Crooked Media - What A Day: No swampromise

- Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) turning the tables on his MAGA overlord

The GOP’s presidential frontrunner is a four-times-indicted criminal, and Republicans in Congress are torching every piece of legislation in their path—even the stuff they asked for. How are we losing to these guys?
 

• After demanding a deal to secure the U.S.-Mexico for years, Republicans in the Senate killed the bill aimed at doing just that on Wednesday. The $118 billion bipartisan border security package took months to hammer out and included funding for Israel and Ukraine, as well as a whole host of other measures. But it went down in a 49-50 vote, with 60 needed to pass, after Republican Senators lined up against it. Disgraced former president Donald Trump instructed his loyal minions in Congress to reject any bipartisan border deal because it would interfere with his dictatorial “Only I can fix it,” campaign. In a rare moment of having a Good Take, our frenemy Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ)—one of the deal’s authors—summed it up nicely when she said, “Three weeks ago, everyone wanted to solve the border crisis. Yesterday, nobody did.” 
   

• The Senate is now planning a vote on a stand-alone aid bill that retains all of the foreign aid of the border package but removes, you know, the border provisions. Even if that passes the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, its fate is unclear at best in the Republican-controlled House. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said on Wednesday that the foreign aid bill “would protect America’s national security interests by stopping Putin’s onslaught in Ukraine before he turns to other countries,” and would help Israel.
   

• Because Republicans are impervious to shame, they are throwing their own failures back in their constituents’ faces and acting like we’re all just supposed to accept it. In an interview with Fox Business, extremely-failed presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said he had already voted against the standalone foreign aid bill because “We should first secure our southern border.” Man, how can I get paid $174,000 per year to get up every morning and not do my job? Turns out “Nobody wants to work anymore!!” is more of a top-down issue.

There’s something of an open rebellion against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a-brewin’ among his colleagues in the Upper Chamber, but that’s nothing compared to the truly batshit, unbridled madness of the House GOP. 
 

• Republicans in the House also lost just enough of their own members on Tuesday in a sham impeachment expedition of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that it, too, failed. That one was pretty funny. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who apparently has a humiliation fetish, said on Wednesday he was planning to hold another vote to impeach Mayorkas. 
   

• Last year was the least productive year in Congress in at least a half-century. This year is somehow slated to be even worse. House Republicans have a razor-thin majority, but basically nothing to show for it. It should be noted that Nancy Pelosi was able to pass a lot of legislation with the same margins when she was speaker, as current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pointed out. The GOP is running through House Speakers (there are rumors that Johnson’s head is next for the guillotine) and can barely agree to fund the government for more than a few weeks or months at a time. We’ve repeatedly endured the looming threat of a government shutdown and even defaulting on our national debt because of Republican greed and antipathy for functioning government. 

When Republicans refused to hold a SCOTUS confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland and got away with it eight years ago, that national embarrassment seemingly became precedent. GOP lawmakers decided that from then on, if a Democrat was in the White House, they would just take any election year off. Democrats should be in a better position with voters than the party that refuses to do anything except continue passing tax breaks for the rich, but the GOP has been more adept at changing the national conversation and creating culture war issues. Republicans have been highly effective obstructionists, so now it’s time for Dems to show that they too can play hardball.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced  the conditions laid out by Hamas in their counteroffer to the three-phase hostage swap deal on Wednesday. Hamas proposed a four-and-a-half month ceasefire, during which all remaining hostages captured on October 7 would be released and Israel would withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip. The militant group proposed that it would also be at this time when the two sides would reach an agreement to end the war. Netanyahu called this proposal “delusional” and dug his heels in, renewing a pledge that the war will only end when Israel destroys Hamas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was more circumspect, saying: “There are clearly nonstarters in [what hamas] has put forward…But we also see space in what came back to pursue negotiations, to see if we can get to an agreement.” Blinken met with leaders of Qatar and Egypt on Tuesday, the countries who are acting as mediators for Hamas in these negotiations. He also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland told the leadership of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that special counsel Robert Hur has concluded his investigation into classified documents found at the residences of President Joe Biden, and that he is committed to making “as much of the Special Counsel’s report public as possible.” 

The FBI arrested a man in Tennessee who told an undercover officer that the U.S. is “being invaded” by migrants and was planning to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border with a cache of weapons and commit violence against federal border patrol agents. 

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley had a humiliating showing in Nevada, where Trump was not even on the ballot. Haley finished second to “None of These Candidates.” She still has expressed no plans to drop out. So if you ever find yourself thinking nobody likes you, at least you were never people’s second choice behind “No one.”

Disgraced former president Donald Trump realized his MAGA flock liked the “Dictator for a day” line featured he threw out in a December interview with Sean Hannity and began adding it to speeches. Now, three-quarters(!) of GOP voters say they would be in favor of Trump having dictatorial powers for a day. 

Surprising no one, videos have surfaced of Tesla drivers wearing Apple’s new “Vision Pro” virtual reality headsets…while driving. 

For the first time in two decades, Mexico has surpassed China to become America’s top source of official imports. 

California’s recent record rainfall will not be enough to stave off its long-term drought problems, because reservoirs are not equipped to capture flood water. Everyone will rue the day they dismissed my “Really big buckets” presentation to the California State Legislature.

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The EPA issued new rules on air pollution that are projected to prevent 4,500 premature deaths annually on Wednesday. Corporations immediately objected saying it would “hurt the economy” because I guess America’s economic engine is fueled by thousands of preventable deaths!

A federal judge rejected Donald Trump’s motion for a mistrial in the E. Jean Carroll case on Wednesday after a jury ordered him to pay her more than $83 million in damages last month.