Sean Casten, D-Il., lays it all out in this twitter thread: It’s hard to explain how dysfunctional the @HouseGOP is, and the degree to which their own internal divisions are superseding every normal function of government. But I’m going to try with a short story about this week in the house. Thread: 1. First: We operate on a 9/30 fiscal year but the (McCarthy) led house couldn’t agree on how to fund prior to. They tried to just say “cut everything by 30%”. That didn’t pass. So they said “let’s just fund at current levels for 45 days”. That cost McCarthy his job. 2. For context, when Dems had the majority we got all our appropriations done by August 1 so the Senate could finalize and POTUS could sign. @HouseGOP still hasn’t done that. @HouseGOP 3. Also, you may recall this summer the @HouseGOP threatened to default on US debt unless we agreed to future spending rules. A deal was struck that passed the House and was signed into law to do so. The 30% cut was not consistent with that law. (AKA, it was illegal) @HouseGOP 4.
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“I am so tired of these psychos” Maybe Americans are getting a clue. Maybe they are waking up, if not in the way wingnuts and QAnons think they should. The results of the last few elections suggest that, as Jamelle Bouie writes, the right’s culture war shtick — from “parental rights” to book bans to “critical race theory” to transgender kids and ad nauseum freakouts over drag shows — has finally worn thin (New York Times): If the results of Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio tell us anything, however, it’s that this post-Roe form of culture warring is an abject failure, an approach that repels and alienates voters far more than it appeals to or persuades them. It certainly turned off voters to Moms for Liberty. They got their asses handed to them in school board races in Iowa on Tuesday.
He will do it regardless. There is no doubt.
Marge continues to make friends and influence people I knew girls like her in high school. They all became criminals: After Rep. Lauren Boebert helped get Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus over the summer, Greene has been on a payback mission against her former friend-turned-nemesis. And after a date at Beetlejuice The Musical turned into a national conversation about groping, Greene has resorted to a playbook familiar to any woman who survived high school: She’s telling GOP colleagues, according to lawmakers, that Boebert is a “whore.” One Republican lawmaker, who has heard Greene use that word multiple times to describe Boebert, told The Daily Beast that Greene has been at this campaign for some time. “Calling her a whore, that’s not new,” this GOP lawmaker said.
“When in the history of the world have the people banning books been the good guys?” Erin Reed (Erin in the Morning) posts on Threads: This story got drowned out by the elections yesterday, but I want to make it clear to everyone. A decent sized city in Tennessee has banned public homosexuality. This is the kind of law we have not seen since the 70s. It’s straight out of Orbán and Putin’s government. Now Murfreesboro has moved on to local libraries “where at least four books, all containing LGBTQ+ themes, have been pulled from the shelves,” Reed writes, describing the ordinance. “Following that, the [city] council moved to enact a tiered library card system, where most nonfiction content will be gated behind the adult-only library card. This system will go into effect in 2024.” Where have we seen that before? Reed continues: On Monday, however, the county steering committee met to discuss a new resolution: the removal of all books in the library that could possibly violate the Murfreesboro ordinance.
By hook and by crook It’s not clear sometines whether the beleaguered 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) is as dead as a Norwegian Blue or just resting. The Act, explains Democracy Docket, was not just intended to address open discrimination, but the subtle kind as well, as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1969. Chief Justice John Roberts will go down in history for eviscerating and/or weakening VRA provisions. Even then, The VRA is not quite dead yet: Over the past few months, pro-voting forces have brought a series of lawsuits under lesser known and rarely litigated provisions of the VRA that seek to combat some of the more “subtle” — but nevertheless pernicious — voting laws that disenfranchise citizens across the country. From Washington to North Carolina and other states in between, these lawsuits are tapping into more obscure portions of the VRA in order to protect voting rights. You go to war with the VRA provisions you have.
The polls are driving them crazy but the performance on Tuesday should make them keep their heads down, do the work and recognize they have a good argument and all the other side has is hate. Ron Brownstein on the election this week and what it means for Democrats: Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls. Even as many Democrats have been driven to a near panic by a succession of recent polls showing President Joe Biden’s extreme vulnerability, the party in yesterday’s elections swept almost all the most closely watched contests. Democrats won the Kentucky governorship by a comfortable margin, romped to a lopsided victory in an Ohio ballot initiative ensuring abortion rights,and easily captured an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. Most impressive, Democratsheld the Virginia state Senate and were projected to regain control of the Virginia state House, despite an all-out campaign from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin to win both chambers.Among the major contests, Democrats fell short only in the governor’s race in Mississippi.
It’s not a pretty sight The GOP debate last night was torture. I watched it because it’s my job but I’ll be very happy when this primary is over. I usually sort of enjoy watching them tear each other apart and say stupid things but this one is truly unpleasant. I thought this one might be more interesting because it was on NBC so maybe it would have more interesting questions than the softballs they’ve been given on the earlier Fox debates. But no. It was just more dull — well except for Nikki Haley calling Ramaswamy “scum” and Ramaswamy calling Zelensky a Nazi. They didn’t ask about abortion until the last 15 minutes, they didn’t ask about guns, they didn’t ask about Trump’s legal problems. (Chris Christie did mention them in one early answer but that was that.) Aaaaand there was a rousing discussion about how much to cut Social Security and Medicare! Here’s the leading so-called “moderate” on the stage who the media anointed the winner: Points for making that clear. It is a total waste of time for everyone. I don’t know why they are bothering.
They’re doing it again as if nothing has changed. Do they think they are immune to consequences of fascism? Margaret Sullivan reads the media the riot act: Whatever doubts you may have about public-opinion polls, one recent example should not be dismissed. Yes, that poll – the one from Siena College and the New York Times that sent chills down many a spine. It showed Donald Trump winning the presidential election by significant margins over Joe Biden in several swing states, the places most likely to decide the presidential election next year. The poll, of course, is only one snapshot and it has been criticized, but it still tells a cautionary tale – especially when paired with the certainty that Trump, if elected, will quickly move toward making the United States an authoritarian regime. Add in Biden’s low approval ratings, despite his accomplishments, and you come to an unavoidable conclusion: the news media needs to do its job better. The press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win.
The Republicans just can’t get it together They can’t even get the votes together to pass the draconian spending cuts they all live for: House Republicans on Thursday pulled their annual financial services and general government funding bill amid divisions on abortion-related provisions and FBI funding. It was the second time in a week GOP leaders opted to punt a vote on a funding bill over divisions within the party. GOP leadership hoped to pass the conference’s partisan plan laying out fiscal 2024 funding for the White House, the Treasury Department and other offices this week.