Category: Headlines

Just In | The Hill 

The disorder in the House is leaving lawmakers fuming over their inability to stay apprised on national security matters, as it is blocking them from entering classified briefings or meeting with top officials. 

Lawmakers say they can’t even go into a special room known as the sensitive compartmented information facility or SCIF where they discuss top secret information with national security officials.  

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) said he was blocked from entering the SCIF by security as he arrived for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on “matters in the Indo-Pacific.”  

“I’m informed by House security that technically, I don’t have a clearance. 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 said at a press conference alongside other Republicans pleading for a quick resolution to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) quest for the gavel.  

McCarthy supporters are largely sounding the alarm on the national security issue as they try to pressure opponents to reach a deal on the Speaker fight. McCarthy lost an eighth straight ballot to become Speaker on Thursday afternoon. 

Incoming chairs for the House intelligence, armed services, and foreign affairs committee complained the delay is hindering their oversight of the Biden administration — a top priority for the GOP majority.  

“There is no oversight of the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, or the intelligence community. We cannot let personal politics place the safety and security of the United States at risk,” Reps. Michael Turner (Ohio), Mike Rogers (Ala.), and Michael McCaul (Texas) said in a statement. 

Lawmakers don’t directly hold security clearances but are deemed trustworthy for receiving such information simply by the office they hold.  

Other briefings are restricted by committee membership — and the committees cannot be formally comprised until a Speaker is elected.  

“No members have clearances. Our election is supposed to be our vetting process. But the rules only let Intel Committee members view certain materials, the vast majority of the classified materials, and until we’re constituted, members really aren’t able to get those kinds of briefings or accesses,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) who lead the intelligence committee during the prior session.  

Talks to reach a deal among Republicans to make McCarthy the Speaker have not been successful so far. 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is among those opposing McCarthy, suggested in comments Thursday that it could take much more work to reach a deal. One of the concessions that has been discussed is a proposal that would allow a single member of Congress to force a vote to oust a Speaker. 

“There is a trust issue with the gentleman who wants to be Speaker,” Perry said. “It is hard to restore trust in just a month or two and it’s really hard to betray confidences in a meeting where the details are then leaked out to the press.” 

The group has also floated having members of the conservative Freedom Caucus be appointed as subcommittee chairs, subverting the normal process. The idea has drawn pushback from Rogers, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, who characterized it as “insane.”  

“As if Kevin McCarthy or any speaker magically gets to tell members, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m giving your seat to somebody else who’s an aggravation to the conference,’” Rogers told The Hill. “It just shows how insane they are.”  

The total freeze has also led to an interesting dynamic.  

A GOP staffer told The Hill that staff who receive security clearances due to the nature of their work are still able to access the SCIF and receive briefings, even as lawmakers cannot.  

“Nobody on our committee can go down and get briefed on things,” Schiff said.  

“The committee will need to be reconstituted. And most of the materials are only accessible to members of the committee and until reconstituted there are no members of the committee,” he told The Hill. “So Intel is more impacted really than probably just about any other committee.” 

The Intelligence Committee’s formation is more complicated than some other House panels, with members typically seeking waivers to bypass limitations on how many terms a member can sit on the panel — a nod to the importance of institutional knowledge in the constant churn of Congress. 

“Every delay here has a compounding impact. Because the first thing that happens there has to be a Speaker. Then committees are constituted, but Intel is a select committee. So the leader on the minority side and the Speaker have to agree to ratios. Then they have to work out other waivers that have to take place. Who’s the rank[ing member] or who’s the chairman, all these things take time,”Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), who will need a wavier to continue to serve on the panel. 

Some see the shutdown of the House over the Speaker fight as embarrassing and worry it could have negative real-world consequences.  

McCaul, the top Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told The Hill on Thursday that he was worried about missing classified hearings on matters like Syria and the war in Ukraine. 

“Classified briefings about things like that Iran bombed our base in Syria,” he said. “You know, what’s going on in China and Taiwan? What’s going on in Ukraine? We don’t have time to get our classified briefings.” 

Quigley said it doesn’t take more than just a few days for lawmakers to fall behind on world affairs. 

“The world doesn’t stop because one caucus can’t agree. And a couple of days is one thing. Beyond that, it gets complicated and eventually dangerous. You’re flying blind. You don’t know what’s happening,” he said. 

Gallagher said the standoff risks hurting the nation’s global standing. 

“We’ve seen what happens over the last two years. When deterrence fails, when weakness invites aggression. It’s up to this Congress to restore deterrence to restore peace through strength, but we aren’t able to do that vital work until we actually get past the speaker vote, populate our committees and start getting to work,” he said.  

In some corners, the ire is only growing at the 20 lawmakers objecting to McCarthy’ leadership. 

“We have business, serious business, to do. This is not the place to be frivolous,” Rogers said. 

“And we’ve got some people who are being very frivolous right now.” 

​National Security, Policy, China, House Speakership vote, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Gallagher, Mike McCaul, russia, ukraine Read More 

Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

Do you remember the first time you defied your parents — and got away with it? Or the first time you told a boss to shove it — and he shoved it? Donald Trump found himself on the receiving end of this sort of abuse Wednesday, as he pressed the 20 House Republicans blocking Kevin McCarthy from the speakership to vote for his man — and they collectively blew him off.

“Vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory,” Trump wrote (in all caps) on Truth Social. “Republicans, do not turn a great triumph into a giant & embarrassing defeat.”

But not only did the Gang of 20 defy Trump’s pointed directive, one of their leaders sassed him from the floor of the House. GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who is as Trumpy as you can get without resorting to a comb-over, said she was unmoved by his phone calls to the Gang telling them to “knock it off,” and issued orders back to Trump himself: “The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, ‘Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”

Trump’s ineffectual insertion of himself into the speaker ruckus is only one marker of his decaying political powers. His fervent support of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Adam Laxalt and Blake Masters for Senate seats bombed at the ballot box. On Election Night, Fox News, once a steadfast ally, labeled him “The biggest loser tonight” for the Republicans’ poor results. His acid tongue, once corrosive enough to end the careers of his foes, has become impotent: His attempt to brand presidential rival Ron DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” backfired, making Trump the object of derision instead of DeSantis. In December, he hit a seven-year low in his standing with voters. His desultory 2024 presidential campaign has drawn only yawns from the press and politicians, setting him up for a devastating magazine profile by Olivia Nuzzi that portrays him as a sad duffer living in the opulence of the past like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

This is not to say that current events have completely husked Trump and dumped him in the compost. He still commands a core of supporters and a demonstrable ability to fundraise, so let’s keep his political obituary in the prewrite bin for now. But every politician is born with a sell-by date pressed on his forehead, and Trump is no exception. If he’s starting to stink of irrelevance to politicians like Boebert and Matt Gaetz, people he more or less invented, then his political time might be drawing to an end.

Part of Trump’s decline is his fault. Why did he have to jump into the speaker fight to support somebody who is so untrustworthy and reviled? Why did he think that a buffoon like Walker, an opportunist like Oz, or a barking mallard duck like Masters were bankable Senate candidates? But Trump’s decline is equally structural. A politician out of office never carries the swat of a politician in office, no matter what heights he once commanded. As president, Trump could make the nation snap to with an executive order or a military threat directed at Iran or North Korea or a Cabinet firing or a saucy press conference. He could create loyalists by dispensing jobs and favors. He could maintain them with fear tactics. Today, he has less power to affirmatively direct the national conversation than a late-night talk show host and he no longer frightens anyone. Other ex-presidents, like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have accepted their diminished powers and conserved what remains of their influence by entering only fights they know they could win. This fundamental lesson of politics has yet to reach Trump.

Another cause of the Trump deterioration resides in the ambitions of others. As long as he was president, Trump had no rival for the White House among Republicans. He was the go-to guy. But once Joe Biden felled him and he lost the crown, other Republicans who aspired for the presidency were freed to exercise their political dreams. They didn’t have to kill the king. The king had been killed, or at least exiled, freeing them to explore the old leader for his weaknesses should he chose to return. But now, Trump is just in their way, and their personal ambitions outweigh their personal fealty. So far, the aspirants haven’t directly rebuked Trump the way the Gang of 20 has, but in ignoring him they’ve signaled that they think his time has passed. Why risk a murder charge by playing the role of Brutus when you can count on the tide to carry Trump away?

“All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs,” the racist British politician Enoch Powell observed in 1977. Trump’s end had to come sooner or later. But it’s coming now.

******

Your boss is like your average politician. Eventually he becomes irrelevant, too. Send notes on longevity to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed senses it is about to be replaced by my Mastodon and Post accounts. My RSS feed doesn’t worry about death because it is already dead.

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Just In | The Hill 

American politics is experiencing something new beginning this month – an entirely blue Pacific coast.  

For the first time since the rise of the modern Republican Party prior to the Civil War, Democrats will hold every U.S. House district on the West Coast. California, Oregon and Washington will still have Republicans in Congress but they represent the interior of those states and none of their districts reach the shoreline. 

Given the reigning conventional wisdom that the West Coast leans left, many may shrug off this development as unsurprising or even wonder why it had not happened before. As a historical phenomenon, however, it constitutes the culmination of a notable geographical shift in partisan identity.

From the Civil War in the 1860s to the Great Depression of the 1930s, Republicans dominated West Coast politics. From 1863 to 1867, during the 38th and 39th Congresses, they held every House seat from Pacific states, with all of those districts reaching the coastline. Even during the Depression, Republicans clung to some coastal districts, with Republican Richard J. Welch representing San Francisco for 12 terms from 1926 to 1949, and they came back strong in the region after World War Two. All three West Coast presidents — Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — were Republicans.

Democratic ascendency on the entire Pacific Coast is a late 20th Century development. At one time both Oregon and Washington were reliably Republican states. This changed during the 1960s but by then two new Pacific Coast states had entered the union, with Alaska represented by a single Republican, Rep. Don Young, for nearly five decades from 1973 until his death in 2022. The election of Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola to succeed Young, along with an upset victory by Democratic Rep. Maria Gluesenkamp Pérez in a rural district of southwest Washington gave Democrats their clean sweep of the West Coast.

In parts of California, particularly the far north and Orange County, this Democratic dominance does not reach very far inland, but the coastline is blue from Crescent City to San Diego, as are the coastal districts of Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Alaska. 

For the Pacific coast, it was a blue wave in 2022.

The last time Democrats won every congressional seat on the Pacific coast was 1858 when there were only two states and three house districts west of the Rocky Mountains. With the Civil War, Republicans gained near total dominance. Now the region has come full circle back to the Democrats.

The East Coast has never experienced anything similar. With more states, more diversity, more districts and more political history, no party ever gained complete control of the Atlantic seaboard. Even at the height of Democratic power during the Depression, a handful of Republicans clung to districts in the Northeast, just as during periods of Republican dominance during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Democrats held the Southeast. Even the resignation of southern members of Congress during the Civil War did not give Republicans control over all remaining districts on the East Coast.

Independent commissions draw district boundaries in most Pacific states. Democratic dominance does not come from partisan gerrymandering. It reflects the views of the majority living on the coast. Perhaps it’s in the water. Alaska retains two Republican senators but otherwise, Democrats hold every Senate seat on the West Coast, and Joe Biden carried 78 of the 81 electoral votes of Pacific states without breaking a sweat.

The 2022 midterm elections represented the culmination of a historic shift from a Republican tilt to Democratic dominance on the West Coast. It was not enough for Democrats to retain control of the U.S. House, however, and the new Republican House Speaker could still come from inland California.

­­­­Edward J. Larson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 16 books of American political, legal, and cultural history, lives on the West Coast overlooking the blue Pacific.

​Campaign, Opinion Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

Majorities of midsize business leaders expect their sales and profits to increase this year but also believe the U.S. could slip into recession, according to a survey conducted by JPMorgan Chase.

In an online survey of 791 business owners and executives, 65 percent of respondents said they believe a recession is likely and only 8 percent said they were optimistic about the economy in 2023. 

Even so, 63 percent of business leaders said they expect to see higher sales and 51 percent are expecting higher profits next year despite the dour outlook. Only 14 percent of respondents expected revenue to fall and 24 percent expected profits to fall in 2023.

“Following the challenges of the last few years, it’s encouraging to see the resilience of small business owners and leaders,” said Ben Walter, CEO of Chase Business Banking, in a Thursday statement.

 “The next economic cycle is always right around the corner,” Walter said.

While the U.S. economy powered through high inflation and rising interest rates in 2022, a growing number of economists expect the country to face at least a brief recession by the second half of 2023. 

The Federal Reserve is on track to keep boosting interest rates with the goal of slowing the economy enough to keep bringing inflation down from four-decade highs, but at the cost of higher unemployment. Fed leaders have expressed optimism that a historically strong labor market can handle higher joblessness, but have not ruled out the chance of their rate hikes causing a steep increase in layoffs.

Inflation is also expected to remain high throughout 2023, pinching household budgets as annual price growth continues to fall from a peak of 9.1 percent in June. The Fed aims for annual inflation of roughly 2 percent, well north of the November annual inflation rate of 7.1 percent.

“Inflation has been a challenging headwind impacting businesses of all sizes, across all industries,” said Ginger Chambless, head of research for JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking, in a Thursday statement.

“While we have seen some encouraging signs that inflation has started to moderate and should cool over 2023, businesses may still want to consider adjustments to strategies, pricing or product mixes to help weather the storm in the near-term.”

​Finance Read More