Crooked Media - Dude, where's my McCar?

- Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), holding up a picture of the classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago bathroom and making the most of the sham GOP impeachment hearings.

We’re just a few dozen hours away from a government shutdown, because Republicans would rather just see the whole thing burn. 
 

• Once again, the Republican-controlled House of Representative failed to approve a 30-day stopgap funding bill on Friday, making a government shutdown all but a certainty. The Democratic-led Senate, meanwhile, has repeatedly passed bipartisan versions of a deal that would avert a shutdown. All Democrats in the lower chamber and 21 Republicans voted against the GOP-designed measure, which would have cut most domestic programs by a whopping 30 percent. 
   

• Far-right members of the GOP House caucus have been in the driver’s seat for much of this, doing donuts in America’s parking lot, and they seem all but determined to smash into a brick wall. At the center of this shitstorm is the personal feud between GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and oRep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), one of the most cynical jackasses in the history of Congress. Gaetz has repeatedly threatened to force a vote on booting McCarthy if he works with Democrats in any way to avoid a shutdown, but also seems unsatisfied with any partisan legislation McCarthy puts forth. 
   

• So what actually happens if this pissing contest between our most odious members of Congress leads to the government shutting down? Well! The White House would be forced to furlough 820,000 workers across the federal government, and another 680,000 civil servants would be required to report to work but would not be paid (what a deal). All of the groups would likely be paid once Congress passes a budget, but as with previous shutdowns, there’s no telling how long it would last.

Speaker McCarthy already agreed to a government-funding deal with the White House earlier this year when Republicans almost forced the United States government to default on its debt, and President Biden’s aides have tried to get him to stick to it. He won’t. 
 

• House Republicans are pretending their refusal to fund the government is about spending cuts, but, as always, they only want certain kinds of spending cuts. Obviously, because these are Republicans, that means major cuts to social safety net programs, including WIC, the supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children. They care about the sanctity of life and the life of every child, you may have heard. Life begins at conception! You can’t abort a fetus, but you can starve a child!
   

• Republicans want to increase funding at the border, while slashing every other program that disproportionately helps Americans in need. In the upper chamber, Republicans seem to be slightly more circumspect, and have joined voted with Democrats to pass bills attempting that would avert the shutdown, but the House remains non-functional. After a two-hour GOP conference, in McCarthy reportedly let on that he was ready to accept a bipartisan house deal, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said he believed a shutdown was inevitable. 

In the little over nine months of his speakership, Kevin McCarthy has capitulated time and again to his far-right members, but nothing ever seems to satiate their greed and cruelty.

At Crooked, we love books. They teach us new things, expand our horizons, and piss off uptight conservatives who never got to stay for story time at the library. That’s why we created our very own storefront on Bookshop.org, where you can find books published by Crooked’s imprint, a selection of favorites from the Crooked staff, and lots more. Bookshop.org directly supports local booksellers, so you won’t be personally funding Jeff Bezos’ yacht renovations. That’s always a plus! Head to crooked.com/bookstore to find your next read.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) declared a state of emergency on Friday after heavy rainfall in New York City caused flash floods, shut down entire subway lines, and turned major roadways into bodies of water. Friday was the wettest day at JFK airport on record. Some New York City schools asked parents to return during the storm to pick up their children, which school officials later said was “precisely the wrong thing to do.” Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY) was quickly (and rightly) criticized for not warning residents about the storm soon enough, waiting until noon on Friday to address city residents. Basement apartments in New York are often rented by landlords illegally, leaving tenants without adequate egress in the event of a flood. The people who rent those apartments are often immigrants or other people desperately seeking affordable housing. More than 14 inches of rain this month make it the second-wettest September in New York City history, and the wettest since 1882. Hope Eric Adams is feeling great about his decision to slash the budget of almost every municipal department except the NYPD! It’s clearly going really well!

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) passed away at 90 on Friday. Feinstein was a pivotal Democratic vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her death has restarted conversations about how the Biden administration’s judicial nominees will be confirmed in her absence. 

Following the Supreme Court ruling to end race-based affirmative action in college admissions, nearly all of America’s most elite schools, including six of the eight Ivy League colleges, have said they will continue giving preference to children of alumni. Legacy admissions disproportionately favors wealthy, White students. 

In a suspected suicide bombing, a man blew himself up in a crowd of people celebrating the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s birthday in southwestern Pakistan on Friday. At least 52 people were killed and another 70 were wounded. 

The UAW announced on Friday that it will extend its strike to two more assembly plants, saying that the Detroit Three (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis) have not moved far enough to meet worker demands for higher pay and benefits. 

A Las Vegas man named Duane Davis was charged with murder on Friday related to the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. Guess that means he’s really dead, folks. (Or IS HE???)

Seeing the writing on the wall that he is going to spectacularly lose the 2024 Democratic Primary, anti-vaxx lawyer to the stars Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is reportedly planning to run as an Independent in 2024.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on Friday that could set the stage for a major ruling on how the First Amendment applies to major social media platforms. The case revolves around whether Florida and Texas can prohibit social-media companies from removing posts based on the views they express. In particular, you won’t be shocked to learn that the two states objected to the decisions some platforms made to ban disgraced former president Donald Trump after the January 6 insurrection. Both sides in the case cited conflicting decisions between two federal appeals courts in urging the Supreme Court to take up the case. Last year, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta largely upheld an injunction against Florida’s law, with Judge Jevin Newsom writing, “Social media platforms exercise editorial judgment that is inherently expressive. When platforms choose to remove users or posts, deprioritize content in viewers’ feeds or search results or sanction breaches of their community standards, they engage in First Amendment-protected activity.” A few months later, a different Fifth Circuit panel in New Orleans reversed a lower court order blocking the Texas law. The Supreme Court’s three most conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas—have already signaled their support for keeping the Texas law in place.

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On Friday, a Georgia bail bondsman named Scott Hall became the first defendant in the Fulton County election conspiracy case to take a plea deal. Here’s to many more!

California has raised the minimum wage for food workers to $20 per hour.