A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate process the House Republican circus after Kevin McCarthy lost his gavel.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Murray Suddenly Finds Herself Second In Line To The Presidency
When the gavel came crashing down Tuesday afternoon, declaring the Office of the Speaker of the House vacant, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the Senate president pro tempore, found herself one step higher on the ladder of presidential succession.
Continue reading “Murray Suddenly Finds Herself Second In Line To The Presidency”Let’s Talk about ‘PodiumGate’
You probably haven’t heard of “Podiumgate.” I’ve been kicking myself for the last week or so because there’s been so much going on and this story is so convoluted that I haven’t made time to write about it. But it’s the kind of story I’ve always loved. And it’s a big story, even if, for the moment, it’s almost entirely contained within Arkansas. So in this post I’m going to try to give you the outline, to catch you up so we can keep tabs on it going forward. It’s so convoluted that I may get some points wrong or at least get some points of emphasis wrong. But bear with me because you’ll be glad you did.
It all starts back in June when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas takes a trade delegation to Paris, France to drum up business for Arkansas. She was visiting an aerospace trade show and aerospace and defense actually make up a significant amount of the state’s exports. (And yes, I’m withholding some details about what went down in Paris to build up dramatic tension. You have to keep reading.)
Continue reading “Let’s Talk about ‘PodiumGate’”Judges Order Alabama To Use Special Master’s Map After State Refused To Un-Gerrymander Its Own
A panel of federal judges Thursday ordered Alabama to conduct its 2024 congressional elections under a map crafted by a special master, a necessity after state lawmakers refused to draw a court-ordered second Black opportunity district.
It’ll likely mean the election of an additional Democratic congressperson in 2024. That reality helps illuminate why Republican state officials across multiple states are fighting tooth and nail to keep their biased maps, no matter what the courts tell them to do.
Continue reading “Judges Order Alabama To Use Special Master’s Map After State Refused To Un-Gerrymander Its Own”If Louisiana’s Next Election Uses Gerrymandered Maps, It’ll Be The 5th Circuit’s Doing
After the Supreme Court knocked down Alabama’s gerrymandered map in June, court watchers, redistricting experts and those invested in which party controls the House of Representatives did quick napkin math to figure out where that decision would redound.
One obvious answer was Louisiana, where a district court had enjoined the congressional maps as a likely VRA violation last summer. The Supreme Court froze that case in place in June 2022, pending the outcome of the very similar Alabama one.
Now the case is moving again. But the Louisiana litigants — and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — are working to scuttle the automatic redistricting fix many expected. They seem to be procedurally walking in slow motion, trying to delay producing a map that empowers Black voters and would likely give Democrats a House seat until they butt up against the 2024 elections and run out of time.
Continue reading “If Louisiana’s Next Election Uses Gerrymandered Maps, It’ll Be The 5th Circuit’s Doing”No Good Answers For What Comes Next In The GOP House
Greetings from DCA, where Morning Memo is posted up for an early morning flight. Sign up for the email version of Morning Memo.
More Questions Than Answers
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have a grasp on what is happening in the House. I don’t think anyone really does.
A few things I do know:
- Normal partisan-focused analysis falls short. This isn’t a Dems v. GOP issue or vice versa.
- The more confident the prediction or assertion about what lays ahead, the more skeptical you should be.
- No clever finagling, needle-threading, or pretending is going to get around the deeply undemocratic, minority flex many House GOPers are determined to perform. If consensus remains the enemy, then we face a very uncertain road.
Let’s run through the big questions and the main unknowns as a way of framing up the news.
Dead In The Water?
It’s taking some serious research and analysis to sort out what exactly the House can do, if anything, without a speaker in place. Uncharted territory in a big way:
Matt Glassman: How much power does Speaker pro tempore McHenry have?
WaPo: The House can’t function without a speaker
News From The States: How does a ‘frozen’ U.S. House function without a speaker? Everyone’s got an opinion.
What Happens Next?
The first order of business – and in fact the only order of business it seems like the House even can take up (see above) – is electing a new speaker.
How’s that looking? Not good!
Increasing signs suggest that next Wednesday’s planned vote on a new speaker is more aspirational than certain.
To say there’s no consensus candidate doesn’t come close to capturing the current dynamic.
Will The House GOP Handcuff The Next Speaker, Too?
This remains probably the biggest unknown and most crucial question of all.
As we discussed in yesterday’s Morning Memo, if the hair-trigger motion to vacate under the current rules is kept in place, then no speaker will have the authority to lead. It would be a phantom majority. Kevin McCarthy stumbled through nine months of that before it all collapsed.
No one wants the job under those circumstances, nor should they.
What’s This Mean For Democracy?
This isn’t normal. Not normal at all. Let me repeat …
“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” said Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University, told the WaPo. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”
This isn’t a violent assault on the rule of law. This is a different category of anti-democratic impulses, the same minority extortion tactics that we’ve seen from Republicans on the Hill since at least 2010.
Super damaging. No end in sight. It may seem like they’re mostly hurting themselves. They’re not.
What’s This Mean For Budget Talks And A Shutdown?
By the time a speaker vote is held next Wednesday – a big if (see above)– only 5 weeks and 2 days will remain until the current CR expires and the government shuts down.
That leaves a very narrow window for negotiating a long-term deal or even extending things with another CR, which seems almost fanciful to contemplate since the last CR cost the speaker of the House his job.
What about Ukraine aid? Good question!
It’s a looming train wreck, even if a new speaker is in place next week.
It’s Jim Jordan v. Steve Scalise … For Now
What a matchup.
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) each announced Wednesday their runs for speaker of the House.
One the on hand, the odious chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a key figure in securing the speakership for Kevin McCarthy in the first place.
On the other, the majority leader who famously called himself “David Duke without the baggage” and had been through the meat-grinder of an assassination attempt and now cancer.
I’m less interested in which of them can win. The more salient question is can either of them – or anyone else – secure the kind of support that allows the motion to vacate to be deweaponized? That locks in a sustainable working majority? That has the authority to negotiate freely with the Senate and White House?
As I mentioned yesterday, things could get worse with McCarthy gone. Mark this matchup as Exhibit A for that proposition.
Quote Of The Day
Via Emine Yücel, reporting from the Hill:
Replacing one dick with a different kind of dick isn’t gonna change anything.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), on the race to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House
Didn’t Expect The Senate To Get Involved Like This
‘Pool Noodles’
Bannon Back In The Spotlight
NYT: From a Capitol Hill Basement, Bannon Stokes the Republican Party Meltdown
A Good Thread
Republicans in the House are unlikely to ever gel into an effective governing machine. But they also don’t need to, from the perspective of the larger reactionary project. Chaos might be all that is needed to sabotage any attempt at halting the slide into authoritarianism. 3/
— Thomas Zimmer (@tzimmer_history) October 4, 2023
Reader Mailbag
In response to yesterday’s Morning Memo, a reader wrote in wondering if House Democrats cooperating with some reasonable Republicans might not effectively sideline the most radical GOPers in the House and arrest this slide into ever great chaos. A portion of their email:
This does involve more rational members of the GOP having the courage to stand up to the threat of primarying, and some of them will lose.
I understand that this is certainly risky, and may even be impossible. But would it be worth trying? I fear that standing back and applauding their chaos just makes the chaos more permanent.
My email response:
I get the impulse. I really do. But it’s all illusory, I’m afraid. While there’s a core radical group that drives a lot of the House GOP madness, their numbers grow dramatically when faced with the prospect of cooperating with the Democrats whom they have vilified and demonized to the point of caricature. So any cooperation or prospect thereof collapses pretty quickly.
But even if you don’t buy that, what you describe has already happened: Any Republicans who cooperated with Dems or weren’t totally MAGA lost primaries or didn’t run again over the course of many cycles. This is what’s left. So it’s already played out as you imagined and this is where you end up.
I love hearing from you. Keep the feedback coming.
Trump Is Still Buffaloing Judges
A good thread on how Trump used his presence at his civil trial in NY to delay his deposition in his lawsuit against Michael Cohen, but then left the NY trial early:
Fani Willis Is Offering Plea Deals In Georgia RICO Case
At least some lower-level defendants in the Georgia RICO case are getting plea offers – or having their interest level in pleading out gauged – by Atlanta DA Fani Willis, the AJC reports.
Among those offered a deal was Mike Romans, the director of Election Day ops for the Trump 2020 campaign, but he rejected it, the newspaper reported.
Georgia GOP Wracking Up Legal Bills
AJC: “In all, the Georgia GOP has spent more than $1 million on legal fees since the beginning of last year, most of it for the Trump election interference case.”
Morning Memo Will Be Back Tuesday
I’ll be out Friday, but Morning Memo will be back after the holiday weekend. See you then!
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
Fracture and Paralysis
Everyone was rightly shocked at how rapidly events unfolded yesterday. We’re now getting the first signs that the degree of fracture and the centrifugal forces unleashed by McCarthy’s ouster may be more chaotic and protracted in their impact than most first imagined.
Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman said this afternoon that no one in the GOP caucus thinks a new Speaker will actually be elected by next Wednesday, when the election has at least tentatively been scheduled. A look at the news suggests why. At least one House Republican has announced that he will not support any candidate who doesn’t require that the 1 vote motion to vacate rule be changed. Many more are demanding a change without yet making it a categorical demand, though seems like just a matter of time. Marjorie Greene says she will not support any Speaker who supports more Ukraine aid. Meanwhile it’s almost impossible to imagine that Matt Gaetz and his crew would give up this power over any future Speaker. Why would they? The current crisis can’t be ended without their votes.
Continue reading “Fracture and Paralysis”Question of the Day
Do Matt Gaetz and his confederates agree to give up their 1 vote motion to vacate rule for the new Speaker? Hard to imagine. Why would they? On the other hand, what potential Speaker would possibley consent to enter the office on the basis of Kevin McCarthy’s fatal mistake?
I can think of two: Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. But seriously, how do you figure that’s resolved?
Remember too that we’re little more than a month from a replay of the shutdown countdown and at some point a vote to impeach President Biden. So new moments to break a Speakership are thick on the horizon.
Succession, Wingnut World Edition
We now have two official candidates to succeed Kevin McCarthy: Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan. It seems unlikely we’ll get another candidate, at least another with a real shot at winning.
Despite the fact that Jordan is from the Freedom Caucus and Scalise was in effect McCarthy’s deputy, Jordan is a McCarthy ally. From the outside, we tend to see the House in ideological or partisan terms. But there are factions and alliances that transcend those divisions. Indeed a leader’s faction almost by definition has to span the ideological breadth of the caucus. That’s the only way to win a leadership election. In many ways, this succession fight is between Team Scalise and Team McCarthy, with Jordan being the nominee of Team McCarthy.
Continue reading “Succession, Wingnut World Edition”A Contrary View
TPM Reader PT says Dems should have propped McCarthy up. On balance, I don’t agree. But he makes a good argument.
Continue reading “A Contrary View”I realize this is contrary to conventional wisdom, and your own analysis of the situation, but if I had been running the House Democratic Caucus I would have provided Kevin McCarthy with votes to keep the Speakership. My thinking is the following: