benson and Rusty Bowers.
When Biden awarded these fifteen people the Presidential Citizens Medal today, he reminded the audience that on this day in 1941, FDR delivered the famous “Four Freedoms” speech.
In that speech, FDR told the country that “The nation takes…much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fiber of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.”
—
Notes:
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTomAll these guys are in the *same party* 
The Associated Press @APAs tensions boiled over on the House floor during the speaker votes, Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama started to charge toward Matt Gaetz before Richard Hudson physically pulled him back.Full coverage:https://t.co/rT1rrJ7Ayy https://t.co/klMbHN02iV5:20 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2023830Likes190Retweets
Josh Marshall @joshtpmTHERE IT IS: McCarthy agreed to give Freedom Caucus the keys to the car on pushing for national debt default. 6:34 PM ∙ Jan 6, 20238,224Likes3,442Retweetshttps://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
January 5, 2023
January 5, 2023
After 11 ballots, the Republicans remain unable to elect a speaker and thus unable to organize the House.
After passing comprehensive laws on a wide range of issues with a similarly small House majority under Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during the last Congress, the Democrats remain united behind Hakeem Jeffries. They have delivered 212 votes for him 11 times.
The contrast is stark.
Throughout the day, the allies of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) negotiated with the 20 extremists who refuse to back him, apparently offering them more and more power to win their votes. McCarthy has allegedly agreed to their demand that a single person can force a vote to get rid of the speaker, a demand that puts him at their mercy and that he had previously insisted he would never accept. He has also apparently offered members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus two spots on the House Rules Committee, which decides how measures will be presented to the House, and given them control over appropriations bills. He is also said to be considering letting them choose committee chairs, jumping over those with seniority.
This will not sit well with the rest of the conference. Lawyer and Washington Post columnist George Conway wrote, “I’m no political scientist, but it does strike me that a guy who negotiates by giving stuff up and and getting nothing in return probably wouldn’t make a good leader of a legislative body.”
If McCarthy does eventually win the speakership, he will have empowered a small group of extremists to control the House, and the next two years will be a constant fight as this tiny minority can hamstring the government. One of the extremists, Ralph Norman (R-SC), who wanted Trump to declare martial law in 2021 in order to retain the White House, said that McCarthy will get his vote only if he agrees not to raise the debt ceiling and will instead shut down the government and default on the national debt.
Bulwark podcast host Charlie Sykes told Alex Wagner Tonight, “There is no Republican establishment…. [W]hoever becomes the speaker is going to preside over the chaos that has been building for years. He or she is going to be the mayor of Crazytown.”
As the Republicans look incompetent and irresponsible, and will almost certainly make sure nothing much gets done in the 118th Congress, President Joe Biden is working to make sure people understand just how much the Democrats got done in the past two years.
At a cabinet meeting today, he told reporters that the country has made real progress and that the administration is now focusing on implementing the recently passed “big laws” so Americans feel the benefits of them. He noted that the $35 cap on the cost of insulin for those on Medicare went into effect only this year, along with other medical benefits like free vaccines for Medicare recipients. He also pointed out new tax credits for making homes energy efficient, and noted that government officials need to get the message out that the laws are out there.
Biden talked about both public and private investment in manufacturing, which will create jobs, and his conviction that the administration’s approach to building the economy from the bottom up is “off to a pretty darn good start.”
In a later set of remarks, the president and Vice President Kamala Harris explained that with Republicans having scuttled the bipartisan agreement on revising immigration laws that senators were working on in the last Congress, the administration is also stepping up to address the influx of migrants to the border. Today it announced new measures.
Biden explained that, currently, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Haitians make up a large percentage of those trying to come to the U.S. across the southern border, while the patchwork system of different rules at the border, along with the lack of asylum officers, means the system is broken. Former president Trump used Title 42, the public health rule, at the start of the pandemic to reject most migrants, but that rule imposes no penalties on those trying repeatedly to get into the country, significantly inflating the numbers of people apprehended at the border.
So, until Congress passes a comprehensive immigration plan to fix the system completely, the administration is working to stiffen enforcement for those who come to the U.S. without a legal right to stay, and also to speed up the process for those who do have that right. Those seeking asylum can use an app to request a humanitarian exemption to Title 42, and once the rule is lifted, can use the app “to schedule a time to present themselves at a port of entry for inspection and processing, rather than arriving unannounced at a port of entry or attempting to cross in-between ports of entry.”
Others can apply for admission if they have a U.S. sponsor, and then pass a background check, at which point they can enter the U.S. to work legally for two years. The U.S. will welcome 30,000 people a month from these four countries. But here’s the kicker: if they try to enter the U.S. without that paperwork, they are barred from entry in the future.
Since the U.S. applied this program to Venezuelans in October, undocumented crossings of Venezuelans have dropped about 90%. The administration is now expanding the program to include people from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
Immediately after Biden spoke, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas followed up. He began by refuting the Republican refrain that Biden’s attempt to end Title 42 will mean open borders, reiterating that “Title 42 or not, the border is not open.”
He provided some statistics on a system he calls “broken, outdated, and in desperate need of reform.” Currently, he explained, “It takes four or more years to conclude the average asylum case, immigration judges have a backlog of more than 1.7 million cases, and we have more than 11 million undocumented people in our country, many of whom work in the shadows, pay taxes, are our neighbors, attend our places of worship, work on the frontlines, and farm the food on our tables.” Once again, he begged Congress to update our immigration laws.
On Sunday, Biden will go to El Paso, Texas, to meet with local officials and community leaders to hear what they say they need, make it public, and try to convince Republicans to do something about it, rather than using the immigration issue as a political cudgel.
When asked why he is going now, when for two years Republicans have been demanding that he go, Biden made it clear he did not intend to respond to political stunts and wanted a visit to be tied to the impending end of Title 42. But there is no doubt this is an excellent political moment to respond to the Republicans’ drumbeat complaints that Biden is ignoring a border crisis.
Tomorrow, on January 6, Biden will honor people who distinguished themselves by protecting the country during the 2020–2021 attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, awarding them the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian award in the United States. Recipients include Capitol Police and law enforcement officers, election workers, and elected officials who withstood pressure to lie for Trump.
One of those getting a medal, posthumously, is U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died on January 7, 2021, after a series of strokes. Today, Sicknick’s estate asked for $10 million in damages from former president Trump, suing him for assault, negligence, violating Sicknick’s civil rights, and wrongful death, saying Trump incited the violence of January 6 that contributed to Sicknick’s death.
And on that note, two years after the January 6th insurrection, it is notable that Trump’s name has barely been mentioned during the fight over the House speakership. After McCarthy had lost three ballots, Trump urged the 20 extremists, some of whom have been his staunchest supporters, to “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY.” They ignored him. And for all the threats that the Republicans would make Trump himself House speaker, so far he has gotten just one vote.
—
Notes:
@POTUS Biden to award the Presidential Citizens Medal on Friday to the following individuals during an event marking the 2nd anniversary of the #January6thInsurrection ","username":"edokeefe","name":"Ed O'Keefe","date":"Thu Jan 05 15:31:36 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/FluAdk...
Ed O'Keefe @edokeefeJUST IN: @POTUS Biden to award the Presidential Citizens Medal on Friday to the following individuals during an event marking the 2nd anniversary of the #January6thInsurrection 
3:31 PM ∙ Jan 5, 202312,298Likes3,195Retweetshttps://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/04/trump-endorses-mccarthy-speaker-house-00076298
Duty To Warn 🔉 @duty2warnRep. Ralph Norman said that to win his vote, McCarthy would need to be willing to shut down the government and default on the debt.1:29 AM ∙ Jan 6, 20232,651Likes996Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/05/us/house-speaker-vote
@SykesCharlie cautions that \"whoever becomes the speaker is going to preside over the chaos that has been building for years. He or she is going to be the mayor of Crazytown.\" ","username":"WagnerTonight","name":"Alex Wagner Tonight","date":"Thu Jan 05 23:25:55 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/...
Alex Wagner Tonight @WagnerTonight"There is no Republican establishment. There are no normies." @SykesCharlie cautions that "whoever becomes the speaker is going to preside over the chaos that has been building for years. He or she is going to be the mayor of Crazytown." 11:25 PM ∙ Jan 5, 20231,117Likes290Retweetshttps://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-capitol-police-officers-family-sues-trump-over-death-2023-01-06/
George Conway🌻 @gtconway3dI'm no political scientist, but it does strike me that a guy who negotiates by giving stuff up and and getting nothing in return probably wouldn't make a good leader of a legislative body6:22 PM ∙ Jan 5, 202349,209Likes5,753Retweets
January 4, 2023
January 4, 2023
The Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives in 2022—aided by gerrymandering and new laws that made it harder to vote—but they remain unable to come together to elect a speaker. In three ballots yesterday, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) could not muster a majority of the House to back him, as a group of 20 far-right Republicans are backing their own choices. The saga continued today with three more ballots; McCarthy still came up short.
In contrast, the Democrats have consistently given minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York 212 votes, more votes than McCarthy received but not a majority of the body. When former Speaker Nancy Pelosi nominated Jeffries yesterday, she blew him a kiss and the caucus rose up in a standing ovation.
Because it is still unorganized, the House technically has no members. No one is sworn in, and so they cannot perform their official duties or hire staff. About 70 new members brought their families to Washington, D.C., to watch their swearing in, and the extra days as the speakership contest drags on are becoming hard to manage.
The chaos suggests that Republican leadership does not have the skills it needs to govern. Leaders often have to negotiate in order to take power—Nancy Pelosi had to bring together a number of factions to win the speakership in 2019—but since 1923 those negotiations have been completed before the start of voting.
Just weeks ago, McCarthy and his supporters were furious at Senate Republicans for negotiating with their Democratic colleagues to pass the omnibus bill to fund the government, insisting they could do a better job. Now they can’t even agree on a speaker. “Thank God they weren’t in the majority on January 6,” Pelosi told reporters, “because that was the day you had to be organized to stave off what was happening, to save our democracy, to certify the election of the president.”
One story here is about competence. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that Pelosi ran the House with virtually the same margin the Republicans have now and yet managed to hold her caucus together tightly enough to pass a slate of legislation that rivaled those of the Great Society and the New Deal. McCarthy can’t even organize the House, leaving the United States without a functioning Congress for the first time in a hundred years.
But there is a larger story here about the destruction of the traditional Republican Party over the past forty years. In those years, a party that believed the government had a role to play in leveling the country’s economic and racial playing fields was captured by a reactionary right wing determined to uproot any such government action. When voters—including Republicans—continued to support business regulation, a basic social safety net, and civil rights laws, the logical outcome of opposition to such measures was war on the government itself.
That war is not limited to the 20 far-right Republicans refusing to elect McCarthy speaker. Pundits note that those 20 have supported former president Trump’s positions, particularly the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They also worked to overturn the 2020 election, challenging the electors from a number of states. But 139 Republicans, including McCarthy himself, voted in 2021 to challenge electors from a number of states and went on to embrace the Big Lie, and McCarthy’s staunchest supporter is extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
And today, more than 60 prominent right-wing figures, from President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general Edwin Meese III to Trump lawyers Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, who were both instrumental in the effort to overturn Biden’s election in 2020, and Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas, who also participated in that effort, declared themselves “disgusted with the business-as-usual, self-interested governance in Washington.” They declared their support for the 20.
The roots of today’s Republican worldview lie in the Reagan Revolution of 1980.
Reagan and his allies sought to dismantle the regulation of business and the social welfare state that cost tax dollars, but they recognized those policies were popular. So they fell back on an old Reconstruction era trope, arguing that social welfare programs and regulation were a form of socialism because they cost tax dollars that were paid primarily by white men while their benefits went to poor Americans, primarily Black people or people of color. In that formula, first articulated by former Confederates after the Civil War, minority voting was a form of socialism that would destroy America.
When Reagan used this argument, he emphasized its idea of economic individualism over its racism, but that racism was definitely there, and many of his supporters heard it. When he stood about seven miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Ku Klux Klan members had murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner just 16 years before as they tried to register Black people to vote, and said “I believe in states’ rights,” the racist wing of the old Democratic Party knew what he meant and voted for him.
In the years since, party leaders cut taxes and deregulated business while rallying voters with warnings that government policies that regulated business, provided a social safety net, or protected civil rights were socialism that redistributed white tax dollars to minorities. In the 1990s, under the leadership of House speaker Newt Gingrich, Chamber of Commerce lawyer Grover Norquist, and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, the party purged from its ranks traditional Republicans, replacing them with ideological fellow travelers.
As their policies threatened to lose voters by concentrating wealth upward and hollowing out the middle class, Republicans increasingly warned that minority voters wanted socialism and were destroying the nation to get it. Trump rode that narrative to power, and now tearing down the current government is the idea that drives the Republican base.
Just last night, in his apparent realization that the party is moving beyond him, Trump launched a new attack on Black Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, falsely accusing her once again of delivering suitcases of fraudulent ballots in the 2020 presidential election to steal victory from him. Trump said he is fighting “the evils and treachery of the Radical Left monsters who want to see America die.”
That Republicans now have a wing openly determined to destroy the federal government is not a function of a few outliers who have wormed their way into Congress; it is the logical outcome of this worldview. Lawmakers like Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) are clearly enjoying the power they are currently wielding, but their larger project is the one the party has advertised since they were children: stopping the government from any of the actions it has called “Marxist” or “socialist,” burning it all down to make white Americans free.
Destruction doesn’t take skill at governance; it only requires obstruction. The 20 are good at that.
But a new era is pushing the Reagan era aside. Plenty of Republicans who want to deregulate business and cut taxes recognize that it is our democratic government and the rule of law that protects their investments, and that maintaining the government will take basic laws and the skills to negotiate and pass them.
At the same time, after two years of Democratic control, Americans have seen that government can work for them, and they appear to like the new laws that have created jobs—including in manufacturing—and invested in social services and are rebuilding infrastructure. Republicans who want to get reelected are moving away from the extremists to take credit for the laws passed under the Democrats. Just today, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Ohio governor Mike DeWine, and former Ohio senator Rob Portman—all Republicans—joined President Joe Biden, Democratic governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear, and Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown in Covington, Kentucky, to visit the Brent Spence Bridge between Covington and Cincinnati, Ohio. The bridge is on one of the country’s busiest freight corridors and is being rebuilt with money from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021.
In Ohio yesterday, Jason Stephens, a Republican promising to stop far-right policies, joined with Democrats to snatch the speaker’s chair from a far-right Republican who focused on religion and opposing abortion rights and who believed he had sewn up the necessary votes in his party. A Democratic state representative told Morgan Trau of ABC News, “Speaker Stephens led a coalition of moderate lawmakers from across the aisle, who will now focus on delivering the common sense solutions that Ohioans sent us here to deliver…. Now we can work on investing in our communities, on public education and workforce development.”
—
Notes:
Josh Marshall @joshtpmWorth remembering: Nancy Pelosi just ran the House for two years with the exact same margin. She not only easily commanded the Speakership but passed a lot of legislation. Part of this is that the Dems are not the GOP. The radicalism and propensity for parliamentary ...5:44 PM ∙ Jan 3, 20239,946Likes1,562Retweetshttps://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22218058/republicans-objections-election-results
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/nancy-pelosi-voted-house-speaker-as-democrats-take-majority.html
Lalee Ibssa @LaleeIbssa“None of us has seen anything like this disrespect for the institution in a most cavalier, frivolous way. It’s quite sad,” Pelosi said.“But let’s be hopeful that in the next day or so as they find their purpose and their unity, they understand why they are here.” 2:35 AM ∙ Jan 5, 202310,891Likes1,953Retweetsabcn.ws/3GEAFat ","username":"ABC","name":"ABC News","date":"Wed Jan 04 16:47:13 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/...
ABC News @ABCAmid multiple failed House speaker votes, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "thank God" Republicans weren't in the majority on Jan. 6 — "because that was the day you had to be organized to stave off what was happening." abcn.ws/3GEAFat 4:47 PM ∙ Jan 4, 202310,464Likes2,264Retweets
The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHollerPELOSI: “Happily, the honorable Hakeem Jeffries.”Pelosi graciously votes for Jeffries for speaker and blows him a kiss — gets an ovation. A peaceful transfer of power that must look very foreign to the GOP. 6:32 PM ∙ Jan 3, 202314,142Likes2,461Retweetshttps://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/politics/biden-kentucky-infrastructure-wednesday/index.html
https://conservativeactionproject.com/conservatives-call-for-new-house-leadership/
January 3, 2023
January 3, 2023
Today, the Republicans took over the House of Representatives.
The first thing they did was to remove the metal detectors that were installed after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The removal was one of the things Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised far-right Republicans in hopes of winning their votes to elect him speaker. The House has not yet voted on the rules package that ends "Democrat fines for failure of Members to comply with unscientific mask mandates and security screenings before entering the House floor," but the metal detectors are gone, just three days before the second anniversary of the January 6 attack.
So far, the removal of those metal detectors is the only concrete outcome of McCarthy’s attempt to woo the extremist members of his conference.
McCarthy failed today to win the House speakership. For the first time since 1923, the speaker was not decided on the first ballot.
The reason for the failure is that the Republican conference in the House is feuding internally. On the one hand are the extremists who maintain the reason the Republicans lost ground in the last three elections is that party leadership has not gone far enough in dismantling the government. They are led by lawmakers who were key in former president Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, men like Scott Perry (R-PA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Jim Jordan (R-OH). “I stand firmly committed to changing the status quo no matter how many ballots this takes,” Perry tweeted. “If…McCarthy had fought nearly as hard to defeat the failed, toxic policies of the…Biden Administration as he has for himself, he would be Speaker of the House right now.”
Politico’s Heidi Przybyla recalled that in his 2021 memoir, former Republican speaker John Boehner said of this faction: “What they’re really interested in is chaos.… They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it’s beyond saving.” And they are tied tightly to right-wing media: “Every time they vote down a bill, they get another invitation to go on Fox News or talk radio,” he said. “Its a narcissistic—and dangerous—feedback loop.”
On the other hand are Republicans like the one who spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper last night, saying that the holdouts want “procedural trickery that no one in America gives a damn about, but that might give these few loudmouths just a little bit more of the attention and power they crave…. None of these narcissists—and that’s what they are, pure narcissists—did a damn thing to help us win the majority. Nothing. If anything, many of them were liabilities, requiring outside help from Kevin McCarthy, ironically. So they contribute nothing to the team, and then have the audacity to demand outsize influence and power.”
The statement is important; equally important is that the source wanted to stay anonymous.
Before today, there were plenty of signs McCarthy did not have the votes he needed to become speaker. About five extremists had made it clear they would not vote for him, and another bloc of about nine Republicans had waffled. McCarthy tried to bluster his way through the uncertainty, beginning the process of moving into the speaker’s office last night.
But as former White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted: “politics 101 rule—avoid going into a vote not knowing if you have the votes….” McCarthy revealed that he had not mastered that rule when the House began to vote. It turned out that he was down not just the five promised “no” votes, but a full 19 votes as extremists threw their support to members who share their ideology. Meanwhile, the Democrats united around Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the House minority leader.
The results of the first ballot had Jeffries in the lead with 212 votes and McCarthy second with 203; Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who was part of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, had ten votes. Nine votes went to miscellaneous others.
A second ballot again saw Jeffries and McCarthy at 212 and 203 respectively. But extremists concentrated around Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), giving him 19 votes.
A third ballot had Jeffries holding steady at 212, while McCarthy dropped a vote to stand at 202. Jordan picked up that vote to stand at 20. A dropping vote is never a good sign for a frontrunner.
And with that, the House adjourned about 5:30 p.m., sending representatives off to negotiate behind closed doors.
At stake is the direction of the Republican Party. While extremists blame their recent losses on the leadership that will not, they insist, go far enough, observers note that Republicans have lost voters who see the party as far to the right of the mainstream. Moving the party farther right is the last thing less extreme Republicans want, especially those 18 new Republican representatives from districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. An extremist House speaker will almost certainly kill their careers as two years of headlines feature members like Lauren Boebert (R-CO) lecturing and Jim Jordan yelling.
So, as McCarthy’s bid for speaker bogs down, the question is whether they will accept the extremist Jordan—who is deeply implicated in the January 6, 2021, attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election—as speaker, or whether they will work to find a compromise candidate by working either with Democrats or with Republicans who regroup around someone who isn’t Jordan. Former Republican governor of Ohio John Kasich has already called on House Republicans to work with Democrats “to pick a speaker to run a coalition government, which will moderate the House and marginalize the extremists.”
But which way they will go is unclear. As congressional reporter for Punchbowl News Max Cohen reported tonight, the Republicans still have to defer to their media for direction. Representative Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), who expects to be in the House leadership, said of the 19 voters who swung to Jordan: “We’ll see what happens when Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating up on these guys. Maybe that'll move it.”
As for the man who sparked this meltdown, NBC’s Garrett Haake tweeted an exclusive story: “Former President Trump declined to say if he's sticking by his endorsement of Kevin McCarthy for speaker tonight, telling me in a brief phone interview he's had calls all day asking for support, and ‘We'll see what happens. We'll see how it all works out.’”
People are comparing this multiple-ballot contest to that of 1923, when Progressive Republicans forced incumbent speaker Frederick Gillett, a Republican, to accept rules changes that gave them more power before they would put him back in office. Perhaps more instructive, though, was the speaker’s contest of 1855–1856, when a struggle over the future of the country created shifting coalitions that crossed party lines until, after two months and 133 ballots, representatives put Nathaniel Banks, who had ties to most of the different factions, in the speaker’s chair.
Conspicuously excluded from the talking and visiting on the House floor today was newly-elected George Santos (R-NY), whose lies about his education, employment, financing, and so on would lead any healthy political party to demand an investigation of him before he took office. In this case, though, his vote for McCarthy was too important to pass up, so he sat shunned by his colleagues, alone and silent, except when called on to vote.
The House Democrats, meanwhile, organized without a hitch, putting together a leadership team that consists of Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Katherine Clark (MA), and Pete Aguilar (CA). With quite a bit of enthusiasm, the Democrats voted as a bloc to give Jeffries more votes than McCarthy, whose party is in the majority.
The Senate, too, organized easily and with what looked like a good deal of fun. Vice President Kamala Harris swore in the senators, then chatted with families and posed for pictures.
Tonight, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) wrote to the Architect of the Capitol complaining that McCarthy had occupied the office of the House speaker without having been elected. “How long will he remain there before he is considered a squatter?” Gaetz asked. “Please write back promptly as it seems Mr. McCarthy can no longer be considered Speaker-Designate following today’s balloting.”
The first day of Republican control of the House of Representatives does not bode well for the next two years.
—
Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/03/house-gop-removes-metal-detectors-jan-6
@GOPLeader McCarthy’s GOP detractors: ","username":"jaketapper","name":"Jake Tapper","date":"Tue Jan 03 00:05:54 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/FlgZeK...
Jake Tapper @jaketapperHouse Republican Member of Congress goes off against @GOPLeader McCarthy’s GOP detractors: 
12:05 AM ∙ Jan 3, 20234,160Likes849Retweets
Garrett Haake @GarrettHaakeEXCLUSIVE: Former President Trump declined to say if he's sticking by his endorsement of Kevin McCarthy for speaker tonight, telling me in a brief phone interview he's had calls all day asking for support, and "We'll see what happens. We'll see how it all works out."10:52 PM ∙ Jan 3, 20238,157Likes1,759Retweets
Max Cohen @maxpcohenRep. Guy Reschenthaler, who’s poised to be chief deputy whip, on what could possibly swing the 19 Jordan voters: “We’ll see what happens when Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating up on these guys. Maybe that'll move it.”8:46 PM ∙ Jan 3, 20232,975Likes523Retweetshttps://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/new-congress-sworn-in-2023/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/politics/house-speaker-vote-mccarthy/index.html
https://www.rawstory.com/kevin-mccarthy-john-boehner/
@SpeakerBoehner's 2021 memoir (on the modern) party offers evergreen insight:\n\n\"What they're really interested in is chaos. ...They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they've finally proved that it's beyond saving. 1/","username":"HeidiReports","name":"Heidi Przybyla","date":"Tue Jan 03 21:17:53 +0000 2023","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":841,"like_count":2889,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}">
Heidi Przybyla @HeidiReportsThis from @SpeakerBoehner's 2021 memoir (on the modern) party offers evergreen insight:"What they're really interested in is chaos. ...They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they've finally proved that it's beyond saving. 1/9:17 PM ∙ Jan 3, 20232,889Likes841Retweets
John Kasich @JohnKasichA block of House Republicans should get together with Democrats to pick a speaker to run a coalition government, which will moderate the House and marginalize the extremists.6:48 PM ∙ Jan 3, 202354,980Likes7,212Retweets@VP is a whole mood today 😂😂 really missed her💕 ","username":"kamalaharrisus1","name":"kamalaharris.usa•Selin💜💛","date":"Tue Jan 03 21:01:44 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/...
kamalaharris.usa•Selin💜💛 @kamalaharrisus1@VP is a whole mood today 😂😂 really missed her💕 9:01 PM ∙ Jan 3, 20231,670Likes295Retweets
Jen Psaki @jrpsakipolitics 101 rule--avoid going into a vote not knowing if you have the votes...5:54 PM ∙ Jan 3, 202371,949Likes6,418Retweets
Matt Gaetz @mattgaetzI’d like to report a squatter 
Juliegrace Brufke @juliegracebGaetz sent a letter to the Architect of the Capitol questioning why McCarthy is allowed to occupy the Speaker’s office. https://t.co/gOlXOtlHQj2:52 AM ∙ Jan 4, 202312,114Likes2,263Retweets
January 2, 2023
January 2, 2023
Members are gathering in Washington for tomorrow’s organization of the 118th Congress. The opening of a new Congress is always an exciting time, and this year is particularly interesting.
It appears that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) still does not have the votes to become speaker when the Republicans take the majority tomorrow, although he has made significant concessions to the 15 or so far-right members who refuse to back him.
He has agreed to make it a great deal easier for members of the House to throw out the speaker, a concession that will put him at the mercy of the far right, and a concession that he vowed he would never make. He has agreed to put more of the extreme right members on committees, and he has said he will create a select committee to investigate the “weaponization of government against our citizens.”
He has agreed to cuts to the Office of Congressional Ethics and to forcing the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol to turn over all of its documents to the Committee on House Administration, rather than the National Archives, which has sparked concerns that Republican members will reveal the identities of national security personnel who testified before the committee.
And yet, it seems the more he concedes, the weaker he looks. On Saturday night, nine members of the far-right congressional delegation, many of whom are implicated in the January 6, 2021, attempt to overthrow the government, indicated his concessions were still not enough. They issued a letter with the warning: “Time to make the change or get out of the way.” The letter complained of “deficiencies” and “dysfunction” and “Republican failures” but was quite vague about what its authors wanted, except perhaps power.
Meanwhile, after it turned out that his campaign biography was entirely made up, Republican representative-elect George Santos of New York is facing investigations into his finances and his citizenship. Today, Brazilian authorities reopened fraud charges against Santos for a 2008 case in which he apparently stole checks from an elderly man. The case had been dormant because authorities had not been able to find Santos. McCarthy and other Republicans have refused to take a stand for or against Santos; his vote for speaker will be crucial. Santos has denied that he committed a crime.
“We’re supposed to be hitting the ground running here, but instead it’s just a big belly flop,” a Republican lawmaker recently told Politico. “Believe me, it’s not just members of the Freedom Caucus who are aggravated. As the days and hours trickle on, the more aggravated people become.”
As the House Republicans’ infighting threatens two chaotic years, the Democratic-controlled Senate will continue to confirm judges who reject the extremism of the Trump-era appointees, working to restore balance and representation in the judicial system. In the first two years of the Biden administration, the Senate confirmed 97 federal judges. Seventy-four have been women—more female judges than the Senate confirmed in Trump’s four years or in George W. Bush’s eight.
The Supreme Court will be harder to rebalance because of Trump’s three appointments, made possible by the refusal of then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to move forward President Barack Obama’s nominee in March 2016 with the argument that it was too close to a presidential election, and then his rushing through of Amy Coney Barrett in late October 2020 after voting in the presidential election had already started.
While the House struggles and the Senate focuses on judges, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the administration will greet 2023 by traveling around the country highlighting what the laws passed in the last two years will mean for Americans.
In that effort, they will be joined by leading Republicans, in what amounts to a rebuke of their far-right colleagues. On Wednesday, January 4, Biden will be in Kentucky with McConnell, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), and Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) to talk about how the bipartisan infrastructure law is rebuilding the country, providing jobs that don’t need a four-year college degree. Harris will be in Chicago doing the same; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will be in New London, Connecticut; then-former House speaker Nancy Pelosi will be in San Francisco.
The January 6th committee continued to release transcripts over the holiday weekend. Journalists examining those transcripts have uncovered important new information.
Among that information is that an email on January 2, 2021, from January 6 rally organizer Katrina Pierson shows that Trump’s invitation to supporters to march on the Capitol was not spontaneous; it was part of the plan. By January 2, people knew that Trump would urge his followers to march to the Capitol. To another organizer, Pierson wrote: “POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the ellipse, and call on everyone to march to the capitol. This actually works out, because Ali [Alexander]’s group is already setting up at the Capitol, and SCOTUS is on the way.”
After the riot of January 6, Trump advisor Hope Hicks exchanged horrified texts with Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, bemoaning that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day, he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote, “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed…. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked,” she wrote.
Conservative Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols tweeted: “Their concern for the Constitution they swore to uphold is so touching.”
—-
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/29/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-bid/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/02/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-house-vote/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/01/politics/mccarthy-key-concession-speakership-race/index.html
Jake Sherman @JakeShermanNEW: On House GOP call, Kevin McCarthy said that he has given in on the motion to vacate -- the no-confidence motion allows members to boot the speaker.This is something he had indicated he would never do.10:30 PM ∙ Jan 1, 202312,306Likes2,169Retweetsgovinfo.gov/collection/jan… ","username":"hugolowell","name":"Hugo Lowell","date":"Sun Jan 01 23:22:57 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/FlbGDM...
Hugo Lowell @hugolowellNEW: Jan. 6 committee obtained email from Katrina Pierson showing rally organizers knew by Jan. 2 that Trump would call for people to march to the Capitol — as it releases the underlying evidence it accumulated during the investigation. govinfo.gov/collection/jan… 
11:22 PM ∙ Jan 1, 202315,300Likes5,641Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/nyregion/george-santos-brazil.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/january-6-text-messages/index.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/02/1146045412/biden-diverse-federal-judges-women-black-appeals-courts
RepScottPerry @RepScottPerryNothing changes when nothing changes, and that must start from the top. Time to make the change or get out of the way. 
3:36 AM ∙ Jan 2, 2023213Likes68Retweetshttps://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/01/02/mccarthy-on-the-brink-00076003
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” - Hope HicksTheir concern for the Constitution they swore to uphold is so touching 
The Daily Beast @thedailybeast“I am so done.” https://t.co/9zKMJCnssh5:42 AM ∙ Jan 2, 202311,435Likes2,087Retweets
The Curious Case of the Political Party in the Night-time...
The fight to become House speaker is fascinating on the Republican side, but I’m also watching the Democratic side. Have you noticed that we have heard virtually nothing from the Democrats about it? On the surface, that silence seems to reflect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s style. She was famous for knowing when to stand back and let the Republicans tear…
January 1, 2023
January 1, 2023
I hit “send” on my new manuscript at about 6:00 yesterday evening and have spent the first day of the new year just relaxing and catching up on oh, so many things that did not get done in the last few months.
Often on January 1, I post about the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln signed on this day in 1863, but had thought perhaps just to post a photo tonight. It feels like we could all use another quiet day.
But there are three things I didn’t want to let slip by, because they both sum up 2022 and point toward 2023.
First, as of today, January 1, 2023, the out-of-pocket cost of insulin for Medicare recipients is capped at $35 a month. Insulin in the U.S. costs up to ten times as much as it does in other countries, and the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last August, both enables Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and caps the cost of insulin.
Unfortunately, more than half the diabetics in the U.S. are under age 65 and thus are not covered by Medicare. This amounts to more than 21 million people. Senate Republicans rejected the Democrats’ attempt to apply the cap to private insurers. The vote was 57 to 43, meaning that 57 senators—including seven Republicans—voted in favor of the cap, but the filibuster means that it takes 60 votes to pass most measures through the Senate, so the cap for those covered outside Medicare failed.
Second, yesterday Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued the 2022 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. It’s an interesting document, not just for what it says, but also for what it doesn’t say. The introduction is dominated by a discussion of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the Warren court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision and required the desegregation of the public schools. It was a moment in which the Supreme Court’s stance overturned a long history of discrimination and appeared heroic.
The unstated comparison is to this summer’s decision of the Roberts court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion. The comparison runs aground on the reality that Brown v. Board expanded equality before the law and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health contracts it, but it is interesting that Roberts feels obliged to use the court’s annual report to defend the court’s actions.
The report makes no mention of the leak of the Dobbs decision, a leak that the right wing met with fury but that has come to appear to be associated with right-wing Justice Samuel Alito and thus seems to have fallen off their radar screen. The report does not mention popular demands for justices to have a code of ethics—demands heightened by news that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni participated in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election but he did not recuse himself from making decisions about that attempt—but it does demand protection for judges for their safety, despite the court’s recent expansion of gun rights. “A judicial system cannot and should not live in fear,” Roberts wrote.
And third, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, was inaugurated as the new president of Brazil today. Lula replaces Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing ally of former U.S. president Trump. Traditionally, an outgoing Brazilian president is supposed to pass the presidential sash to the incoming president as a symbol of the peaceful transfer of power. But Bolsonaro for weeks refused to accept the outcome of the election, and as he is now under a number of investigations, he flew to Orlando, Florida, Friday night and expects to stay at least a month while he sees whether the new government will pursue the investigations.
In his place, a 33-year-old garbage collector, Aline Sousa, representing “the Brazilian people,” presented the sash to Lula and placed it on him. A software developer at the inauguration told New York Times reporters Jack Nicas and André Spigariol, “Lula’s inauguration is mainly about hope…. I hope to see him representing not only a political party, but an entire population—a whole group of people who just want to be happier.”
Seems like a good note to start 2023.
Happy New Year.
—
Notes:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23559678-2022-year-end-report-on-the-federal-judiciary
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/31/politics/john-roberts-year-end-report-supreme-court/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/insulin-cost-cap-people-diabetes-no-benefit-rcna58165
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/republicans-block-insulin-price-cap-really-gone-rcna42177
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/01/world/americas/bolsonaro-florida-brazil.html
December 31, 2022
December 31, 2022
And so, the sun sets on 2022.
It has been an astonishing year across the board, and I thank you all for, well, everything.
May 2023 treat us all kindly.
December 30, 2022
Just a year ago, we were focusing on Russian troops massing on the border with Ukraine, which the U.S. government and allies recognized as an attempt both to keep Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a longstanding military alliance resisting Russian expansion, and to test the unity of the democratic nations that made up NATO itself. Former president Donald Trump had weakened NATO and vowed to pull the U.S. out of it if he won a second term, demoralizing our allies, but Democratic president Joe Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had worked hard to pull the alliance back together.
Biden worked the phones and Blinken flew around the world, talking to allies not only to warn them but also to get pledges to pressure Russia, help Ukraine defend itself, and accept refugees if necessary. On one day alone, Biden spoke with leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, and Romania; the secretary general of NATO; and the presidents of the European Union.
Biden and Blinken anticipated Putin’s pretenses for an invasion of Ukraine and publicized them, taking away from the Russian president a key propaganda lever. Along with their allies, they warned they would respond to any invasion of Ukraine with heavy economic sanctions that would crush the Russian economy. This was a threat many observers met with skepticism, since sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2014 invasion and subsequent occupation of Ukraine had not been strong enough to force Putin to a reckoning.
On February 4, Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in Beijing and pledged mutual support and cooperation, issuing a statement saying their authoritarian regimes were actually a form of democracy. On the same day, the Republican National Committee (RNC), meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, censured Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for joining the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. That attack was an attempt to overturn our democratic form of government by installing a candidate rejected by voters, but the RNC defended the events surrounding January 6 as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and attacked the investigation as “persecution.”
It appeared that a global authoritarian movement was coalescing for an attack on liberal democracy and that the leaders of the Republican Party were on the side of the authoritarians. The United Nations was formed after World War II to protect the idea of a rules-based international order so that countries would not unilaterally attack each other for their own advantage and start wars. If Russia, a member of the U.N. were allowed to violate the fundamental principle that had preserved relative peace in Europe since World War II, there was no telling what might come next.
And then, on February 24, 2022, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, a country that had fought Russian invaders since 2014 but was clearly—everyone knew—no match for Russia’s powerful military. Recent reports show that Russian leaders expected the assault to take ten days. Ukraine’s best hope was to get President Volodymyr Zelensky to safety to preserve the Ukrainian government-in-exile.
But then, something surprising happened.
When the U.S. offered to evacuate Zelensky, he said: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” Within days, he and his cabinet had recorded a video from Kyiv, demonstrating that the Ukrainian government was still in Kyiv and would fight to protect their country. Ukrainians defied the invaders as the U.S., NATO, the European Union, and allies around the globe rushed in money, armaments, and humanitarian aid. In Brussels, London, Paris, Munich, Dublin, and Geneva, and across the globe, people took to the streets to protest the invasion and show their support for the resisters.
In their fight for their right to self-determination, the Ukrainians and their defenders reminded the United States what cherishing democracy actually looks like.
Meanwhile, at home, the administration and Congress showed Americans that the government could, indeed, help ordinary people. In his first year in office, Biden and the Democrats had passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion package to jump-start the economy after the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. Together with Republicans, they had also passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more popularly known as the bipartisan infrastructure law, which invested in long-overdue repairs and extensions to the country’s road, bridges, broadband, and other hard infrastructure.
But with just 50 votes in the Senate, Democrats had to get all their senators on board for more legislation, and it appeared that they would not be able to do that in 2022. As global post-lockdown inflation hit the U.S., it both made lawmakers cautious about more spending and seemed to give Republicans a ready-made tool to attack Biden and the Democrats before the upcoming midterm election.
It was at this juncture that the hard work of knowing how to negotiate, something we had become unused to seeing in Washington, paid off. Over the spring and summer, Democrats worked with Republicans when possible to build the economy not through the supply-side theories of the Republicans, which say that freeing capital at the top of the economy by cutting taxes will spur wealthy investors to create jobs, but by creating jobs and easing costs for wage workers.
They shepherded through Congress the PACT Act, expanding healthcare and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits; the CHIPs and Science Act, to bolster U.S. scientific research and manufacturing, especially of silicone chips; and the Inflation Reduction Act, which makes historic investments in clean energy and finally lets Medicare negotiate drug prices (which will cap insulin for Medicare participants at $35). They passed an expansion of the Affordable Care Act that has dropped the rate of those without health insurance to a new low of 8 percent.
They passed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring states to recognize marriages performed in other states, and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which had languished since 2018. It passed the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. The administration also announced debt relief of up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants.
Finally, just yesterday, Biden signed into law an omnibus funding bill that includes a reform of the Electoral Count Act, making it harder for a Trumplike president to use the terms of the law to overturn an election. There were key measures left undone—neither voting rights protections nor the childcare, eldercare, and education infrastructure package Biden wanted passed—but the list of accomplishments for this Congress rivaled that of the 1960s’ Great Society and the 1930s’ New Deal.
Meanwhile, the reactionary Republicans illustrated exactly what their rule would mean for the country, and it was not popular. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized reproductive healthcare as a constitutional right. Immediately, stories of raped children unable to obtain abortions and women unable to obtain healthcare during miscarriages horrified the 62% of Americans who supported Roe v. Wade and even many of those who did not support Roe but had never really thought that the U.S. government would cease to recognize a constitutional right that had been on the books for almost 50 years.
The justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, including the three Trump added to the court, had publicly assured senators they would not challenge settled law—a key principle of jurisprudence—and their willingness to do so indicated they intended for their ideology to replace legal precedent. Just days after the Dobbs decision, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court decided that the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases because Congress cannot delegate “major questions” to be decided by the executive branch. This doctrine threatens to undermine government regulation.
The court went on to fulfill a right-wing wish list, deciding a number of cases that slashed at the separation of church and state, expanded gun rights, and so on.
At the same time the court’s decisions were making the right wing’s plans for the country clear, the January 6th committee’s public hearings exposed the deliberate plan to overthrow our democracy. Led by chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and vice chair Liz Cheney, the committee used shocking videos and powerful testimony primarily from Trump’s own relatives and appointees and other Republican officials to show how Trump and his cronies planned even before the election to claim that Democrats had stolen victory, and then had used that Big Lie to inflame supporters to keep him in office.
Inflation, though starting to ease, was still high enough in November that political pundits expected the Republicans would sweep back into control of Congress. Instead, despite gerrymandering and the new voting restrictions many Republican-dominated states had imposed in response to the Big Lie, voters put Republicans in control of the House by only four seats. For the first time since 1934, the president’s party did not lose a seat in the Senate in a midterm election; instead, the Democrats picked one up.
At the end of 2022, more than 300 days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what seemed a year ago to be the growing power of authoritarianism appears to have been checked. Finland and Sweden took steps to join NATO, while the Biden administration expanded its work with Europe and traditional allies by pointedly nurturing partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, investing in those regions as both Russia and China have had to pull back.
At least so far, the rules-based international order is holding. Putin’s military, which a number of right-wing Republicans had championed as more powerful than that of the democratic U.S., turns out to have been poorly trained and ill equipped as Putin’s cronies siphoned money from military contracts to funnel into expensive homes and yachts in other countries. And the Ukrainians turned out to have trained heavily and well, especially in logistics, and to be determined to fight on to victory.
The Russian economy is reeling from global sanctions, and in its troubles, Russia has turned to Iran, which is also suffering under sanctions and which has provided drones for the war in Ukraine. But Iran, too, is facing protests at home from women and girls no longer willing to obey the country’s discriminatory laws.
China’s economy is also weaker than it seemed, owing to changing supply chains, a real-estate bust, and increasing dislocations first from a zero-Covid policy that prompted extreme lockdowns, and now from the easing of those restrictions that has turned the virus loose to ravage the country.
The crisis of democracy in the United States is not over, not by a long shot. Anti-semitism and anti-LGBTQ violence rose this year, along with white supremacist violence and gun violence, while a right-wing theocratic movement continues to try to garner power. Wealth and its benefits remain badly distributed in this country, and the ravages of climate change are getting worse. Those things– and others– are real and dangerous.
But the country looks very different today than it did a year ago. I ended last year’s wrap-up letter by saying: “It looks like 2022 is going to be a choppy ride, but its outcome is in our hands. As Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who was beaten almost to death in his quest to protect the right to vote, wrote to us when he passed: ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.’”
The story of 2022 turned out to be how many folks both abroad and at home stepped up to the plate.
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/world/autocracies-democracy-pandemic-analysis-intl-cmd/index.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/protesters-take-to-the-streets-across-europe-support-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/21/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2022.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/world/europe/russia-iran-military.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2022/12/29/2022-in-review/
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-year-the-west-woke-up/
December 29, 2022
December 29, 2022
Today, President Joe Biden signed into law the bipartisan year-end omnibus funding bill passed by the House and the Senate before lawmakers left town.
The $1.7 trillion measure addresses key goals of both parties. It funds the military and domestic programs. It funds public health and science, invests in law enforcement, and funds programs to prevent violence against women. It funds veterans’ services, and it provides assistance to Ukraine in its struggle to protect itself against Russia’s invasion. It updates the Electoral Count Act to prevent a president from trying to overturn a presidential election, as former president Trump did.
Biden said, “This bill is further proof that Republicans and Democrats can come together to deliver for the American people, and I’m looking forward to continued bipartisan progress in the year ahead.”
But on his social media platform, Trump took a stand against the bill that funds the government. “Something is going on with [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell [(R-KY)] and all of the terribly and virtually automatic ‘surrenders’ he makes to the Marxist Democrats, like on the $1.7 Trillion ‘Ominous’ Bill,” Trump wrote. “Could have killed it using the Debt Ceiling, or made it MUCH better in the Republican House. Nobody can be this stupid.” Then he went on to blame the deal on McConnell’s wife, Trump’s own Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, using a racist slur.
This exchange reveals the dynamic dominating political leadership at the end of 2022. Biden and the Democrats are trying to show that the government can produce popular results for the American people. They are joined in that effort by Republicans who recognize that, for all their talk about liberty, their constituents want to see the government address their concerns. Together, they have passed the omnibus bill, as well as the CHIPS and Science Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and gun safety legislation.
This cooperation to pass popular legislation is an important shift in American politics.
But Trump and his cronies remain determined to return to power, apparently either to stop this federal action Trump incorrectly calls “Marxism” or, in the case of extremist Republicans, to use the government not to provide a basic social safety net, regulate business, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights—as it has done since 1933—but instead to enforce right-wing religious values on the country. They reject the small-government economic focus of the Reagan Republicans in favor of using a strong government to enforce religion.
The determination of Trump and his team to dominate the government, and through it the country, has been illustrated powerfully once again today with the release of more transcripts from testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Former White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Griffin recalled how Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dismissed the idea that the Trump administration should coordinate with the incoming Biden officials over the coronavirus pandemic. “It was the first COVID... meeting that Jared led after [Biden won],” Griffin recalled, “& Dr. Birx... said, "Well, should we be looping the Biden transition into these conversations?" & Jared just said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Similarly, in an extraordinarily petty exchange, the chief of staff to former first lady Melania Trump, Stefanie Grisham, recalled that Trump wanted to fire the chief White House usher, Tim Harleth, for being in contact with the Biden team about the presidential transition. (Secret Service agents told Trump about the contact, raising more questions about the role of the agents around Trump.) Melania Trump stopped the firing out of concern for the stories Harleth could tell about the Trump family, but he was let go just before Biden’s inauguration, leaving the Biden’s standing before the closed doors of the White House for an awkwardly long time when they entered for the first time.
This determination of far-right Republicans to bend the country to their will presents a problem for the Republican Party. Establishment Republicans came around to backing Trump in 2017 after he promised them lower taxes and less regulation, the goals they had embraced since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
But Trump managed to stay in power by feeding the reactionaries in the party: those who reject the idea of American equality. Trump’s base is fiercely opposed to immigration and against the rights of LGBTQ Americans, while also in favor of curtailing the rights of women and minorities. Rejecting the equality at the heart of liberal democracy, many of them hope to enforce religious rules on the rest of the country and admire Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán for replacing democracy with what Orbán has called “Christian democracy,” or “illiberal democracy” that enforces patriarchal heterosexual hierarchies. As Trump encouraged them to, many of them reject as “fraudulent” any elections that do not put their candidates in power.
Now, as Republican establishment leaders recognize that Trump’s star is fading and his legal troubles seem likely to get worse—his tax returns will be released tomorrow, among other things—they seem eager to cut Trump loose to resurrect their anti-tax, anti-regulation policies. But those Americans who reject democracy and want a strong government to enforce their values are fighting for control of the Republican Party.
The far right has turned against Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, whom Trump hand-picked and who helped arrange the false electors in 2020. Trump loyalist Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate, is challenging McDaniel. Of more concern to her is the challenge of Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent election denier who has provided legal counsel for Trump in his struggles against the January 6th committee, calling it “a purely political witch-hunt, total abuse of process & power serving no legitimate legislative purpose.” Orbán supporter and Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson and Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk are backing Dhillon.
Kirk, who is a prodigious fundraiser, has warned the RNC that the party must listen “to the grassroots, our donors, and the biggest organizations and voices in the conservative movement” or it would lose in 2024. “If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations.”
The far right is also challenging the bid of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for House speaker, creating such havoc that today former Republican representative, senator, and secretary of defense William S. Cohen and former congressional staff director and presidential senior fellow emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations Alton Frye published an op-ed in the New York Times warning that “the Republican caucus is dominated by campaigns and commitments that gravely encumber efforts to define common ground in the political center.” They urged House members to recruit a moderate speaker from outside the chamber and to “fortify those Republicans who seek to move the party beyond the corrosive Trump era.”
They called for a secret ballot, so Republican members won't have to fear retaliation.
Cohen and Frye suggested that organization of the House by an outsider would allow for “meaningful coalition building,” but the Republicans about to take control of the House have so far indicated only that they intend to investigate the Biden administration before the 2024 election, a throwback to the methods party leaders have used since 1994 to win elections by portraying the Democrats as corrupt.
Representatives James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), who are expected to take over the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, respectively, have already demanded records from the White House. When White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber said the White House would respond to those committees after the Republicans were in charge of them—a position administrations have as taken since the 1980s—Comer and Jordan took to social media today to complain that “at every turn the Biden White House seeks to obstruct congressional oversight and hide information from the American people.” (Jordan, of course, refused to respond to a subpoena from the January 6th committee.)
The year 2022 has seen an important split in the Republican Party. The party’s response to voters’ dislike appears to be either to reject democracy altogether or to double down on the old rhetoric that has worked in the past, although you have to wonder if they have gone to that well so many times it’s drying up.
In the meantime, the Democrats have worked with willing Republicans to demonstrate that lawmakers in a democracy really can accomplish big things for the American people, and for the world.
Which vision will win out will be a key political story of 2023.
—
Notes:
Angela McGuire💙🌊🌊🌊🌊 @angelaretailDang! Cheato Von Tweeto be all up in Mitch's business! 
12:56 AM ∙ Dec 29, 2022222Likes27Retweets
Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVanceAlyssa Griffin transcript: “It was the first COVID, like, morning meeting that Jared led after [Biden won]..& Dr. Birx..said, "Well, should we be looping the Biden transition into these conversations?" & Jared just said, "Absolutely not." & then we just moved on.”9:38 PM ∙ Dec 29, 202213,484Likes3,602Retweetshttps://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/28/transcript-jan-6-panel-interviews-00075698
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/29/trump-fire-usher-bidens-white-house-ex-press-secretary
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/us/politics/biden-white-house-usher.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/us/politics/ronna-mcdaniel-harmeet-dhillon-rnc.html
Paul Bedard, “Trump lawyer: Subpoena was ‘assault’ on Constitution,” Washington Examiner, December 29, 2022.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/23/charlie-kirk-rnc-ronna-mcdaniel-harmeet-dhillon/
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/29/jim-jordan-james-comer-oversight-requests-00075710
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-vote.html
Heather Cox Richardson's Blog
- Heather Cox Richardson's profile
- 1333 followers
