What A Day: Speaker now or hold your peace

Letsssss get ready to rumbleeeeeeee!
 

• Insurrectionist, Ohio State wrestling sexual abuse apologist, and overall MAGA nutjob Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said on Thursday that he would push for yet another vote to become Speaker of the House. Jordan has failed two votes, and had said Wednesday that he would not seek another vote and would instead devote his attention to expanding the power of interim speaker Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) so that the House can get back to, you know, governing. 
   

• But members of the GOP rank-and-file and far-right Jordan supporters alike objected. Empowering McHenry would effectively hand over control of the House floor to Democrats, they said, and would set a bad precedent. Chairman of the House Terrible Guy Committee Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) voiced his opposition to the stopgap measure in a deranged way only he could, saying, “I'm against 'Speaker Light.' I'm against Bud Light. I believe it is a constitutional desecration to not elect a Speaker of the House. We need to stay here until we elect a Speaker.” Okay, Matt, calm down. Are we particularly shocked to be back to square one with the caucus who took 15 votes to elect a speaker in January only to boot him nine months later? No, not really. 
   

• Jordan has to contend with the 20-or-so members of his bloc who are withholding support. The GOP caucus is, to put it mildly, extremely divided. Some of them want to empower McHenry, some of them want to elect Jordan, and a few others want the eight Republicans who voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to publicly apologize and renominate him. The whole thing would actually be pretty funny if these were not some of the most powerful people in the world preventing the U.S. from having a functioning government.

The House of Representatives has never gone so long without a speaker in all of U.S. history. I guess that’s what happens when your majority caucus is stuffed to the brim with incompetent goons.
 

• Since they narrowly retook the majority, the House GOP has made kicking the can down the road the party’s official sport. All day Thursday, Jordan continued trying to drum up support from his gaggle of holdouts, seemingly to no avail. Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) said no minds were changed during the closed-door meetings, and a number of attendees told Jordan to give up his bid. Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) put it bluntly: “He needed to know there’s no way forward for a speakership. He missed his moment in leadership when he failed Steve Scalise. That was pretty much everybody's opinion.” Ouch!!!
   

• Compounding the chaos, in another closed-door meeting McHenry threatened to resign as speaker pro tempore if his GOP colleagues tried to push him to move legislation on the floor without an explicit vote to expand his powers in the chamber. The role of speaker pro tempore is, itself, relatively new, created in the aftermath of 9/11 as a way to sustain governing continuity in the event of a terrorist attack. Ousted speaker McCarthy has been very vocal in his belief that McHenry does not need the House to allow him to bring legislation to the floor. What an absolute mess!

We’re sure that someone in one of our nation’s finest op-ed sections will find a way to blame the House Republican pandemonium on the “progressive left”, but in all seriousness, this moment is equally crucial for House Democrats. This kind of disaster is what happens when a party is held together solely by grievance politics and scotch tape. Elected Republicans have no interest in governing, so it is up to House Democrats to remain united and show the American people what they stand for and the legislative priorities they would deliver in the hopes of winning back the majority in 2024. Right now, Republicans have set the bar at “doing literally anything.”

Book bans are sweeping the nation. It’s a trend we like even less than platform crocs. Book bans hit kids the hardest, so the Crooked Store just released a baby onesie for the little ones in your life! It says “read me a banned book” on it, and it’s the perfect way to raise awareness while you raise the next generation of book worms. Head to crooked.com/store to grab one.

On Thursday, President Biden gave a rare Oval Office address ahead of the Congressional request he will make on Friday for $100 billion in aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Biden opened his speech with an account of his Wednesday trip to Israel, where he met with the families of victims killed and hostages kidnapped in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Biden expressed his solidarity with the Jewish community, and called the attacks, which claimed more than 1,400 Israeli lives, “pure unadulterated evil.” As he has many times in the past 12 days, Biden also voiced his support for Palestinian people’s “right to dignity and self-determination,” and underscored that Hamas does not represent them. He also said that when he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he reminded the Israeli government that they “must operate by the laws of war.” 
 

According to new CBS News polls, the majority of Americans, 56 percent, disapprove of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. 28 percent of Republicans approve of Biden’s handling of the conflict, notably higher than their overall approval of him, whereas one-third of Democrats disapprove. 85 percent of Americans are concerned with a wider war in the Middle East. 70 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Independents think the United States should send humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, compared to only 41 percent of Republicans. The question of whether the United States should send weapons and military aid to Israel produced the most attention-grabbing results, with the majority of Democrats and Independents opposed to it, and the majority Republicans in support. Josh Paul, a State Department official who worked on foreign arms transfers, publicly resigned on Wednesday over the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, saying he could not support further U.S. military assistance to Israel. He called the administration’s response “an impulsive reaction” based on “intellectual bankruptcy.” 

President Biden called his funding request an “Unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security,” to “sharpen [the country’s] qualitative military edge.” Biden also said, “We cannot give up on a two state solution. Israel and Palestinians deserve to live in safety, dignity, and peace,” and assured members of the “Muslim American, Arab American, and Palestinian American communities” who are suffering because of the recent spike in Islamophobia, including the fatal stabbing of a 6-year old Palestinian-American boy, “I see you, you belong, you are all American.”

In the midst of one of the most consequential crises in the Middle East in decades, when disinformation is flooding social media, Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) removed the New York Times’ verification badge. The Daily Caller, which has had to fire more than one employee for secretly being an actual Nazi, still has theirs.

Over 400 Jewish and Muslim congressional staffers signed an open letter on Thursday urging Congress to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the wake of “antisemitism, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian sentiment on the rise nationwide.”

Federal regulators approved the expansion of a gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest on Thursday, ignoring the protest of environmental groups, indigenous tribes, and top officials in the region including U.S. Senators, governors, and state attorneys general. 

Laphonza Butler, who was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) announced that she will not run for a full senate term in 2024. 

A Los Angeles Times investigation found that the psychiatric inpatient unit at Los Angeles General Hospital restrained patients at a higher rate than any other hospital in the state. Hospitals are forbidden under federal law from restraining psychiatric patients except to prevent them from harming themselves or others as a last resort.

Disgraced author J.K. Rowling says she would “happily” do prison time for her deranged transphobic views. This extremely privileged woman is dying to be oppressed!!!

Michigan voters will have the chance to vote for a ballot initiative in 2024 to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and then allow it to update annually based on the rate of inflation through a process called “indexing.” The minimum wage rising with inflation? Can you imagine such a utopian concept???

A Texas judge ruled that far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will not be allowed to use his Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to evade paying more than $1 billion in settlements to families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims.