Dem Demographer Kevin McCarthy: Why he’ll be the speaker of the House if he wins the House and what he wants to do

Kevin McCarthy said that he would cut back on government spending if the Republicans win the House on Tuesday, while launching investigations into the Vice President’s administration.

The Biden administration still uses the Trump-era Title 42 rule to turn people away at the US-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere, US border encounters topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million were turned away under Title 42.

McCarthy said they wouldn’t use impeachment for political purposes. It wouldn’t be used at other times if something rises to the occasion.

And with the MAGA-wing calling to cut off funding to Ukraine while the GOP’s defense hawks vow not to abandon the country amid its war with Russia, McCarthy attempted to reaffirm his support for Ukraine while saying they would not automatically rubber stamp any additional requests for aid.

McCarthy said that he had watched people on the other side of the aisle spread dangerous conspiracy theories. I will be the speaker for all of the House. It won’t be looking at just the Republicans. We will be looking at Democrats as well.

McCarthy is also against the idea, but some sources believe he may need to cede some ground on the issue or find compromise in order to unlock the remaining votes he needs to become speaker. The GOP leader has gone to the five individuals who have publicly come out against him directly, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the five, told CNN, and is continuing ongoing conversations with various factions of the Republican conference.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the State of the Union: What do we really want to hear about immigration laws in the United States?

He said that the policy of staying in Mexico for immigration proceedings in the United States should be followed right away.

To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”

Most bills will be primarily messaging endeavors, unlikely to overcome the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, though they would have to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the national borrowing limit at some point next year. McCarthy, however, signaled Republicans will demand spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, teeing up a risky fiscal showdown that could lead to a disastrous debt default.

If you want to give a person a higher limit, you should first change your behavior, so you don’t keep raising and all the time, right? he said. “You shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna let you keep spending money.’ No household should do that.

McCarthy has said that there are no plans for a Social Security and Medicare sunset in the debt ceiling talks, which may upset some Republicans. McCarthy said on Fox that the state of the union address was one of the most partisan he had ever heard.

When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You do not risk a default.

To that end, McCarthy has vowed to reinstate freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to her committee assignments, despite being stripped of her assignments by Democrats last year for her inflammatory remarks.

When asked if he has any restrictions about which committees Greene can serve, McCarthy – who will have a direct say in doling out those assignments – said “no.” She told CNN that she wanted to be a member of the House Oversight Committee, which will be a key role in GOP investigations in a majority.

“She’s going to have committees to serve on, just like every other member … He said that they will look at it when they go through the steering committee. She is a member of our conference and she is allowed to put through the committees she wants.

The other members have also spouted conspiracy theories. Most recently, some Republicans have mocked the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, or peddled fringe conspiracy theories about the incident.

An Interview with M. Scalise during the 2021 Jan. 6 Flare Black-Hole Outburst: What Do We Want to Tell Them?

“The first thing I’ll ask the president to do is not to call half the nation idiots or say things about them because they have a difference of opinion,” he said. The president is probably responsible for leadership, I think. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

But hard-right Republicans seized the opportunity to extract promises — and in some cases apologies — from their would-be leaders. One question was whether he would commit to investigating Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if given the power of a Republican-led House.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida asked Mr. Scalise about comments he made on a private conference call days after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in which he agreed with Mr. McCarthy that Mr. Gaetz’s comments about conservatives he deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump had been dangerous and “potentially illegal.”

Two people familiar with the exchange, who are not authorized to speak publicly, say Mr. Scalise apologized and said he should have waited until he had more facts to say.

The turmoil underscored how Republicans were toiling to find a path forward after disappointing midterm results, and still grappling with the influence of Mr. Trump and his election lies on their party, including the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack. It came as former Vice President Mike Pence made his most scathing comments yet about Mr. Trump’s actions during the assault on the Capitol, and as Mr. Trump himself, who has received an unusual torrent of internal blame for the string of midterm losses by candidates he had handpicked, geared up for an expected announcement on Tuesday night that he would run for president again.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said it would be a narrow one. “It makes it really critical that you’ve got somebody with superb political skills. Somebody that knows everything that’s going on here.

Aside from plotting potential retribution, there is also concern among those who support McCarthy over what kind of deals he could be willing to make in order to secure the votes for speaker.

It was not clear whether Mr. McCarthy enlisted Mr. Trump to help his campaign, or if Mr. Trump was simply working on his own. The former president has spoken with Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, and Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, among others. A group of seven current and incoming Republican lawmakers, including Mr. Crane and Mr. Norman, signed a letter to their leaders in the next Congress making it easier to remove the speaker if they so choose.

When Nancy Pelosi in 2018 found herself about a dozen votes short of what she would need to secure the speaker’s gavel, she quietly picked off defectors, methodically cutting deals to capture exactly enough support to prevail. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.

The right flank of the Republican party in California has been appeased by a number of pledges made by the California Republican. He traveled to the southern border and called for Alejandro N. Mayorkas to quit as homeland security secretary. He promised Ms. Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.

He has threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. He has been quietly meeting with ultraconservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. On Monday night, he publicly urged his members to vote against the spending bill.

In an opinion essay, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is running as a protest candidate in the speaker race, noted that Mr. McCarthy had said before the midterm elections that he did not see grounds for impeaching any Biden administration officials. Mr. McCarthy had made a threat against the homeland security secretary.

According to lawmakers, there was a heated discussion about offering a resolution to remove McCarthy holdouts from their panel assignments if they don’t back down. At least for now they thought it might be not the best move.

McCarthy chatted with the so-called “Five Families” who represent the various ideological groups in the House GOP. Some of the demands from the right he was willing to give in to were, for example, establishing a broad investigative panel to look into the Biden administration.

The teams win. Fractured teams lose,” GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, co-chair of the centrist-leaning Main Street Caucus, told CNN, pointing to McCarthy’s broad support among the conference. The conference will not be held hostage by a few.

It’s unclear, however, whether moderates will actually be willing to follow through with the same hardball tactics often deployed by the far right – especially if it could wind up backfiring for McCarthy. Opposing the rules package, for example, could upend any careful negotiations between McCarthy and his detractors, so GOP sources don’t believe McCarthy’s supporters would ultimately take it down.

The dynamics of the moderate and progressive wings will likely spill over into next year with a thin House majority. Part of what’s fueling the divide: House Republicans who identify as either centrist or part of the GOP’s so-called governing wing feel validated following a midterm cycle in which many extremists candidates failed.

Nancy Mace is a South Carolina Republican and she said that people don’t need to double down on failed policies. “There’s a reason the midterms were the way that they were: people who are left of center, right of center were the most successful.”

Steve Womack said it was important that Republicans didn’t begin January 3 “by going face down and not having some clarity on what we’re going to be able to accomplish.” We need to show the American people that their trust and confidence was a good move, even though it was a slim majority.

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the handful of Republican lawmakers to come out in firm opposition to McCarthy as speaker, also acknowledged the reality of a narrowly divided House.

He told CNN it was a community of common fate. If five people won’t row in that direction the ship won’t go anywhere. And that’s true on impeachment, it’s true on the speakership vote, it’s true on the budget, it’s true on policy choices.”

What concessions will be made and what other deals are going to be cut are some of the questions that remain unanswered. Womack asked. We should not give a lot of that leverage away.

The Freedom Caucus: What is the Problem with Speaker’s Decrement? An Analysis of the Boehner’s Letter to the House Speaker

The member told CNN they had expressed their concern to McCarthy about the restored motion to leave the speaker’s chair. The tool was constantly wielded over former Speaker John Boehner’s head before he eventually resigned, and most Republicans are concerned that it would hamper their ability to effectively govern.

The leader of the group held a meeting to allow his members to debate rules changes and other concessions, even though there is still no decision on the motion to leave the chair.

The conference will come together when the new Congress begins in January but many members are preaching unity, calling the private deal-making part of the process. To that end, the Republican Governance Group recently sent a letter urging their colleagues to unite behind McCarthy.

Republicans are talking about different points of view and it shouldn’t be a surprise, GOP Representative MarioDiaz-Balart told CNN.

The members from competing groups have time to have fun with one another. All of Capitol Hill came together for a Christmas party in the office of Burchett, including some anti-McCarthy lawmakers. Amid the Mountain Dew fountain and “charcuterie plate” consisting of Cheez Whiz and Ritz crackers, Burchett at one point rode the skateboard of Gaetz’s wife.

Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican who identifies himself as part of the governing wing, said at the end of the day, the various factions actually agree on most things and dismissed the idea it would be tense next year.

Moore told CNN that there was not a lot of drama. I met with members of the House Freedom Caucus to discuss what we agree on. It is an enormous amount.

Four days before the House speaker vote, when his critics were still noncommittal about their support for his speakership bid, even after the California Republican had offered a number of key concessions – including making it easier to oust the sitting speaker – he attempted to give them the hard sell.

But now with just one day to go, a group of at least nine Republicans have made clear that they’re still not sold – despite McCarthy’s warning and even after he gave in to some of their most ardent demands, which he outlined during a Sunday evening conference call.

McCarthy is still trying to make the deal work with hardliners threatening to deny him the job on Tuesday and his allies growing increasingly anxious that he will give away his power for nothing.

It was announced on Monday that the new majority in the US House of Representatives would be inaugurated on Tuesday without a clear leader. McCarthy supporters are hoping for a last-minute resolution but are bracing for the worst as the conference gathers on Tuesday before the speaker vote.

We’re ready for a fight. Not the way we want to start out in our new majority, but you can’t really negotiate against the position of ‘give us everything we ask for and we won’t guarantee anything in return,’” Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, a member of the centrist-leaning Republican Governance Group, told CNN.

“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. A way to make the place run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s in deal-making mode, working the phones with critics and supporters alike to find consensus on rules changes designed to win over holdouts.

Breaking a Promise to the House Speaker: The No-vote Campaign against Kevin McCarthy in the House and Senate Minority Caucus

He can only afford to lose four votes on the House floor, and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with nearly a dozen other GOP lawmakers publicly saying they’re still not there yet.

Lawmakers worked over the weekend to finalize the rules package. Ultimately, McCarthy informed Republicans on the conference-wide call Sunday evening that he agreed to the five-person threshold on the motion to vacate – which he billed as a “compromise.”

McCarthy released the final rules package later in the day and sent a letter to his colleauges saying that he would make certain the GOP’s ideological groups were represented on committees if he became speaker.

That group is still pushing for a single member to be able to call for a vote toppling the speaker, which is what it used to be before Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules, and they also want a commitment that leadership won’t play in primaries.

“Thus far, there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties, and thus, no means to measure whether promises are kept or broken,” the letter, obtained by CNN, states.

McCarthy postponed the races for committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have a say in the process, but other members believe it was a way to keep themselves out of trouble.

McCarthy and his defenders made a vow in holiday calls and text messages to each other that they wouldn’t let a few of them control the conference.

“People want to get to work and this has just been holding us up,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, a leader of the Republican Governance Group, told CNN, of the protracted speaker’s fight. “I have people who say they don’t care if it is 500 times, they are voting for Kevin. There is no one else.”

McCarthy’s opposition, however, has also been working in tandem – and they are far more practiced in playing hardball, though the Freedom Caucus has been openly divided over McCarthy.

The five hard no votes strategically began to trickle out their public statements of opposition after McCarthy won the secret ballot vote. The pressure on McCarthy to cut a deal intensified after negotiations last month dragged on, with an additional group stating their demands in a letter.

The House will not stop voting until someone gets the majority of the vote, which hasn’t happened since 1923.

The administrative matters committee sent a letter last week detailing practical implications of a drawn out speaker’s fight. Committees won’t be able to pay staff if House Rules are not approved.

The same memo, which was first reported by Politico and obtained by CNN, also warned that student loan payments for committee staff wouldn’t be disbursed if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January.

It could be one of the ways a battle over the speaker could cause the House to be disorganized during their first days in the majority, with some of the harsher punishments falling on rank-and-file staffers.

McCarthy supporters have contended that there is no genuine alternative, no consensus candidate that has the votes to prevail, waiting in the wings. Bob Good promised on Fox News that a new speaker would be elected, though he wouldn’t reveal who that would be.

Even with the race far from settled, boxes from McCarthy’s office were spotted by CNN being moved into the speaker’s suite last week – a standard protocol, but a sign he’s committed to seeking the job.

The members of the group said it was a strange game of chicken where the anti-McCarthy group pulled the steering wheel off of the dashboard while the pro-McCarthy group pedaled to the metal.

Frustrated politicians: The tale of Frederick Huntington Gillett and the fate of the congressional leadership in the early days of the January 6 attack

Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.

Frederick Huntington Gillett was the model of a New England gentleman. He studied at Harvard Law School before being elected into the US House. Gillett was so calm and laid back that a reporter joked that the Massachusetts congressman would refuse coffee in the morning “for fear it would keep him awake all day.”

His inoffensiveness may even have been an asset in winning the support of his Republican colleagues for House Speaker in 1919 and 1921. A group of progressive Republicans prevented Gillett from being elected until the ninth ballot was held, after party leaders agreed to rule changes that would give rank-and-file members more power.

McCarthy deserves a big share of the blame for the spectacle of a legislative majority spending days trying to organize itself, wrote Jill Filipovic. McCarthy said in the early days after the January 6 attack that Donald was the culprit. Before Republicans elected McCarthy, there was an all- too-predictable outcome of handing power to the unhinged, which Trump bore responsibility for, but did not support his impeachment.

“Even if McCarthy manages to squeak out the leadership, a powerful and vocal contingent of his party has publicly humiliated him and expressed their lack of confidence in his control,” she observed.

The rebels relied on Trump’s approach of political combat because they didn’t heed his instructions. He helped to encourage a younger, more extreme group of people to demand power. It seems these burn-down-the-house conservatives will do almost anything in pursuit of victory and believe – like Trump – that chaos, instability, and hyper-divisiveness have great political value. Some Trump loyalists might be close to concluding that they do not need him anymore, since they no longer need to follow his every move.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-chaotic-victory-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Two Years of Washington D.C. Law Enforcement: An Almost-Death Spot on a Soldier in the Capitol, Sent to a Crime

The speakership drama extended through the second anniversary of January 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol to try to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. In a striking moment that day, police drew their guns at the door of the House chamber to protect its members, who were later evacuated.

Biden honored a number of heroes on Friday, one of which was Michael Fano, a former Washington DC police officer who was wounded in the riot. “If Republicans can finally agree on a speaker, the same GOP leaders who spread former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election … will take the reins of power in the House,” Fanone wrote for CNN Opinion.

“This week marks two years since the most violent day of my law enforcement career, the same violent uprising that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and many others in his party continue to downplay,” Fanone noted. Two years ago, violent insurrectionists almost took my life, but they ignored my pleas that I have kids.

The Americans weren’t sure if Hamlin was going to make it after tackling the player on Monday Night Football. Hamlin was resuscitated on the field, and by the end of the week he was able to speak and move his arms and legs.

Coy Wire, who played for the Bills and the Atlanta Falcons before becoming a journalist, wrote that he was reminded of the brutal nature of the sport he loved, feeling the physical pains from his nine seasons in the NFL. I have titanium plates and screws in my neck. I had many concussions, including one in Buffalo where I had no recollection of what happened until I watched the game the next day. I recall vividly how frightening injuries can be.

Mental wounds were reopened as haunting memories came flooding back in after the horrible scene unfolded on Monday night.

Paul Rieckoff, a former high school and college football player, was watching his two young sons play a game of playground football hours before Hamlin’s collapse. My son is one year younger than my oldest and I was talking to another dad who also played football and has an 8-year-old son. His son plays football in pads for the first time this fall. I don’t think I can allow my son to hit that early. Or maybe ever. I just can’t.”

Jeff Pearlman told the story of Chuck Hughes, the Detroit Lions wide receiver who suffered a fatal heart attack at Tiger Stadium in 1971 and became the only NFL player to die on the field during a game. Less than 10 minutes after Hughes’ body was taken off the field, the game was back on, Pearlman noted. But times are different now. “Fifty-two years after the Hughes tragedy, the Bills-Bengals game was rightly suspended after Hamlin’s collapse…”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/opinions/kevin-mccarthy-chaotic-victory-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Why a Royal Family is Not a Legit Institution: The Case of Prince Harry and Meghan Andelman in Avatar: The Way of Water

At the start of 2023, Ukraine’s forces struck a vocational school housing Russian troops in the occupied city of Makiivka in the Donetsk region. Russian officials put the death toll at 89, while the Ukrainian military stated hundreds of casualties. Regardless of the disparity, David A. Andelman noted, it was “Russia’s highest single-incident death toll since the war began more than 10 months ago.”

“Avatar: The Way of Water” may be on its way to earning as much as $2 billion at the box office, but Jeff Yang was wary of going to see director James Cameron’s sequel until his 14-year-old son persuaded him. “Though I’d recalled feeling like the 2009 original was more of a weirdly off-putting immersive experience than an actual motion picture,” Yang wrote, “Cameron’s masterful narrative instincts and intricate worldbuilding overwhelmed my reflexive cynicism…for the first half hour of ‘Way of Water”s epic three-hour running length, anyway.”

“Audiences and critics now and in the future will laud Cameron’s creativity and attention to detail, and they should – but they likely won’t know how much of the franchise’s incredible worldbuilding is simply an act of elaborate collage, snapping together elements pulled from scores of our world’s oldest civilizations, while ascribing them to fantastical cat people rather than resourceful human beings,” Yang wrote.

Prince Harry’s new book, titled “Spare,” was titled after the saying that people in the line of succession need to have an heir and a spare.

The book is being called jaw-dropping, but there is a contradiction in the continuing saga of Harry, Meghan and the royal family.

Harry and Meghan quit the family “amid complaints that they preferred a private life as ‘regular people,’ no longer wanting the media attention that came with being royals, including being tabloid fodder. In an excerpt from an upcoming interview, Harry told ITV: ‘I want a family. Not a legit institution.

“And fodder it is. The details of a physical altercation betweenHarry and William in which William knocked him to the floor and left him scratched and bruised is one of the accusations Harry made against his brother.

Drexler said that sibling rivalry is even more prevalent when there are only two of them. Most aren’t born into families with set hierarchies that remind them of where they are. But brotherly discord has existed throughout time, inspiring countless works of art in all spheres (most of them tragedies). Harry is not special—his is one of the commonest dramas of human nature.”

When Kevin McCarthy was elected to the US House of Representatives (and subsequently Trumpled), and he was not going to run away from his promises of vengeance

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views that are expressed in this commentary are not of hers. There is more opinion on CNN. This piece has been updated to reflect the latest news.

With the war in Ukraine growing more tense, it might be appropriate to think that the new leadership in the US House of Representatives will be careful not to push their political agendas too far. But no such thing is happening.

It was confirmed this week that anyone who was worried that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would find it hard to steer a moderate course after having to compromise with the most extreme members of the Republican Party won the seat.

McCarthy tried to paint the decision as one of high-minded, security-conscious patriotism. It was exactly opposite of that. The just-elected speaker couldn’t run away from his own recorded vows of vengeance.

He promised a year ago that if Republicans became the majority, they would remove Democrats from their committees for their actions.

True, Democrats had – with support from some Republicans – removed Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committees. But that was because of Rep. Greene’s incendiary and violent statements, such as supporting the execution of prominent Democrats, agreeing with comments calling the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting a “false flag,” among others. She later said she was upset about things and that she couldn’t trust the government. The House voted to censure Gosar for posting a video on social media that appeared to make him kill a democrat and attack a president.

The attempt to take over the US Capitol on January 6 was complicated by the fact that social media accounts of election deniers like Gosar were used to stoke the flames.

The committee had a tradition of bipartisanship, key to fulfilling its functions, until the arrival of Trump and the tensions caused by news that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to try to help him get elected – an issue the committee necessarily had to confront.

It was forced to look into Ukraine’s request for more American weapons to defend against Russia. In an attempt to win over the hearts of the Ukrainians, Trump called on President Zelensky to do them a favor and announce an investigation of Biden, a man he thought could defeat him in 2020.

The topics the committee discussed were legitimate. Trump’s self-serving mismanagement of relations with Ukraine resulted in his first impeachment.

McCarthy should use integrity lightly in the context of committee assignments. McCarthy is giving plum seats to his new ally, Greene, who made a name for herself initially with her embrace of the deranged ideas of QAnon, which she later distanced herself from, and has spewed an endless stream of outrageous statements, including suggesting that Jews have used space lasers to start forest fires. She later distanced herself from these comments as well. But McCarthy is also giving committee assignments (plural!) to the mind-boggling liar – the new congressman, George Santos of New York.

Then, of course, there are the signs of his own brittle integrity. Who can forget his denunciation of Trump from the House floor on January 6, followed promptly by a contrite pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. It calls to mind Groucho Marx and the famous quote, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”

There were times when he forcefully denied that he said in a GOP leadership meeting after the January 6 attack that Trump should resign. He said that the Times report was false and wrong. There was a tape of him saying that.

The contents of a laptop owned by the son of the President was dismissed as misinformation by the man. The former intelligence committee chief was accused of inartful paraphrasing of the Zelensky and Trump call. The Speaker accused him of using his position as committee chairman and leaving the country less safe in his letter.

Schiff, who announced Thursday that he would run for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the upper chamber in 2024, is not buying McCarthy’s justifications. He said that Kevin McCarthy is a man who wants to do the former president’s bidding and that he led the impeachment of his master.

The speaker can choose or remove members of the Intelligence Committee. He needs a majority of the House to take action on other committees. It was more difficult for him to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee due to the statements she has made that are considered antisemitic.

“[A]s we enter a new Congress,” McCarthy wrote to the Democrats’ leader, “I am committed to returning the Intelligence Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people.” Sadly, at the worst possible time, during a moment of rising global tensions, he is doing precisely the opposite.

But after a wild week in Washington, it’s fair to ask who is on each side of the line the Arkansas governor drew in her Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

The national television audience was used to recommit to the hardline base strategy of the GOP as it was pushed by Trump. But her strategy did not come in isolation. Liberal policies on social, economic and foreign policy are thought to be crazy by many conservatives. In recent years, extremists have been a problem for Democrats and left-wingers called for the defunding of the police in the past.

Sanders spoke moments after Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was on her feet yelling “liar” at Biden, with the House chamber sounding more like a heckler-filled late-night comedy club than a solemn state occasion. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was seen trying to shush his ruder lawmakers, but he was among those Republicans who voted not to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory over false claims of fraud. And it was McCarthy who embraced ex-President Donald Trump after his baseless claims of a stolen election incited an unprecedented insurrection at the US Capitol. More recently, he appeased untamed elements of his party to squeeze into power last month.

The distraction of GeorgeSantos, a New York congressman who lied about his education, job records and family background, is complicating things for the new House majority. New York Republican Nick La Lotaa told CNN on Wednesday that he wouldn’t talk about what Republicans should be doing if he had to.

Meanwhile, new Republican-led oversight hearings – including one on Wednesday apparently designed to prove that some combination of Twitter, the FBI and Biden stole the 2020 election – have further erased the line between conservative opinion TV and governance. The all-day session featured histrionic questions, which verged on intimidation of witnesses, that delighted the GOP’s base and ran on a loop of right-wing media. But if anything, it undermined the premise that a massive media, deep-state swamp conspired against Trump as witnesses testified that there was no order from the FBI to temporarily suppress a New York Post story about a laptop purportedly belonging to the president’s son, Hunter. Another House hearing on Thursday, the first of a series into the alleged “weaponization” of the government against conservatives, will again fuel an impression the GOP is trying to build scandals from right-wing talking points.

While such showdowns allow party leaders to fire up vital base voters and cook up a general stench of scandal that, even if unproven, could harm the Biden administration, they risk highlighting the GOP’s most extreme, media-hungry personalities and alienating moderate voters.

It is true that political normality is in the eye of the beholder. Biden surrendered to a swamp mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is, and the country is in the clutches of a left-wing cultural purge, argued the candidate, who was running on a platform of empowering working people.

But while Sanders may be adopting a shrewd approach for a rising star in a party that often rewards far-right candidates in primaries, it would seem to fly in the face of lessons of the midterm elections, when voters in swing states rejected far-right extremism.

He used the tactic of bulwarking between moderate Americans and the excess of what he has called “ultraMAGA” Republicans to his advantage in the mid-terms.

This is why Biden’s strategy goaded McCarthy’s most radical followers into acting out on Tuesday night after saying Americans didn’t want to see fighting in Congress.

Reporters attempted to get McCarthy to comment on the performance of the woman he has developed a relationship with, but he dodged them. He hopes to avoid a public spectacle of Extremism with millions watching on TV, but his hopes are dependent on radicals like she and her colleagues. This narrow grip on power thanks to a minuscule majority is one reason why McCarthy has also not repudiated Santos, who is expected to face a House ethics probe.

Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday that she wasn’t sorry for her poor manners during Biden’s speech, even though she provided Democrats with the exact image they most want to highlight. She said she was “pissed off” and “I don’t clap for liars.” Pelosi told CNN on Tuesday night that the decision for Americans was between chaos and stability.

Not every Republican is tolerating the party’s incivility. Romney told him that he didn’t belong in the House, even though McCarthy had failed to go. LaLota, meanwhile, in his interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, stressed how the New York Republican had become a distraction from the party’s priorities.

Republicans want to govern on things like putting our economy back on the right track, securing our border, and holding the administration accountable.

There is a lot of work to be done by House Republican Chairmen given the Biden White House’s handling of the border crisis, Covid-19 Pandemic and withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is no reason why a genuine investigation into Biden’s finances – and those of his son, who is under federal investigation – should not be part of this oversight either.

The House Oversight Chair warned that a story could hurt Biden and there was a plan to cover it up.

Former senior officials from Twitter admitted that the social media network made a mistake in suppressing the story – on the grounds that they were worried it was based on the same kind of foreign misinformation that had tainted the 2016 election. They testified that the FBI didn’t give them any orders to stop a story that could hurt Vice President Joe Biden in the election.

Instead, McCarthy opted to give the footage to a friendly conservative media network. Carlson has been one of the most vocal voices in conservative media in calling for the footage to be released. Carlson has been a huge McCarthy critic – so this move could help win the speaker some favor with Carlson’s camp as McCarthy tries to hold together both the conservative and moderate wings of his Republican conference.

The move by the Speaker of the House to give over a lot of his government materials to a friendly media outlet comes after pressure from his right flank to restore the work of the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

McCarthy told the select committee to keep all of its records for future review, as he promised during his bid for the speakership.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the January 6 Capitol Attack: Why McCarthy gave him access to the Capitol, and why he couldn’t release it

Carlson has been one of the most prominent promoters of January 6 conspiracy theories. Most notably, he has devoted significant airtime to the false claim that liberal “deep state” partisans within the FBI orchestrated the insurrection as a way to undermine former President Donald Trump. He spoke with a few of the rioters who were subsequently charged by the Justice Department.

After a number of news outlets sued for access to the videos, the chief judge of DC federal court ruled that there was a strong public interest in seeing some of the security footage from the attack. However, these video releases haven’t been automatic or guaranteed. The public release of videos can be requested by news organizations after they are played in court.

At a press conference last month, McCarthy said that he supported releasing the security footage of January 6, when Pelosi was Speaker. The public should see what happened.

Top congressional leaders are now able to see the security footage after it was shared by the U.S. Capitol Police.

Bennie Thompson said that he wants the American people an explanation of why McCarthy gave Carlson access.

Criminals have access to thousands of hours of footage from the attack, as well as from an online database, but they cannot publicly release the clips due to a protective order.

The Justice Department prosecutors wrote that once a video is released from the U.S. Capitol interior security camera, the cat is out of the bag.

Democrats are worried that a new wave of misinformation could be unleashed because of the host’s access to thousands of security tapes from the Capitol attack.

He issued the warning following reporting by Axios that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to more than 40,000 hours of the tapes.

Rep. Bennie Thompson’s Congressional Select Committee on Capitol Security and the January 6, 2016 Insurrection: How important is it to the press?

Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, House Democrats met virtually for a briefing on the matter, led in part by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which completed its work in December.

“I’m not comfortable with the knowledge that I have right now that the security interests of the Capitol, the people who work there and the people who visit is protected,” Thompson, now the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security panel, said. There are items that should not be made available to the public.

Thompson went on to detail the painstaking process the select committee followed during its investigation to access the security footage, and his worries the same procedures aren’t in place today.

The Chief of Capitol Police said that when Congressional leadership ask for things, we must give it to them.

I said that they belong to the American public when asked about them in the press. He told the Times that sunshine lets everyone make their own decisions.

McCarthy is hoping that outsourcing this work to the media will be a way to appease his right flank without upsetting his moderates and majority makers.

In the letter, Schumer said McCarthy’s decision to give the footage to Carlson “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers, not the truth.”

Others questioned how long the footage is going to be dragged out in the press, with some lawmakers concerned about the optics of appearing to try to downplay a deadly insurrection in the US Capitol.

McCarthy wants to move quickly, but his team needs to be careful with how they handle it to not endanger their security, sources said. He also told lawmakers that other media outlets will get access to the footage after Carlson airs his exclusive, but it could take a few weeks.

CNN and other media organizations are calling for congressional leaders to grant access to the security footage from the riot.

“Unlike Democrats, we do work very effectively with the Capitol Police. We respect law enforcement. This is about openness.

But one of his closest allies – Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also has downplayed the January 6 attack – backed his decision to give the footage to Carlson. She told CNN she was involved in the decision by McCarthy to give the footage to Carlson.

According to CNN, Carlson’s team was given some parameters for what could and could not be broadcasted. They are being very careful and responsible.

He wouldn’t say if the commitment was done to encourage him to vote present and help the California Republican’s cause.

“But I look forward to talking to him this week and further about figuring out an approach that makes sense and respects the security concerns that many members have articulated in the House,” Jeffries said of the speaker.

Top Democrats are waiting to hear what footage they see next-to-next-to leading anti-Trump MPs (Mike Levinson)

A source familiar with the matter has said that top Democrats are waiting to see what footage is ultimately released before making a decision on whether to grant the media access to it.