Washington dc

The news that China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher won’t run for reelection in his safe Wisconsin district may have surprised Washington, but it’s a decision that has been apparent for some time. The thirty-nine-year-old Marine veteran, touted by China hawks and Republican leadership as a rising star, is naturally frustrated by an utterly broken institution in the House. But it also serves as a warning shot to Republicans about what could come next. If you’re in the position of being a chairman — Gallagher is the youngest of them — even an utterly dysfunctional chamber can still allow you to do some meaningful work in the committee. But if Democrats retake the House in 2024, being in the minority is a completely different animal.

The Senate’s gay sex scandal started with a bang, but has ended with a whimper. This morning, the Capitol Police announced that they will not be pressing charges against Aidan Maese-Czeropski, the disgraced former Ben Cardin staffer filmed having sex with a male partner in the Hart Senate Office Building, as first reported by Cockburn. “For now, we are closing the investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding a sex video that was recorded inside the Hart Senate Office Building on the morning of Wednesday, December 13,” the Capitol Police said in a statement. “Despite a likely violation of congressional policy — there is currently no evidence that a crime was committed.

As a new Covid variant, JN1, has cropped up across America, the public health officials who were at the forefront of the Covid-19 pandemic were hauled into Congress and pressed on lockdowns, the origins of the coronavirus, school closures and more behind closed doors. The most prominent target, Anthony Fauci, was particularly grilled by the House’s bipartisan Covid Select Committee for fourteen hours over two days. Unreported until now is the lack of interest by the committee’s top Democrat, the confirmed conflicts of interests that an American scientist investigating Covid’s origins had and the carelessness with which Fauci ran his grant-making.

As I write this, a federal judge is considering whether Amtrak should be allowed to seize Washington DC’s Union Station, which is something like a combined urban mall and rail hub. In court, Amtrak has argued that it’s entitled to take Union Station and claims its expertise in transportation management makes it better equipped to operate the station. The US Constitution protects the rights of property owners in all sorts of ways, but it doesn’t protect property owners against eminent domain — the phrase for having your property taken for public use in exchange for fair compensation.

Once again a mostly peaceful protest has inexplicably ended up in violence — this time outside of the Democratic National Convention headquarters in Washington, DC. Ironically, this latest batch of protesters were calling for a ceasefire in Israel as they initiated their own violence on the streets of the nation’s capital.   A pro-Palestine protest was held Wednesday night outside the DNC headquarters as Democratic lawmakers gathered in the building for a fundraiser. During the melée, Capitol Police evacuated the top House Democrats from the building, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Representative Pete Aguilar.  The night began with a candlelight vigil down the street from the DNC before turning violent.

The Florida Man had a plan. It was obvious from the beginning, but this being Washington, despite all the bizarre outcomes of the post-Cold War political scene — interns, scandals, impeachments, Donald Trump in the White House and out of it, the Cheneys surrounded by cheering Democrats — normalcy remains the assumed status quo. Normalcy does not encompass a plan to vacate the speaker’s chair with the unanimous help of the other party. In fact, prior to 2019, anyone could have used the same tool the Florida Man would deploy to unseat a speaker. They just never tried it officially, because to do so would be crazy, risking handing control of the House to the minority. And it was that audacity which kept the Florida Man’s plan alive.

At long last, House Republicans finally selected their new speaker: Mike Johnson, the Shreveport native who resembles nothing so much as the pale casseroles ubiquitous to Baptist fellowship halls across the American South. They could be white cheddar cheese and boiled potatoes, they could be whipped cream and banana with Nilla wafers — you won't know 'til you take a scoop, but you won't have to chew very much to enjoy it. Mike Johnson is perhaps the furthest thing from Kevin McCarthy in experience. He has no record as a fundraiser. He is a strong social conservative, a version that has not been updated since the mid-2000s.

Will today be the day we get a permanent speaker of the House? It’s tough to say. House Republicans huddled this morning to figure out who they will put forward as their speaker-designee in the hopes that someone — perhaps, anyone! — can steer the rowdy House at a time of growing international strife. They eventually settled on Minnesota representative Tom Emmer. There’s no guarantee that Emmer will even get the required votes from the full House, however. To minimize that possibility, Representative Mike Flood circulated a “loyalty pledge” of sorts that all current speaker candidates signed, which requires them to support whoever the conference selects. Flood noted to me, though, that even Jesus Christ would struggle to get to 217 votes in this House GOP conference.

Forget boy math, forget girl math: focus on Speaker Math: getting anywhere near the magic threshold of 217 votes is proving almost impossible for any Republican. Back in January, even former speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn’t get to 217, clinching the gavel with 216 votes after some of his then-foes threw him a bone by simply voting present and therefore lowering the threshold. At that point though, he never dipped below 200 votes in his marathon bid to secure the speakership. Now, it’s former McCarthy foe turned McCarthy ally Jim Jordan who’s finding that getting to 217 is somehow almost harder than getting over 200. Following a second public ballot, Jordan is losing votes at a time when he needs momentum.

This Friday October 13, governments around the world received a warning from Israel: look out for yourselves, look out for your Jewish citizens, as terrorism may reach your soil.The Israel National Security Council and Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended that all Israelis abroad remain cautious, “keep away from the demonstrations and protests and — if necessary — check with local security forces regarding possible protests and disturbances in the area.”“Against the background of Operation Swords of Iron,” the agencies said in a joint statement, “Hamas leadership has called on all of its supporters around the world to hold a ‘Day or Rage’” against Jews around the globe.

The likelihood of Steve Scalise's ascent to the speakership is high at this hour, with his 113-99 victory over Jim Jordan in the House Republican Conference meeting. But there are a few challenges ahead that could prove difficult in an upcoming afternoon of voting on the floor. Jordan's total was disappointing for his supporters, who had hoped the vote would effectively be flipped, leading Scalise to bow out and wait for another day, content with his continued role as majority leader. But Jordan's team is not exactly expert at whipping votes, and the abstention of eight members didn't help him any.  What Scalise brings, effectively, is a normal continuity of leadership.

Representative Nancy Mace, newfound foe of ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy, has been using a software for official work that is expressly not permitted by House rules. The South Carolinian chairs a subcommittee on CyberSecurity on the Oversight Committee, and recently passed the MACE Act, which unusually she named after herself — yet uses the work management site Monday.com to handle a number of tasks in her office. “We used it for everything and Nancy ran it,” a former Mace staffer tells The Spectator. All legislative and media planning work went through this platform, sources say; we’re also told by former Mace staff that her office has used it to conduct constituent services that could leave personal information of her constituents potentially vulnerable.

It's time to move the seat of federal power to a Republican-run city until we can figure out what is going on. Monday night, Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar was carjacked at gunpoint in Navy Yard, a Washington, DC neighborhood just blocks away from the Capitol building. Cuellar's chief of staff Jacob Hochberg said that three men held up the congressman. Police recovered the vehicle, a white Honda, but are still tracking down the suspects. Cuellar is the second member of Congress to be the victim of random violent crime this year. In February, Democratic representative Angie Craig was attacked in an elevator at her Capitol Hill apartment building by a homeless man who demanded to be let into her home to use the restroom.