All posts tagged: Kevin McCarthy

Speaker Mike Johnson reaches deal with Chuck Schumer for long-term spending bill

Speaker Mike Johnson reaches deal with Chuck Schumer for long-term spending bill

Published by Sam

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (AP) House Republican leadership and their counterparts among the Democratic Senate majority are set to announce a topline deal on spending for the next fiscal year, ending a pattern of short-term funding measures that had threatened government shutdowns. The deal, which Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reached on Sunday, will supposedly include roughly $16b in cuts to nondefence spending while also providing for a pay increase for service members. Axios first broke news of the topline number, which is set at $1.59tn for the full package. If legislation to fund the government at this level passes before funding deadlines over the next month and a half, it will represent a major victory for the burgeoning speakership of Mr Johnson, who will have achieved what his predecessor Kevin McCarthy could not: Keeping his caucus unified while passing a long-term government funding bill. Previous reporting from The Washington Post in December indicated that the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right contingent in the House of …

The House Republicans Who’ve Had Enough

The House Republicans Who’ve Had Enough

Published by skeptic

House Republicans didn’t exactly have a banner year in 2023. They made history for all the wrong reasons. Last January, they presided over the most protracted election for speaker in a century, and nine months later, for good measure, lawmakers ejected their leader, Kevin McCarthy, for the first time ever. Last month, the House expelled one of its own, George Santos, for only the sixth time. The rest of the year wasn’t any more productive. Thanks in part to Republican discord, the House passed fewer bills that became laws than any other year in decades. And for the few important measures that did pass, GOP leaders had to rely on Democrats to bail them out. Republican lawmakers have responded by quitting in droves. After the House spent much of October fighting over whom to elect as speaker, November saw more retirement announcements than any single month in more than a decade. Some members aren’t even waiting for their term to end. McCarthy resigned last week, depriving the party that fired him of both his experience …

The Last Remaining GOP Holdouts Are Surrendering to Trump

The Last Remaining GOP Holdouts Are Surrendering to Trump

Published by skeptic

The last Republican holdouts who once were skeptical of Trump are now endorsing him. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota (Win McNamee / Getty) January 5, 2024, 6:27 AM ET Nearly a decade into the Donald Trump phenomenon, Republicans are still finding new ways to abase themselves. Consider Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 Republican in the House. If the name is familiar, that could be because for a fleeting moment in October, it looked like Emmer might become the next speaker. Kevin McCarthy had been unceremoniously tossed from the role, in a charge led by Trump allies. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan had both fallen short. Emmer emerged as a potential compromise solution for a tired caucus. Then Trump took to the phones, calling members to whip them against the majority whip, whom he viewed as insufficiently loyal. Among the complaints: Emmer had voted to certify the 2020 election of Joe Biden, and he had not yet endorsed Trump’s 2024 race. Emmer quickly realized he couldn’t win and decided to drop out. “He’s done. It’s …

Why Does the GOP Block Ukraine Aid? For Trump.

Why Does the GOP Block Ukraine Aid? For Trump.

Published by skeptic

The White House and Senate continue to work frantically toward a deal to supply Ukraine before Congress recesses for Christmas. Supposedly, all leaders of Congress are united in their commitment to Ukraine—so the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, insists. Yet somehow this allegedly united commitment is not translating into action. Why not? The notional answer is that Republicans must have a border-security deal as the price for Ukraine aid. But who on earth sets a price that could stymie something they affirmatively want to do? Republicans have not conditioned their support for Social Security on getting a border deal. They would never say that tax cuts must wait until after the border is secure. Only Ukraine is treated as something to be bartered, as if at a county fair. How did that happen? Ukraine’s expendability to congressional Republicans originates in the sinister special relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Pre-Trump, Republicans expressed much more hawkish views on Russia than Democrats did. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in spring 2014. In …

Can We Abandon Our Delusions About Trump Supporters?

Can We Abandon Our Delusions About Trump Supporters?

Published by skeptic

In the last spring of the Obama administration, Michelle Obama was delivering her final commencement address as first lady, at City College of New York. Then, as now, the specter of Donald Trump had become the inescapable backdrop to everything. He’d spent the past year smashing every precept of restraint, every dignified tradition of the supposedly kindhearted nation he was seeking to lead. Obama couldn’t help but lob some barely cloaked denunciations of Trump’s wrecking-ball presidential campaign—the one that would soon be ratified with the Republican nomination. “That is not who we are,” the first lady assured the graduates. “That is not what this country stands for, no.” The promise did not age well. Not that November, and not since. Explore the January/February 2024 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More “This is not who we are”: The would-be guardians of America’s better angels have been scolding us with this line for years. Or maybe they mean it as an affirmation. Either way, the axiom prompts …

The Curtain Falls on George Santos

The Curtain Falls on George Santos

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This morning, Republican Representative George Santos became the sixth House member in American history to be expelled from Congress. Though Santos managed to hang on to the support of the majority in his party, he was ousted in a 311–114 vote. I spoke with my colleague Russell Berman, who covers politics, about why some members voted not to expel Santos, and how much of an outlier he really is. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Republicans Find Their Line Lora Kelley: How did we get to a place where Santos is being expelled, and how did he make it to Congress in the first place? Russell Berman: George Santos ran in what should have been a high-profile, competitive race last year in Long Island. He was in a swing district that was fiercely contested because control …

The Republicans Have No Majority

The Republicans Have No Majority

Published by skeptic

Mike Johnson now knows what Kevin McCarthy was dealing with. At the new speaker’s behest, House Republicans today relied on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown by passing legislation that contains neither budget cuts nor conservative policy priorities. The bill was a near replica of the funding measure that McCarthy pushed through the House earlier this fall—a supposed surrender to Democrats that prompted hard-liners in his party to toss him from the speakership. Johnson is unlikely to suffer the same fate, at least not yet. But today’s vote laid bare a reality that’s become ever more apparent over the past year: Republicans may hold more seats than Democrats, but they don’t control the House. Under McCarthy and now Johnson, Republicans have been unable to pass just about any important legislation without significant help from Democrats. The three most consequential votes this year have been the spring budget deal that prevented a catastrophic U.S. debt default, September’s stopgap spending bill that averted a shutdown, and today’s proposal that keeps the government funded through early 2024. …

Adam Kinzinger: Kevin McCarthy Is the Man to Blame

Adam Kinzinger: Kevin McCarthy Is the Man to Blame

Published by skeptic

Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman from Illinois, is best known for his service on the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. He and Liz Cheney were the only two Republicans on that committee, and completely noncoincidentally, neither one is in Congress today. The new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is more typical of the House Republican caucus: He was a leader of the election deniers. In his new book, Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, Kinzinger details his manifold struggles: with his conscience, with his ambition, and, ultimately, with the Republicans who attempted to subvert the Constitution. A six-term congressman and an Air Force veteran, Kinzinger today is chastened but still somewhat hopeful—not hopeful about the short-term future of the Republican Party, but hopeful that pro-democracy voters are still sufficient in number to turn back the authoritarians. I first met Kinzinger in 2014, when we were both members of the late Senator John McCain’s delegation to the Munich Security Conference. Also in that delegation were Senator Lindsey Graham …

Where Is Mike Johnson’s Ironclad Oath?

Where Is Mike Johnson’s Ironclad Oath?

Published by skeptic

On August 16, 1867, a young farmer named Alfred McDonald Sargent Johnson walked into the courthouse of Cherokee County, Georgia. He had an oath to swear. The effects of the Civil War were still visible in Canton, a village of about 200 people and the county seat. For one thing, that makeshift courthouse was inside a Presbyterian church—its predecessor having been torched by William Tecumseh Sherman’s men shortly before their march to the sea. For another, Georgia was still under military rule as federal officials debated how best to reconstruct the former Confederate states. How does a government reintegrate the men who, not that long ago, were engaged in a treasonous rebellion? Read: Elon Musk’s anti-semitc apartheid-loving grandfather Johnson had, like many of his neighbors, taken up arms against the United States. At age 21, he’d joined Company F of the 3rd Georgia Cavalry. The Third had fought in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga campaigns, and Johnson had even been captured as a Union prisoner at New Haven, Kentucky. But he was just a foot soldier …

Kevin McCarthy’s Defeat Could Cost Republicans the House

Kevin McCarthy’s Defeat Could Cost Republicans the House

Published by skeptic

Few Americans are shedding tears for Kevin McCarthy. The former House speaker engendered little public sympathy as he tried, and ultimately failed, to wrangle a narrow and fractured Republican majority into a functioning governing body. His ouster on Tuesday has, in the short term, paralyzed Congress and increased the likelihood of a prolonged government shutdown in the coming weeks. Republicans are only now beginning to contemplate the significant political ramifications of tossing McCarthy. Retaining their narrow majority in the House next year was already going to be a challenge. But the GOP will now have to defend its four-seat advantage without a leader who, for all of McCarthy’s political shortcomings, was widely recognized as its best fundraiser, candidate recruiter, and campaign strategist. “They just took out our best player,” a rueful Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma told me on Thursday, referring to the eight renegade Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy. Cole, the chair of the Rules Committee and a 22-year veteran of the House, was a McCarthy loyalist to the end. He could become …