What A Day: It's not goodbye, it's Pelosi you soon

- Georgia GOP candidate Herschel Walker, seeming to have forgotten that he’s still running for Senate

The forthcoming GOP House majority has some pretty bizarre proclivities, which will be all the more dangerous once they’re handed control in January.
 

• We’ve had our fun skewering Republicans for their terrible midterms performance, but the reality remains that they will take the House majority come January, so we need to be prepared for what’s ahead. A House majority has subpoena power and sets the chamber’s agenda. A Republican house majority means a vengeful group of MAGA psychos hellbent on revenge for the impeachment of disgraced former president Donald Trump will spearhead frivolous investigations into president Biden. In terms of legislative priorities, Republicans don’t seem to have many (apart from the classic tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which a Dem-held upper chamber will block). They mostly seem interested in bottling up President Biden’s legislative priorities and investigating House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the DOJ because they were too mean to (friends-of-the-House-GOP) January 6 insurrectionists. 
   

• Incoming House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair James Comer said that the panel under his leadership will focus on trying to link Biden to the business dealings of his son, Hunter, picking up where an unsuccessful 2018 effort left off. There have also been rumblings of new investigations into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Biden administration’s (appropriate) response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The right-wing mediasphere is, how do we put this, obsessed with Hunter Biden, and there’s no question that a House GOP majority will be out for blood, no matter how selectively they have to leak or aggressively they have to lie. In preparation for this onslaught of investigations, the White House is building up its defense team, but has also signaled interest in a helping hand in the counteroffensive from major left-leaning nonprofits.
   

• Biden will also face new difficulties advancing his foreign-policy agenda with a GOP House majority. The new congressional makeup will have the potential to constrain Biden’s ability to continue providing high levels of aid to Ukraine for its defense against Russian invaders. The Republican caucus is already somewhat divided between hawks and isolationists, which will put the next likely chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, on his back foot. Ultimately, a divided GOP caucus is good for Democrats and gives them leverage, but it’s still likely that Republicans will close ranks and put aside their differences in the name of staving off giving Dems a win of any kind.

Meanwhile…
 

• Across the aisle, the incoming Democratic minority will be shaking things up. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, making way for a new generation of Democratic leadership. Speaker Pelosi has held the top spot in the House Democratic leadership for 20 years, and president Biden spoke with her this morning, congratulating her on her historic tenure as the first female speaker of the House. In a slightly more unusual choice, Pelosi said she will remain in Congress despite withdrawing from leadership. She also said she will not explicitly endorse any specific member of the Democratic caucus in the race to succeed her. 

• This is an inflection point for House Democrats, and a long time coming, as Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Whip Jim Clyburn are all in their 80’s. Hoyer announced he too will step aside from leadership, while Clyburn initially said he hoped to remain in leadership, but today announced he hopes the new party leaders will be “Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar.”. To wit: Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is widely seen as the likely successor to Pelosi, with Reps. Katherine Clark (D-MA) and Peter Aguilar (D-CA) serving as his top lieutenants. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, much was said about Democrats lacking a deep enough bench to sustain themselves as a party. In the intervening 6 years, the representatives who have joined the Democratic caucus injected new energy and feelings of possibility, and Pelosi is right to give the next generation a shot at leadership to move the party into the future. 

However the new House leadership shakes out, Democrats will have to find a way to blunt the damage and exploit the weaknesses of their Republican counterparts in the interest of delivering for the American people.

Exciting news! Duolingo and Crooked Media have worked together to bring you a brand new podcast named Radiolingo! Our newest show investigates all the ways language shapes our world and how our world shapes language. Hosted by Ahmed Ali Akbar, an audio journalist and James Beard Award-winning writer, each episode introduces a new way of looking at the impact of language across our lives, our relationships, our culture and much more. 
 

You can subscribe and listen to the trailer of Radiolingo now, wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in every Tuesday for new episodes.

News of the sudden collapse of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency agencies has been reverberating through the halls of Congress this week, as lawmakers grapple with their role in facilitating the multibillion dollar grift. Democrats and Republicans alike had been cashing campaign checks and working closely with leaders of the cryptocurrency industry including FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is under multiple financial-crimes investigations. The lawyer selected to lead FTX restructuring, who previously oversaw the Enron bankruptcy case, called the FTX situation a “complete failure of corporate controls.” If the Enron guy thinks it’s bad, it’s probably pretty bad. Federal policymakers have been forced to ask themselves if they could have prevented a crisis if they had paid closer attention to such an industry soone. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said he is exploring the need for comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation, which it should be noted has been repeatedly proposed over the years as the industry grew, but was always stymied by staunch industry lobbying. Technology will always outpace the law and legislation, but the FTX story highlights a natural weakness of our congressional gerontocracy (remember the kinds of cringe-inducing, internet-101 questions lawmakers asked during the Facebook hearings?). But it’s not just our tech-resistant policymakers—FTX is also a story of the outsized role corporate lobbyists play in regulating their own industries, which simply should never be allowed in a fair and functioning government.

Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake refuses to concede the race she definitely lost. 

Starbucks workers at more than 100 U.S. stores went on strike today in their largest labor action since the campaign to unionize the coffee giant’s stores began late last year. 

The University of Virginia will pursue an external review of leadership action to prevent the on-campus shooting that killed three football players and injured two more students earlier this week. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence said that he has “closed the door” on testifying for the January 6 Committee, and that “Congress has no right to my testimony.” Always important to remain deferential to the president who was encouraging chants from his supporters who wanted to hang you.

Amazon began mass layoffs in its corporate ranks today, which will affect some 260 employees to start with. 

Many Republican leaders are seemingly trying to ignore the fact that Trump announced his 2024 bid. I guess we have that in common. 

Facebook confirmed yesterday that it has no immediate plans to reinstate Trump despite his presidential campaign announcement, but his suspension is set to be reconsidered in January, two years after he was kicked off for inciting the January 6 insurrection. Now if only they would ban my dad.

Of the many inhumane challenges posed by abortion bans across the country, one in particular has been overlooked. In states with particularly strict abortion bans, exceptions are sometimes made if the pregnancy is life-threatening for the mother, or in the case of a medical emergency. But psychiatric emergencies don’t count, sometimes explicitly. Laws in Georgia, Nebraska, and West Virginia specify that medical emergencies don’t include suicide threats. Florida’s exemption is written to include life-threatening illnesses “other than a psychological condition.” This framing presupposes that mental health is distinct from physical health, which contradicts basically all available research. Postpartum depression is widely recognized, as it affects about one-in-eight people who have given birth, but evidence shows that depression during pregnancy may be even more common. Mental-health conditions including suicide and substance use became the leading underlying cause of pregnancy-related deaths in 2017-2019, ahead of bleeding, heart conditions, and infections, according to a September report from the Centers for Disease Control. Alabama, which has a near-total statewide abortion ban, included an exemption for suicidal individuals at the request of the state medical association. Abortion opponents say that exceptions for psychiatric emergencies will encourage people to “fake” mental illness, demonstrating how simultaneously callous and cruel they are.

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The CEO of General Motors says its portfolio of electric vehicles should be profitable by 2025.

The labor market remains strong with new unemployment claims falling last week despite technology-sector layoffs at companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter. 

Tennessee’s Attorney General and Senate Antitrust Committee Chair Amy Klobuchar said they are looking into whether the live-events site Ticketmaster violated antitrust regulations after an uproar over the company’s handling of the sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour. We here at Crooked offer our unwavering support to the Swifties in their unlikely crusade to break up corporate monopolies.