Thomas Massie

Thomas Massie’s predicament, as he fends off a Trump-backed challenger – and Trump himself – in the Republican primary for his seat in Congress, is symbolic of the vexed relationship libertarians have with the right these days. Massie was not only a Tea Party Republican when he was first elected in 2012, he was a Ron Paul Republican, inspired by the longtime, philosophically libertarian Texas congressman who made his second bid for the GOP presidential nomination that year. The Commonwealth of Kentucky had sent Paul’s son, Rand, to the US Senate two years before, and its 4th congressional district put Massie in the House. Libertarians are natural junior partners in someone else’s enterprise ​Now Trump is trying to take him out.

Texas Ron Paul celebrated his 90th birthday on Saturday at a freshly-built college events center in Southeast Texas. More accurately, hundreds of beaming Ron Paul fans and various libertarian podcast influencers celebrated Ron Paul’s birthday, and Ron Paul showed up to give a speech at the end. But everyone, Cockburn included, had a delightful time, full of amiable conversations, mostly modest self-promotion, and, of course, endless discussions about smashing the US financial system. “I’m so enraged by the corruption I see around me, I would have dropped dead of a heart attack by now without the influence of Ron Paul,” Clint Russell of the Liberty Lockdown podcast was saying during an afternoon of speeches and Ron Paul testimonials.

Anyone who has perambulated through the groves of academe has encountered dumb smart people. They are clever, intellectually nimble, but they lack what Aristotle called φρόνησις and what the rest of us call “street smarts” or “practical wisdom.” In academia, dumb smart people often appear to be merely quaint or eccentric. In the realm of politics, they appear first as an exciting novelty, then as a destructive if naive force, cynically manipulated by the very people they hoped to replace.  In 1992, the billionaire Ross Perot epitomized the dumb smart political actor when he ran as an Independent candidate against George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He pretended to provide an alternative to both Bush and Clinton. In reality, Perot guaranteed Clinton’s victory.

In the early hours of this morning, Donald Trump must have been thinking that, compared to passing legislation through Congress, Middle Eastern diplomacy was a doddle. "FOR REPUBLICANS THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE!" he Truth-Socialled at about 1 a.m., as a small band of conservative rebels threatened to block the passage of his big, beautiful bill in the House of Representatives. "RIDICULOUS!!" Trump desperately wants to celebrate Independence Day at the White House tomorrow with a flamboyant signing ceremony for his domestic spending mega-bill. It would mark, in his mind, another week of winning bigly. Of course, the rule of Republican politics in the 2020s is simple: what Donald wants, Donald gets.

The President needed One Big, Beautiful Vote in the Senate to move forward with his One Big, Beautiful Bill. It was a close call. This afternoon senators voted 50-50 to pass the act which will solidify Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, increase child tax credits, reduce Medicaid spending – to name a few of policies in the 940-page proposal. Vice President J.D. Vance acted as the tie-breaker, passing the bill and sending it back to the House of Representatives, where it also passed by just one vote back in May. Trump, unsurprisingly, is delighted. “MAGA VICTORY,” tweeted the White House just minutes after the bill had been passed. In many ways, the knife-edge victories have boosted the President’s agenda.

The passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” early Thursday morning by the slimmest of margins in the House of Representatives is a clear victory for Donald Trump, but even more so for Speaker Mike Johnson, who managed to buy off both blue-state SALT Republicans and Freedom Caucus fiscal hawks, moving closer to their demands by just enough to thread the needle. This was by far the biggest challenge Johnson had yet to face, and the question if “Deacon Mike” was up to the challenge was back of mind for many in the GOP conference. Had Johnson failed to deliver, his speakership might not have ended immediately, but he would effectively be a dead man walking – and the next time someone decided to pick a leadership fight, Trump might not have his back.

Former congressman Matt Gaetz kicked off the 119th Congress by not showing up and taking the Capitol Hill press corps to school. After weeks of drama, Mike Johnson was reelected as speaker of the House on the very first ballot — exactly as Gaetz predicted. Some Hill reporters, such as Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, and even Congressman Thomas Massie, had tweeted in response to Gaetz’s declarative prediction that he was wrong. Heading into the vote, everyone knew that Massie was implacably opposed to Johnson — but everyone else’s opposition proved to be quite placable. The drama kicked off almost immediately, when Democratic congressman Hank Johnson failed to show up before roll was called.

If a motion to vacate the speaker of the House fails resoundingly, does it make a sound?The answer is, of course, yes — with a Capitol Hill press corps that loves nothing more than pitting all-too-willing Republicans against one another. Next week, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is poised to finally pull the trigger on her quixotic quest to oust Speaker Mike Johnson — but she’s likely to be left holding a bag of small-dollar donations and press clippings, which is what her detractors think she is actually motivated by.On one side of the push to oust Johnson is a trio of Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar.

Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests are inspiring a nationwide movement while the Democratic Party finds itself split in two. A group of twenty-one House Democrats called on Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, to end the encampment or resign as progressives such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman joined in the Manhattan university’s protests Friday.The Democratic Party struggles with clashing opinions regarding the broader conflict as well as concerns over electability — particularly as “uncommitted” voters sent a message to President Joe Biden in the primary over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

President Joe Biden signed the foreign aid package, which features $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, on Wednesday after the bill swiftly moved through Congress. The breakdown of aid is as follows: $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan.Speaker Mike Johnson infuriated some of his Republican colleagues by even negotiating on the legislation, let alone bringing it to the House floor for a vote; he previously said he would not move any foreign aid until Democrats agreed to give additional funds for border security. Instead, after the Senate rejected the border security bill HR-2 and Johnson rejected the Senate-negotiated immigration package, the speaker made moves to go ahead with sending money abroad anyway.

A provision to require automobiles built after 2026 to contain technology capable of limiting or preventing the vehicle’s operation will go into effect after Representative Thomas Massie’s move to block funding for the Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 for one year failed last week. Nineteen Republicans defied Massie and voted against his budget amendment, along with 210 Democrats, though two Dems — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — voted Yes to Massie’s bill.

Merrick Garland’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was a spectacular, if depressing, confirmation of something any sentient observer had noticed long ago: that the Department of Justice, and its head, Attorney General Garland, are horribly, egregiously compromised.  The outcome or upshot? That Garland should be impeached and removed from office and the DOJ itself should be put into the political equivalent of Chapter 11 so that its management can be replaced and its activities reorganized. As I say, this has long been obvious to any sentient observer. But Wednesday’s testimony put meat on the bones of this impending repudiation. Several Republicans put hard questions to the attorney general.

The House will vote on Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden’s debt-ceiling deal this evening and, by all accounts, the speaker has stuck the landing. Having reached an agreement with the White House, McCarthy got his way in a crucial Rules Committee meeting yesterday, fought off a Freedom Caucus rebellion and looks set to win support for his deal from a majority of his conference.  To the great disappointment of those banking on a bruising Republican civil war, McCarthy evidently feels secure in his position. Asked about the possibility of disgruntled hardliners filing a motion to vacate today, McCarthy replied: “Look, everybody has the ability to do what they want. But if you think I’m going to wake up in the morning and ever be worried about that, no. Doesn’t bother me.

Tulsi Gabbard will retire from Congress at the end of the year. The Hawaii representative is going out with a bang, introducing several bills that show why she is so despised by her establishment Democratic counterparts — and why she could potentially become a very powerful broker in the American political realignment. Last week, Gabbard introduced the Protect Women's Sports Act, legislation that would prevent biological men from competing in women's sports. Gabbard understands that keeping men and women's sports separate is a question of basic fairness for female athletes — Chelsea Mitchell, a high-school track runner, for example, has lost out on four state titles because she's had to compete against two individuals who were born male.