Author: Politico

Olivia Beavers: We’re still in the press gallery and we’re seeing alerts. This is inching up close to us.

Sarah Ferris: At one point, I saw a group of officials pull House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip Clyburn from the floor in a quick flurry.

Olivia Beavers: Then a House press gallery staffer ran up behind us and locked the doors.

Marianne LeVine, Senate reporter: Then there was an announcement the building wasn’t secure. Intercom, probably Capitol Police. We decided to barricade the doors with couches and chairs. We turned off the lights and we hid behind the desks.

Marianne LeVine: We started hearing noise. We could hear they’d gone into the Capitol. We heard a lot of stampeding and cheers and people. We could hear chants of, “Four more years!” and all that.

Burgess Everett: We could hear people shaking the walls. At this point, people are on the Senate floor and all over the Capitol that shouldn’t be. We don’t even know this because we turned everything off because we’re trying to make it seem like nobody is in this room. We don’t know who the heck is in there. … I just heard banging and yelling, and police screaming and radio. I mean, it just sounded like bedlam.

Stephen Voss: On the north side of the Capitol is a security door. It was very chaotic there. About a dozen rioters had forced themselves through the door but then were pepper sprayed and pushed out; they fell on top of each other in a pile. The Capitol Police tried to close the door, but a rioter had jammed a flagpole into the top of the door to keep it open. The police kept trying to close the door and eventually bent the flagpole. This went on for about 45 minutes. At one point the rioters used a metal barricade to try to ram the door. The door glass eventually broke but the police managed to keep the rioters out.

Olivia Beavers: That’s when you notice this sizable shift on the floor below, especially on the Democratic side, which I could see more clearly because I was closer, that, “Oh sh–, something is going on.”

Sarah Ferris: Hundreds of lawmakers, who had been seated on the floor or in the upper galleries, began turning to whisper to each other, some raising their voice as they asked what was going on, others frantically checking their phones.

Olivia Beavers: What we could see was the looks on the faces of the members: “Is this really happening?”

Melanie Zanona: Members started to get loud, they were talking to each other, they were starting to kind of go at each other. One member at one point, a Democrat, Steve Cohen, yelled over towards the Republican side of the room and said, “Call Trump and tell him to call this off.” And then a little bit later on, a lawmaker sitting on the Republican side shot back and said something along the lines of, “I bet you liberals are glad now you didn’t defund the police.” And he then said, “Let’s hear it for the Capitol Police.” Got a few people to start clapping.

Sarah Ferris: We were also told tear gas has been dispersed, spurring another flurry on the floor as staff sprinted to start distributing the escape hoods that Congress ordered as an emergency precaution after 9/11.

Olivia Beavers: We’re watching members take out these gas masks and you can hear the crumpling sound of the wrapping.

Melanie Zanona: And the Capitol Police officer said there’s protesters [in Statuary Hall], tear gas has been dispersed. And he started advising everyone where the escape hoods were located up in the gallery. The gallery staff started then passing out—there were these big black duffel bags, and they started taking out these escape hoods. They were contained in this foil, wrapped up in this foil. It was like a double package.

Olivia Beavers: Congressman [Ruben] Gallego stood up on a chair and told people to stay calm and take deep breaths or they’d pass out.

Melanie Zanona: When they were passing out the escape hoods on the balcony, the Capitol police officer was like, OK, everyone, you know, put on your hoods and then someone else got on the microphone. I think it was the new chaplain, who’s a female, but a female voice did get on the microphone and said, “Let’s pray,” and started praying as all the members and staffers and everyone is putting on these escape hoods, preparing to be evacuated. She said a prayer.

Olivia Beavers: They’re getting evacuated. This is really escalating.

Melanie Zanona: And then a police officer is like, “OK, everyone, follow me.” The way the balconies are set up, it’s like they’re sectioned off. So we have to climb over these gold railings.

Olivia Beavers: As I’m climbing over one railing, this police officer yelled at us to take cover and duck.

Olivia Beavers: There was a moment when a reporter asked me: “Do you think we should take off our press badges?” I said, No.

To rewind a bit: The lack of a National Guard response on Jan. 6 is one of the major subjects of lingering finger-pointing two years after the insurrection. Was this Trump administration malfeasance? Poor law enforcement planning? Opinions vary, but the issue is front and center again with this week’s publication of Sund’s memoir, Courage Under Fire.

In the book, Sund is sharply critical of numerous figures he says were responsible for the failure to deploy federal resources to back up the outnumbered police as they battled the mob. He recounts meetings with congressional staffers in the days before the insurrection in which he was told that then-speaker Nancy Pelosi was “never going to go” for deploying the Guard, and meetings in the midst of the crisis when Pentagon brass said they didn’t want to take responsibility for the unprecedented spectacle of the military rushing the citadel of democracy.

“It was sickening,” Sund told me this week. “I’m sitting here watching my men and women fighting, you know, defend every inch of ground. … I get on the call with the Pentagon to find that they’re really [more] concerned about the look of having the National Guard up at the Capitol than they are about my men and women and their asses handed to them. That’s sickening.”

In the book, Sund ruefully notes that on Jan. 6, it took less time for the New Jersey State Police to deploy from the Garden State than it took for the guard to show up from an armory less than two miles down East Capitol Street.

Sund is one of the more controversial Jan. 6 law enforcement figures, the first person ousted over the day’s security failures, and someone who has come under vocal criticism from fellow cops like the injured Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone, whose book beat Sund’s to market by three months. When I interviewed him last fall, Fanone scoffed at the idea of Sund writing a book at all. “The reality is that the United States Capitol Police as an agency was an absolute and utter fucking failure,” he said.

But John Falcicchio, the D.C. deputy mayor who sat in on the day’s panicked law enforcement conversations from the city police command center, says that Sund’s depiction of the unheeded calls for federal backup rings true.

“[D.C. Police] Chief [Robert] Contee kind of says, Hey, listen, guys. Let’s just get right down to it. Chief Sund, are you inviting the National Guard to come support the U.S. Capitol Police on the grounds of the Capitol? And there’s like a silent moment. Then he says yes. And literally, the Pentagon is the next voice heard. And they’re literally like, we’re not going to be able to fulfill that request.” The room deflated. “The Pentagon, in fairness, was saying: Listen, that visual of the National Guard charging up to the Capitol is one we don’t know that it’s the best one to portray.”

Whatever his intentions — and I’m not competent to litigate whether he was a goat or a scapegoat — Sund’s book draws an interesting connection, one that is worth pondering as the country looks forward: In his telling, there’s a direct connection between the decision making on Jan. 6 and something that had happened just a half-year earlier, when the Trump administration flooded the city with federalized law enforcement to counter the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd.

If the consensus about Jan. 6 is that there was an unconscionably weak federal response, the general opinion about the summer of 2020 is that there was a disgracefully excessive military presence when Donald Trump took his infamous walk across a freshly-cleared Lafayette Square in the company of the uniformed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

From the aforementioned general — Mark H. Milley, who soon gave a full-throated apology for an appearance that “created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics” — on down, the photo-op was panned as a dangerous break from American traditions.

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” retired General and former Trump administration defense secretary James Mattis wrote in a statement at the time. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo-op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

It’s less well remembered now, but the summer of protests was full of smaller-scale versions of this disagreement. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser remade her previously conflict-averse political reputation by clapping back at Trump’s threats to sic Secret Service dogs on protesters. As late as Jan. 5, Bowser was writing Trump’s acting attorney general to note that the city’s requests for assistance the next day did not mean there was any interest in a repeat of 2020, when “unidentifiable personnel — in many cases armed — caused confusion among residents and visitors.”

And of course, the New York Times’ decision on June 3, 2020, to run an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton headlined “Send In the Troops” famously led to a staff revolt and the ouster of the paper’s editorial page editor as the organization disavowed the column’s publication.

Sund’s book got advance attention ahead of its publication because of the former chief’s warning that the failures ahead of Jan. 6 could easily be repeated — in his view, the system that failed to pass along intelligence about far-right insurrectionists’ plans has not really changed. When we spoke this week, he went into wonky detail about the system for calling out the guard and other reinforcements, a cumbersome process that involved sign-offs from Pentagon brass as well as from the congressional leadership to whom the Capitol Police report. He thinks a single person should be put in charge of Capitol security.

The complicated reporting structure remains, he said, though the 2021 recommendations of a panel of security experts to make it easier for the chief to call in the Guard were instituted later that year. Still, Sund said, the chief’s call for backup can be overridden, and depends on there already being an emergency — something that wouldn’t make it any easier to pre-deploy in response to intelligence.

“It’s a no-win situation for a chief,” he told me.

In Washington’s local government, meanwhile, the issue connects to a perpetual sore point: D.C.’s lack of statehood. Anywhere else in the country, a governor could simply call out the Guard. But in the capital, it requires sign-off from the executive branch, which on Jan. 6 was occupied by the administration whose admirers were behind the disturbance. In pushing for statehood, the locals would like to change that arrangement.

All of this process stuff makes sense as far as it goes. But as with so much else about permanent Washington’s perennial hope of a return to normal after the chaos of 2020, it doesn’t factor in the reality of what America is in 2023: a country where the kinds of crises that lead to calls for the National Guard are likely to have a partisan overlay.

That’s an enormous change. Beyond hurricanes and other natural disasters, there’s a long history of federal backup being brought in to deal with things that were in some sense enormously political: civil disturbances like the 1968 riots that burned swathes of D.C., standoffs like the eviction of the Bonus Army of jobless World War I veterans that marched on the capital in 1932. Further afield, federalized Guard units enforced desegregation rulings during civil rights-era standoffs like the one in Little Rock.

But in none of those cases was it about the results of an election pitting one party against another, as on Jan. 6, or even about an issue that tracked as closely with party as did the protests in the summer of 2020, by which point opinions on the civil rights issues of the day had — unlike in the era of Little Rock — sundered along partisan lines. Especially after the spectacle of Lafayette Square, can you blame the brass for not wanting to get involved on their own?

It’s healthy, in a free country, to feel uncomfortable about having armed forces sort out partisan battles. But it’s dangerous to not police political lawlessness because the authorities are afraid they’ll be dragged by the insurrectionists’ elected admirers.

Which is why Sund’s preferred solution, that deployment decisions somehow be yanked away from politics, isn’t going to cut it. All the procedural improvements in the world won’t change the fact that political timidity will hamper any fight against insurrection. Ending the partisan divide over insurrectionism would be the best way out of danger. But if that’s not possible, ending the timidity about fighting it would help, too.

“Coelho asked me to go in,” said Jim Margolis, the former senior adviser to Barack Obama who back then was a twentysomething Democratic operative. “I thought I was going in for two days, and I emerged, like, eight weeks later,” he told me. “I can just see us in these crowded little clerks’ offices, with the throngs of people, and the vote-counting attempting to take place, and all the histrionics.”

“Hand-counting paper ballots and punch-card ballots is a grueling process,” Stephen Nix, now the senior director of Eurasia at the International Republican Institute, then the Midwest field director for the NRCC, told me. “Complete monotony,” he recalled, “and then all of a sudden there’s a questionable ballot and everybody runs to the table and surrounds the table, and there’s all this scrutiny, and there’s all this debate.”

By the middle of April, as the auditors went from county to county, the day-to-day updates in the papers in Evansville read like a neck-and-neck horse race. “McCloskey jumps ahead three votes,” a headline read on April 11. “Lead seesaws,” a headline read on April 12. “McIntyre stretches lead to six,” a headline read on April 13. The NRCC ran full-page advertisements in the papers. “Frank McCloskey and the Democrats in Washington,” the ads read, “are doing more than just insulting the people of Indiana — they are trying to steal an election.”

On April 18, though, at the intermittently testy last public hearing at the Municipal Building in Evansville, the task force had had one final, fateful decision. At issue were 94 unnotarized, unwitnessed absentee ballots from a handful of counties. By law, none of them should have been counted — a point upon which everyone agreed. The trouble was some of them were, because some county clerks had sent 62 of them to precincts, meaning they already had been among the mix of the counted. It was too late to take them out. The rub now was the remaining 32. They had been rightfully held back by other clerks. They had not been counted.

“These were held separately,” Panetta explained at the hearing. “They ought not to be counted.”

Clay, the other Democrat, concurred. It was “unfortunate,” he said, that first group was counted, but to now count the second “would be to compound the problem that already exists.”

Thomas, the one Republican, was livid. He charged “hypocrisy.” The abiding proposition of the task force was to “treat like ballots in a like way,” he said. “I heard over and over again that the cry is count all the ballots,” he said. They should “at least be consistent,” he said.

“The reality is this,” Panetta countered. “While we say we count all the ballots, we do make some judgments and we do apply some discretion.”

Thomas, becoming more and more frustrated, which is clear even from just reading the transcript, asked Shumway for some guidance. But Shumway’s job was to be in charge of the counting of the ballots — that the task force decided to count. “I am glad the basic decision on this,” he told the trio, “is yours and not mine.”

“Some were sent to the precinct and some were retained by the clerks. My question is: So what?” Thomas said. “Is the difference in where they have been physically located sufficient to treat them entirely differently?”

“These became scrambled when they went to the precincts. It is too bad. But they became scrambled at the precinct level,” Panetta stressed. He called this “the distinguishing feature.”

The task force put it to a vote. The Democrats said no to counting the 32. The Republican said yes.

“Really surprising,” Thomas said sarcastically.

And with that, and at the end of this 5-hour, 14-minute hearing, Shumway announced the final tally — McCloskey, 116,645; McIntyre, 116,641. A margin of four votes. The task force audit had made the result even closer and less certain.

Republicans’ recriminations ramped up even more.

“They have the arrogant power and they use it,” Thomas said. “We will not be civilized. We will not assume it’s business as usual. We will not go back to playing the lackey.” Thomas said he felt like he’d been “raped.” Too strong? “Talk to a rape victim,” he would tell the Los Angeles Times. “Ask them after it’s over if they can just forget about it. I feel personally violated.” (Thomas declined to comment.)

The announcement was made as the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice released details of a plan to impose a new regulation — a version of a Trump-era policy often called the “transit ban.” Under the new rule, migrants would be prohibited from applying for asylum in the United States unless they were first turned away for safe harbor by another country. It would also deem ineligible migrants who don’t go through authorized ports of entry. DHS and DOJ will hear public comment on the proposed regulation before it goes into effect.

Biden said the new details announced Thursday “won’t fix our entire immigration system but they can help us a good deal in better managing what is a difficult challenge.” He added: “Until Congress passes the funds, a comprehensive immigration plan to fix the system completely, my administration is going to work to make things at the border better using the tools that we have.”

The president also confirmed plans for his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office. Biden said he will visit El Paso, Texas, on Sunday to “assess border enforcement operations” and “meet with local officials.” The visit comes ahead of his trip to Mexico City for the “Three Amigos” summit with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts.

The moves reflect the Biden administration’s latest venture to combat a migration surge straining the U.S. immigration system. They also come as the president faces growing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on border issues.

The topic has intensified for the Biden administration in recent weeks as officials prepared for a court-ordered end to Title 42 limits, only to see the Supreme Court temporarily block lifting the policy. But regardless of the Trump-era policy’s fate — set to be decided by the high court later this year — the southern border is facing a record-breaking migration influx likely to remain a key policy issue throughout Biden’s presidency.

Biden referenced a plan he put forth in the early days of his presidency to overhaul the “broken immigration system,” including policy to crack down on illegal immigration and protect recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and other “Dreamers” brought to the U.S. illegally as children by their family. The president called out Republicans for rejecting his proposal and his requests for additional funding.

“Our problems at the border didn’t arise overnight and are not going to be solved overnight. It’s a difficult problem. It’s clear that immigration is a political issue that extreme Republicans are always going to run on,” he said. “But now they have a choice. They can keep using immigration to try to score political points or they can help solve the problem and come together to fix the broken system.”

The humanitarian parole program, effective immediately, builds upon the one rolled out solely for Venezuelans this fall, which created a narrow pathway for up to 24,000 migrants who have preexisting ties in the U.S., and people who could provide financial and other support. Implementation of the program, which deals with countries facing political and economic turmoil, is dependent on the use of the Title 42 authority to turn away those at the U.S.-Mexico border who don’t qualify.

Border agents have already turned away masses of Venezuelans using Title 42 authority over the past few months, and now they will do the same for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. Mexico has agreed to accept 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, Biden said.

Migrants who cross unlawfully into Panama or Mexico will be also deemed ineligible for the program, in an attempt to discourage people from taking the dangerous journey through the Darien Gap.

The program for Venezuelans, announced in October 2022, forces migrants to apply for asylum from their home country, while expelling those who tried to enter the U.S. unlawfully from Mexico. Venezuelans who were approved for humanitarian parole were allowed to enter the U.S. by air. The number of those migrants crossing illegally has dropped 70 percent, falling from about 21,000 in October to 6,200 in November, according to latest U.S. Customs and Border protection data.

Alongside additional legal pathways and deterrence, the administration is continuing its preparation for the end of Title 42 limits, Biden said Thursday. The administration is working to counter cartels and human smuggling networks, while surging resources like personnel, transportation, medical support and facilities to support border officials. Border cities and other jurisdictions receiving a large number of migrants will also receive additional funding and support, Biden said Thursday. DHS plans to expand outreach to state and local officials.

These steps come as Democratic-led cities dealing with migrants bused in from the southern border pleaded with the White House this week to help them manage an influx that has already overloaded community resources. Republicans have also called on the administration to do more, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pointing out the high levels of Cuban and Haitian migrants in South Florida.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said Biden has been listening to appeals by him and fellow Democratic mayors of Chicago and Washington, D.C. “and he realizes that there are things we must do.”

“And I just don’t believe this is the end of the sentence. This is a comma. We need to continue that sentence so it ends with an exclamation point, and we have resolved our decade of border crisis,” he said.

But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called Biden’s plan a “band-aid for a historic flood.”

While Thursday’s announcements could temporarily help the administration tackle the record number of people fleeing to the U.S., the president’s speech was met with swift condemnation from immigration reform advocates and lawyers who decry any expansion of Title 42, which has allowed border agents to immediately expel millions of migrants on public health grounds without considering their claims for asylum. For days, administration officials have been weighing the political consequences of doubling down on public health policy.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) slammed the moves on Thursday. He said while he approved of the administration’s decision to increase access to parole for a small number of migrants, “this benefit will exclude migrants fleeing violence and persecution who do not have the ability or economic means to qualify for the new parole process.”

“The Biden Administration’s decision to expand Title 42, a disastrous and inhumane relic of the Trump Administration’s racist immigration agenda, is an affront to restoring rule of law at the border,” Menendez said in a statement. “I am deeply disturbed that instead of working with Congress to develop a solution to the multiple humanitarian crises that are fueling mass migration in our hemisphere, the Administration is circumventing immigration law which will exacerbate chaos and confusion at the Southern border.”

Coupling this action with the resurrection of a policy similar to the Trump-era transit ban put the administration in defensive mode to ward off criticism among Democrats and immigrant advocates. Menendez said the decision to move forward with an “unlawful” transit ban “erases the words and values etched on the Statue of Liberty.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, at a press conference that immediately followed Biden’s, repeatedly said the new policy has “no resemblance” to the previous administration’s transit ban because DHS has also introduced lawful pathways.

He also further detailed plans to expand Title 8 border processing in anticipation for the end of Title 42 restrictions. Title 8 would allow the government to quickly remove from the country anyone unable to establish a legal basis — such as an approved asylum claim. These migrants would be subject to a five-year reentry ban.

“I think rather than see this as restricting individuals’ abilities to seek asylum, you should see this as managing the border in an orderly and humane way, while also expanding these pathways with the parole program,” one administration official said Thursday when asked about potential blowback to the announcements.

Marianne LeVine, Erin Durkin and Gary Fineout contributed to this report.

The mystery is why other Republicans — his own allies in particular — would go along with this.

Even before the latest round of overnight negotiating, McCarthy was at risk of violating principles of power that are at work in any arena where people jostle for influence and recognition — from school playgrounds to world capitals. McCarthy has served notice that there is more advantage to be gained by being his enemy than his ally.

The reports on the latest maneuvering put that in a vivid light. POLITICO’s story described the bargaining as a “glimmer of hope” for McCarthy. The details, however, are hopeful in the same way that a person dying of thirst might find a pitcher of saltwater hopeful.

McCarthy is ready to drink.

Previously, he had agreed to House rules that would allow five members to push a “motion to vacate” forcing a vote on whether to oust the speaker. Going any lower than that was supposedly a “red line.” Now, a new deal would allow just one person to force a new showdown and McCarthy advocates say there is not really a practical difference between one and five.

Red line? What we meant to say was actually, you know, not so much red as kind of magenta. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a McCarthy supporter, said as he left the would-be speaker’s office Thursday morning that the latest moves should not be thought of as “concessions” but rather “clarifications.” He said he’s confident his fellow GOP partisans won’t “misuse” the motion to vacate.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, with which McCarthy opponents closely align, would also get a guaranteed two spots on the powerful House Rules Committee — amid signs that McCarthy might surrender the speaker’s historical power to decide which individuals get the seats.

Opponents are also using their leverage to extract major changes in the appropriations process. There would be standalone votes on each 12 annual appropriations bills — a major priority for fiscal conservatives who deplore big “omnibus” spending packages — considered under an “open rule” that allows any lawmaker to offer floor amendments.

Notably, according to Bade’s reporting in POLITICO Playbook, “McCarthy’s camp also expects that he may eventually have to endorse [his opponent’s preferred choices] for committee gavels, such as Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who’s pushing to lead the Health and Human Services subcommittee on Appropriations, or Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who’s gunning to lead the Committee on Homeland Security.”

If you are someone other than Harris or Green and had been hoping someday to wield that gavel, and have been a steadfast McCarthy supporter, how do you feel about that preceding sentence? As a practical matter, McCarthy is asking his own supporters to be as supine toward him as he is being to his opponents.

McCarthy may feel he has no choice, but what’s striking about the modern House is that there are many others who also feel that their range of options is so narrow. An earlier generation of lawmakers would have had multiple other powerful actors — veteran committee chairs and appropriators and the like — with independent bases of power. There is scant prospect that they would have been fine with letting a weakened figure take the speakership or simply leave it to McCarthy to decide for himself how long he wants to let this week’s drama drag on.

There were some signs of a backlash. The Dispatch reported that Rep. Robert Alderholt, a veteran GOP appropriator from Alabama and McCarthy backer, is bridling at the latest reports. Adding some people to committees, is one thing, but “as far as skipping over people’s seniority … I think we’ve gone too far.”

Also notable is the nature of McCarthy’s defense. Just as he chose not to have Republicans campaign last fall on an idea platform — such as Newt Gingrich’s “Contract for America” in 1994 — he has not really waged battle with his opponents on the ideas front. He has urged them to get in line for the sake of party unity, and on grounds that Republicans should be firing at President Joe Biden rather than each other.

But he so far hasn’t ventured a substantive argument like: My values and judgment about governing are better, and more in line with the country’s mood and the mainstream of the GOP, than those of my grandstanding opponents like Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert.

He might reasonably ask: How on earth would that help anything? One answer is that it would at least claim a higher ground for his candidacy than what he has tried so far — transactional maneuvering, now turning to rank appeasement. That’s especially true since the latter approach hasn’t worked so far, and — with multiple opponents saying they are hard no’s no matter what McCarthy puts forward — there is only the slightest reason to suppose it will start working.

For now, McCarthy has maneuvered himself into a situation where he might face something worse than losing the speakership: Winning it under conditions like these.

The possible deal comes after several hours of negotiations with McCarthy’s detractors and less than a day after the GOP leader made an offer that conceded to basically all of their demands — including making it easier to boot a speaker.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of McCarthy’s opponents, said that there was a deal “on paper,” but cautioned that it was a first step.

“It’s changes that we wanted. Now we’ve got a lot more that we want to get to. This is round one. It’s on paper. Which is a good thing,” Norman said.

Other McCarthy opponents acknowledged significant progress, but were cagey about whether they had reached a final proposal for both sides to sign off on.

“A lot of good work has been done today. There’s still a lot of work to be done,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), asked if there was a deal, replied cryptically: “Very exciting.”

The sign of hope for McCarthy follows a third day of high-profile failed votes on the House floor.

There were few visible shifts over those many hours, as his opponents continued to break against him: While most started the day rallied behind Rep. Byron Donalds, by Thursday evening several had broken off to support Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), a name POLITICO previously reported as rippling amongst McCarthy’s defectors. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) also nominated former President Donald Trump.

But McCarthy spent Thursday’s votes huddling with some of his detractors. He was spotted chatting with Rep.-elect Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), two members who are so far opposing his bid. Clyde, asked afterward about the conversation, told a reporter that it was “none of your business.”

Meanwhile, GOP Whip Tom Emmer convened meetings in his office during the votes, including with Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), one of the no votes.

“This is the most hopeful set of conversations we’ve had in weeks,” McCarthy ally Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said, adding that the offer by leadership allies amounts to “clarifying what our intent is — and that enables trust, where some have had trust issues.”

Republicans are weighing trying to adjourn through Friday or the weekend as they face likely absences from their own members. And leadership is hoping that their nascent deal with conservatives will help corral support for taking that break.

The GOP is already missing one member: Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) missed the ninth ballot after traveling back to his home state for a “planned non-emergency medical procedure,” a spokesperson told POLITICO. Buck’s office said the lawmaker would be out the rest of Thursday and most of Friday.

The tentative breakthrough comes as McCarthy’s allies have spent most of Thursday trying to figure out if the glimmers of hope over the potential deal are just a mirage. In a slim majority, he can’t afford to alienate the other side of his conference, where centrists and institutionalists already have heartburn over the proffered deal.

“I want to see what those concessions are, line by line. And maybe name by name,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.)

“Frustrated? That’s mild,” he added.

And tensions remain sky-high among House Republicans on Thursday. During one meeting between McCarthy and Main Street Republicans, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told members that if anyone was wavering, they should “get out,” according to a member in the room who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity.

Johnson’s move was meant to ensure those who stayed were unified in backing McCarthy. No one left the room.

The offer McCarthy made to conservatives on Wednesday night includes items many in his conferences once viewed as red lines.

It would, according to two Republicans familiar with the proposal, include a vote on term limits for members, more seats for Freedom Caucus members on the powerful House Rules Committee, and allowing a single member to force a vote on ousting the speaker. That last item is a particularly steep climbdown for McCarthy — essentially guaranteeing that if he does land the gavel, it’s never fully safe.

Additionally, the conservative Club for Growth agreed Thursday to back McCarthy’s speaker bid pending the deal. That came after the McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund reached a deal with the Club, which had initially signaled opposition to McCarthy, to stay out of open House primaries for safe Republican seats.

McCarthy’s camp is hoping that if they can winnow down his opposition from 20 to a half-dozen or so, the pressure on the remaining holdouts will be so great that enough would cave. McCarthy has also floated that if he can flip enough “no” votes into his column, he could convince others to vote “present,” helping him by lowering the number of total votes he needs to win.

But Republicans are also worried that a hardline group of their colleagues are essentially unwinnable. At the start of the day, a leadership aide said there are likely still five “hard nos” against McCarthy: Gaetz (Fla.), Boebert (Colo.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Bob Good (Va.) and Matt Rosendale (Mont.). McCarthy can only lose four GOP votes and still win the speakership, assuming full attendance.

“We need to get to a point where we evaluate what life after Kevin McCarthy looks like,” Boebert said as she nominated Hern on Thursday.

McCarthy allies are also worried about incoming Rep. Eli Crane (Ariz.). In a warning sign, Crane said on Thursday night that he was “not looking for a deal” and “leadership knows where I’m at.”

McCarthy’s camp also expects that he may eventually have to endorse conservatives for committee gavels, such as Rep. Andy Harris (Md.), who’s pushing to lead the Health and Human Services subcommittee on Appropriations, or Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who’s gunning to lead the Homeland Security Committee. (Those decisions are subject to the approval of the GOP steering committee, though McCarthy’s influence is significant.)

If the negotiating gets that far, it’s bound to upset centrists and even some mainstream conservatives, who are likely to argue that McCarthy is rewarding bad behavior.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), for example, also wants the Homeland Security gavel.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), for one, called dropping the motion to vacate down to one member a “terrible decision,” but left the door open if it got McCarthy the speaker’s gavel.

“I don’t like it. I don’t want to vote for it. But I’m willing to discuss it,” said Bacon, while warning that setting it at one member could result in the step being taken “every week.”

Nicholas Wu, Katherine Tully-McManus, Meredith Lee Hill and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

And that’s a harsh reality for the upper chamber’s Democrats. They can unilaterally approve President Joe Biden’s lifetime judicial nominees — confirming them even more quickly than last term, thanks to a clear 51-seat majority.

But they won’t be satisfied with simply turning the Senate floor into a nomination factory after Biden’s unexpectedly productive first two years in office. It’s just not in their DNA.

“I want to see some action,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a member of Democratic leadership who chairs the Senate Rules Committee.

Holding only 50 Senate seats and a narrow House majority over Biden’s first two years in office, Democrats pushed through two sweeping party-line laws on Covid aid as well as taxes, health care and energy. That’s on top of bipartisan law spending billions on infrastructure, safeguarding same-sex marriage, tightening gun safety standards and boosting microchip manufacturing.

An agenda even approaching that size seems unattainable in the coming months as House Republicans flail their way through a stalemated speaker battle. Yet Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is still hopeful, regardless of who ends up leading the House, that lawmakers can “keep the streak going moving forward.”

Rather than sweeping changes to election law, D.C. statehood or the gargantuan plan known as “Build Back Better,” Democrats are discussing modest but still challenging issues to tackle this Congress. Klobuchar mentioned childcare, housing, Big Tech and antitrust as possibilities as well as “some type of immigration” bill.

“I know it seems impossible in the House, but it’s really necessary,” she said.

Schumer is still keen on marijuana banking legislation, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is eager to bring down drug prices and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) believes there’s room for bipartisan agreement on housing and crypto regulation.

All of those would have to clear the 60-vote hurdle of the Senate’s legislative filibuster before House Republicans would even think of considering them. And some Democrats argue that the only way to motivate the House to think in a more bipartisan fashion is to lead the way.

“It’s going to take a different strategy. We’ll work together here, and set an example,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).

The last time Democrats found themselves in the situation they’re confronting now — holding the presidency and Senate majority with a GOP House — was in 2012 after President Barack Obama’s reelection. That Senate took significant and risky steps toward bipartisanship, not all of them successful: An attempt at new gun background checks fell short, while a bipartisan Gang of Eight senators, including Schumer, helped pass a sweeping immigration reform bill.

But the House refused to touch immigration. Eventually, the government shut down as House Republicans and Senate conservatives tried to defund Obamacare. Then, Democrats lost the Senate in the brutal 2014 election.

With that lesson learned, Democrats are not aiming as high this time around. And even if Kevin McCarthy eventually manages to seize the speakership in the coming days, it’s hard to imagine a rush of bipartisanship in the first half of this year.

Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said things will look more sunny “if Kevin holds his ground and … tries to work with some of the people who are more moderate. And don’t cater to people that hold you hostage. In America we always say we don’t pay for hostages.”

“I’ve talked to Kevin before — I’d like to think that” he’ll work with us, Manchin said. “We’ll just see how he comes out of this.”

There’s also the question of whether Senate Republicans will even allow things to get that far. With just 51 seats, Democrats will need at least nine GOP votes in the Senate to pass anything. That means Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who collaborated with Democrats to a surprising degree that past two years, maintains effective veto power over any legislation moving through the chamber.

Democratic leaders will have to calibrate their ambitions to what is doable, and possibly once again allow bipartisan gangs to cut deals. Different factions of Republicans have shown interest in taking on Big Tech, marijuana banking and lowering drug prices, particularly insulin.

And GOP leaders said Biden may have to get involved.

“I don’t think anybody for two years will want to just do judges. I think you want to see if there are some legislative accomplishments we can put up,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “But clearly you’re going to have strong differences of opinion in divided government. So that’s going to require some presidential leadership.”

Then there are the must-pass spending bills, the debt ceiling and an expiring farm bill to confront. In particular, Republicans want to avoid another big end-of-year government funding deal crafted behind closed doors, after December’s $1.7 trillion bipartisan bill.

That will require both House Republicans and Senate Democrats to actually prioritize putting appropriations bills on the floor.

“That’s where Republicans in the House will make a difference once they get leadership established,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

Of course, that assumes the fractious House can cobble together 218 votes even for spending bills after this week’s ugly speaker clashes. But a handful of optimistic Democratic senators see the House’s current struggle as a potentially cathartic one.

Brown said he hoped this week’s disarray “will free up enough Republicans to realize that if they want to get anything done, they have to work across party lines with us.”

“I don’t know that House Republicans want to go back and say: ‘Oh yeah, we did a lot of investigations,’” he added.

The FTC is also looking to prohibit other types of employment provisions under the rule that have the same effect as a non-compete. That could include requirements to repay training expenses if a worker leaves a company within a certain time period.

The FTC’s proposal would extend to nearly all work arrangements, including unpaid or volunteer positions, apprentices and independent contractors, in addition to regular employees.

The proposal fulfills a key pillar of President Joe Biden’s competition policy agenda from last year. In a sprawling executive order from July 2021 the White House directed the entirety of the federal government to prioritize work involving competition policy and enforcement, particularly in labor markets. That specifically included a rulemaking effort by the FTC on non-compete clauses.

“For decades, I’ve fought for the notion that if your employer wants to keep you, they need to make it worth your while with good pay and benefits,” Biden said in a tweet. “Consistent with my Executive Order, today’s FTC announcement to limit non-compete agreements is a huge win for workers.”

Non-competes are a “widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses,” the agency said in a statement.

The FTC estimates that banning the practice could put close to $300 billion back in the pockets of workers each year, as well as boost the career opportunities for about 30 million Americans.

“It is an individual problem for a worker, but it is an aggregate problem for the economy,” FTC Chair Lina Khan told reporters on Wednesday’s call.

In written statements, Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, highlighted not only the effect of non-competes on wages but also on innovation and new business formation.

“This in turn reduces product quality while raising prices,” Khan wrote, saying that in the health care sector alone, banning non-competes could lower consumer prices by as much as $150 billion each year.

The FTC commissioners voted 3-1 along partisan lines to issue the proposal, with the agency’s lone Republican commissioner Christine Wilson voting no.

In a written statement, Wilson said her fellow commissioners are departing “from hundreds of years of legal precedent that employs a fact-specific inquiry into whether a non-compete clause is unreasonable,” and instead is proposing a near-blanket ban on the practice. Wilson also questioned whether the agency has the constitutional authority to issue the rules, and said a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority dooms the FTC’s efforts on non-competes.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also criticized the proposal, saying the agency lacks authority to issue the rule and that it ignores the benefits of the practice.

“Attempting to ban noncompete clauses in all employment circumstances overturns well-established state laws which have long governed their use and ignores the fact that, when appropriately used, noncompete agreements are an important tool in fostering innovation and preserving competition,” Sean Heather, U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president for international regulatory affairs and antitrust, said in a statement.

According to the other three commissioners, in many cases, employers leverage their outsized bargaining power to compel workers into signing these contracts, such as by making them a condition for receiving severance pay or part of an employment agreement.

“For too long, coercive noncompete agreements have unfairly denied millions of working people the freedom to change jobs, negotiate for better pay, and start new businesses,” Sarah Miller, who heads up the antimonopoly group American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement.

Khan said that one reason for the rulemaking was the increased utilization of non-compete agreements across a broader segment of the American workforce in recent decades.

“These are no longer just being used in the boardroom, but are now basically proliferated across the economy,” she said.

The FTC estimates that roughly one-in-five workers are subject to non-competes, Khan said.

In a tweet, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chair’s the Senate Finance Committee, said “non-compete clauses are anti-worker and anti-American, plain and simple. I’m glad the [FTC] is moving to end this practice and level the playing field for American workers.”

As a precursor, the FTC on Wednesday announced enforcement actions against two glass companies and a pair of related security firms over their use of non-competes.

States including California, North Dakota and Oklahoma, as well as the District of Columbia have already outlawed the use of non-compete agreements, and other states restrict their use among certain groups of workers.

The process to write and implement a rule can be lengthy, and includes public comments and potential legal challenges. A final rule will likely not be in place until at least 2024. The FTC will open the proposal for two months of public comments and the rule will take effect six months after a final version is published.

The FTC frequently uses its rulemaking authority to enforce its consumer protection mandate, including recently proposed regulations governing privacy and data security practices. The last time the agency issued a competition rule, however, was in 1967, governing “discriminatory Practices in Men’s and Boys’ Tailored Clothing Industry.” The rule was never enforced, and rescinded in 1994.

“We cannot let personal politics place the safety and security of the United States at risk,” they said.

The trio’s shot at the 20 conservative holdouts preventing McCarthy from taking the gavel comes as concerns mount among security-oriented lawmakers that they can’t do their work until a speaker is elected. Those complaints in the opening days of the new Congress include not being able to access classified information and an inability to begin committee work.

Until a speaker is elected, lawmakers cannot be sworn in. Committees won’t form, new Republican chairs won’t be confirmed, new members won’t be appointed to panels and subcommittee chairs won’t be named.

The Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs panels — chaired by Turner, Rogers and McCaul, respectively — feature prominently in the GOP agenda. The lawmakers reiterated they “strongly support” McCarthy as the fight heads into a third day.

“McCarthy’s Commitment to America agenda outlines a stronger approach to countering China, a plan to investigate the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how a Republican majority will hold this administration accountable,” they said.

It’s the most high profile warning so far as McCarthy and his allies look to break a logjam on the House floor. But Democrats and Republicans tasked with oversight of the Pentagon and intelligence community have been sounding the alarm throughout the week about the impact of a drawn–out fight.

House GOP military veterans aired their concerns at a press conference on Wednesday.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said he and fellow Armed Services member Don Bacon (R-Neb.) were scheduled to meet with Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley in secure House facilities on Wednesday to discuss security in the Indo-Pacific region, but were barred from doing so.

“I’m informed by House security that, technically, I don’t have a clearance,” Gallagher told reporters. “I’m a member of the Intel Committee, I’m on the Armed Services Committee, and I can’t meet in the SCIF to conduct essential business.

“My point is we have work to do that we can’t do right now,” he added.

Lawmakers aren’t required to obtain security clearances, but are permitted access to sensitive information through their positions.

Gallagher has also been tapped by McCarthy to chair a select committee to assess the wide array of security and economic threats posed by China. The panel is a major pillar of the House GOP national security agenda, but a resolution establishing the committee can’t be considered until the House elects a speaker and organizes.

Intelligence Committee member Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) also complained that members of his panel “don’t have access” to their secure facilities or classified information.

“The secure facility that we work in every day when we’re here, we can’t go in there right now,” Wenstrup said. “We would get daily briefs. We’re in there all the time. And right now, we can’t be in there at all.”

The concerns are bipartisan. Incoming Armed Services ranking Democrat Adam Smith of Washington said the chaos on the House floor is “a problem” for committee work.

“We’re going to be without any committees for potentially weeks,” Smith told POLITICO.

It’s unclear how long McCarthy can sustain his bid. Though he has the backing of the majority of the GOP conference, the California Republican has flipped no votes in his favor in six ballots.

McCarthy may have made progress overnight with a series of concessions to conservatives, however, including allowing a lower threshold for forcing a vote to oust the speaker and granting seats on the House Rules Committee to members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus.

His path to the speakership may include granting some coveted gavels to conservatives.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a top McCarthy opponent, is seeking an Armed Services subcommittee gavel, among other conservative lawmaker requests for committee spots. But Gaetz later said McCarthy solicited a list of committee assignments conservatives wanted and then leaked it to embarrass them. Gaetz has since said he will never back McCarthy.

But Rogers, the presumptive Armed Services chair, acted as an enforcer for McCarthy ahead of the floor battle. The Alabama Republican argued in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday before the speaker election that GOP members who vote against McCarthy should lose their committee assignments.

And Rogers dismissed the possibility of handing a subcommittee gavel to Gaetz on Wednesday, though the issue may now be moot.

“Everybody else has to go through the Steering Committee and make their case. … They want to skip all that,” Rogers told POLITICO. “And of course I’m going to tell one of my subcommittee chairs, ‘Yeah, I want you to step aside so I can reward Matt Gaetz with a chairmanship.’”