Tag: House Republicans
The House Republicans Who’ve Had Enough
House Republicans didn’t exactly have a banner year in 2023. They made history for all the wrong reasons. Last January, they presided over the most protracted election for speaker in a century, and nine months later, for good measure, lawmakers ejected their leader, Kevin McCarthy, for the first time ever. Last month, the House expelled one of its own, George Santos, for only the sixth time.
The rest of the year wasn’t any more productive. Thanks in part to
The Polite Zealotry of Mike Johnson
In an interview last week on Fox News, the newly elected speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, told host Sean Hannity, “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”
For many politicians, that would be a throwaway line. But not for Mike Johnson. When he told a Baptist newspaper
The Republican Betrayal of PEPFAR
Twenty years ago, a Republican president, George W. Bush, created the most successful, life-giving global-health program in history. This year, House Republicans appear determined to undermine it. If they succeed, it will be an act of extraordinary recklessness, done even while claiming to be the pro-life party.
In 2003, nearly 30 million Africans had AIDS, including 3 million under the age of 15. In some countries, more than one-third of the adult population carried the disease. More than
Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic
The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the
The Trump Indictment Puts the GOP on Trial
Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on August 1, 2023
Earlier today, Donald Trump was indicted for a third time, on the charge that he attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit”; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct and impede” an official proceeding of the U.S. government and for actually partaking in that obstruction; and a
The Logic Behind Biden’s Refusal to Negotiate the Debt-Ceiling
President Joe Biden has already made the most important domestic-policy decision he’ll likely face this year. Biden and his top advisers have repeatedly indicated that they will reject demands from the new GOP majority in the House of Representatives to link increasing the debt ceiling with cutting federal spending. Instead, Biden is insisting that Congress pass a clean debt-ceiling increase, with no conditions attached.
Biden’s refusal to negotiate with
Jaime Herrera Beutler’s Lasting Regret
Among the things Jaime Herrera Beutler remembers about January 6, 2021, is that her husband managed to turn off the television just in time.
He was at home with their three young children in southwestern Washington State when the riot began. It had taken him a few moments to make out the shaky footage of the mob as it tore through the Capitol. Then he started to recognize the hallways, the various corridors that he knew led to the House
The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report
The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But the committee zoomed in so tightly on the culpability of Trump and his inner circle that it largely cropped out the dozens of other state and federal Republican officials who supported or enabled the president’s multifaceted, months-long plot. The committee downplayed the involvement of the legion
The GOP Can’t Hide From Extremism
The role of extremist white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point.
The backlash against former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist, anti-Semite, and Christian nationalist, has compelled more Republican officeholders than at any point since the Charlottesville riot in 2017 to publicly condemn those extremist views.
Yet few GOP officials have criticized the former president personally—much less declared that Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper (formerly known as Kanye West)
The Inside Story of the GOP on January 6
Mitch McConnell froze when a Capitol Police officer rushed into the Senate chamber carrying a semiautomatic weapon. The majority leader had been so engrossed in the Electoral College debate happening before him that he hadn’t realized anything was amiss—until pandemonium erupted.
Mere moments before, Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail had subtly entered the room and beckoned the vice president away from the dais where he was overseeing proceedings, a rarity for agents who usually loitered outside the doors. A