Chaos in Congress

[Voronwë the Faithful]

True. And unlike Santos' district, which is a real toss-up, a special election to replace McCarthy should easily result in another GOP representative replacing him.

[N.E. Brigand]

Former speaker Kevin McCarthy will retire from Congress at end of year

I've just seen this video of Kevin McCarthy saying that Democrats "look like America" and Republicans "look like the most restrictive country club in America."

Some sources indicate it was filmed on Oct. 23rd in England. Others aren't clear about the date. I've only seen it on social media so far.

Wanting to check its authenticity, I found this Washington Post story from a week ago which quotes McCarthy as saying almost the same thing at an event in New York.

Is this actually the same speech being quoted slightly differently? Or are these his new unshackled post-Trump talking points?

[N.E. Brigand]

Or maybe yes.

Former speaker Kevin McCarthy will retire from Congress at end of year.

He's made it official. And I appreciate Dave Weigel's meme skills here:



"Didn't I?"

[N.E. Brigand]

I saw this referenced somewhere else recently too, but here's a story from Axios about how unproductive the 118th Congress (2023-2024) has been in its first year. Just 24 bills have been passed by both House (with four of those still awaiting President Biden's signature), almost none of any great importance, and those that are important were just "keep the lights on" bills.

That's barely a third as many laws as were passed in the first years of earlier sessions of minimal legislating: the previous low water mark of recent history is 70 laws in 1995, the year Newt Gingrich became House Speaker during Bill Clinton's presidency.

[N.E. Brigand]

Didn’t anyone tell him that only Republican Congressmen are allowed to serve openly as foreign agents?

Brandon van Grack observes that, as far as he knows, Sen. Menendez is the first person to be charged under 18 USC 219, the law that "prohibits public officials from acting as foreign agents." He adds that unlike people charged under the more familiar section of this law, it's not possible for a public official even to register as a foreign agent.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that Sen. Menendez, who is charged with being a foreign agent of the Egyptian government, will not be attending a classified briefing tomorrow on the Hamas-Israeli war.

A superseding indictment has been issued in the case of Sen. Bob Menedez, Democrat of New Jersey:

The new charges accused Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to all prior counts, of making positive comments about Qatar in exchange for items of value, including luxury wristwatches.

The luxury wristwatches Menendez was allegedly offered were valued between $10,000 and $24,000, according to the new indictment.

"How about one of these," the indictment quoted co-defendant Fred Daibes as saying in a message he sent to Menendez along with photos of the watches.

Menendez and Daibes had attended an event in Manhattan hosted by the Qatari government, prosecutors said.

Two days later, September 29, 2021, Daibes sent Menendez a message about a Senate resolution supportive of Qatar as the Qatari Investment Company considered a real estate investment with Daibes.

By March of 2022 the Qataris were offering Nadine Menendez tickets to the Formula One Grand Prix in Florida, prosecutors said, and by 2023 the Qatari Investment Company completed a joint venture with Daibes worth tens of millions of dollars.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The GOP majority will be even smaller this month as important votes for keeping part of the government open are pending.

Scalise transplant and recovery will keep him out of Washington

Remember that at one point Scalise was the GOP choice to replace McCarthy as Speaker. What clusterfuck that would have been!

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. Greg Pence, Republican of Indiana and the brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, has announced that he won't run for reelection this year.

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Sen. Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey facing a twice-superseded indictment on corruption charges, gave a speech in the Senate today complaining about that.

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Rep. Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee, has made some questionable financial disclosure filings. A watchdog group has called for an investigation.

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Rep. James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, has made a lot of noise about how suspicious it is that Hunter Biden did some business through shell companies. It turns out that Comer has also done so, and that his company was twice shut down by the state.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

MidasTouch is not a source that I would normally cite but I'm going to put this here as marker in case anything comes of it with that caveat.

[RoseMorninStar]

*IF* that is true, I might imagine it's because he's willing to work across party lines and lessen the power of the 'freedom' caucus.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Senate just passed -- and the House will pass -- a six-week spending measure so the government doesn't shut down this week but will be funded until early March.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But not without some drama.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Posted with a giant grain of salt, as it sure seemed previously like Gaetz was going down, only to miraculously remain unscathed.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile the Senate had been working on a bipartisan bill to fund Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the U.S. border. Mitch McConnell had said it was a better deal than anything that would be passed if Donald Trump was president. But today he's indicating that because Donald Trump has come out against any border deal, it's probably not going to be passed.

(It would have faced great difficulty in the House regardless.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The Dept. of Justice is investigating some unnamed Democratic member of the House for misuse of funds meant for his or her personal security. This came to light because today the Sergeant at Arms informed the House of a warrant for information on member security.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Dept. of Justice is investigating some unnamed Democratic member of the House for misuse of funds meant for his or her personal security. This came to light because today the Sergeant at Arms informed the House of a warrant for information on member security.

Apparently DOJ is investigating Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who was elected in 2020 and who is considered a member of "The Squad," the unofficial group of eight (originally four) progressive House Democrats whose best-known members probably are Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Apparently a watchdog groups recently called for an investigation into Bush allegedly hiring her boyfriend (now husband) as a security guard.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

You mean the weaponized DOJ, which is also prosecuting the president's son and the senior (Democratic) senator from NJ?

[N.E. Brigand]

You mean the weaponized DOJ, which is also prosecuting the president's son and the senior (Democratic) senator from NJ?

Not to mention the guy who illegally disclosed Donald Trump's tax returns.

I imagine the Republican answer to your (good) point would be that this is only because they exposed the previously one-sided nature of DOJ investigations.

In any case, Rep. Bush has confirmed the investigations (plural: Dept. of Justice, Federal Elections Committee, and House Ethics Committee) and says she is cooperating. She says that she received a lot of threats, that it's permissible to spend campaign funds on personal security, and that her now-husband is a security expert who charges below the market rate. She adds that the non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics already investigated the matter last year and cleared her of any wrongdoing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

You mean the weaponized DOJ, which is also prosecuting the president's son and the senior (Democratic) senator from NJ?

Not to mention the guy who illegally disclosed Donald Trump's tax returns.

Right! Who just was sentenced to quite a significant amount of jail time (5 years, I believe).

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, yesterday asked TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew, who is from Singapore, whether he was ever “a member of the Chinese Communist Party.”

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How tall is Elizabeth Warren? Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote yesterday that she’s “United States Senator” tall. He also said her net worth is $73 million. (Forbes last year listed her worth as $12 million.) And that $400,000 x 12 = $6,000,000. Maybe Van Orden should take one of Donald Trump’s cognitive tests?

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Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, fears that passing the bipartisan child tax credit bill crafted by Sen. Ron Wyden (Democrat of Oregon) and Sen. Jason Smith (Republican of Missouri) would "make the president look good mailing out checks before the election, means he could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts." It’s nice of him to say out loud that Republicans don’t want to help poor kids because they want to help rich people.

After some delay, a version of that child tax credit bill passed the House 357-70 on Wednesday and is headed to the Senate.

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I’ve seen a lot of claims from the right lately that the Senate’s immigration bill would actually increase illegal immigration, because it would only impose caps on admission after 5,000 illegal immigrants per day had entered the country. Not so, say independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Sen. James Lankford, two of the bills co-authors. The trigger is met at 5,000 *encounters* per day.

And it's worth remembering that Republicans were asking for these laws to be changed during Donald Trump's administration, when courts blocked him from taking steps on border security and immigration that Republicans now say Joe Biden would be able to do without this bill passing.

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DOJ is investigating Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who was elected in 2020 and who is considered a member of "The Squad," the unofficial group of eight (originally four) progressive House Democrats whose best-known members probably are Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Apparently a watchdog group recently called for an investigation into Bush allegedly hiring her boyfriend (now husband) as a security guard. ... Rep. Bush has confirmed the investigations (plural: Dept. of Justice, Federal Elections Committee, and House Ethics Committee) and says she is cooperating. She says that she received a lot of threats, that it's permissible to spend campaign funds on personal security, and that her now-husband is a security expert who charges below the market rate. She adds that the non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics already investigated the matter last year and cleared her of any wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, Rep. Troy Nehls, Republican of Texas, referred to Rep. Cori Bush’s husband as a “thug” and says Bush wouldn’t need security is she didn’t mouth off so much. When asked about those remarks on Wednesday, he denied that there was anything racist about what he said.

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No charges will be filed against a now-former Congressional aide (to a Democratic representative) and his partner who, um, misbehaved in a hearing room.

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, today introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, for remarks Omar made in the Somali language to Somali immigrants in her district, but a local newspaper hired two translators whose work confirms that Omar didn’t say what Greene alleges.

Greene also is apparently unfamiliar with the word "indictable."

And Greene, along with Ron DeSantis, has also called for Omar to be deported (she’s been an American citizen since 2000), which is gross and racist.

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But probably not as gross as Rep. Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, tweeting about murdering someone by giving them "a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride." Then Collins got mad when his account was blocked.

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ABC reports that the House Ethics Committee "has reached out to a former girlfriend of Rep. Matt Gaetz seeking an interview amid the committee's ongoing investigation into the Florida congressman." I saw somewhere a few days ago that the reason Gaetz worked so hard to undermine now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is that McCarthy approved this investigation. Will Gaetz launch a new effort to oust current House Speaker Mike Johnson?

[N.E. Brigand]

I’ve seen a lot of claims from the right lately that the Senate’s immigration bill would actually increase illegal immigration, because it would only impose caps on admission after 5,000 illegal immigrants per day had entered the country. Not so, say independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Sen. James Lankford, two of the bills co-authors. The trigger is met at 5,000 *encounters* per day.

However, Sen. Lankford today said that all of the 9/11 terrorists were in the U.S. illegally. That's not true. They were entered legally, although I believe some overstayed their visas.