Democrats might stop the House speaker’s ouster—and they won’t let him forget it

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday April 30, 2024 · 12:00 PM PDT

2024/04/30 · 12:00

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WEST VIRGINIA - MARCH 13: U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) participates in a discussion at the Greenbrier Hotel on March 13, 2024 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. House Republicans are holding their 2024 House Republican Issues Conference, also known as the annual House GOP retreat, in West Virginia from March 13-15. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) — House Speaker Mike Johnson

House Democratic leadership announced Tuesday that they’ll allow members to block any effort from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her tiny team of nihilists to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, a reminder of where the power sits in the House.

“We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said in a statement.

Even among Republicans Greene’s tantrums have been wearing thin for a few weeks now, but since she had Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Thomas Massie of Kentucky as cosponsors, the theoretical threat remained real—Johnson’s margin of error is that small.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday April 30, 2024 · 8:58 AM PDT

2024/04/30 · 08:58

A billboard displays Donald Trump's quote: "I was able to kill Roe v. Wade... without me there would be no 6 [week bans]."

Donald Trump, who believes he’s the only Republican who knows how to talk about abortion, just gave President Joe Biden and Democrats all the ammunition they need on the issue. In a lengthy interview with Time magazine, Trump refused to say he would veto a federal abortion ban … three times.

The question wasn’t hard the first time; a simple “yes” or “no” would have done the trick. “Will you veto any bill that imposes any federal restrictions on abortions?”

“You don’t need a federal ban. We just got out of the federal. You know, if you go back on Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade was all about—it wasn’t about abortion so much as bringing it back to the states,” Trump replied.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday April 29, 2024 · 1:00 PM PDT

2024/04/29 · 13:00

no image description available — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Sunday airwaves to pat himself on the back for getting Ukraine aid passed, and promptly reverted back to his old ways. Bipartisanship is in the rear view mirror now and McConnell is still intent on the GOP winning at all costs, no matter what damage is done to the country.

In lengthy interviews on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation,” McConnell dodged the most critical issues of the day in furtherance of his primary goal.

“I think the single most important thing I can do is make sure my successor is the majority leader, no matter how the presidential election comes out,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan. "What I want to do and what I'm focused on is not the presidential race, but getting the Senate back. I've been the majority leader, I've been the minority leader. Majority is better."

McConnell said he intends to "get ready for the challenges that we have ahead of us, rather than just looking backward." The nation’s biggest challenge ahead is Donald Trump and his threat to democracy, and that’s what McConnell is refusing to look back on.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday April 29, 2024 · 7:30 AM PDT

2024/04/29 · 07:30

US President Donald Trump applauds next to Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and judge Amy Coney Barrett who was just sworn-in as a US Supreme Court Associate Justice, during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House October 26, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images) — Donald Trump applauds next to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

The U.S. Supreme Court heard Donald Trump’s immunity claim in his federal criminal trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election Thursday, and the conservative majority is likely going to give Donald Trump what he wants: a delay of the trial until after the election. If Trump wins again, the conservatives have essentially signaled that they would be open to blanket immunity for him against any future criminal charges.

The fact that Supreme Court justices are suggesting that the president is above the law proves why the court must be reformed.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Friday April 26, 2024 · 10:00 AM PDT

2024/04/26 · 10:00

House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden has fizzled out. But the two members tasked with the job, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, needing to atone for their failure, have picked another fight: threatening to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt over the Department of Justice’s refusal to provide the audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe.

Garland is refusing to play their game.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday April 25, 2024 · 3:00 PM PDT

2024/04/25 · 15:00

Most GOP senators have fallen in line with Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign to return to the White House, starting from the top with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. They’re with him despite everything, including Jan. 6 when he unleashed a mob on the Capitol that threatened their physical safety, if not their lives.

But they are hanging on to the pretense that they’ll be able to constrain him by continuing to refuse to nuke the filibuster for him, something Trump demanded when he was in the White House.

Axios reports that they “are locking arms to defend the filibuster,” pointing out that both senators vying to replace McConnell as leader when he steps down next year—John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota—continue to defend the filibuster as a Senate institution needing to be maintained.

The would-be No. 2 leader, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, told Axios “the filibuster is the character of the United States Senate. I continue to support the filibuster.”

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday April 25, 2024 · 11:19 AM PDT

2024/04/25 · 11:19

Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema, is having a very difficult time figuring out just what it is she stands for, depending upon who she’s talking to. That’s leading her to swing wildly from the far-right fringes steeped in conspiracy theories to trying to put on a “moderate” face to consolidate support.

Abortion is the most obvious example of Lake’s confusion, where she’s flip-flopped between absolute bans, allowing each individual state to decide, and having compassion for all women’s choices.

Now she’s landed right back on the far edge of the fringes, telling an audience at an Idaho Republican gathering (yes, Idaho, and yes, she’s running in Arizona) that it’s “unfortunate” that the 1864 Arizona law banning abortion—which she called “out of line” a few weeks ago—isn’t being enforced.

“[U]nfortunately, the people running our state have said we’re not going to enforce it,” Lake told the right-wing Idaho Dispatch. “We don’t have that law, as much as many of us wish we did.”

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday April 24, 2024 · 11:15 AM PDT

2024/04/24 · 11:15

After 15 months of trying to pull a Biden family crime spree out of thin air, lead impeachment zealot James Comer has watched his dreams of MAGA glory crumble into dust. Comer, the House Oversight Committee chair, told a Republican colleague that he’s ready to be “done with” the whole fiasco, according to CNN.

“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out. He is fed up,” another GOP lawmaker said.

There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess. The effort by Comer and co-zealot Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, to find dirt on President Joe Biden and his son Hunter has ended up with the two coated in mud. It’s become so pathetic that even Sean Hannity has stopped propping it up.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday April 24, 2024 · 6:30 AM PDT

2024/04/24 · 06:30

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case brought by the state of Idaho, which wants the nation’s highest court to rule that its abortion ban preempts federal law when it comes to emergency abortion care.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, requires that hospitals receiving Medicare funding provide stabilizing care for all ER patients—including abortion care, even if it conflicts with a state’s own stricter abortion rules.

Enter Idaho. That state’s draconian abortion ban was triggered the minute the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The ban allows for an abortion when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” but does not require emergency room doctors to provide stabilizing care. The Biden administration sued the state, saying the abortion ban violates EMTALA because its exceptions are too narrow to allow doctors to perform abortions if needed to stabilize a patient.

Idaho’s doctors concur.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday April 23, 2024 · 10:55 AM PDT

2024/04/23 · 10:55

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) questions U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill March 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Bidenâ€™s pick to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, would become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court if confirmed. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) — GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham

The Senate is finally set to pass Ukraine aid, with the first procedural vote Tuesday afternoon and final passage expected as soon as Tuesday night. Now that Republicans are forced to do the right thing, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham has found a way to justify his previous monthslong blockade of the aid package.

“There’s a loan component to it. This would not have passed without President Trump,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. “Trump has created a loan component to this package that gives us leverage down the road.” “His idea of making some of the aid a loan, not a grant, was really a turning point in the whole process,” Graham told Axios, in a desperate bid to save face and justify his craven actions on Ukraine aid.

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday April 22, 2024 · 11:15 AM PDT

2024/04/22 · 11:15

President Joe Biden and Democrats won big in the House Saturday, when it voted resoundingly in support of Ukraine aid. This could mark a turning point for Republicans, leaving them with a choice: to admit defeat and start governing, or to keep fighting with each other.

For months, both former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and current Speaker Mike Johnson have catered to Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the House GOP on Ukraine aid, insisting that it could not pass without a harsh immigration and border security bill. Once they got that, they turned it down at Trump’s request. Now there’s Ukraine aid and no border deal—a big loss for far-right Republicans and Trump.

This could signal that the fever has finally broken among the governing bloc of the GOP … or not. What it has done is unleash a torrent of anger against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the extremist Freedom Caucus by some non-MAGA members.

Before the vote, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas slammed his colleagues, saying, “I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the speaker over it, I mean that’s a strange position to take … I think they want to be in the minority too, I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Friday April 19, 2024 · 10:51 AM PDT

2024/04/19 · 10:51

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and the House Republican leadership meet with reporters following a closed-door Republican strategy session as Johnson pushes towards separate votes on aid for Israel and Ukraine, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

After months of House Speaker Mike Johnson dragging his feet, the House finally voted 316 to 94 to advance the foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Democrats made that happen—again. In fact, Democrats have been responsible for passing every key funding bill during Johnson’s tenure, a fact that continues to enrage the far-right Freedom Caucus. That, in turn, makes Johnson even more reliant on Democrats to keep his gavel.

Newer
Older

RSS

Democrats might stop the House speaker’s ouster—and they won’t let him forget it

3 ways Trump dodged a ‘yes or no’ question on abortion

Mitch McConnell will stop at nothing to regain Senate majority

Trump immunity case shows why we need to reform the Supreme Court

House GOP manufactures new fight after Biden impeachment fails

Delusional Senate Republicans still believe they can control Trump

Who is Arizona’s GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake? She doesn’t even know

The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

The Supreme Court is hearing another abortion case. What could go wrong?

Senate Republicans finally forced to do the right thing on Ukraine aid

Biden wins on Ukraine as House GOP faces big decision about its future

Mike Johnson owes everything to Democrats, and it could cost him his gavel