yyyyeah, the GOP can't get this rule over the line without Democrats at this point Vote still being held open and no Democrats coming to the rescue yet

New from me: I read through the House GOP's "Parents Bill of Rights"

If it became law, it would force schools to post a blueprint on how conservatives can better harass teachers and school boards

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-… That includes posting the full "Bill of Rights" of things parents should get to know, including a list of EVERY BOOK in the school library and "if a school employee or contractor acts to change a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns or preferred name.”

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-…

okay, friends, second verse, same (?) as the first:

the House is about to gavel into session. almost no other business, including swearing-in the members, can get done without electing a speaker.

mccarthy still doesn't have the votes.

let's see how this goes. as things stand, the gop leadership wants to adjourn for the full day to avoid having to take any more votes where mccarthy loses.

democrats: i mean...you can -try-

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1610680212756500480

House Clerk just announced that 434 members-elect are present at the start of the 118th Congress Elise Stefanik, as the chair House Republican Conference, puts forward McCarthy as a nominee for speaker

Here’s hoping that someone has a Kevin McCarthy vs Lettuce cam set-up ready to go

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-… The one (1) downside to a super protracted speaker fight is that committee staff might lose out on pay if things don’t get sorted politico.com/news/2022/12/2…

ugh I know that the General Hellscape is bad but I have learned so much from the very smart people on this stupid website?? the jokes are fun, the career boosting insanely useful, but it was the experts and academics actually engaging on here that really locked me in here [rocks in rocking chair] yessir I remember the days of the early to mid-aughts. 1000 followers was a huge audience. place was big enough to seek out new ideas, small enough to actually converse and debate with strangers. no native retweets, you had to parse that sucker by hand.

...it just hit me that if you read the EXACT WORDING of Reinhart's affidavit order, it instructs the government to -file- its redacted version on or before noon today.

DOJ has done so. It does not say though that the filing has to be -unsealed- by noon. Just saying!! lol someone who knows this process better than me may say I've got this wrong in the next eight minutes, but as a non-lawyer it seems at least plausible that it's an accurately pedantic reading

Do I wish that even more people will be affected by the Biden administration's student loan announcement? Clearly!!

But the impact this will have on, for example, the millions of people who didn't graduate but are struggling with student debt, is massive

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-… The people who struggle the most to repay their debts and would likely default once the repayment freeze ends? $10K in loans or less. This is a huge weight off their shoulders.

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-…

According to StudentAid.gov data as of Q2 2022, about 45.3 million Americans hold federal student loan debt

This action will clear the remaining debt of up to 23.9 million Americans, depending on if they had Pell Grants in undergrad, so up to about half of the total

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1562462774969581570

Another factor that will determine how many of those 23.9 million see their debts erased: how many of them are making over $125K at this point.

The data is unclear on how many, say, are making that much and have paid down the majority of their loans already

The shot of one of the rioters reading Trump’s tweet about Mike Pence lacking courage through a bullhorn really hammers home how inflammatory he really was that day Also…the videos they’ve stitched together really show how MANY people there really were inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Like…you can argue it was “just a few” of the people who proteststed, but it’s easy to imagine being overwhelmed by the waves of people piling in

Both Thompson and Cheney have said “in the weeks ahead” in reference to future hearings. That’s a good sign, I think, given my previous concern that they’d try to cram a lotttt of information into a few hearings Cheney: 2nd hearing wil be focused on the fact that Trump and his advisors knew that he lost

The committee then plays a clip from deposition with Trump aide Jason Miller, who says that the campaign’s data team knew that Trump was going to lose as votes roleld in

Dems: hey, so about the whole subversion of democracy thing

GOP: anything you do to hold us accountable we will do unto you with swift and terrible fury, no matter how specious the reasoning or actual evidence

Dems: oh okay well we don’t want to set a bad precedent 98% of dems: we should get rid of the filibuster and actually govern on policy’s merits

gop: if you get rid of the filibuster we will be forced to also actually govern on policy's merits

2% of dems: hmm. sounds bad. better not take that risk.

So something interesting that could be developing at the UN: Ukraine appears to be laying the groundwork to challenge whether the Russian Federation is the legitimate successor to the USSR’s seat and veto on the Security Council Here’s the ambassador citing the part of the charter that deals with admission of members during his speech at the UN Security Council earlier tonight

UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, speaking directly to camera at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine: “President Putin: stop your troops from attacking Ukraine. Give peace a chance.” Albania’s ambassador says that this isn’t a conflict between Russia and the West, but “between Russia and international law, Russia and the UN Charter."

Riddle me this: how is the US saying “Russia better not invade Ukraine” a case of being -for- war? It feels like for some people trying to avert a war counts as warmongering and I really don’t get it. NATO members haven’t issued “deterrent sanctions” that some hawks are calling for

US intel that’s made it into reports has all been about the things that Moscow -wants- to pull, neutralizing potential Russian pretexts

Ukraine isn’t gonna invade Russia, so what am I missing?

I didn’t have room to get into it here, but while the main target of this “crack pipe” thing is def white suburbanites, there’s something about yelling “THE GOV'T WANTS PEOPLE SMOKING CRACK” that speaks to long-standing conspiracies in Black communities

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-… So in highlighting the ‘equity’ part of the HHS harm reduction grant, the GOP and Fox News get a twofer!

- Biden is wasting money on Black drug addicts
- Biden wants Black people to be drug addicts

Truly, what a perfect storm of a nontroversy

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-…

[screams into the abyss]

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1480746890442547202

Sinema concluded her remarks by "urging other senators to contact her if they wanted to discuss the issue further.” And I would love to be a fly on the wall for one of those meetings. Or maybe present at one of those meetings. I could make charts.

It. Has. Not. Been. Tradition. The. Whole. Time. You. Dink.

https://twitter.com/chadpergram/status/1480663837825286145

The filibuster is a mistake of the rewritten rules, which deleted the rule for “previous question,” a loophole exploited by the Southern slaveholding class and later the Dixiecrats. That is the history of the filibuster.

You know how you can register to vote at the DMV? Mitch McConnell fought against that bill in 1992, calling it a “solution in search of a problem.”

He’s saying the exact same thing now about Dem bills making it easier to vote

msnbc.com/opinion/mitch-… From 1992, again on the National Voter Registration Act: "Republicans, who twice in the last year used the threat of a filibuster to block the measure from coming to the floor, say the bill will encourage vote fraud.”

msnbc.com/opinion/mitch-…

SCREAM.

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1443002747989544969

TO REPEAT MYSELF: “We should understand this effort as plastering the veneer of technocracy onto her already shallow version of moderation, where aesthetics are more important than policy.”

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

New from me: I wrote on the most benignly weird thing that we’ve learned about the Trump era to date — WH staff using the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber to calm down the former president’s rages — and why it makes perfect sense

msnbc.com/opinion/trump-… Come for the AMAZING art from @chelseastahl, stay for my extremely on-brand discussion of the Trump-ALW overlap

msnbc.com/opinion/trump-…