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As Republicans wrestle with what to do about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Liz Cheney, and other looming deadlines for whether to explicitly label themselves the party of political violence, their unflinching introspection has brought them to one key question: What about Ilhan Omar, tho?
- Democrats have announced they will hold a House vote on Thursday to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her committee assignments, after Republican leaders took a good hard look at her antisemitism, conspiracy theories about school shootings, and endorsements of political violence, and with one, inspiring voice declared: “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had his long-awaited heart-to-heart with Greene on Tuesday night, at which she reportedly refused to apologize for her past comments or step down voluntarily. You never know when someone might suddenly transform into a completely different person, it was worth a shot!
- After his productive summit with Greene, McCarthy called an emergency late-night meeting with the GOP Steering Committee, which could have decided to remove Greene from her committee posts on its own. Instead, GOP lawmakers offered up a deal in which they would kick her off just one committee (“Fine, she’s an unapologetic hurricane of evil, but you must allow that she is a terrific fit for the budget panel”). Democrats didn’t go for it, for some reason, and every House Republican will now have to go on the record about whether they consider QAnon and its attendant violent fantasies to be an acceptable presence in the party.
- Given that a referendum on Greene is tacitly a referendum on Donald Trump, we can expect a disturbing majority of Republicans to answer in the affirmative. (Many of them while on their feet, applauding.) Even the Senate Republicans who have spoken up against her have carefully kept Greene’s thirst for political violence out of the frame of their objections: There’s Mitch McConnell’s “loony lies,” Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) calling her “nutty” and “an embarrassment to our party,” even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) stressing the importance of separating the party from “the people that are in the wacky weeds.” Marjorie Taylor Greene was the moderator of the right-wing Family America Project’s Facebook group, which under her watch became a forum for death threats against Democrats, sentiments she endorsed on her own Facebook page. Less than a month after a deadly attack on the Capitol, perhaps “wacky” isn’t the most salient aspect of Greene’s worldview?
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the Black Swan mirror, a GOP leader who defied Trump is at the center of the same proxy battle in reverse.
- House Republicans met on Wednesday to confront Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) over whether she should continue in her role as GOP conference chairwoman, after she voted for Trump’s second impeachment and didn’t mince words: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution." McCarthy has defended Cheney, but in standing by while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) went to Wyoming to rail against her, and treating her impeachment vote as an infraction equal in seriousness to Greene promoting violence against elected Democrats (“I do think she has a lot of questions she has to answer to the conference,” McCarthy said in late January), he’s made clear that leadership-wise, he plans to close his eyes and let MAGA take the wheel.
- In even more offensive false equivalences, a handful of GOP lawmakers led by Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) have proposed stripping Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her committee assignments, citing remarks that contained none of Greene’s outright bigotry, for which Omar has nevertheless apologized. Fox News has eagerly cooperated in promoting that false comparison, which is itself an example of the same racist, Islamophobic impulses that Greene (and of course, Trump) gleefully represent. Whataboutism, bad faith, pretending to be mad about antisemitism in moments of convenience: This stunt is a lush cornucopia of Republican delights.
With Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate virtually assured, the open question of his continued influence in the GOP is now playing out through simultaneous battles over these two GOP House members. But the fact that Cheney is more likely to face consequences than Greene suggests it isn’t much of an open question at all.
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On today's Pod Save The World stream, Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes explain the military takeover in Myanmar, the Biden administration's pause on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, disparities in Israel's mass vaccination campaign, and more. Watch & subscribe →
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Low reimbursement rates from health insurers have led some doctors to limit testing for coronavirus, which you might recognize as the exact opposite of what should be happening. Doctors across the country say reimbursement rates don’t even cover the cost of testing supplies, leading them to stop testing certain patients, or skip coronavirus testing altogether. The problem seems to be most common with pediatricians using in-office rapid testing, a particularly important tool in parts of the country where other types of testing are less accessible. Multiple doctors have identified certain state Medicaid plans as low-reimbursement culprits, which is to be expected, but also UnitedHealthcare, a large private insurer that has no excuse. Legislation passed last spring prevents doctors from billing patients to recoup their losses for coronavirus testing (great), but failed to define what constitutes a “complete” reimbursement from insurers (doctors are fucked). The result is yet another artificial obstacle to controlling the pandemic.
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- President Biden reiterated his commitment to moving forward with the OG big stimulus bill, but told House Democrats he’s open to further targeting the $1400 stimulus checks as a compromise with Republicans. (That is, the checks will stay the same size, but might only go out to people below a lower income threshold.)
- Canada has labeled the Proud Boys a terrorist organization, along with the Atomwaffen Division, an American neo-Nazi group, and the Base, a paramilitary white supremacist group.
- The Senate has approved a power-sharing agreement, allowing Democrats to at long last take control of committees.
- More than 370 Democratic congressional aides put out a rare public statement imploring senators to convict Trump, describing their own frightening experiences during the January 6 insurrection.
- Well, the courts lost Kenosha murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. Let’s make a list of places he might be—Joe Rogan’s recording studio? Tucker Carlson’s warm embrace? The KKK scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
- The Justice Department has dropped a Trump administration lawsuit that accused Yale of discrimination against white and Asian applicants, in a transparent attack on affirmative action.
- The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has opened an investigation into whether pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood voted illegally in November. Maybe the real voter fraud was all the voter fraud we did along the way.
- Myanmar’s military has charged Aung San Suu Kyi with illegally importing walkie talkies, a creative justification for locking up the country’s civilian leader in the wake of a coup.
- A witness to the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting, who provided critical information to investigators, was deported to Mexico this week after a traffic stop.
- Weird Golden Globes nominations, folks! Unless we read this wrong and Emily in Paris was nominated for “most Emilies in Paris,” there has been a mistake.
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The growing controversy over school reopenings has centered on whether teachers need to be vaccinated first, a question that would be way less central if schools could afford to implement basic safety measures. As teachers unions clash with parents and cities over the safety of in-person learning, there’s not much fundamental disagreement: Teachers and health experts agree that schools could be open during the vaccine rollout, with the precautions of universal masking, keeping students in limited groups, proper ventilation, and regular testing of everyone on site. The issue is, many school districts still don’t have the resources to make those precautions possible, and additional funding is on hold until Congress finally passes this coronavirus relief package. Vaccinating teachers as soon as possible should obviously be a priority, but there’s a workable middle ground that would have been available months ago if Republicans hadn’t held up the resources.
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The Virginia Senate has passed a bill to abolish the death penalty.
The FCC has taken its first steps to expand a broadband services discount program to cover remote schooling.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine may be able to reduce coronavirus transmission.
New York has repealed the "walking while trans" ban, a law that’s exposed women of color and trans women to police harassment since 1976.
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