Understatement of the year, so far.
If the US stops it’s aid to Ukraine, and then shuts down, some major ripples will form in the fabric of our current political reality.
We’ve been joking about “this shit timeline” for a long time, but I have the feeling that we are indeed at crossroads.
October 5, 2023 (Thursday)
Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, and Mike Levine of ABC News reported today that sources have told them that former president Trump shared information about U.S. nuclear subs with Anthony Pratt, an Australian billionaire who was a member of the Mar-a-Lago club. The sources say Pratt then shared that information with at least 45 others: more than a dozen foreign officials, his own employees, and a few journalists. Trump allegedly shared the exact number of nuclear warheads U.S. submarines carry, and exactly how close they can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.
Former defense secretary William Cohen explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper how information about nuclear submarines fit into the larger picture of what’s known as the nuclear triad, the land, sea, and air systems that protect the U.S. “Out of the triad,” he said, “the submarine is the one that is most secure for us because it’s not targetable…. So they’re special. And he is giving away special information on what is protecting us around the world.”
FBI agents and the team overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, looking into Trump’s mishandling of national security documents, have interviewed Pratt at least twice. About a year ago, on November 9, 2022, U.S. Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Dianna, were sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for conspiring to sell classified information about nuclear-powered warships to a foreign country.
“Naval nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe was entrusted with our nation’s critical secrets and, along with his wife Diana Toebbe, put the security of our country at risk for financial gain,” U.S. Attorney Cindy Chung for the Western District of Pennsylvania said at the time. “Their serious criminal conduct betrayed and endangered the Department of the Navy’s loyal and selfless service members. The seriousness of the offense in this case cannot be overstated.”
Trump today endorsed Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for the speakership. There is an important history to this endorsement. On January 11, 2021—five days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the attempt of some Republican lawmakers to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election—Trump awarded Jordan the Medal of Freedom without a real explanation of why he deserved it.
On January 6, 2021, then-Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) told Jordan to get away from her because “You fckng did this!”
Yesterday, in a speech at the University of Minnesota, Cheney explained: “Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election…. There was a handful of people, of which he was the leader, who knew what Donald Trump had planned. Now somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, ‘Why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned? You were in those meetings at the White House.’”
She concluded: “If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the Speaker of the House…there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are trying to get the indictments against him for trying to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election thrown out, arguing that a president has absolute immunity from prosecution for criminal as well as civil prosecutions. If this argument succeeded, it would mean that a president was above the law and could do anything they wanted without fear of prosecution. In her newsletter Civil Discourse, Joyce White Vance suggests this is likely an attempt to delay the trial at least until after the Republican National Convention nominates a presidential candidate and possibly until after the 2024 election itself.
Trump’s tangles with the law are not going well, and in a sudden flurry today, his lawyers tried to delay or get rid of them. In his coverage of Trump’s fraud trial in New York this week, Daily Beast political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery noted that Trump likely appeared in person because he had cited the trial as the reason he could not give a deposition in his $500 million lawsuit against his former fixer Michael Cohen for talking about him and thus breaking his fiduciary duty to act solely in Trump’s interest. That deposition was rescheduled for Monday. Today, Trump withdrew his case against Cohen, clearly suggesting he was afraid to testify.
In the New York fraud trial, a document introduced into evidence today undermined the argument that Trump wasn’t involved in the fraudulent valuations at the heart of the case. The Trump Organization’s 2014 statement of financial condition included a note from the organization’s comptroller saying: “DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW.”
Apparently concerned that Trump would try to move his assets around to hide them, Justice Arthur Engoron today ordered Trump, his older sons, and the two Trump Organization employees in the suit not to move money or open a new business without reporting it to the independent monitor overseeing the businesses. They must also provide a list of each of their businesses and anyone who shares ownership of those businesses.
Trump has also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to delay his trial for mishandling the national security documents he stashed at Mar-a-Lago until after the 2024 election.
( no transcript yet. 4 minute interview )
October 6, 2023 (Friday)
In a Washington Post op-ed today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered House Republicans a “path to a better place” than the “dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House.” Democrats have repeatedly offered both in public and in private to enter into a bipartisan governing coalition, he wrote, but under former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republicans have “categorically rejected making changes to the rules [in order] to…encourage bipartisan governance and undermine the ability of extremists to hold Congress hostage.”
Jeffries offered to work with willing Republicans “to reform the rules of the House in a manner that permits us to govern in a pragmatic fashion.” Stating up front his willingness to negotiate, Jeffries wrote that the House “should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support.” This would stop a few extremist Republicans from preventing “common-sense legislation from ever seeing the light of day.”
Jeffries called for “traditional Republicans” to “break with the MAGA extremism that has poisoned the House of Representatives since the violent insurrection on Jan[uary] 6, 2021, and its aftermath.”
“House Democrats remain committed to a bipartisan path forward,” he wrote, but “we simply need Republican partners willing to break with MAGA extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common good for the people.”
Jeffries is reaching out at a delicate moment for Republicans. While the minority leader’s appeal to what is best for the country is an important reminder of what is at stake here, there are also political currents running under the surface of the speaker crisis. The speaker vote will force Republicans to go on the record either for or against former president Trump, a declaration most have so far been able to avoid.
There is enormous pressure from pro-Trump MAGA Republicans to stick with the former president and elect his chosen candidate, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), as House speaker. But Jordan is a very close ally of Trump’s and can be expected to demand an end to investigations into the former president in exchange for doing even the most basic business—Trump, after all, demanded a government shutdown until the cases against him were abandoned. Throwing the speakership to him will mean facing the 2024 election with a fully committed Trump party and government dysfunction as the Republicans’ main argument for why voters should back them.
That might play well in the gerrymandered districts of the extremists, but there are 18 Republicans who won election in districts President Biden won in 2020, and they will not want to run on a ticket dominated by Trump and Jordan. But a vote for the other declared candidate, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), means being on record against Trump and for a man who once described himself as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage.”
The other calculation those wavering Republican members of Congress must make is what they expect for the future. A number of the state maps that gave Republicans their slim House majority have been found unconstitutional and are now being redrawn in ways that suggest the Democrats might well retake the House in 2024. If that happens, having forged a working relationship with the Democrats would be far more useful than standing with the hard right.
It would take as few as five Republican votes to elect Jeffries speaker, which is an unlikely outcome, but it would also take just a few Democrats to vote present and lower the number needed to enable the Republicans to elect someone more moderate than their current option. Jeffries might well be signaling that the Democrats are willing to enable that outcome, but only for a Republican who is not a bomb thrower.
Republicans who are not committed to Trump may also be paying attention to what increasingly feels like a shift in the country’s popular tide. Today’s news provided more evidence that Biden’s approach to the economy—using the government to invest in ordinary Americans—is working far better than the Republicans’ approach of slashing the government to enable capitalists to organize the economy ever did.
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released yet another very strong jobs report showing that the U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, almost twice what economists had predicted. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%. The biggest gains were in leisure and hospitality and in government. Average hourly wages went up 4.2% over the past 12 months; more than the inflation rate of 3.4%. The bureau also revised its employment statistics for July and August upward, showing that the employment in those months was up 199,000 more than the gains already reported.
The country’s shift away from concentrating wealth upward also showed today in positive movement toward a historic settlement between the United Auto Workers and automakers. UAW president Shawn Fain announced that General Motors has agreed to include workers at plants making batteries for electric vehicles in the UAW’s national labor agreement.
While the UAW wanted—and appears to be obtaining—higher wages, its leaders were especially concerned about what the transition to EVs would do to workers. Fain said that automakers had been planning to phase out the engine and transmission plants worked by union laborers and replace those jobs with lower-wage jobs in non-union battery plants. Until now, automakers had said it would be “impossible” to permit the battery plants to be covered by the union umbrella.
Fain called the agreement a “transformative win” and, in light of that agreement, announced that the UAW will not expand its strike into GM’s most profitable plant in Arlington, Texas. Fain said he expects that Ford and Stellantis, which includes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, will agree to the same deal, and labor scholars agree.
Trump visited a non-union plant in this dispute, where he attacked the transition to EVs as job killers for autoworkers. This new agreement makes it unlikely that autoworkers will back Trump over this issue.
Biden, on the other hand, weighed in on the fight by joining the UAW picket line.
Another Heather Cox Richardson interview on Amanpour & Co., covering what has happened to the GOP as well as some details about her book:
October 7, 2023 (Saturday)
Early this morning, Eastern Daylight Time, Hamas militants broke out of the Gaza Strip, where approximately 2 million Palestinians live, largely unable to leave because of the extensive restrictions Israel has imposed. They pushed as far as 15 miles (about 24 kilometers) into Israel, taking over at least 22 towns and firing at least 2,500 rockets. They have killed at least 250 Israelis, wounded more than 1,500 others, and taken hostages. The attack was a surprise, having an effect on Israelis that observers are comparing to the effect of 9-11 on people in the U.S.
Hamas is a group of Palestinian militants that make up one of the two major political parties in the Palestinian Territories, which consist of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas was established in 1987 and gained control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Since then, Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have periodically exchanged fire. In May 2021 that tension turned into an 11-day conflict that has simmered along the security fence between Israel and Gaza ever since.
In a video address to Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are at war and we will win it.” Israelis have killed at least 232 people and wounded more than 1,700 in retaliation for the attack. He promised the Israeli military will “take revenge for this black day” but that it “will take time.” He warned that Israel would turn “into ruins” the places where Hamas operates, and told residents of Gaza to “get out of there now,” although they have no way to leave.
There are serious questions about how the Netanyahu government did not see this attack coming. It was either a spectacular intelligence failure or a security failure or both, and it strikes at the heart of the Netanyahu government’s promise to keep the country safe. At the same time, the attack is making Israelis rally together. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been protesting Netanyahu’s strengthening hold on the government have said they would come together in this dangerous moment.
A number of countries, including the U.S., have designated Hamas a terrorist organization. It is backed by Iran, which provides money and weapons, and last month high-level Iranian officials apparently met with Hamas leaders in Lebanon. Today Iran praised Hamas for the attack. Iran has opposed the recent talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel about normalizing relations. Since the decline of Iraq as an independent power, Iran has viewed the combination of Israel, its main enemy, with Saudi Arabia, its main rival for power, as the greatest threat to its security in the region.
Iran and Russia are allies whose relationship has strengthened considerably as the Russian war against Ukraine has pushed the two increasingly isolated countries together to resist Western sanctions. Former Russian president and deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said the attack was “expected,” and used it to accuse the U.S.
The Middle East, rather than Ukraine, was “what Washington and its allies should be busy with,” he said. “But instead of actively working at Palestinian-Israeli settlement,” he went on, “these morons have interfered with us, and are providing the neo-Nazis with full-scale aid, pitting the two closely related peoples against each other. What can stop America’s manic obsession to incite conflicts all over the planet?”
Today’s assessment of the Russian offensive in Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War said: “The Kremlin is already [exploiting] and will likely continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several information operations intended to reduce US and Western support and attention to Ukraine.”
Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have contextualized the attack by calling out Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people but also are calling for restraint and for the violence to stop.
India, too, has expressed solidarity with Israel.
In the U.S., the administration suggested that it sees a larger hand behind this attack and is working with partners and allies to contain the violence. In a statement, President Biden said the United States “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel.” It went on with a warning—“The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation”—and a threat: “My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.”
Biden told reporters that he has been in contact with the King of Jordan, has spoken with members of Congress, and is in close touch with Netanyahu. He says he has directed the national security team to engage with their Israeli counterparts—“military to military, intelligence to intelligence,…diplomat to diplomat—to make sure Israel has what it needs.” He has also directed his team “to remain in constant contact with leaders throughout the region, including Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, the UAE, as well as with our European partners and the Palestinian Authority.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke today with the presidents of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, urging Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the attack and to work to restore calm. He also spoke with the foreign ministers of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Türkiye, as well as the European Union’s High Representative for foreign affairs. Blinken urged the EU, Türkiye, and the so-called Quint countries—France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S.—to continue to engage on the issue, and he promised to stay in close contact with all the parties he talked to today.
In the United States, Republicans used the moment to attack President Biden. In an echo of a similar lie from Trump, who falsely claimed the Obama administration had paid $150 billion to Iran for a nuclear agreement, they took to social media in a flood to say that the U.S. had funded the attack on Israel because it had recently “paid” $6 billion to Iran.
The statement was wrong across the board: the U.S did not pay Iran anything. It helped to ease restrictions on Iranian money that had been frozen in South Korea, enabling Qatar to take control of the money and use it for humanitarian aid. In any case, the money has not yet been transferred. Still, it was a surprising decision to attack the U.S. government at a time when the country would normally be united behind Israel.
Nonetheless, the attack has made the national implications of Republicans’ own troubles even more clear. In times of crisis, the executive branch briefs the so-called Gang of Eight on classified intelligence matters. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of each party in the House and the Senate, and the leaders of each party in each chamber’s intelligence committee. But without a House Speaker, this leading intelligence group is missing a key member. It is not clear if the acting speaker, Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was tapped by former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and not elected, can participate.
The lack of a speaker is a problem. Although House committees can still meet, the House can’t do much. McHenry is responsible mostly for overseeing the election of a new speaker; he does not have the authority to bring bills or even resolutions to the floor.
Is it just me, or does this feel like Putin opening a second front to distract from Ukraine and maybe encourage the Arab states to ally with him against the Western countries? With multiple other hot spits threatening to flare up, i am more than a little frightened of what comes next.
You mean Hamas’ incursion into southern Israel? Maybe he encouraged it, but I don’t see how this wasn’t going to happen at some point. Things in Palestine is beyond desperate right now. There is no way that people could not have seen this coming. You can only put your boot on people’s necks for so long before something breaks. Maybe it benefits Putin, in terms of distraction, or maybe it doesn’t? Same with the Arab states… they’ve been abandoning the Palestinians for years now in order to get western/US arms/money. The current round of governments in the region aren’t fully aligned with the US, but they’re enough are willing to take our arms and cash…
I’ll also add that Hamas might have taken this action, in part because it was losing mindshare among Gazans… more radical groups have been popping up, in part out of frustration with the situation and Hamas’ perceived lack of action to do something about this situation. This is them doing something - with the main goal seeming to be the kidnapping of civilians to trade for Palestinian prisoners. Given the current government, I don’t know if there WILL be a swap. I’m guessing that Netanyahu might cut the losses, and just obliterate Gaza and not try and get the hostages home first…
Shit’s getting fucked all over…
with everything the netanyahu led government has done, it feels hard to see their policy as anything other than provocation. you push until someone snaps, and then you can blame the people reacting. it’s not good for anyone other than him and his friends
Agreed. He’s never wanted to give up land for a two state solution, and he’s always wanted to destroy the last vestiges of Oslo. He’s a full “Greater Israel” guy all the way, Palestinians be damned… Hamas aren’t the good guys here, I’d argue, but this was entirely predictable.
HCR’s comment about this being an intelligence failure makes me suspicious that he did know and opted to let it happen, to use it as a causus belli and appropriate the “wartime president (or PM)” prerogatives. I’m not usually a conspiract dude, but this seems pretty convenient for him.
Putin? Again, maybe… but the reality was that this was coming. Whether or no it’ll benefit Putin and draw the Arab states more strongly into his orbit, I don’t know. He can exploit it for sure, but so can the Israeli government and western powers, too.
So yeah, he might have known, but I doubt he can “let” anything happen so much as he can give Hamas his approval whatever they do, but they’re not just puppets of Putin. This has been a sort of general categorical error many of us have had with regards to global south conflicts, that the actors on the ground are merely puppets of either the west or the Soviets during the cold war or of the west or Russia now. These are historical agents of their own, and are just as able and willing to shape events as the “great” powers…
Whether this benefits him as a distraction, maybe, but the opposite might also be true, especially as Ukraine is making it clear who they support (Israel). But anyone thinking that these conflicts are beneficial to anyone clearly doesn’t understand the nature of conflict, believing they can control outcomes. Putin certainly believed that invading Ukraine was going to benefit him… and look at how that’s gone down.
I don’t know… it’s complicated and there are so many moving parts that we’re just not privy to…
I’m pretty sure doc means Netanyahu, since that’s the “he” you referred to in your comment.
I also think that’s who doc means because I’ve had the same thought, that I wouldn’t put it past Netanyahu to let Israel’s guard down while Hamas attacked, in order to ramp up the shock and fear, so that Israeli citizens (and sympathizers of them around the wotld) rally behind him as a noble strongman fighting back against “Palestinian terrorism.” (Not unlike how Capitol defenses were drawn down on January 6, perhaps due to orders from Tromp himself.)
Makes more sense… for sure, I’m sure he sees it as a benefit to him, as it unites the government behind him, and distracts from his legal troubles.
I’ve seen others pointing out (go see the article I just posted in the Drums of War thread from an opposition politician in the Knesset) that it could also backfire on him? Like, he might get unity immediately, but then there is the very real possibility that he could be blamed for the failure of intelligence in the incursion areas. Others noted that in the livestream I was watching earlier as well, that if this indeed is seen as a intelligence failure, that could very much unite people against him, too. The numbers of Israelis killed in this has been pretty high, plus the kidnappings. Netanyahu’s whole thing is that he’s big and tough, and is gonna keep Israelis safe via his hardlined policies. So, he failed in that and Israelis are dead or captured, and not just IDF soldiers, but civilians…
I don’t know… just some scattered thoughts on what’s happening on the ground. We’ll see.
You read me correctly. Netanyahu setting up a convenient crisis to shore up his power.
i think, at the very least, no disaster will go unused. 
October 8, 2023 (Sunday)
I took today off entirely to celebrate my sixty-first trip around the sun. Spent it with family and dear friends, and even snuck in some time on the water.
A really nice day.
Will be back at it tomorrow (although if the news would slow down just a tad, I wouldn’t be unhappy)…
October 9, 2023 (Monday)
The crisis in the Middle East has continued to escalate. Since I last wrote on Saturday, October 7, the contours of the attack on Israel by Hamas have become clearer. More than 900 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, and dozens more have been taken hostage and are now being held in Gaza, with Hamas threatening to execute them if Israelis target civilians without warning. At least 11 U.S. citizens were killed in the attack.
In retaliation, Israel has struck the Gaza Strip from the air and restricted food, electricity, and fuel. Around 680 people have been killed in Gaza, and more than 187,500 have been displaced. Thousands more have been wounded on both sides.
Rumors are flying about how deeply Iran backed the attack by Hamas, and whether Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew ahead of time about the attack, but there is little analysis yet that is verified. At the same time, the volume of disinformation spreading suggests that the crisis is being used to destabilize the U.S. by increasing the already strong feelings about the conflicts between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East.
And, over all, the conflict is deeply steeped in centuries of history both in the region and elsewhere as well as in longstanding cultural antisemitism, which had been on the rise and which is now, in some countries, at fever pitch.
For my part, while I am willing to try to keep people abreast of key players and events in the present crisis, I am trying to be cautious and not speculate in areas about which, as a scholar of the United States, I am not versed. The volume of hate mail about last Saturday’s letter, pretty evenly divided between those accusing me of backing one side and those accusing me of backing the other, is about the highest I’ve ever received, but I was trying simply to present the verified events of Saturday alone, with a focus on how they affected the United States.
While I can’t say much about the internal meaning of events in the Middle East, I can reflect on what is happening, on a day-to-day basis, in the U.S. in response to the crisis.
President Joe Biden has been in touch with Prime Minister Netanyahu throughout the last few days, and this morning met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall, and White House chief of staff Jeff Zientz about the situation, directing them to act with their Israeli counterparts on all parts of the crisis but focusing primarily on the missing hostages.
This afternoon, Biden called the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom to coordinate support for Israel. After the call, the leaders issued a rare joint statement, expressing “our steadfast and united support to the State of Israel, and our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.” They reiterated that “the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned. There is never any justification for terrorism. In recent days, the world has watched in horror as Hamas terrorists massacred families in their homes, slaughtered over 200 young people enjoying a music festival, and kidnapped elderly women, children, and entire families, who are now being held as hostages.”
They emphasized that their countries would support Israel against such atrocities, and again warned other countries against trying to exploit the chaos after the attack to gain an advantage.
At the same time, the statement continued, “All of us recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and support equal measures of justice and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike. But make no mistake: Hamas does not represent those aspirations, and it offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed.”
The U.S. is facing this crisis with a weakened diplomatic corps, a weakened military, and a weakened government.
Because of holds Republican senators have put on the nomination process, the U.S. does not have a Senate-confirmed ambassador to Israel or Egypt, the two countries that border the Gaza Strip. The nominees for U.S. ambassador to Oman and Kuwait are similarly waiting for confirmation, as is the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has held up several of the Middle East nominations, claiming that the “nominees keep lying to Congress and the American people, testifying publicly that they are committed to countering Iran and deepening the U.S.-Israel relationship then implementing the opposite policies in secret once confirmed.”
The military is also down critical leaders, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is refusing to lift his hold on more than 300 uncontroversial military promotions, a hold he says is to protest Pentagon policy of permitting military personnel time off to obtain abortion care.
And the House of Representatives is without a speaker, making it unclear what, if any, business other than electing a new speaker it can conduct. The two candidates in the race for speaker—Representatives Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH)—apparently hope to be elected from within the Republican conference, but neither has shown any sign of being able to find the necessary votes.
Scalise is saddled with his own declaration years ago that he was like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “without the baggage,” and—in addition to old accusations of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of the Ohio State University wrestlers on the team of which he was the assistant coach between 1987 and 1995—Jordan is closely associated with the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Republicans from more moderate districts are likely to be reluctant to back either of them.
Today, former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested he would be willing to return to the speaker’s chair and noted that he had more votes than any other current Republican candidate when the extremists ousted him last week.
This evening, House Republicans met in private to discuss the speakership. They are expected to hold a candidate forum tomorrow and a private vote on a nominee Wednesday. They then hope to have a candidate to take forward for a floor vote.
ive never thought about it before. she must get piles of it every day. i hope it’s not something she reads regularly. that stuff isn’t good for one’s mental health
