Crooked Media - What A Day: Blueland test

- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), who we assume is talking about how the House is no longer functional

For some time now, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been warning that the United States would hit its statutory debt limit on Thursday, January 19. Well, here we are.
 

• The deadline prompted the Treasury Department to begin taking “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its debts, which would cause an international financial crisis. In a letter to congressional leaders, the Treasury outlined this plan as the government runs up against its artificially-imposed borrowing capacity because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a sniveling little weasel who would burn the entire country to the ground so long as he and his buddies got to collect the insurance money. The “good” news is that Republican debt-limit threats have become so routine that Treasury now has a lot of experience with these “extraordinary measures.”
   

• McCarthy will now have several months to decide whether to be sane or whether to wreck the country out of spite as the Treasury Department pulls its emergency lever to keep the government operating until at least June. He’ll need as much time as possible, considering it took him 15 rounds of votes just to get the Speaker’s gavel in hand. It doesn’t matter that this is, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre put it, a basic “constitutional responsibility,” House Republicans have signaled from day one that they would make this process as ludicrously cumbersome as possible. 
   

• So what kinds of ransoms might Republicans want in exchange for not wrecking the country out of spite? McCarthy has called for a vote on a House GOP proposal called the Fair Tax Act (hmmm why do I think this won’t actually be “fair”?) which would abolish the current federal income tax(!) and replace it with a 30 percent, highly regressive national sales tax. Payroll taxes, which finance Social Security and Medicare, would also be abolished. The IRS? Also gone. Wow! Which demographic would this policy disproportionately benefit at the expense of all others? Could it be…the rich? Funny how that always seems to be the case with GOP fiscal policy!

The House GOP shows no signs of stopping their Bad Ideas train. 
 

• In her letter, Yellen stressed, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” and while many new outlets have reported that “neither Republicans or Biden’s Democrats seem willing to budge,” that’s just wholly disingenuous. Only one party stands in opposition to the country paying the debts it already owes. The other party, to quote Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), is simply saying, “In exchange for not crashing the United States economy, you get nothing.” 
   

• Even with such a shallow mandate, emboldened House Republicans have already turned their eyes towards intervening in Washington, DC, local government. They have vowed to block DC legislation allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections; they've singled out the city in an abortion bill that would permanently prohibit the District and the federal government from using taxpayer money to subsidize abortions. Tuesday, they also took aim at DC’s historic overhaul of its criminal code. One House Republican, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), even threatened last year to try to repeal DC home rule entirely, and similar attacks will likely intensify with a Republican-led Oversight Committee populated with the likes of batshit crazies like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ). 

The narrow Senate Democratic majority makes it less likely that any such stand-alone Republican bills will succeed, but the House GOP is making the strongest possible case for the debt ceiling’s permanent abolition.

Fox News tycoon/merchant of hate speech Rupert Murdoch will be deposed in a $1.6 billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. 

Actor Alec Baldwin and a film weapons specialist will be charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death of Halyna Hutchins, which occurred on the set of the film Rust in October 2021. 

The Supreme Court released a report on its investigation of the Dobbs leak last year, but has been unable to identify the leaker, despite not interviewing any of the justices. So, to summarize: they tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has officially ended pandemic-era proxy voting in the House.

Relatedly: Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) sustained “several serious injuries” after falling from 25-feet off a ladder at his home yesterday, leaving the House GOP’s razor-thin majority down one vote. We wish Steube a speedy recovery so that he may get back to the serious Republican business of destroying the social safety net for personal enrichment.

A federal judge acquitted Capitol insurrectionist Joshua Black on one obstruction charge while convicting him of five others because she said he had a “unique stew in his mind.” Move over, Twinkie Defense!

Jacinda Ardern resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand, unexpectedly, saying she no longer has “enough in the tank” to fulfill her duties. 

Eight leading unions in France have announced new nationwide strikes and protests in opposition to French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.  

Western allies have pledged additional billions of dollars in new weapons for Ukraine today, but Berlin still has yet to lift a veto on sending the country German-made tanks.

A series of regular and special elections this year will be heavily colored by public sentiment on abortion rights in post-Roe America. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) saw precisely that happen last Tuesday when his plans to enact a 15-week abortion ban, which had already stalled in the narrowly-Democratic State Senate, would be set back even further when what had been identified as a “Republican seat” in Virginia Beach flipped for pro-choice Democrat Aaron Rouse. Similarly-consequential elections this year will determine control of the Virginia General Assembly and Senate, as well as the Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey legislatures. Last year’s midterms saw many swing-state legislative chambers flip to Democrats—like in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota—all states which also elected pro-choice Democratic governors.

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Michigan might offer a roadmap for Democrats after the all-Democratic state government opened its session with a banger of a legislative agenda including new protections for LGBTQ residents, the repeal of an anti-abortion statute, and a repeal of the state’s “Right to Work” law. We like to call this plan a “hell yeah.”

Wes Moore was sworn in yesterday as the first Black governor of Maryland.

A group of pro-choice religious leaders filed a lawsuit today challenging Missouri’s near-total abortion ban.