We’ve been waiting to hear what secret agreements now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to make with the Freedom Caucus to become speaker. Yesterday we learned one key condition. McCarthy agreed to pursue something called “prioritization” as part of their plan to push debt default later this year. On its face, prioritization is a scheme by which the U.S. government will simply stop doing various functions — food and safety, Medicaid, roads, school lunches, air traffic control, border security — to prioritize only debt interest payments and likely Social Security and the military. In other words, there’s no need to default on the debt, the argument goes. You basically just default on the U.S. government.

We’ve mentioned a few times that during Kevin McCarthy’s marathon week of votes to become speaker, George Santos was conspicuously cozying up to far-right players like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Those are the kind of people you want to have on your side if you’re girding for a battle with the “fake news” media and the “GOP establishment.” It seems to be paying off. Yesterday Matt Gaetz interviewed Santos on Steve Bannon’s show and the spin was pretty clear. “One thing I know about this town, they come for the fighters,” Gaetz said opening the interview, “And they’re coming for George Santos like nothing I’ve seen in quite some time.”

David reminds us today of the universal D.C. establishment rule that to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest all special counsels, all FBI directors and all other related legal people must always be Republicans. We know the oppression ex-President Trump suffered under Republicans like James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Chris Wray and Bob Mueller, half of whom Trump himself appointed to office. But then there’s the related rule that special counsels must always be Republicans. Republican AGs appoint Republican special counsels; and Democratic AGs appoint Republican special counsels. You’ll remember that way way back in the day the first special counsel appointed to investigate Bill Clinton was a respected and generally non-partisan Republican lawyer, Robert Fiske. He found nothing and was wrapping up his investigation. So he was replaced by the extremely partisan movement conservative lawyer Ken Starr.

We now have a fifth freshman Republican Representative from New York calling on George Santos to resign from office. Now it’s Mike Lawler of New York’s 17th district, just north of New York City. He’s the one who narrowly defeated Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the head of the DCCC in 2022. As noted yesterday, the now close-to-unanimous demand from constituents and the New York GOP for Santos to get out won’t, I think, have much effect. He’s close to a wanted man in his Long Island district. In a sense it hardly matters what the folks back home are saying. His support is coming from the House GOP leadership.

Over the course of the afternoon, four Republican Reps from New York state – all freshman – have called on George Santos to resign.

The first was Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who is from the adjoining 4th district. He made the announcement at the Nassau County GOP press conference we noted earlier. Since then Rep. Nick LaLota (1st), Rep. Nick Langworthy (23rd) and Rep. Brandon Williams (22nd) have all done the same. (I think this the rough order over the course of the day. But they’ve come in kind of a flurry.)

People forget that it wasn’t really the Freedom Caucus that knocked Kevin McCarthy out of contention for Speaker in 2015. They were part of it. But what did him in was that members from the rest of the caucus didn’t think he was ready. As the Speakership was hanging in the balance in 2015, he gave an interview in which he said that the whole point of the Benghazi hearings was to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. That was true of course. But that wasn’t the public story for Republicans. Today’s comments from McCarthy are a reminder of that and a reminder that things probably haven’t changed.

There’s a simple way to avoid being forced to resign: Don’t resign. It’s really that simple. It always has been. Just don’t resign. George Santos seems to understand that. But I’ve never thought shaming or lack of support at home or on the Hill would drive him out. Lawsuits and prosecutions are what will bring him down. And likely sooner rather than later. Just which it will be I’m not sure. There are so many routes to criminal and civil liability.

The mystery of that three-page document continues and even seems to be picking up steam. I mentioned the gist in this earlier post here. The question is just what concessions Kevin McCarthy made to the Freedom Caucus to become speaker? It came up at a GOP conference meeting today. And apparently some details were revealed but not others. Indeed, there seemed to be some disagreement about whether it’s actually written down at all. Or, rather, there was disagreement about whether there is a mystery three-page document and then yet other commitments that weren’t even included in the three-page document. These latest details come from Axios’s afternoon email.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of Anderson Torres, who until Sunday served as chief of security in the country’s capital Brasilia, according to the English-language Brazilian Report. Torres is a former justice minister under ex-President Bolsonaro. At the moment he is on “vacation” in the United States. Torres is at the center of suspicions that pro-Bolsonaro authorities were negligent or worse in security preparations for Sunday’s demonstrations.

The House GOP has passed its rules package and now the 118th Congress in the House is off to the races. But the rules package was never where McCarthy’s real concessions resided. The rules package wasn’t what signed control of the House over to the Freedom Caucus. That was contained in informal promises where McCarthy agreed to cede control over the committee that schedules votes, where he committed to backing the Freedom Caucus’s debt default plans and more.

I had assumed these were verbal agreements over hand shakes. But apparently not. According to the insider sheet Punchbowl News, in addition to the 55-page rules package hashed out between McCarthy’s supporters and the Freedom Caucus, there was an additional, secret three-page document spelling out the real agreement.

From Punchbowl …