I've now read numerous entries in the "How Johnson Did It" genre and imo in asking "how" he decided on Ukraine and the haste to compare him to Winston Churchill, Paul of Tarsus, etc they missed the more illuminating story of WHAT he did.

I will call this "the Johnson Maneuver" — I get the fixation on the epiphany of an Aw-Shucks-y backbencher thrust into the spotlight, intelligence briefings and Very Serious quotes from guys named Mike, his background, faith, family, etc. Details like this capture the imagination. Newspapers exist for such details. BUT-

Marjorie Taylor Greene offers an amendment to make funds from the Israel funding bill available “for the development of space laser technology on the southwest border.”

This is real, not made up— it’s amendment 11 here

H/T @juliegraceb rules.house.gov/bill/118/hr-PI…
I say this with hesitation and concern, but…

…Jewish…Space… Lasers?

Have been thinking on this. We loathed the guy for a long time for many reasons but January 6th towers above them. Many have forgotten (or never reckoned with) his central role in the aftermath becoming a partisan dispute rather than a bipartisan moment of reckoning. We have not.

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1780708050455920985

Mike Johnson didn’t cover himself in glory on this either but he wasn’t the leader, McCarthy was. It was a time when his choices and leadership really mattered, and he chose very badly for very bad reasons. It colored all that followed and did serious, lasting harm to the country

Finally read the Uri Berliner piece on NPR biasand I'm baffled by how little the enormous media controversy it spawned has resulted in scrutiny of its claims for factual accuracy. There are significant problems with the piece including obvious, verifiable falsehoods

https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1777780360819986570

To recap, the premise is "I'm a lib who worked at NPR for 25 years and it's too lib now." The author's argument begins with deeply flawed polling analysis (to which I will return) and then proof points based on NPR's coverage of three Trump-era stories, all of which he gets wrong

Marjorie Taylor Greene emails her constituents a Rome News-Tribune write-up of her press release boasting she "secured over $3.8 million in federal funding for the runway extension at Richard B. Russell Regional Airport."

The story fails to note that she voted against the bill.





The story says she "netted earmarks for smaller projects in Gordon, Dade, Whitfield, Paulding and Cobb counties in the Fiscal Year ’24 budget signed into law Saturday by President Joe Biden," with an MTG quote on her own "meticulous" work on earmarks in a bill she voted against

Ken Buck represents CO-4; Lauren Boebert, who represents CO-3, is running to replace him. If Boebert wins a special election to replace Buck she'll have to resign CO-3, creating a new vacancy. But if she doesn't run in the special she risks losing her chance to remain in Congress Colorado law requires the Governor to schedule a special election if a vacancy in the congressional delegation occurs more than 90 days before the general election, and Ken Buck says he is resigning next week. Boebert has to make a quick decision here, and imo it’s a tough one

Virginia 538 average: Trump +49
Virginia results (87% in): Trump +28

Nobody ever polled Colorado but the state party endorsed Trump two months ago; with most of the vote in he's at +29. Haley leads in several counties, including Denver and Boulder

Rep. Anna Luna (R-FL), the only Republican in either chamber of Congress cosponsoring legislation to codify protections for IVF access nationwide, just withdrew her cosponsorship of the bill: That bill is H.R. 7056, the Access to Family Building Act, sponsored by @RepSusanWild (D-PA). Text here:

It is the House companion to @SenDuckworth's bill that Republicans prevented passing in the Senate this afternoon
congress.gov/bill/118th-con…

https://x.com/SenDuckworth/status/1762967617764004242

The exact point I’ve been making all night. Biden addressed their concern, gave the access they wanted, patiently waited through wildly screamed questions, and gave a long substantive answer that marked a shift in US foreign policy on a major conflict. They’re fixating on a slip.

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1755760752810463731

Was it a national story when the Speaker of the House talked about supporting Iran instead of Israel four days ago? No it wasn’t!

Maybe that was because, especially compared to matters like US foreign policy and a war that’s killing thousands of people, IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1754168330150130036

The future of Republicans' push to impeach Sec. Mayorkas is imo more complex than it seems. The question of when they might try again could vary greatly based on procedural, practical, electoral, and political factors. Some thoughts, with an explanation of why none of it matters–

https://twitter.com/mychaelschnell/status/1755041408388415989

Procedural. Last night's vote failed 215-215. Blake Moore changed his vote so he could seek reconsideration of the resolution, which he then did. His request for a recorded vote on a motion to reconsider was postponed (by Speaker Johnson), under Rule XX

https://twitter.com/ringwiss/status/1755229537384681635

House Ways and Means Republicans just issued a press release defending their deficit-increasing funding cuts for IRS enforcement on wealthy tax cheats. It contained the sentence below which is objectively false; I’ve been wondering for weeks if they will figure this out. Not yet! They *have not* already redirected $20 billion in IRS funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to offset cuts in the Inflation Reduction Act. That was part of an agreement to future action as part of a deal that House Republicans have been trying to break for the past 5 months

1) House Rs just quietly punted 1 of 12 appropriations bills
2) Passing all 12 is key to Mike Johnson’s govt funding strategy
3) They’ve only passed 6
4) T-HUD is not the hardest one
5) Deadline is 2 weeks from today
6) Johnson has not outlined a coherent plan to avoid a shutdown

https://twitter.com/elwasson/status/1720201385415790604

And a very big point:

7) The Appropriations Committee has itself been unable to pass 2 of the 12 bills (CJS and Labor-H). There are at present “no upcoming markups” scheduled to move them to the floor.

Again — shutdown is two weeks away

Before we move to the next phase, I'd like to circle back to a thing that happened late last night: during Republicans' second attempt of the day to find a speaker nominee, they uncovered what looked awfully like a plot to deny Mike Johnson the nomination and reinstate McCarthy-- The Republicans are in the 13th hour of trying to elect a speaker. They've chosen and then rejected Tom Emmer, with Trump stabbing him in the back after he was mortally wounded. Rather than break for the night, House GOP leaders decide to keep everyone in there for another round

In They Live, Roddy Piper realizes putting on a certain pair of sunglasses leads to a key revelation. He tries to get Keith Davids to put them on, Davids refuses. They beat the crap out of each other until both are too damaged to continue. Davids puts on the glasses.

A metaphor. To extend the [political] metaphor further, there are several points during the fight when you think they’re going to stop because it’s been going on so long and how could they possibly keep going. And in reality, you aren’t even close to finishing it yet. And they keep fighting.

As a friend put it, Jim Jordan cannot fail, he can only be failed

https://twitter.com/lpdonovan/status/1715357725280895084

Too many have fallen into the trap - myself foremost among them (below) - of trying to analyze and predict his behavior using normal person logic. And like, all of us and I too need to remember that Jim Jordan generally doesn’t think about these outcomes like a normal person

https://twitter.com/fritschner/status/1714452455113507323

If you compare Jordan's potential for attack fodder to the Rs' anti-Pelosi hits, it lacks a key ingredient (misogyny). But he's way underwater with independents, and most importantly imo can be used to undercut a swing district R's independent brand. I think about that this way- You win a swing district by building an independent brand- you emphasize bipartisanship, focus on the district, break with your party in key areas if necessary.

Your ads say you're a reasonable person who worked across the aisle to do X. You even stood up to your own party on Y.

While I was writing this a reporter asked (paraphrased) "isn't the problem that the next Speaker won't be better?" Many would add "and will likely to be worse" to that, and I think this is a fair question. Democrats did give this thought and consideration, and I have thoughts—

https://twitter.com/fritschner/status/1709559909488976279

Now again, start by looking at this from Democrats' POV on Tuesday morning. McCarthy is Speaker, you're looking ahead. The two most urgent things are funding and Ukraine and he's refusing to give assurances on either. So choose the other adventure- keep Kevin.

What happens next?

Pretty evident people don't understand a key piece of House Dems' thinking on McCarthy and governance of the House. The idea that we acted out of schadenfreude or pique with no thought to the legislative outlook is, of course, silly nonsense. Here's what the takes are missing- On Saturday morning we had no idea what was happening. Scalise told the GOP they were moving bills that signaled imminent shutdown. This is what we expected. Then McCarthy suddenly and unexpectedly did an about face and announced a vote on a CR. We didn't know what to make of it

I did not know this and it is infuriating. House Rs patted themselves on the back so much for rules changes on "transparency," esp. the 72-hour rule. On Saturday we had a mad dash to review a 71-page, $200 billion bill because Kevin McCarthy wouldn't give us 90 minutes to read it Then he went on the Sunday shows the next day and straight up lied about it. Just flat out lying, he knows this isn't true, that he caused this to happen, and he lying about it because Kevin McCarthy is a lying liar.

This hearing was a major tactical mistake by Comer, Jordan, and McCarthy. The whole point is to damage the President politically, but the first hearing totally backfired. Having started this it's hard to stop, and it will get harder as they go, for all of them. Real risk here imo

https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1707408720227910138

The Biden-district guys are in a bad spot here. McCarthy gave a green light over their objections to win cool points with the right (a total failure, it turned out), but now that it's going, it has to end somehow. Are they just gonna stop if they keep striking out? Seems unlikely

There’s so much in the Menendez indictment, but the gold and other sensational details have thus far outshined the most important point: Egypt allegedly ran an intelligence operation in the US that included bribing a key Senator to keep aid flowing despite human rights violations

https://twitter.com/andrewsolender/status/1705947220573368421

Egypt is one of the top recipients of US military aid. Its ruling military dictatorship has a horrifying record of human rights violations: mass imprisonment without trial of critics (including US citizens), disappearances, custody deaths, torture, rape, extrajudicial killings