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“Terrible Fight” Between Chinese And European Automakers Looms, Warns Stellantis CEO

January 6, 2023 Published by Chris Chilton

Carscoops

The expansion of the Chinese auto industry into Europe and America means the coming years will give us here at Carscoops plenty to write about and you even more choices when it comes to choosing your future cars.

But while the arrival of the Chinese might be exciting to those of us outside the industry, those on the inside at established Western carmakers are terrified. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares told reporters at CES in Las Vegas that European firms faced a “terrible fight” with their incoming Chinese counterparts if the region’s politicians didn’t act to assist the likes of Stellantis, BMW, and Volkswagen.

“The price difference between European and Chinese vehicles is significant,” Tavares told Automobilwoche. “If nothing is changed in the current situation, European customers from the middle class will increasingly turn to Chinese models. The purchasing power of many people in Europe is decreasing noticeably.”

The Stellantis boss claimed European carmakers were fighting with one hand tied behind their back because regulations in Europe mean vehicles built in the region are around 40 percent more expensive to make than rival models made in China.

“I think we’ve seen this movie before,” said Tavares, likening the scenario to the fate of the European solar panel industry that lost out to Chinese manufacturers, though he could just have easily referenced Detroit’s battle against European and Japanese imports in the 1960s and ’70s, or the British motorbike industry’s fight against Japanese two-wheelers during the same period.

“It’s a very bleak scenario,” he told Automobilwoche. “But it doesn’t have to go that way.”

Tavares says that if European politicians fail to protect local industries they will be forced to move production to cheaper countries to reduce costs and compete head-on with low-priced Chinese products. For context, the entry-level MG4 EV costs over $13,000 less than the cheapest Volkswagen ID.3.

But the former Renault number two claimed an alternative solution would be to “re-industrialize” Europe, though he conceded that would involve changing trade deals that might limit European industry’s activity in China, something many German companies wouldn’t support.

European politicians face some tough decisions but they’ll need to make them quickly. “In the current context, if nothing is done in the European Union, there will be a terrible fight,” Tavares warned.

This just in: A lot of news really is 'fake'

January 6, 2023 Published by The Hill

Being a pundit means never having to say you’re sorry. Pundits get things wrong all the time, but try to find one who admits he got it wrong.

As the midterm elections approached, a conservative contributor on Fox News Channel said, without the slightest hint of doubt, that Democrats would suffer a “bloodbath” in the elections. They didn’t. In fact, they did surprisingly well. When that same contributor was on Fox a day or two later, there was no mea culpa, no acknowledgement that he made an honest mistake. He just continued — as confidently as before — giving his latest opinions, which he might get wrong again.

As for my friends on the left, this just in: Democracy didn’t die in 2022, despite how many times they told us that the end was near. Donald Trump, their bogeyman of choice, may say things a prudent grownup would never say, and he may have too much power within the Republican Party, but he doesn’t have nearly enough clout to kill off democracy, as hard as he may try. Two world wars and the Great Depression couldn’t bring America down — and neither can the “Ego from Mar-a-Lago.”

I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my profession. I always knew that journalism was fundamentally a pursuit of the negative, that we mainly report about bad things that happen, but I never gave much thought to how all that negativity affects us — it affects how we see things, especially how we see the country we live in.

We don’t report about banks that don’t get robbed or planes that don’t crash. We all know that. To the extent that that distorts reality, it’s no big deal. But there was a time when we were exposed to bad news only for a short time during the day. Now local TV news programs in many cities around the country begin before dawn and return to bring us more bad news in the afternoon, shows that run straight through for hours. If you want to hear about how many people got shot in your city, local news is the place to go. “If it bleeds, it leads” isn’t simply a catchy phrase. It’s an accurate description of what you’re likely to see on-air. And, of course, there’s cable news, which bombards us with bad news all day long.

Add to all that, the cable news commentary, which wants nothing to do with moderate points of view. Those on the fringes — right and left — get airtime. That’s where the money is. No one (or hardly anyone) tunes in to cable news at night to hear some expert say, “Well, I can see both sides of the argument.” In the world of cable news, extremism in defense of high ratings is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of an intelligent discussion is no virtue.

Apologies to Barry Goldwater.

Holman Jenkins, the Wall Street Journal columnist, got it right when he kicked off the new year with a column that begins, “Exaggeration is the universal media bias. Hysteria sells … .”

That’s why we heard so much about Republicans who were “fascists” and about how climate change will “end life as we know it” and about how Trump supposedly was working for the Kremlin.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a correspondent at CBS News, I interviewed Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford University biologist who had written a book called “The Population Bomb,” which laid out what he said was the coming apocalypse.

Ehrlich believed that “the battle to feed all humanity is over.” How could I, or any other reporter, pass on a story like that? It didn’t matter if someday, way down the line, it would turn out to be true or not. The story was provocative, the kind of thing that catches our attention.

Doomsday never arrived, of course; we humans came up with all sorts of innovative ways to feed a growing population. But that didn’t stop CBS’s “60 Minutes” from putting him on last Sunday to preach more gloom and doom — that “humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off.”

He was “good television” way back when, and doomsday scenarios make for good television all these years later. Who cares if his predictions have been wrong. “Exaggeration is the universal media bias. Hysteria sells ….”

And as Holman Jenkins writes, “Before we can expect better from voters and the leaders they pick, we might have to expect better from the media and social media from which our common, non-hysterical understandings are made.”

There’s the real world and the one we’re told we live in — the one where the clock is ticking on our planet’s very existence, where Republicans are a bunch of bigots and Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats are out to intentionally destroy the United States of America.

How do I know all this hysterical stuff? I heard it on the news.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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Biden proposes tougher limits on deadly soot pollution

January 6, 2023 Published by Emma Newburger

US Top News and Analysis

Seen from the window of an Amtrak train, smoke billows up from power plants alongside the tracks in Northern Virginia.

Andrew Lichtenstein | Corbis Historical | Getty Images

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed a rule that would strengthen federal limits on industrial soot, one of the country’s most deadly air pollutants that disproportionately impacts the health of low-income and minority communities.

The proposal is the latest action by the Biden administration to better address environmental justice and air pollution. Research shows that exposure to particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, leads to heart attacks, asthma attacks and premature death. Studies have also linked long-term exposure to soot with higher rates of death from Covid-19.

Communities of color are systematically exposed to higher levels of soot and other air pollutants as they are more likely to be located near highways, oil and gas wells and other industrial sources.

The EPA proposal seeks to limit the pollution of industrial fine soot particles — which measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — from the current annual level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter to a level between 9 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter, which the EPA said aligns with the latest health data and scientific evidence. However, officials said they are also considering public comment on an annual level as low as 8 micrograms per cubic meter and as high as 11 micrograms per cubic meter.

The Trump administration had declined to tighten the existing Obama-era regulations that were set in 2012, despite warnings from EPA scientists that doing so could save thousands of lives in the U.S.

“The 2012 standards are no longer sufficient,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters during a briefing on Thursday. “This administration is committed to working to ensure all people have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and an opportunity to live a healthy life.”

If the proposal is finalized, a strengthened annual PM 2.5 standard at a level of 9 micrograms per cubic meter — the lower end of the agency’s proposed range — would prevent up to 4,200 annual premature deaths and result in as much as $43 billion in net health benefits in 2032, according to the EPA.

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Some public health advocates criticized the proposed standards as not going far enough. Paul Billings, senior vice president with the American Lung Association, said the soot standards must be lowered to an annual level as protective as 8 micrograms per cubic meter in order to best protect public health.

“Cleaning up deadly particulate matter is critical for protecting public health,” Billings said. “Failing to finalize the standards at the most protective levels that health organizations are calling for would lead to health harms that could have been avoided, and would miss a critical opportunity to meet President Biden’s environmental justice commitments.”

Air pollution takes more than 2 years off the average global life expectancy, according to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Sixty percent of particulate matter air pollution is produced by fossil fuel combustion, while 18% comes from natural sources like dust, sea salt and wildfires and 22% comes from other human activities.

PM 2.5 particles can be emitted directly from the source, including construction sites, unpaved roads, fields or smokestacks, or form in the atmosphere as a result of reactions of chemicals like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are pollutants emitted from power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles, according to an EPA fact sheet.

Industries including oil and gas companies and automakers have long opposed a stricter standard on soot pollution. During the Trump administration, a slew of industry groups argued against scientific findings on the public health impact of PM 2.5 exposure and urged the government to maintain the existing standard.

The EPA is accepting public comment for 60 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. The agency is scheduled to release a final rule by August.

VIDEO3:4103:41

Supreme Court limits EPA’s ability to restrict carbon emissions from power plants

The News with Shepard Smith

Mega Millions: Are your jackpot odds worse when more people play?

January 6, 2023 Published by Addy Bink

Just In | The Hill

(NEXSTAR) – With a jackpot close to $1 billion, thousands of Americans are now vying to be the first big Mega Millions winner of 2023. But are your chances of landing the top prize getting progressively worse as more and more tickets are sold ahead of Friday’s drawing?

The short answer is no. To explain, we have to use a little bit of mathematical thinking.

Your chances of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is 1 in 302,575,350, according to game officials. Those odds are the same regardless if you are one of the millions playing or the only person with a ticket.

Not sure how to play Mega Millions? Here’s what you need to know

It’s because you’re playing for certain numbers and not against other Mega Millions ticket holders, Rong Chen, a distinguished professor of statistics at the Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences, explained to Nexstar’s WPIX amid the Powerball jackpot craze last fall.

If Mega Millions entailed putting every player’s name in a hat to determine who would win the jackpot, your odds would be dependent on how many people are playing. If it’s just you and another person, you would have a 1 in 2 chance of winning. If it’s you and 1,593,201 players, then your odds would be 1 in 1,593,202.

But that isn’t the case. Instead, Mega Millions players are trying to match the six numbers drawn every Tuesday and Friday. All combinations of those numbers have the same chance of landing the jackpot – roughly 1 in 302.6 million – according to Chen. If you have an extra $600 million laying around, you could purchase nearly every possible number combination and increase your own odds of winning the jackpot.

Mega Millions: Here’s where the most jackpot-winning tickets have been sold

However, as more people play Mega Millions, your odds of splitting the jackpot increase. That can, in turn, lower your jackpot payout. For example, a $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot was won by three separate tickets in 2016. Instead of having a chance at a cash payout of $745.9 million, the three winners were given prizes of roughly $533 million each, which equates to a lump sum payout of about $327.8 million.

The next Mega Millions drawing is scheduled for 11 p.m. ET Friday. Mega Millions is played in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Tickets are $2 and there are a total of nine ways to win a prize.

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Putin’s changing generals fails to fix Russia’s military performance in Ukraine

January 6, 2023 Published by Dov S. Zakheim, Opinion Contributor

Just In | The Hill

In January 1940, just about a month after the Soviet Union attacked Finland in what came to be known as the “Winter War,” General Semyon Timoshenko replaced Kliment Voroshilov, a close associate of Joseph Stalin, as commander of the Soviet invading force. Voroshilov’s troops had suffered 320,000 casualties in that single month; the Finnish casualties were less than a fourth of that total. Timoshenko succeeded where Voroshilov disastrously failed: His forces broke through Finland’s defensive Mannerheim Line and defeated the Finns two months later.

Governments replace commanding generals during wartime for various reasons. A commander may have served an excessive tour of duty. Or, like Gen. Douglas MacArthur, he (there has yet to be a she) is removed for insubordination. But, like Voroshilov, generals are also, and invariably, fired for incompetence. To be dismissed in that manner is humiliating for the general who suffers that fate. For Air Force General Sergey Surovikin, commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, and a Hero of the Russian Federation — appointed in October 2022 by Vladimir Putin as commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine — who reportedly was replaced this week by Lieutenant General Yevgeny Nikiforov after a mere three months, humiliation is an understatement.

Putin appointed Surovikin to the command in Ukraine to replace Army Colonel-General Gennady Valeryevich Zhidko, another Hero of the Russian Federation, who in late May 2022 had been named to head the Russian invading forces and then was demoted about a month later. Zhidko, in turn, had replaced Army General Alexandr Dvornikov, who appears to have served less than two months in that position. While Zhidko, like the other two generals, had served in Syria, Dvornikov and Surovikin both shared a reputation for brutality. Dvornikov was nicknamed “the Butcher of Syria.” Surovikin’s reputation in that regard equaled, if not exceeded, that of Dvornikov and his nickname was “General Armageddon.”

Now, he too may be gone.

Putin has taken a special interest in the Winter War for some time. Coming from St. Petersburg, he is especially sensitive to the history of its surrounding region. Indeed, he is known to venerate Peter the Great, who founded St. Petersburg in 1703 and defeated a powerful Swedish force at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. Putin told the Russian Military Historical Society in March 2013 that the Soviet Union had invaded Finland to “correct mistakes” that he argued were made when Finland became independent in 1917. “The border was just 20 kilometers from St. Petersburg and that was a significantly major threat to a city of 5 million,” he told the Society. He opined that the Red Army initially sustained heavy losses because of “errors,” and then Stalin mobilized his forces so that Helsinki should “feel all the power of the Russian, then Soviet, state.”

In replacing general after general in Ukraine — another country whose independence Putin considers to have been a “mistake” — the Russian autocrat is following Stalin’s example. Nevertheless, whereas the Soviet dictator chose the right general to replace his old comrade Voroshilov, Putin has yet to find his 21st century Timoshenko. The war in Ukraine has lasted more than three times as long as the Winter War, with no end in sight.

Putin’s rapid replacement of his military leadership indicates that not only is he dissatisfied with its performance, but that with each change, his panic over the likely outcome of the war continues to grow. It has been said that he has been delusional about the war, that his staff gives him only partial information about its progress, and that he lives in a bubble. His replacement of two — and perhaps now three — top generals in the space of 10 months would indicate otherwise; he sees that his “special military operation” is in serious jeopardy.

It is a common theme in sports that when a team flounders, management replaces the coach. In 1961, the hapless Chicago Cubs hired and fired nine managers. The changes did nothing to improve the Cubs’ poor performance on the field. Putin’s changes appear to be achieving results that are no better. Ukraine fights on, and Russia’s military continues to be stymied on the battlefield, no matter who leads it. Putin has good reason to worry.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was under secretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy under secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.

National Security, Opinion Read More

[World] Hawaii: Footage shows Kilauea volcano erupting again

January 6, 2023 Published by

BBC News world

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Watch: Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano spews lava

One of the world’s most active volcanoes has erupted again in Hawaii, nearly one month after it stopped releasing lava, scientists said.

Glowing lava was observed inside Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano on Thursday, the US Geological Survey said.

Webcam images showed lava flow within the Halemaʻumaʻu crater in the volcano’s summit caldera.

Officials say the eruption currently poses no direct threat to nearby communities.

It is the first sign of activity inside the volcano since both Kilauea and its larger neighbour Mauna Loa stopped erupting in December.

The USGS said lava from Kilauea was flooding much of the Halema’uma’u crater at the volcano’s summit, while clouding the skies with volcanic smog.

USGS via Reuters

Image caption,

A rising lava lake is seen within Halema’uma’u crater during the eruption of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, on 5 January

The summit is inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii’s Big Island, located away from residents. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said on Thursday that the eruption will not threaten nearby communities.

But high levels of volcanic gas are the primary hazard of concern, as this can have far-reaching effects down-wind.

“Strong winds may waft lighter particles to greater distances,” officials said. “Residents should minimise exposure to these volcanic particles.”

Kilauea’s last eruption began in September 2021 and lasted 16 months. Footage from that eruption shows the volcano was spewing lava fountains that were up to 100 feet tall surrounded by thick plumes of smoke.

Its larger neighbour, Mauna Loa, then began erupting on 27 November after a pause of 38 years, marking the first time in decades that two volcanoes were erupting in Hawaii side-by-side.

Both Kilauea and Mauna Loa stopped erupting at the same time on 14 December, though the Hawaii Volcano Observatory continued to closely monitor them for signs of renewed activity.

Violence hits Mexico cartel stronghold as ‘Chapo’ son nabbed

January 6, 2023 Published by

US Top News and Analysis

Members of the Mexican National Guard guard outside the Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigations on Organized Crime (FEMDO) in Mexico City, on January 5, 2023, after the arrest of Ovidio Guzman, son of imprisoned drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty Images

The sun wasn’t yet up in Culiacan when David Téllez and his family began making their way to the city’s airport for a return flight to Mexico City after their vacation. But not long after they set out they encountered the first crude roadblock, an abandoned vehicle obstructing their way.

Téllez turned to social media to find out what was going on and saw that Sinaloa’s state capital, a stronghold of the cartel by the same name, was filled with roadblocks and gunfire.

It would be hours before Mexico’s defense secretary would confirm that the military had captured Ovidio Guzmán, a son of the notorious former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, on Thursday in a pre-dawn operation north of the city.

Just like that, Culiacan was thrust into a day of terror unlike any its residents had experienced since October 2019 — the last time authorities tried to capture the young Guzmán. Before it was over, at least 29 people would die — 10 members of the military and 19 alleged cartel members — while 21 suspects were arrested, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Friday. Thirty-five members of the military were wounded, he said.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has railed against his predecessors’ aggressive efforts to capture drug lords, but his administration bagged the high-profile cartel figure just days before hosting U.S. President Joe Biden, and at least in the short term locals were paying the price.

Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Culiacan residents posted video on social media showing convoys of gunmen in pickup trucks and SUVs rolling down boulevards in the city. At least one convoy included a flatbed truck with a mounted gun in the back, the same kind of vehicle that caused chaos and mayhem in the 2019 unrest.

All entrances to the city were blocked and similar acts were playing out in other parts of Sinaloa.

Rev. Esteban Robles, spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese in Culiacan, said that “there is an atmosphere of uncertainty, tension,” and that those who could were staying inside their homes.

“A lot of the streets are still blocked by the cars that were burned,” Robles said.

Juan Carlos Cruz | Afp | Getty Images

Oscar Loza, a human rights activist in Culiacan, described the situation as tense, with some looting at stores. On the south side of the city, where Loza lives, people reported convoys of gunmen moving toward a military base, but Loza said streets around his house were eerily quiet. “You don’t hear any traffic,” he said.

Téllez pressed on trying to get his family back to Mexico City, circumventing several more abandoned vehicles blocking roads and eventually making it to the airport.

There the family hurriedly checked in for their flight before employees of an airport restaurant urged them to shelter in a bathroom. Gunmen were arriving at the airport to prevent authorities from flying Guzmán out.

Juan Carlos Ayala, a Culiacan resident and Sinaloa University professor who studies the sociology of drug trafficking, said Ovidio Guzmán was an obvious target at least since 2019.

“Ovidio’s fate had been decided. Moreover, he was identified as the biggest trafficker of fentanyl and the most visible Chapos leader.” Asked how locals were reacting to the arrest, Ayala said “People have differing views, but I think the majority are with them” — the Sinaloa cartel.

That may be because of the money the cartel brings to the region, but also because locals know that even after federal troops withdraw, the cartel will still be there. As bad as it is, the cartel has ensured relative stability, if not peace.

Guzmán was indicted by the United States on drug trafficking charges in 2018. According to both governments, he had assumed a growing role among his brothers in carrying on their father’s business, along with long- time cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that the government had received a request in 2019 from the United States for Guzmán’s arrest for purposes of extradition. He said that request would have to be updated and processed, but he added that first an open case in Mexico awaits Guzmán.

Nicolas Asfouri | AFP | Getty Images

Ismael Bojorquez, director of the local news outlet Riodoce, which specializes in coverage of the area’s drug trafficking, said the violent reaction had to do with the president’s less aggressive stance toward organized crime.

“They (cartels) have taken advantage of these four years to organize themselves, arm themselves, strengthen their structures, their finances,” he said. “I believe there are more weapons than three years ago. All of organized crime’s armies have strengthened, not just the Chapitos, and this is the price that society is paying for this strategy of the federal government.”

At Culiacan’s airport, a Mexican military flight was able to spirit Guzmán away to Mexico City. Téllez’s commercial flight waited for its chance to take off as two large military planes landed with troops as did three or four military helicopters, and marines and soldiers began deploying along the perimeter of the runway.

When the airline flight was finally preparing to accelerate, Téllez heard gunshots in the distance. Within 15 seconds the sound was suddenly more intense and much closer, and passengers threw themselves to the floor, he said.

He did not know the plane had been hit by gunfire until a flight attendant told them. No one was injured, but the plane hastily retreated to the terminal.

Samuel González, who founded Mexico’s special prosecutor’s office for organized crime in the 1990s, said Guzmán’s capture was a “gift” ahead of Biden’s visit. The Mexican government “is working to have a calm visit,” he said.

He called the shots that hit the commercial airliner “without a doubt an act of international terrorism” and suggested it could lead to very serious discussions between the two governments about the implications of these actions.

By evening, Téllez remained in the terminal. The government had shut down the airport, as well as airports in Los Mochis and Mazatlan for security reasons.

Asked if the attempt to capture Guzmán was worth another day of tension and uncertainty in Culiacan, Téllez said, “If they caught him, it was worth it.”

Live updates: GOP leader McCarthy fights for his political future in historic battle for U.S. House speaker

January 6, 2023 Published by Chelsey Cox

US Top News and Analysis

The U.S. House of Representatives entered its fourth day of voting to elect a new speaker on Friday, falling on the grim two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The U.S. House adjourned Thursday for a third night in a row without a speaker — the longest the chamber has gone leaderless in a century — after GOP leader Kevin McCarthy lost an 11th vote and scrambled to work out a deal with a group of 20 far-right Republicans who have blocked his bid for the top job in the House.

McCarthy still didn’t have a clear path to win as of Friday morning.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) stands alone with his eyes closed at the back of the House Chamber as he suffers a 10th consecutive defeat in the 10th round of voting for a new Speaker of the House on the third day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 5, 2023.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

GOP leaders have scheduled a 10:15 a.m. ET conference call with rank-and-file members to brief them on the deal McCarthy’s been negotiating behind the scenes, according to NBC News. It would give some of the party’s most conservative members more power on key committees and him the gavel. The House is scheduled to reconvene at noon.

Support for McCarthy dwindled over the first three days of voting from 203 votes on Tuesday to 200 by the 11th vote on Thursday, falling far short of the 218 he needs to win the speakership. With 222 Republicans in the House, he can only afford to lose four votes.

Ahead of Thursday’s final vote, the bloc of 20 Republican holdouts opposing McCarthy’s speakership offered alternative candidates to McCarthy: Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.. received 12 votes; Kevin Hern, R-Okla., received seven votes; and former President Donald Trump, who was put forward by his longtime ally, Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, received one vote from Gaetz.

All 212 Democrats have unanimously backed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies for each vote.

21 Min Ago

Anniversary of Jan. 6 Capitol riot looms over McCarthy’s struggle for House speaker

Community faith leaders gather for a prayer vigil on the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2023 in Washington, DC. Speakers called for an end to Christian nationalism and denounced political violence.

Nathan Howard | Getty Images

Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy’s protracted struggle for the House speaker’s gavel has now overlapped with the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The insurrection by a violent mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters forced lawmakers in the House and Senate to flee their chambers, impeding the transfer of power from Trump to now-President Joe Biden.

McCarthy had initially blamed Trump for the attack, saying the president “bears responsibility” even as he opposed Democrats’ efforts to impeach Trump for a second time. But McCarthy soon walked back that criticism, and that same month visited Trump and posed with him for a smiling photo.

A man dressed as Uncle Sam, who’s a regular attendee of events held by former President Donald Trump, stops to pray near community faith leaders during a vigil on the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Nathan Howard | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Trump has in recent days urged the faction of House Republican defectors to back McCarthy for speaker. But although the group of far-right lawmakers are highly supportive of Trump — GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz even voted for Trump for House speaker in two of McCarthy’s failed votes — they have not acquiesced to his demand.

Some Democrats are linking the current Capitol chaos to the radicalism that led to the 2021 riot.

“Unfortunately, the utter pandemonium wrought by House Republicans this week is just one more example of how the extreme fringe of their party, led by election deniers, is pulling them further into chaos and making it impossible for them to govern,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Friday morning.

Biden is set to attend a ceremony at the White House at 2 p.m. ET marking the two-year anniversary of the insurrection. He will be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

— Kevin Breuninger

The GOP’s Kevin McCarthy Debacle Is an Insurrection by Other Means

January 6, 2023 Published by James Risen

The Intercept

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talks on the phone ahead of the ninth round of voting for speaker, as the House of Representatives meets for the third day to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.

Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

Reps. Andy Biggs and Scott Perry, two Republican House members leading the effort to block Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker, were among four GOP members of Congress referred to the House Ethics Committee for their roles in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who Republican holdouts briefly tried to install as an alternative speaker this week, was also referred by the House January 6 Committee; so was McCarthy himself.

The intraparty battle for control of the House of Representatives is not a fight between pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps. There are no real anti-Trump moderates left in the Republican House caucus. This is not a matter of competing political ideologies.

The speaker’s battle would make a perfect “Seinfeld” episode: It is a fight about nothing.

And that’s what makes it so dangerous.

Neither the pro-McCarthy camp nor the anti-McCarthy insurgents have any real policy goals for how to make the government more effective. The goal of the insurgents is to stop the government from working at all. Yet that is true of McCarthy and his supporters as well.

The only thing they are really fighting over is personal political power. Nothing more. And that makes it very difficult for McCarthy to appease the Republicans who oppose him.

It is fitting that the battle for control of the House comes exactly two years after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The speakership fight is a continuation of that struggle for personal power. This is an insurrection by other means.

Even if the speakership is decided in the coming days, this battle shows just how paralyzed Congress will be over the next two years.

This is the paralysis that the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress tried to prepare for in December, when the frenetic activity in the House gave off an apocalyptic vibe. Every move was hurried, with an eye on the clock and the knowledge that darkness was looming.

During the lame-duck session, the House Ways and Means Committee released a report about Trump’s long-hidden tax returns; the House January 6 Committee held its final hearing and voted to issue criminal referrals of Trump and others to the Justice Department; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress; and heavily bundled legislation that included continued funding for U.S. aid to Ukraine and new legal protections for the election of American presidents worked its way across Capitol Hill and was signed into law by Biden.

None of those things could wait any longer. The insurgents were about to take over the House.

In November, Republicans suffered some of the worst midterm results for an opposition party in modern American history, thanks to their turn toward right-wing extremism. The Republican-dominated Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and many Republican candidates in key races were election deniers hand-picked by Trump. The Republican Party lacked a coherent policy agenda other than “owning the libs.” Voters were turned off, and, despite high inflation and a worsening economy, Democrats won key races around the country, retaining control of the Senate while losing the House by the narrowest of margins.

Yet the great irony is that the very narrowness of the Republican margin of victory in the House is what is now giving outsized influence to the extremist forces that cost the GOP so dearly.

Rather than fight back, McCarthy gave in to extremism years ago, and became one of Trump’s most prominent enablers. His craven willingness to appease the ex-president and the insurgents in the House means that no one fears him. He is the Neville Chamberlain of the House, and even if he ultimately becomes speaker, he will not really be calling the shots. The insurgents will be in charge, and no one else in the Republican caucus is likely to challenge them.

With de facto control over the House, they will focus on the right-wing political equivalent of performance art: a national abortion ban that will go nowhere, investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other “anti-woke” ways to own the libs. They will not focus on governing.

So if Trump’s taxes, hidden throughout his presidency, were ever going to see the light of day, it had to be before the new Congress convened. It took years for the Ways and Means Committee to get the returns, and then only after a lengthy court battle, which ended in November when the Supreme Court refused to block the documents’ release. Once the committee prevailed in court, it had to release Trump’s taxes and related information before House Republicans had the chance to suppress them.

The committee voted to release Trump’s taxes and also offered some bombshells, revealing that the Internal Revenue Service did not audit Trump during the first two years of his presidency — and didn’t begin to do so until the day in 2019 when the House asked for his tax returns and questioned whether any audits of Trump had been conducted. The IRS had failed to audit the sitting president’s taxes even though it was mandated to do so, and even though it audited the taxes of both presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The committee also found that Trump paid no federal income tax in 2020, while he was president.

The House January 6 Committee also had to wrap up its business during the lame-duck session or see its work shut down after Republicans took over. In fact, rather than continue to investigate the insurrection, House Republicans are vowing to investigate the January 6 committee itself.

So after issuing criminal referrals for Trump and others, the January 6 committee released a final report and handed over all its evidence to the Justice Department and the special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Among the committee’s final disclosures was that its star witness, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said that her former lawyer advised her not to tell the committee the whole truth.

The threats posed by House Republicans on so many fronts help explain why many Senate Republicans joined Democrats in December to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package. That legislation included aid for Ukraine, which many right-wing House Republicans want to block or at least scale back, and changes to the electoral reform act, which governs how presidential elections are finalized and includes changes designed to make it harder for Trump or someone like him to overturn future elections.

Senate Republicans voted for the legislation in the face of furious opposition from their pro-Trump counterparts in the House, perhaps a sign that at least some Senate Republicans no longer fear Trump and his minions.

In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has become more openly anti-Trump since the midterms, when Trump-backed fringe candidates lost key contests and cost the GOP control of the Senate. While McCarthy was fighting for the speakership in the House this week, McConnell made a move heavy with symbolism: He appeared in Kentucky with Biden to showcase a major federal infrastructure investment in a bridge across the Ohio River.

The question now is whether Biden can count on a relatively sane Senate to check the worst impulses of the unstable House.

The post The GOP’s Kevin McCarthy Debacle Is an Insurrection by Other Means appeared first on The Intercept.

James Risen, National Security, Politics Read More