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- Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who just quit, on Sept. 19, 2023.
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So long, my Kevin. You left the Congress, and the country, worse off than you found them.
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A little over two months after he became the first-ever Speaker of the House to get ousted from the job, Kevin McCarthy announced Wednesday that he’ll leave Congress at the end of the year. He departed with a vague promise “to serve America in new ways,” but no details on what that might mean. McCarthy was a huge fundraiser for Republicans, and widely liked by his fellow GOPs, personally. But he’s clearly not feeling life as a back-bencher from Bakersfield. He may well have decided instead to use his sizeable political war chest to influence politics from the outside. McCarthy spent years as a GOP leader, and just nine months in his doomed dream job as speaker. He could have used his substantial power to marshal the House of Representatives against authoritarianism. Instead, McCarthy mortgaged that power: He leveraged the House’s institutional clout to erase accountability for the worst attack on democracy in modern history, and to help Donald Trump lie and protect… Donald Trump. He’s now leaving his replacement, Speaker Mike Johnson, with a two-vote margin and a GOP conference riven with division and vitriol. In other words, first, he undermined America to benefit Trump, and then when his conference abandoned him, he undermined them too by quitting. Speaker rating: Zero stars, would not re-elect.
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Now that McCarthy’s done, a quick reminiscence of how he got here. McCarthy’s leaving after a 17-year congressional career, most of it spent at the upper echelons of GOP leadership. His rapid rise to prominence was remarkable by any measure. He was a tireless worker for his party, and gosh darn it, people liked him! He pursued the speaker’s gavel with Golem-like persistence, and along the way, made compromise after compromise for power. Perhaps only Donald Trump, our national Sauron, has done more with elected office to harm the country.
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Like so many GOP leaders before him, McCarthy helped create the MAGA monster that just ate him up and spat him out.
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All of this really, really matters. McCarthy leaves behind a House GOP with almost no moderates left. Instead he empowered a ruling horde of feral Trumpists who promise chaos unless everyone else meets their maximalist right-wing demands. The party base now demands representatives who slash and burn in support of Trump’s authoritarian try to regain power. And the next guy, Speaker Mike Johnson, is an open Christian nationalist, homophobic bigot, and, as Liz Cheney reports in her new book, an insider coup plotter. Cheney, herself a right-wing Republican, now warns that a GOP majority in 2025 represents a “threat” to the country. A Cheney saying her own party can’t be trusted with power. Now that’s a legacy!
McCarthy elbowed his way to power. He ended up an unhappy warrior, screaming at Matt Gaetz, hating on Nancy Mace, and literally elbowing Republicans out of the way (seriously, another House member recently accused him of a “clean shot to the kidneys.”) Tuck in those arms in retirement!
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Israel said it killed five top Hamas leaders in its war to crush the terrorist organization, even as IDF sources acknowledged they’d killed twice as many civilians as Hamas operatives in Gaza. The Times of Israel published a report quoting IDF sources, who said Gaza Health Ministry estimates of 15,000 killed in Gaza were “fairly accurate,” and that only about 5,000 were Hamas fighters. Israeli forces surrounded the home of Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar, though it was not clear if Sinwar was in the house or if he escaped.
Meanwhile, civilians from Khan Younis, the major city in southern Gaza, fled to the west and south to escape Israeli bombardment, often to places relief organizations warned were not equipped to handle the influx. An Israeli airstrike hit the southern city of Rafah, one of the places civilians had been told to consider to find safety from fighting farther north.
In a rare move, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked the UN’s “Article 99” which allows him to force Security Council action on matters that threaten “international peace and security.” The article hasn’t been invoked for decades, according to a UN official. There’s also new reporting detailing the extent of Hamas’ year-long planning for the Oct. 7 attack, including plans to attack under-sea sites in the Mediterranean and instructions for fighters telling them, “your enemy is a disease that has no cure other than to cut out their livers and their hearts.”
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The fourth Trumpless GOP presidential primary debate kicks off Wednesday night at 8 PM EST on NewsNation. The field is down to just four: Trump antagonist Chris Christie, grimace-y Gov. Ron DeSantis, money-magnet Nikki Haley, and TV jerk Vivek Ramaswamy. Here are all the reasons the debate is quite useless.
The White House joined recriminations of three Ivy League university presidents who refused in congressional testimony to say calls for genocide against Jews violate campus anti-harassment policies. Dem Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said that U. Penn Elizabeth Magill “failed to speak and act with moral clarity” while others called for her to resign.
Mike Johnson said the Lord “told me very clearly” to prepare to be Moses and run for House speaker.
James Comer and Jim Jordan are threatening Hunter Biden with contempt if he doesn’t appear in a closed-door deposition by Dec. 14. Biden’s lawyer has already proposed that his client testify in an open hearing.
The first signs of jury selection for Trump’s federal coup trial appear to have gone out in the District of Columbia. Prospective jurors are being told to report in early February for a three-week trial beginning March 4. Sure sounds like Trump!
The United States charged four Russian soldiers with war crimes for torturing an American man during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The man was kidnapped from a village in 2022, beaten and interrogated for 10 days, DOJ said in the indictment.
A pro-Kremlin disinformation network has been using fake images of Taylor Swift and other celebs to spread anti-Ukraine propaganda to millions of users online.
Rudy Giuliani got smacked down by a federal judge for failing to show up for a hearing in a defamation suit brought by Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos is absolutely killing it on Cameo and making a very honest living!
T.V. legend Normal Lear died at 101. Lear created All in the Family, the culturally deep sitcom that brought everyman bigot Archie Bunker to millions of homes. He was also behind Good Times, Tthe Jeffersons and Sanford and Son, which were among the first shows to feature Black American families.
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And now for a little roundup from the states on bringing Trump and his coup plotters to justice!
A grand jury in Nevada charged six Republican fake electors in connection with Trump’s attempted coup in the 2020 election. The false electors, which included Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, were charged with “offering a false instrument for filing” and “uttering a false instrument”—both felonies. That makes Nevada the third state, along with Georgia and Michigan, to criminally charge fake electors in Donald Trump’s 2020 coup attempt. Criminal investigations of the fake elector scheme are also underway in Arizona and New Mexico.
Meanwhile, 10 fake electors in Wisconsin agreed to settle a civil suit, where they acknowledged that (gasp!) Joe Biden won the 2020 election. As part of the settlement, the 10 agreed to withdraw their false filings, never serve as electors again, and cooperate with ongoing criminal investigations of the coup attempt. That last part could be very bad news for Trump, Rudy, and Trump lawyer Ken Chesebro.
Finally, the Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments today in the attempt to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot under the Constitution’s prohibition against insurrectionists holding office. A trial judge ruled last month that Donald Trump participated in an insurrection, but that the 14th Amendment’s restrictions disqualifying insurrectionists doesn’t apply to the presidency. One justice today called Jan. 6 a “poster child for insurrection.” Colorado’s deadline to print ballots for the 2024 primary is just after New Year’s Day, so justice say they want to get the case resolved quickly.
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2024 is going to be a year full of moon landings, which is awesome.
Time’s 2023 Person of the Year, Taylor Swift, dismissed those who want her to stay away from Chiefs games as a few pissed off “dads, Brads and Chads.” ”
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