The House GOP Has Been Ungovernable For More Than A Decade

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Pass The Popcorn, I Guess?

If you trace the current era of Republicanism to the tea party era that started in 2010, then we’re 14 years into the kind of chaos being demonstrated again today on the Hill, where the GOP is unable to govern itself let alone a country.

I suppose that if Speaker Mike Johnson pulls out a re-election win, you could argue no harm/no foul. But the structural incentives that create this kind of recurring chaos will remain. It’s a mix of things we’ve talked about for years: a close margin in the House that gives the hard-right members more clout; performative destruction as a form of politics that eventually eats its own; extremism both collectively and individually that is rewarded with high media profiles and adoration from the right-wing base.

If Johnson does manage to make his way to victory without a complete debacle it will be because he threaded a very tight needle, helped along by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans controlling all of DC, and not because those structural problems have ebbed.

What You Need To Know About The Speaker Vote

• The House begins its work at noon ET.
• How the math works
• Combine a dozen GOP members who are uncertain votes for Johnson with the sure “No” vote of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and you can see why a first-ballot win isn’t a sure thing for Johnson.
• Johnson is avoiding the kind of side deals to win today’s vote that crippled the speakership of Kevin McCarthy.
• If Johnson is forced out, there’s no obvious viable alternative to him for speaker.

At TPM Today

• With TPM’s Kate Riga on the Hill, we’ll be liveblogging the speaker vote today,
• TPM’s Josh Kovensky will be in federal court today in the Southern District of New York for Rudy Giuliani’s contempt hearing. Stay tuned for his report later today.

Rudy G’s Turn In the Wringer

A federal judge in Manhattan today will consider holding former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to turn over his assets in a timely fashion to satisfy the $148 million defamation judgment against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

End Of Congress House-Cleaning

The Office of Congressional Ethics referred campaign finance allegations against Reps. Andy Ogles (R-TN) and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) to the House Ethics Committee for further review.

Good Catch

Over at Just Security, David Luban shows how the House GOP omitted an essential part of a DC Bar rule it cited in order to gin up a bogus criminal referral of Liz Cheney for her work on the Jan. 6 committee.

FBI Releases New Video Of Jan. 6 Pipe Bombs Suspect

Just ahead of the four-year anniversary of the still-unsolved Jan. 6 pipe bombs case, the FBI released new details and security footage of the suspect:

New Orleans Truck Attacker Was A Lone Wolf

• “Investigators believe the U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a New Orleans crowd acted alone, and they have found no link between that terrorist attack and the deadly explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas that was driven by another servicemember.”–WSJ
• “Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who was shot and killed by New Orleans police officers after opening fire, had posted videos to social media on his way to New Orleans, proclaiming his support for ISIS,’ said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division.”–NOLA.com
• “Five years before a man in a pickup mowed down dozens of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, a confidential security report warned that the iconic Bourbon Street tourist strip was vulnerable to a ‘vehicular ramming’ attack.”–NYT

Vegas Truck Explosion Ruled Suicide

• “The highly decorated Army soldier inside a Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks that exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas shot himself in the head just before detonation, authorities said Thursday.”–AP
• “Matthew Livelsberger, who died Wednesday according to the Army, was an active-duty Green Beret and had served in the Army for 19 years. … Livelsberger had been a soldier during the peak of U.S. combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and had numerous combat deployments, according to the Army. Livelsberger was a highly decorated combat soldier who was awarded the Bronze Star with valor among several commendations.”–USAToday
• “Livelsberger, who had ties to Colorado Springs, Colo., had been on vacation leave from his base in Germany when the explosion occurred and was due back on Jan. 4.”–WSJ

Good-BYE, Net Neutrality

Appeals court uses the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision to strike down the FCC’s net neutrality rules.

Good Read

Michael Schaffer uses (ironically) a new think tank report to peel back the curtain on DC think tank world.

South Korea Update

• “South Korean investigators arrived at the presidential residence with a warrant to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, but faced resistance from presidential security staff as hundreds of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside vowing to protect him.”–AP
• “South Korean investigators failed to arrest the country’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, thwarted by his armed Secret Service bodyguards in another tense showdown resulting from his short-lived martial-law decree last month.”–WSJ
• “The agency, accompanied by some 2,700 law enforcement officials on Friday, abandoned its five hour-long effort to arrest Yoon after it was blocked by a security team that includes a military unit designated with guarding the South Korean leader. Clashes ensued during that standoff, the CIO said, and it will demand Yoon’s head of security appear for questioning on Saturday.”–Bloomberg

Extra Incentive For Dry January

Surgeon general calls for cancer warnings on alcohol as growing body of research shows risk of even moderate drinking.

How Extreme Car Dependency Drives Unhappiness

“A new study … found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.”–The Guardian

Visualization Of The Day

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