Capitol Hill

The reaction to President Trump’s meeting with GOP members on Capitol Hill today was decidedly mixed, especially for the so-called SALT Republicans, with leading voices like Representative Mike Lawler of New York saying, “I’m not going to budge” on the issue despite Trump’s demands. Used to the opposition from the chamber’s last remaining fiscal hawks, much of the focus to this point has been on the typical intransigent wing of the House Freedom Caucus, which still doesn’t like the overall fiscal impact and wanted more significant Medicaid reforms. For them, Trump’s message in the meeting was clear: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.

Congress is once again trying to avoid a holiday-eve government shutdown by ramming through a last-minute continuing resolution to fund the government through the new year. The process, per usual, is angering various factions within the House of Representatives as Democrats, budget-hawk Republicans and the establishment GOP are at odds over how much to spend and what to spend it on and whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.Johnson’s “Plan A,” which was a 1,500-page boondoggle negotiated primarily with Democrats, would have funded the government until March.

In the 1870s, Gustave Flaubert assembled Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, a humorous collection of “received ideas” and clichés then current in French society. A new version needs to be produced for contemporary America. As in the original, the humor would often turn on the contradiction or subterfuge implicit in the word or phrase. “Affirmative action” would merit an entry, since it is supposed to be about battling discrimination when in fact it enshrines discrimination in law. So would the current favorite, “Continuing Resolution” (“CR” among the cognoscenti). The phrase carries the aroma legislative diligence.

A group of around thirty people gathered on the lawn of the United States Capitol Building to hear speeches from three drag queens on Tuesday. MoveOn Political Action organized the event to champion the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights. The lobbying day came at the heels of the new polling that a "healthy majority of Americans across the political spectrum support federal legislation protecting LGBTQ+ individuals." Jiggly Caliente spoke first, addressing her gratitude for being on RuPaul’s Drag Race and for the blessing of being able to be your true self. “I have always known that I was living in a shell that didn’t align with my soul,” she said. Jiggly, or Bianca, accused politicians of blocking local and up-and-coming drag queens from making money.

On President Biden's last-minute trip to Israel Wednesday, the commander-in-chief pledged America's support to the Jewish state alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following what the world’s media covered as Tuesday’s massive explosion of the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza, Jordan abruptly canceled a summit set to be held in Amman with leaders from Egypt and Palestine. The country’s king, Abdullah II, called off the four-way summit, blaming the Israeli Defense Forces for the explosion that, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, killed around 500 Palestinians. The Jordanian demanded an immediate end of Israel’s offensive, labeling the event a “shame on humanity.

TikTok’s terrible, no good, very bad day TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew arrived for a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday with his company facing a forced sale or a ban in the US. In other words, it was an important day for Chew and his company: a chance to put the best case forward for TikTok’s continued existence in America. Chew assembled a formidable force for his Congressional D-Day. TikTok has paid for the best in the business if that business is getting Democratic administrations to do what you want: retaining SKDK, the lobbying firm founded by top Biden advisor Anita Dunn. They also have progressive lawmaker Jamaal Bowman on their side.

Authorities have finally done something about the aggressive, rabid critters that lurk around our nation’s capital and slink from their dens on the Hill to assault honest people for no good reason. Cockburn has encountered all sorts of such creatures on various Capitol Hill pub crawls, but the type the police just decided to address was neither a blundering elephant nor an indignant jackass. Neither was it a Blue Dog, one of those endangered porcupines that rarely appear in the Swamp, nor even a squawking chicken hawk. It was a red fox. A cute little lady fox with a majestically bushy tail, black-tipped ears and feet, white markings on her chest and muzzle, and shining black eyes. People first started posting images of the fox on Monday.

The Democratic Party is out of the office. Quite literally. Nancy Pelosi, who controls administrative policy in the House, this week extended the in-office moratorium and proxy voting through the middle of May. Pelosi says she based the policy on the recommendation of the sergeant-at-arms who wrote that there is still an ongoing “public health emergency due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 remains in effect.” Quite the contrast to the president’s message. Pelosi's extension follows reporting from the Washington Free Beacon last week that most Democratic offices in DC remain shut, citing Covid-19 pandemic and workplace restrictions as the reason.

At least since the 2016 election, one of my favorites politicians — one of the few I could stomach at all — was Ted Cruz. He is certainly one of the smartest and most articulate members of Congress — not, I know, a high bar, but Ted really is someone with deep rhetorical gifts, an illuminating grasp of constitutional principles and a steely eyed appreciation of political realities. After a very brief flirtation with Scott Walker, my favored candidate for president in 2016 was Ted Cruz. I endorsed him publicly and even labored on the outskirts of his campaign for a couple of months. But it was not to be. His announcement that, should he win the Republican nomination, he would pick the egregious Carly Fiorina as a running mate made me raise an eyebrow.

The idea that what happened at the Capitol of January 6 was an “insurrection” was always a ridiculous and malevolent exaggeration. The passage of time has exposed that politically motivated lie and sent the rats scurrying for alternative explanations. Right on cue, we find a hobbyhorse leftist taking to the pages of the Washington Post — Jeff Bezos’s onshore publicity organ for the Democratic Party — to warn us against calling the protest at the Capitol an “insurrection.” The memo to Scribes and Pharisees has gone out. It’s no longer an “insurrection.” It’s been rebaptized a “sinister” act of “vigilantism.

Last night was Liz Cheney’s breakout moment. As Cheney read the various text messages from various Fox News luminaries and Donald Trump Jr. to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she milked the moment, lingering over memorable phrases such as "he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP." And yet Sonny boy's plea was ignored. The old man reveled in the feculent mayhem. Once seen as a neoconservative ogress, Cheney has now achieved full redemption, morphing into the darling of the mainstream media for her refusal to dismiss the mob on January 6 as a bunch of tourists who had accidentally strayed into the Capitol. This is Cheney’s High Noon.

John Eastman, a former member of Donald Trump’s legal team, has just declined, through his attorney, to cooperate with the congressional inquiry into the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. I think he was right to do so, for several reasons. In the first place, the congressional inquiry would be better named a congressional vendetta. Its composition is heavily weighted towards Democrats. The committee includes no “ranking members” of the opposition as the rules stipulate, hence the frequent invocation of the “Star Chamber” in descriptions of the inquiry. It is less an investigation than an inquisition.

Cockburn had thought he'd seen it all. But now he learns that DC has reached a new low in the annals of Swamp incompetence. Democratic staffers in Representative Ayanna Pressley's office can't figure out how to turn their phones back on after setting them to go straight to voicemail for over a year and a half. Every Capitol Hill rat would agree that the worse job in a congressional office is answering the phones. From dusk to dawn, deranged boomers light them up, demanding Representative Joe Blow do something about their loud neighbors, or fix their TV, or help them pay their rent. Many of these callers don't even live in the lawmaker's district or state. It's an exhausting task usually reserved for the lowest of the low — interns.