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Just In | The Hill 

Concerns are rising around Capitol Hill as the two-day impasse among Republicans over who should serve as Speaker effectively keeps the chamber in limbo. 

Republicans have signaled some signs of progress within the party as talks remain ongoing; however, it remains unclear if House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) can cobble together enough votes to take the Speaker’s gavel. 

Frustrations are running high on both sides, as members say the stalemate is keeping Congress from performing basic functions. Below are just a few of those operations.

Swearing-ins

One of the biggest hang-ups lawmakers point to is the effect the delay has had on the ceremonial swearing-in of new members.

Experts say lawmakers are stuck effectively until the House accepts a Speaker — a delay that is also keeping Congress from installing heads of its various committees.

The historic stalemate marks the first time in a century that a Speaker was not determined in the initial ballot. But with six ballots down and the path to resolving the impasse uncertain, it remains unclear when Republicans will be able to find a solution.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), who is set to become the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said he hasn’t been able to meet with his “Republican counterpart because that hasn’t been chosen yet.”

“​​They’re not going to choose committee chairs like contested races until after the vote for Speaker,” he said. 

Bringing legislation to the floor

Republicans lament the hold-up the fight has had on legislation that House GOP leadership had hoped to bring up at the start of the new Congress.

“People care about real issues like border security, like inflation, like energy reliability, oh, like defining the 87,000 IRS agents — which is what we would’ve voted on today,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said late Tuesday. 

Crenshaw is referring to legislation Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said the newly GOP-led House is supposed to vote on that targets funding aimed at bolstering the IRS — part of a sweeping economic bill Democrats passed without GOP support last year.

The GOP-backed legislation faces a tough road ahead in the Democratic-led Senate. But it is among a list of ambitious bills spanning hot-button issues such as abortion, immigration and crime that are key to the party’s agenda. 

Committee operations 

The longer the fight drags out, the longer members on both sides say it will take for the chamber’s various committees to begin their work.

“Committees can’t hire their staff members as well because there are no committee chairs and ranking members,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill on Wednesday that the Intelligence panel is among those that would likely see the biggest impacts from the hold-up, noting, “Nobody on our committee can go down and get briefed on things.”

“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.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) raised similar concerns. “I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. We oversee all 19 intelligence agencies. We are currently offline,” he told CNN.

“We have a third, one of our three branches of government, offline right now. That is a very dangerous thing for our country, and it cannot continue much longer,” he also said. 

Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), who serves on the Intelligence panel and the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that he also ran into problems, pointing to a planned meeting with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I’m a member of the Intel Committee. I’m on the Armed Services Committee, and I can’t meet in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] 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.

Pay for certain staff

Boyle also said lawmakers might not have until even mid-January to resolve the issue before some staff could see issues with pay.

“I believe there’s a date of Jan. 13, regarding pay for committee staff,” Boyle said. “So that’s one date to look at if this dysfunction were to continue that long.”

In a guidance from the House Administration Committee first reported by Politico last month, committees were warned of the risk a delay in installing a Speaker would have on pay for certain staff.

“Committees need to be aware that should a House Rules package not be adopted by end of business on January 13 no committee will be able to process payroll since the committee’s authority for the new Congress is not yet confirmed,” the memo stated, according to the report.

Al Weaver contributed.

​House, News, Adam Schiff, Brendan Boyle, Dan Crenshaw, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Gallagher, Peter Aquilar Read More 

Just In | The Hill 

The Biden administration’s Venezuela policy is in flux after the country’s U.S.-backed opposition leader was ousted late last month amid political infighting within the Venezuelan democratic political coalition.

Juan Guaidó’s ouster throws a wrench in U.S. and European policy toward the country, as most Western democracies recognized Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

That ousting now threatens to upend the Biden administration’s delicately laid plans to support democracy in Venezuela while carefully engaging with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to inject the country’s substantial oil supplies into the global economy.

President Biden’s strategy marked a reversal from the former Trump administration, which sought a maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and isolation against Maduro, and has drawn pushback from Republicans hawkish on Venezuela. 

The administration secured the release last year of seven Americans in a prisoner exchange with Maduro; however, at least four Americans are still detained in the country. 

“It seems that for now, for this phase, for this round, Maduro, of course, is gaining legitimacy, gaining leverage again,” said Diego Area, the deputy director for strategic development at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Maduro’s legitimacy has been under attack for nearly a decade, since the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election.

That election is widely regarded as the last fully democratic election in the country. The assembly members seated in that election in 2018 named Guaidó as acting president of the country during a constitutional crisis in 2018. 

The Biden administration eased restrictions on Venezuela’s oil sector in November following tentative progress achieved in Mexico City between the Maduro government and the political opposition, called the Unitary Platform, representing the 2015 National Assembly.

That was part of a White House strategy to encourage Maduro to take steps toward democratic reforms. The sanctions relief — valid for only six months — allows Chevron to ship oil from Venezuela to the U.S., and the proceeds are not expected to directly benefit Venezuela’s state-owned oil company or the Maduro government.

While the oil exports add to the U.S. supplies — with the global energy market under strain amid efforts to squeeze Moscow’s oil exports and bankrupt its ability to wage war on Ukraine — American officials and experts have said the Venezuelan supply is not expected to make a huge difference in supplementing Russian oil on the market. 

“It’s too early to tell how fast Chevron will be able to move to get things up and running again, because this is a significant change at the operational level of how things functionally come together at the level of the oil fields,” said Michael McCarthy, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs.

Still, the careful opening to Maduro was aimed at encouraging the dictator to take more steps toward compromise with the political opposition. 

But follow-up Mexico City talks have yet to materialize.

Critical of the Biden strategy, Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and senior committee member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced legislation that would make any sanctions relief on Venezuela contingent on Maduro carrying out concrete democratic reforms. 

“Any change in U.S. policy toward Venezuela must be contingent on a transfer of power from the Maduro regime to a democratically elected government,” Risch said in a statement last month when introducing the legislation.

“As such, my legislation would condition the removal of U.S. sanctions on the Maduro regime on a standards-based transition to democratic order in Venezuela,” he said.

Area, of the Atlantic Council, said that while the infighting among the opposition and its rejection of Guaidó is concerning in the short term, it could pave the way for strengthening support among the Venezuelan people that has fallen over the National Assembly’s inability to subvert Maduro. 

“The opposition, if it would have decided to maintain Guaidó in power, nothing would have changed. It was a lose-lose dynamic,” Area said. 

“They decided, the majority of the democratic, political parties, didn’t want to continue with Guaidó, overall, because they are now in the electoral agenda again, they think that elections will eventually and progressively bring democratic institutions again in the country, etc. And the same with the European Union and U.S. is also aligned with that position,” he said.

Still, the vote doesn’t mean Guaidó’s political career is over, although the end of his de jure presidency was essentially set in stone months ago.

Guaidó puzzled some observers by clinging to his post, apparently betting the farm on his powerful network of support outside Venezuela that includes top U.S. officials such as Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), both of whom tweeted in support of Guaidó on Tuesday.

“Maybe the Guaidó side was hoping that come December, the Durbins, Menendezes, the others who have been strong public backers of his leadership as well as folks inside the State Department in the Biden administration would have to back him,” said McCarthy.

That support failed to materialize, but Guaidó remains the most visible member of a Venezuelan opposition that for decades has failed to fully coalesce behind a single leader.

The Biden administration appears to be transferring its support of Guaidó to the National Assembly as a whole. 

“We continue to recognize the authority of the 2015 National Assembly, and we recognize it as the last remaining democratic institution there,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday. 

“Mr. Guaidó remains a member of that 2015 National Assembly, and we’re going to continue to coordinate with him and other like-minded democratic leaders and actors there in Venezuela to support the Venezuelan people.”

Key to the National Assembly’s power is that it is entrusted with approximately $3 billion in overseas Venezuelan assets frozen by the U.S. and its partners. 

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday said that the administration is going to continue to have discussions with members of the National Assembly on how they will oversee such overseas assets. 

Those assets, which include multibillion-dollar investments such as U.S.-based oil company Citgo, will likely be key to future negotiations between the Biden and Maduro camps.

While Guaidó’s interim government had a clear claim to control overseas assets such as Citgo, the Maduro government will now have a new legal claim in its fight to recover control.

“My understanding is that the legal studies that have been done within the U.S. government conclude that the U.S. will still be able to help protect those assets from Maduro, at least for another year, while negotiations are ongoing,” said McCarthy.

And the end of the Guaidó presidency will likely come with few immediate effects either for Venezuelan citizens or for the foreign policy and domestic power dynamics of the country.

“This event … is not a very impactful political event in the daily lives of the Venezuelan citizenry right now. This has not been something that the public has been seized with. And that speaks to the broader and deeper crisis of representation in the opposition, quite frankly,” said McCarthy.

​International, Latino, Policy, Joe Biden, Juan Guaidó, Nicholas Maduro, oil markets, US-Venezuela relations Read More 

Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

Democratic senators were already bracing for a legislative slowdown over the next two years, but the last 48 hours of House GOP mayhem have lowered even their modest expectations.

Just ask Dick Durbin, who’s served as the Democratic whip in every possible configuration of government.

“Oh my gosh,” said the Illinoisan, who’s been Senate Democratic No. 2 since 2005 and also chairs the Judiciary Committee. “Nominees are the first priority. Legislating will be more challenging.”

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.

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Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

BOSTON — Massachusetts Republicans are teetering on the brink of electoral extinction without Gov. Charlie Baker.

But the popular governor’s exit provides a crucial break in a yearslong power struggle that’s paralyzed the state GOP just as the party prepares to pick a new leader, giving Republicans in this deep-blue state the chance to realign and rebuild — if they choose to take it.

The GOP has been propped up for decades in liberal Massachusetts by a succession of fiscally conservative and socially moderate Republican governors who’ve won elections by appealing across party lines. But Donald Trump’s rise splintered the GOP and imperiled its electoral prospects.

When Baker leaves office Thursday, he’ll be replaced by a Democrat — Maura Healey, the state attorney general who beat a Trump-endorsed Republican nominee, Geoff Diehl, by nearly 30 points. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, once Baker’s heir apparent, is exiting too, leaving Republicans holding no statewide or federal elected offices. The party’s share of the state’s registered voters has dipped below 9 percent and its legislative minority shrank — again.

Still,Baker cautions against issuing an obituary for the state GOP, saying the party has overcome leadership vacuums in the past.

“Democracies don’t really like one-party rule for a lot of reasons,” Baker, who chose not to seek a third term, said in an interview. “I think it’s unwise to write [the party off].”

But first, Republicans have to stop sabotaging themselves. Baker’s long-running feud with state GOP Chair Jim Lyons, an uncompromising pro- Trump conservative who’s helmed the party since 2019, left Republicans so strapped for cash and so hobbled by infighting they barely conduct business at state committee meetings, let alone win elections.

The Democratic takeover on Beacon Hill could reunite Republicans against a common enemy. And that, combined with the party’s leadership election at the end of January, could offer the reset Republicans on both sides of the intraparty divide crave.

“I do see an enormous opportunity without having a governor, I really do,” Jennifer Nassour, a Baker ally who served as chair of the state GOP during Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick’s tenure, said in an interview. “When you don’t have a governor, you get to build your own thing.”

The recalibrating of the Massachusetts GOP offers one of the first glimpses into how the party’s post-midterm reckoning is playing out at the state level — and how complicated it can be.

The Bay State’s Republican rift doesn’t break cleanly along ideological lines. Nor can it be categorized solely as a split between those who have supported Trump, like Lyons, and those who don’t, like Baker.

Disagreements about the party’s direction post-Trump run rampant. But its fissures are also fueled by deeply personal gripes and legal battles over its finances.

Lyons has sought a federal investigation into the party’s spending under Baker allies and sued those who he claims are trying to sabotage him. He led a campaign to oust one of his enemies, Ron Kaufman, as the Republican National Committee’s treasurer before Kaufman, Massachusetts’ national committeeman, decided not to seek another term.

Those frustrated with Lyons’ leadership have walked out of state committee meetings to deny him the quorum he needs to pass a budget — to which Lyons responded by suing the party treasurer for blocking access to its bank account. Howie Carr, the state’s most prominent conservative radio host and columnist, has turned against him.

Baker has called on Lyons to step aside for more than a year. Lyons has told the moderate Republican, who alienated a faction of his party through his dealmaking with the Democratic-controlled Legislature and his disdain for Trump, to “reconsider his party affiliation.”

The infighting culminated in Republicans effectively running two slates of candidates in last year’s election.

Both largely lost. And each side is blaming the other.

Lyons’ supporters slam Baker and his allies for refusing to back Diehl while campaigning heavily for a more like-minded Republican for auditor. They say Baker hasn’t done enough to build the party’s bench and bristle at a super PAC funded by his donors that supports centrist Democrats as well as Republicans.

“I understand [Diehl] wasn’t going to win that election. But there was a time when we all supported our nominee because that was the will of the party,” Todd Taylor, a Lyons ally on the state committee and a Chelsea city councilor who lost his campaign for state representative last fall, said in an interview. “We can’t have people sabotaging from within.”

Baker’s supporters criticize Lyons for leading the party in a hard-right and Trumpian direction that’s proved unsellable in solidly blue Massachusetts — where Trump has suffered some of his worst general-election losses — and for alienating donors in the process. They also balk at his use of the party’s limited resources to fund his various lawsuits.

In an interview last week in his ceremonial office at the State House, Baker said it’s “important to kind of take stock of where the party is and what happened and what to do about it.”

But Baker, who’s shifting his focus to his next job as president of the NCAA, isn’t offering solutions for how to fix the state GOP. He wants the party chair to be “somebody who wants to win elections.” But said he isn’t planning on endorsing anyone for the job.

“Parties are supposed to win elections, and thereby making it possible to govern and to hold the other party accountable,” Baker said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Before they can win elections, major players on both sides of the intraparty feud say the next party chair will have to first reunite its moderate and hard-right factions.

Lyons still hasn’t officially said he’s running for a third term as chair, though he’s widely expected to. He’ll face more moderate rivals — his vice chair, Jay Fleitman; state committee member Amy Carnevale; former Republican town committee chair Jon Fetherston and consultant Christopher Lyon — who are sounding alarms about the party’s future if it can’t again appeal across party lines.

Carnevale, a Baker-Trump voter who lost her bid to represent the state on the RNC, is considered to be Lyons’ main competition and, therefore, a new target in his legal battles. She’s amassed a coalition of big-name Republicans who she says are willing to work with her to recruit candidates and bring back donors who’ve ditched the party under Lyons, including former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, former GOP U.S. Senate candidate Beth Lindstrom and Polito, the outgoing lieutenant governor.

Yet even as she touts her support among Baker world, Carnevale said she’s not seeking his endorsement for party chair.

“Governor Baker’s not in office anymore. And to focus on him or the people who supported him is not helping our party and our candidates,” she said in an interview. “We need to just move forward and start a new chapter. We need to switch the dynamics in how we think about the party.”

Amanda Orlando, Diehl’s campaign manager and a state committee member allied with Lyons, is also hoping for a post-Baker reset that includes more outreach to independents who make up more than 60 percent of the state’s voters. But to her, that means letting Lyons lead “without the constant interference” from his detractors.

“Democrats will get behind a candidate. They don’t stay home. They don’t get angry and take their toys out of the sandbox. They accept a primary happens and somebody has won and that’s who they get behind,” Orlando said. “Unfortunately, we don’t.”

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