1 … The US House

In the House GOP battle to seat a new Speaker we have a critical development, which captures or perhaps recapitulates the nature of the battle itself. About 5% of the caucus unseated Kevin McCarthy. Then Steve Scalise won the caucus vote to be Speaker. But a good couple dozen members still wouldn’t vote for him and he quickly dropped out. Then Jim Jordan won the vote and faced the identical problem. But Jordan, his recent establishment turn notwithstanding, is of the Trumpist right. So his supporters are taking a different tack. As the Times reports they’re mobilizing a base-focused press campaign, enlisting right wing media and activists, publishing ‘hit lists’ of recalcitrant members’ phone numbers, threatening primary campaigns. As Trumpist capo Russell T. Vought puts it to the Times, with a lot of history to back him up, the ‘moderates’ will fold because they’re soft. They simply don’t have it in them to deny Jordan on the floor of the House the way Jordan’s strongest allies were ready to do it with McCarthy and Scalise.

You’re starting to have pretty key members of the House saying the Republicans can’t elect a Speaker. Period. Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said last night that the effort is “hopeless” and that they’ll need Democrats help to end the “fiasco.”

“There’s not a person in our conference, not a person in American that can get 217 votes out of this group.”

Just a short update on doings in the GOP House caucus.

Today was the day for Jim Jordan’s one day Speakership. Jordan hasn’t thrown in the towel, as Scalise did. But if I’m reading things right it’s as over for him as it was for Scalise.

Today, with Scalise out, Jordan scrambled to pull together 217 votes. He failed. At mid-day Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, who I’d literally never heard of before, decided that he might as well run. So in the afternoon the GOP caucus held another vote and it was Jordan 124 to Scott’s 81. (Needless to say, Scott was functioning as a stand-in for opposition to Jordan.) Jordan then asked for another vote where the question was not whether members supported him but whether they would vote him on the floor of the House since he was the GOP nominee. He got 152 votes — 55 votes short. The House eventually decided they’d put in a hard day’s work and recessed until Monday.

One issue we’ve discussed since Saturday’s attacks is what effect the Hamas attacks and subsequent Israel-Hamas war would have on public opinion in Israel. Specifically, would there be a rally round the flag boost for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu? As I’ve tried to argue, it was not at all clear this would be the case. There’s been a great deal of anecdotal and reported evidence to the contrary. If you watch Israeli media there’s clearly been a vast upsurge of social solidarity and support for retaliation against Hamas (that civilians in Gaza will pay a heavy price for). But there’s been very, very little evidence of any surge in support for Netanyahu or his government. Indeed, we see signs of a volcanic anger against his government over its responsibility for the events of last weekend. There have been a number of viral videos of members of the coalition heckled in public or shouted down or forced to leave events in response to public anger.

Now we have one of the first polls and it appears to confirm all of that, a vast sea of public anger and catastrophic loss of support for Netanyahu’s government.

Just moments ago news broke that Steve Scalise had withdrawn his bid to be Speaker of the House. This is a genuinely stunning development, even though I semi-predicted it earlier today. I said it half in jest. But we live in an age when half-jokes often come to pass rapidly.

I had a conversation this evening that allowed me to clarify some of my own thinking about these developments. After Scalise won the caucus Speakership vote you had a slow trickle of members saying “I’m still for Jim Jordan.” Then later you had news reports asking, “Can Steve Scalise get to 217?”

There’s a category, conceptual breakdown here that is kind of hiding in plain view. What do these members mean they’re still for Jim Jordan? He lost. It’s over. Scalise is the Republican Speaker candidate. End of story.

Haaretz just published a story adding to the warning question. It’s actually different. This article details what is described as a critical mass of what we would call “chatter” the night before the attacks. There were phone consultations at the highest levels of the army and intelligence services in southern Israel. But they decided that the signals they were picking up weren’t clear enough to raise an alert. By the next morning the attacks had already begun. This is different from the purported warnings from Egypt we’ve discussed. But it’s part of an emerging picture. It’s not clear yet whether it adds to those earlier stories or is simply, as often happens, a rush of ambiguous intelligence, just before an attack. I tried to give this a very basic summary because the piece is paywalled.

It would appear that Steve Scalise is recapitulating Kevin McCarthy’s nine-month out-of-control rollercoaster ride of a speakership in 24 hours. After a brief shining couple hours yesterday afternoon when it seemed like his speakership might actually become a thing, overnight we’ve seen a steady stream of House Republicans announcing either that they will not vote for Scalise or are at least not ready to vote for Scalise. This morning, deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy stepped forward to express “concern” over his erstwhile frenemy-sorta ally’s travails. And by “concern” I mean, barely concealed gloating.

If you haven’t already I want to encourage you to read today’s Morning Memo and the personal note from David at the head of it. It’s only for David to share these things. But I confess I felt a sense of unexpected relief when I saw that he did. I don’t want to and am not at liberty to say any more. The best way I can convey it is that a lot of stuff has happened in this organization over the last two years, difficult stuff. These are things happening in individual people’s and families’ lives. But speaking just for myself, I have sometimes felt a gulf between us or at least me and our TPM community in the wake of these different events, much as you might feel some estrangement from family or friends if you’re dealing with things you can’t discuss with them.

I should add just generally that most of these challenges have ended up better than we or members of our team could have anticipated. I am so immensely grateful for that. I am so proud of and nourished by the resilience and solidarity of this whole crew, this tiny but close-knit battalion of newsers.

There were a lot of press reports that Jim Jordan had the momentum in the House GOP fight for the Speakership. But they held the caucus vote today and Steve Scalise won 113 to 99. Importantly, these caucus votes are secret ballots. So those reports might have been accurate as a measure of what members were telling reporters. But a secret ballot is another matter.

Normally, this would mean that Scalise will now become Speaker. But of course we’re not in the world of normal. This is the House GOP caucus. My understanding is that Jim Jordan still hasn’t officially responded to his defeat. I also hear there’s a move to push the floor vote up to this afternoon rather than waiting for tomorrow. Presumably that’s to get the vote done before anyone gets any ideas about making trouble.

We could have a new Speaker of the House by the end of the day.

On the margins of the unfolding Israel-Hamas war have been a series of reports that Egyptian intelligence gave the Israelis some kind of warning of an impending attack or eruption in Gaza. Those reports have been met by fierce denials from the Prime Minister’s office. Just where this whole question stood after the back and forth of the last 36 hours was unclear, at least to me. But this morning House Foreign Relations Chair Mike McCaul (R-TX) said this: “We know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen…I don’t want to get too much in the classified but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”