US Politics

California has lost two towering figures in the US House of Representatives in the past two years, first with the decision by then House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to step back followed by Kevin McCarthy’s announcement he would be resigning from Congress altogether after being ejected from leadership by his own party.The two represent diametrically opposed politics. But in their home state, their exit from top congressional leadership has had ripple effects, upsetting a political infrastructure that they had each spent decades building up.After the recent death of Dianne Feinstein – one of the most senior members of the Senate – and the upcoming departures of a number of senior California representatives, the most populous US state, with a historically oversized influence on national policy, has found itself somewhat in a political morass.“It’s pretty uncommon to have back-to-back speakers from the same state,” said Marc Sandalow, associate director of the University of California Washington Center. “And then to lose two speakers in succession – that’s a huge turnover.”The upcoming retirements of the veteran representatives Anna Eshoo, Tony Cárdenas and Grace Napolitano have compounded the state’s losses. Moreover, three California representatives – Katie Porter, Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff – are vying for the Senate seat left vacant by the late Dianne Feinstein, contributing to a power vacuum in the House. Overall, the Californians leaving Congress have decades of seniority in the House, Sandalow noted. (However, with the former California senator Kamala Harris in the vice-president’s office, the state is still represented at the highest levels of the US government.)Both parties will probably see their fundraising efforts affected. But particularly for Republicans, McCarthy’s departure will leave a huge gap.“Kevin McCarthy was the last pulse pulsating in the body that is the California Republican party,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime California Republican political consultant. In a state that overall leans Democratic, but with sizable conservative and moderate pockets, McCarthy’s sway for years helped boost his party’s candidates.“Kevin at least had the power of the speakership and the influence of national donors,” Madrid said. “And now that’s gone.” Perhaps gone too, he added, is the political goodwill and influence McCarthy spent decades building up in his home state.McCarthy, 58, has vowed “to support the next generation of leaders”, promising to elevate a new generation of Republicans in an opinion essay for the Wall Street Journal. But his spectacular ouster, and uneasy alliance with far-right members of his party who ultimately ran him out, has diminished his influence, said Madrid. “Kevin’s legacy has taken an extraordinarily big hit. His reputation during the Trump years dramatically lost a lot of lustre.”Such is not the case for Pelosi, 83, who stepped away from House leadership on good terms. She announced in September that she will be seeking re-election in 2024, and has been spending the past year continuing to fundraise for fellow Democrats while growing her own political war chest.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“She still has an immense amount of clout, but she’s now an important voice in the room, as opposed to the voice in the room,” said Dan Schnur, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies and a veteran Republican consultant. “Still, we’re seeing a generational shift with her stepping back.”It remains unclear who will step up. Along with Feinstein, Pelosi was part of a generation of Bay Area leaders that helped define Democratic politics and policy for decades. They have also been kingmakers, pulling up many state leaders, including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.“And they have very much been part of the political establishment,” said Sandalow, “Their departure opens the door to potentially far more progressive candidates to emerge.”Still, at least until she retires, Pelosi is likely to remain a powerful influence. “Pelosi is probably the top fundraiser in the history of the US Congress,” said Sandalow, a longtime Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle who has written a biography of the former speaker.Both she and McCarthy, he added, “knew how to tap California’s deep pockets, and then distribute money to their candidates around the country to buy influence”. More

Six US senators have introduced a new “Fans First Act” to address flaws in the live event ticketing system by increasing transparency in ticket sales, protecting consumers from fake or overpriced tickets, and building accountability measures for bad actors.The bipartisan bill, brought to Congress by three Republicans (John Cornyn of Texas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi) and three Democrats (Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Peter Welch of Vermont and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico), is the latest effort by Congress to combat high and exploitative ticket pricing for concerts and other live events.The heated situation with online ticket sellers – predominantly by Ticketmaster, by far the largest of retailers – reached a boiling point in 2022, when demand for tickets to see Taylor Swift’s and Bruce Springsteen’s tours, respectively, crashed the site and sent prices soaring.Several Swift fans went on to sue Ticketmaster for “fraud, price-fixing and antitrust violations”, alleging that “intentional deception” allowed scalpers to buy the majority of tickets, to be resold at a mark-up; within hours of the Eras tour sale, tickets were being resold on secondary seller sites for as much as $22,000 (£18,000).“Because no other venue can hold half as many people as the stadiums and venues working through Ticketmaster, Taylor Swift and other popular musicians have no choice but to work through Ticketmaster,” the suit alleged. The controversy led to congressional hearings with Ticketmaster executives. Though started before the Swift debacle, the US justice department launched an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, over whether it abused its power in the multibillion-dollar live entertainment industry.According to an announcement signed by the six senators, the Fans First Act seeks to improve pricing transparency by requiring all live event ticket sellers and resellers to disclose the total cost of the ticket, including fees, when the fan initially selects a ticket for purchase; a breakdown of the ticket cost; clear terms and conditions of purchase; which seat or section they are selling in order to avoid ticket misrepresentation; and whether or not they are the original seller.The act would also strengthen the Better Online Ticket Sales (Bots) Act, signed into law in 2016, to further prohibit the use of bots to purchase tickets online, and would impose civil penalties on resellers engaging in illegal ticket sale practices. The bill would create a reporting website for fans to file complaints, to be enforced and monitored by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general. And it seeks to stop bad actors by prohibiting the sale of “spec” tickets which resellers do not yet possess, prevents the use of deceptive websites and bad actors masquerading as legitimate sellers, and requires reporting of Bots Act violations from ticketing companies to the FTC.“The current ticketing system is riddled with problems and doesn’t serve the needs of fans, teams, artists or venues,” said Cornyn in the announcement. “This legislation would rebuild trust in the ticketing system by cracking down on bots and others who take advantage of consumers through price gouging and other predatory practices and increase price transparency for ticket purchasers.”Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, applauded the new bill: “We support the Fans First Act and welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing. We believe it’s critical Congress acts to protect fans and artists from predatory resale practices, and have long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures. We look forward to our continued work with policymakers to advocate for even stronger reforms and enforcement.” More

Beyond the tumult surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his threats to seek revenge against his political enemies should he win, the Republican frontrunner has seized on an issue that even some Democrats say could attract new voters in 2024.Trump is backing “school choice” programs that use taxpayer dollars to send students to private and religious schools. It is a stance with wide appeal as parents have become increasingly fed up with the state of US public education.Polls show that about 70% of parents favor greater education options. The issue resonates strongly enough with some voters that Trump’s support could make a difference in the presidential election as well as help Republicans in state and congressional races.“It’s popular among the Republican base, it’s popular among independents and even popular among the Democratic base – in particular African Americans and Hispanics,” said Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.In a banner year for the school-choice movement, 10 states, all governed by Republicans, enacted or expanded programs in 2023 that allow varying uses of public tax dollars for private education assistance, from tuition to tutoring and therapy.For reform advocates, the momentum is a natural outgrowth of the conservative “parents’ rights” movement born of the Covid-19 pandemic, when concerns about safety mushroomed into screaming matches at school board meetings over curriculum, learning loss and diversity initiatives.Many Democrats, backed by powerful teachers’ unions, continue to view such programs with suspicion, however, saying they are attempts by Republicans to weaken public education while further enriching wealthy families.But some Democrats warn that their candidates must embrace education options or risk ceding their historic edge over Republicans on the issue.“If we don’t offer an alternative to private school choice, we are going to lose more voters on this issue,” said Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, which favors school-choice options such as charter schools. “We’re going to lose close elections on this issue.”Polling by Elorza’s group in four 2024 battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina – showed Republicans held a three-point advantage on the question of which party people trust most on education.Elorza said he was concerned particularly about Black voters in states like Georgia, where a slight shift in the 2020 elections would have tilted the state toward Trump.After Republicans in Arizona enacted a sweeping state-funded voucher plan last year, enrollment in the program exceeded budget projections, prompting the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, to argue that it clashes with other state priorities.In Florida, about 123,000 students joined a similar program after it was expanded in March with the backing of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, another presidential candidate who regularly touts it on the campaign trail and in debates.The majority of those students were already attending private schools – a statistic jumped on by critics who argued the program mainly benefits wealthy parents.According to Step Up for Students, the non-profit that administers the Florida program, of the close to 227,000 total students who now receive assistance, about 108,000 are from families who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.The makeup of the program reflects a broad cross-section of demographic groups: 36% of the students are Hispanic and 20% are Black.Shemeika Williams, a Black mother of three who works in a south Florida hospital, said she would not be able to afford the private Christian academy her 17-year-old daughter attends if the state did not cover transportation and tuition costs.Williams, 41, calls herself an independent and said the legislation will make it more likely she will back Republican candidates in the future.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I will support anyone who will benefit me and my family,” she said. “They are helping people who don’t have the resources.”School choice has long been championed by conservatives, including Betsy DeVos, who served as Trump’s education secretary.Trump supports a bill pending in the US House of Representatives that would provide tax relief to corporations and individuals who provide scholarships to allow students to attend private and religious schools.He has also called for more federal support of home schooling, the fastest-growing form of K-12 education in the nation, by providing tax incentives.A Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said Trump seeks to “liberate students from failing schools and raise the quality of education across the board”.School choice, Cheung said, “is an issue that should unify voters of all backgrounds”.Public policy thinktanks such as the Brookings Institution have conducted studies that show vouchers and other choice programs do not produce gains in academic performance and education attainment, largely because the quality of schools that receive private money vary wildly.Conservative advocacy groups argue otherwise, saying there is a measurable improvement in student performance without a corresponding negative effect on public schools.Some Democratic-leaning groups say recent elections showed voters were rejecting the Republican message on education.In a memo last month, the National Education Association, a teachers’ union, noted that voters re-elected the Democratic governor in Kentucky in November in a race in which the Republican candidate’s support for a voucher plan became a top campaign issue.Education was a central issue in races across the country this year. But frequently, Republican candidates who favored private school-choice programs were portrayed by Democrats as supporting efforts to ban controversial education materials and diversity efforts, making it difficult to measure the viability of the issue on its own. More

As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.Such an advisory role for Miller squares with Trump’s desire for a tougher brand of lawyer who will not try to obstruct him, as some top administration lawyers did in late 2020 over his false claims about election fraud.“They’re looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding,” Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer during the Trump years and former justice department official, said. “Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.”Cobb added that “Trump trusts Miller greatly”, although Miller is not a lawyer.“Trump doesn’t care about the rule of law or the quality of the criminal justice system,” Cobb said. “He only cares about fealty to him.”Miller’s legal group, which raked in a hefty $44m dollars in 2022, also has a board seat with Project 2025, a sprawling effort led by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups to map policy plans for a second Trump term – or another GOP presidency if Trump is not the nominee.Project 2025 includes schemes to curb the justice department, the FBI and other agencies, giving Trump more power to seek revenge – as he has pledged to do in campaign speeches and Truth Social posts – against critics in both parties, which could benefit from conservative lawyers’ sign-offs, but which justice department veterans warn would undermine the legal system.“It seems that they are looking for lawyers who will do whatever Trump wants them to do, and that is the antithesis of implementing the rule of law,” Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under George HW Bush, said.“When you consider the number of lawyers who became Trump’s severe critics after joining the first Trump administration and participating in a lot of questionable actions, selection for a new administration will have to exclude pretty much anyone who has any inclination to defend our legal system or question the president asserting absolute authority.”Ayer’s analysis is underscored by Trump’s 2020 anger at top lawyers such as the then attorney general William Barr, the then White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others, who pushed back on Trump for his false claims that he lost to Biden due to fraud.Trump has cited Barr – one of several former top lawyers and officials who later became critics – as someone he would press the justice department to launch inquiries against, according to the Washington Post.The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions including 17 involving his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, has also threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.Trump has attacked the prosecutions against him as political witch-hunts, arguing they give him the right if he wins the presidency again to use the justice department and FBI as tools to attack his opponents.Trump’s retribution agenda was partly revealed on Tuesday at a Fox News town hall, when he slyly said if he was elected again he would not be a dictator “except for day one”.To help facilitate Trump’s agenda, Miller plus the former Trump aide John McEntee, who started as Trump’s personal aide and then became a key adviser in 2020, have reportedly been working with others at Project 2025 to identify tougher pro-Trump lawyers.Besides Miller’s group, numerous conservative groups have board seats on Project 2025 including the Center for Renewing America, a thinktank run by the former Trump budget director Russ Vought. The center employs Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who pushed false information about voting fraud in 2020 as part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss. Clark has written a paper that Vought’s center published titled The US Justice Department Is Not Independent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, Clark and several other former Trump lawyers are now facing major legal headaches after aiding Trump’s efforts to block Biden’s victory, which could complicate Miller’s hunt for new diehard Trump lawyers.Clark and other key conservative lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman have been charged by the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, in a sprawling racketeering case against Trump and 18 others for seeking to thwart Biden’s Georgia victory. Other Trump legal advisers who were charged, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, have struck plea deals with Willis.Some experts foresee real dangers to democracy in Miller’s search for lawyers who would back Trump’s emerging far-right agenda.“This is a search for people with situational ethics,” Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, said.“They’re trying to screen out people who have higher loyalties to the US constitution. It’s likely they’re looking for people whose higher loyalty is to Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re trying to find lawyers who believe in dictatorship. You have to wonder what kind of people in good conscience could sign up for a Trump revenge tour. This appears to be a casting call for an American political horror movie.”If Trump wins, some of the lawyers who may be candidates for key posts according to the New York Times include a few who work at either Miller’s group or have worked for Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a close Trump and Miller ally who has faced several ethics and criminal inquiries.Miller and his legal center did not respond to a request for comment for this story.Miller’s lawyer search could benefit from his group’s contacts in Maga circles and rapid growth. When America First Legal was launched in 2021, it soon garnered $1.3m from the Maga-allied Conservative Partnership Institute, where Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows is a senior official. Meadows and Vought have both served on the board of Miller’s group.America First Legal’s deep pockets have helped fund an array of lawsuits against the Biden administration, states targeting immigration policies and what Miller has labeled “the equity cult”. Just last month, America First Legal filed a brief opposing the limited gag order placed on Trump by a federal judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count criminal indictment of Trump for election subversion.More broadly, the mission statement of Miller’s America First Legal reveals its ideological compatibility with Trump’s authoritarian-leaning agenda, of which hard-right lawyers would be assets in implementing should Trump get another term.“Our security, our liberty, our sovereignty, and our most fundamental rights and values are being systematically dismantled by an unholy alliance of corrupt special interests, big tech titans, the fake news media, and liberal Washington politicians,” the mission statement reads.Given Miller’s strong ties to Trump, some GOP congressional veterans are alarmed by his search for more ideological lawyers who would not question Trump’s emerging authoritarian agenda.“They’re looking for grifters and sycophants like Jeffrey Clark and Ken Paxton,” said the former House member Charlie Dent.In Dent’s eyes, these kinds of lawyers would “do whatever they’re told. This is absolutely dangerous.” More

This week, Joe Biden admitted that he probably would not be running for re-election if Donald Trump was not likely to be the Republican candidate. The thoughts of a rehashed presidential race in 2024 has many Americans dreading next year, and some are looking to third-party or independent candidates as potential alternatives.
So why hasn’t an outsider been more successful in the past? Is running independently of the Democrat and Republican parties a legitimate offer to voters, or nothing more than an election spoiler? And if the answer is the latter, why should the president be the one to worry?
This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Nitish Pahwa of Slate about why Democrats are worried that Biden could suffer the same fate as Hilary Clinton in 2016

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

Hunter Biden has been indicted on nine tax charges in California, becoming the second indictment against the president’s son, adding fuel to a scandal that Republicans have been seizing on in the lead-up to the 2024 election.The state charges on Thursday follow federal firearms charges in Delaware alleging Biden unlawfully obtained a revolver in October 2018 after he falsely stated he was not using narcotic drugs.The new charges include three felonies and six misdemeanor offenses, and Biden faces a possible 17-year sentence if convicted.“The Defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” the 56-page indictment said, adding that Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills”.In 2018 alone, the indictment read, Biden “spent more than $1.8 million, including approximately $772,000 in cash withdrawals, approximately $383,000 in payments to women, approximately $151,000 in clothing and accessories” among other expenditures.Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an inquiry and the White House declined to comment.He had previously been on track to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, which covered $4m in personal income taxes that he allegedly failed to pay in 2017 and 2018.But the agreement imploded in July after a judge raised questions about it. The deal had been pilloried as a “sweetheart deal” by Republicans, who have been investigating nearly every aspect of Biden’s business dealings as well as the justice department’s handling of the case. He eventually paid back taxes with a loan from a friend.The state charges come as Republicans in Congress have pushed forward with a possible impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in connection with his son’s scandals. The House is on track to vote next week on authorizing a formal inquiry, although no evidence has emerged so far to prove that the president accepted bribes or engaged in an influence-peddling scheme, as some GOP representatives have suggested.Some Republicans have expressed doubt about a possible impeachment, questioning whether a case is merited. In September, witnesses brought in by Republicans on the House oversight committee said there was no evidence of crimes by Joe Biden, but also called for further investigation.Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the gun charges in Delaware, which marked the first time a sitting US president’s child faced criminal prosecution. His lawyer said at the time that the special counsel David Weiss was “bending to political pressure” by filing the indictment.Under the previous plea deal that fell apart, Hunter Biden would have been sentenced to two years of probation. In the draft agreement, prosecutors had noted that his struggles with addiction had worsened during the period after the death of his brother Beau Biden in 2015.Weiss, the attorney in Delaware, was appointed special counsel by attorney general, Merrick Garland, in August.The new case is set to add chaos to what will already be an extraordinary election year, in which the sitting president will be dealing with the fallout of his son’s possible trials, while his likely opponent, Donald Trump, is facing four separate criminal cases and 91 charges. More

New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has issued a statement in response to his censure by House Republicans, saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.”In his statement, Bowman said:
I want to thank Democratic leadership and my countless other colleagues for standing up for me last night during the debate. Your words were so kind and I am always grateful to have you all by my side.
I have expressed deep regret, apologized for my mistake, and taken accountability for my actions. I also went through the proper investigative processes with the Republican controlled House Committee on Ethics, which decided not to open a formal investigation.
I had hoped that we could devote our time and resources to doing our jobs and addressing the issues Americans care about. Americans desperately need us to act with urgency to address the high costs of healthcare, prevent gun violence, invest in education, and so much more, but my colleagues have made it explicitly clear that they would rather relitigate already settled matters than do what we were sent here to do and legislate.
This Republican House is unserious and unproductive, and I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies. I look forward to continuing to serve the people of New York’s 16th district and the country.
It is 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
The GOP-led House voted to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman with 214 yeas and 191 nays. There were also five votes of present and three Democrats out of party lines against Bowman, who pleaded guilty to setting off a fire alarm in a House office building in September.
Jamaal Bowman issued a statement in response to his censure saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.” He added: “I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies.”
In response to the House’s vote to censure Jamaal Bowman, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Maga Republicans “have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority”. “Extreme Maga Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censuring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct by their own members,” he added.
Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib criticized House Republicans following the vote to censure Jamaal Bowman. In an impassioned address, she said: “You all [are] so desperate to distract from the fact that you all have nothing, nothing to improve the lives of the American people or end the ongoing genocide [in Gaza]. So now you’re trying to shift the focus by baselessly attacking Rep Bowman to score cheap political points.”
Massachusetts’s Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley also condemned the censure of Jamaal Bowman. Pressley called the censure “just the latest in this chamber’s shameful history of telling Black and brown folks they don’t belong in Congress”.
The Joe Biden administration has announced new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for Americans. A statement released by the White House on Thursday revealed that the actions include the promotion of equitable access to lower-price taxpayer-funded drugs, as well as the launch of a cross-government public inquiry into corporate greed in healthcare.
The White House has pushed back against House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. In a statement released on Thursday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said: “This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear president Biden.”
CNN has announced that it will host two Republican presidential primary debates next month in Iowa and New Hampshire. The first debate will take place on 10 January at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The second debate is scheduled for 21 January at St Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Jahana Hayes, one of the three Democrats who voted to censure Jamaal Bowman, has released a statement explaining her vote:
Today, I voted YEA on a resolution to censure representative Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House office building on September 30th, 2023.
While I disagree with the decision of the Republican majority to put the resolution on the House floor, and the watering down of the censure process, I believe what representative Bowman did was wrong and as members of Congress we should be held to a higher standard.
The other two Democrats who voted to censure Bowman are New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas and Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.George Santos, the former New York Republican representative who was expelled from the House last weekend, has also weighed in on the censure of Jamaal Bowman.Tweeting on Thursday, Santos said:
Republicans in the house just showed they don’t have the testicular fortitude to expel a convicted criminal from the house of reps.
Bowman got a slap on the wrist from the RINO [Republicans In Name Only] establishment and they now all feel like they accomplished something!
New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has issued a statement in response to his censure by House Republicans, saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.”In his statement, Bowman said:
I want to thank Democratic leadership and my countless other colleagues for standing up for me last night during the debate. Your words were so kind and I am always grateful to have you all by my side.
I have expressed deep regret, apologized for my mistake, and taken accountability for my actions. I also went through the proper investigative processes with the Republican controlled House Committee on Ethics, which decided not to open a formal investigation.
I had hoped that we could devote our time and resources to doing our jobs and addressing the issues Americans care about. Americans desperately need us to act with urgency to address the high costs of healthcare, prevent gun violence, invest in education, and so much more, but my colleagues have made it explicitly clear that they would rather relitigate already settled matters than do what we were sent here to do and legislate.
This Republican House is unserious and unproductive, and I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies. I look forward to continuing to serve the people of New York’s 16th district and the country.
Georgia’s state Republican lawmakers have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order.The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.Read the full story here:The Joe Biden administration has announced new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for Americans.A statement released by the White House on Thursday revealed that the actions include the promotion of equitable access to lower-price taxpayer-funded drugs, as well as the launch of a cross-government public inquiry into corporate greed in healthcare.Other actions include increasing ownership transparency, as well as Medicare Advantage transparency.In a tweet on Thursday, Biden said:
“My administration is proposing that if a drug made using taxpayer funds is not reasonably available to Americans, the government reserves the right to “march in” and license that drug to another manufacturer who could sell it for less.”
The White House has pushed back against House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, the “baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality”.In a statement released on Thursday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said:
This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear President Biden. Fox News already reported that the only reason they’re having this vote is to ‘put a GOP win on the table for the base’, which is sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone’s time.”
Instead of doing anything to actually help people before leaving Washington for a month, these extreme House Republicans are hoping to distract from their own failed ability to govern by trying to score cheap political points in an effort to mollify Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is in open war with her own party’s Speaker. The American people are yet again going to see a clear contrast in priorities: President Biden who is focused on solving the challenges facing America and the world, and extreme House Republicans who only focus on stupid stunts to get attention for themselves.
CNN has announced that it will host two Republican presidential primary debates next month in Iowa and New Hampshire.The first debate will take place on 10 January at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The second debate is scheduled for 21 January at St Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has criticized Republicans over their decision to block supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel, saying that they need to “get serious and stand up for democracy”.In a tweet following the Senate’s vote on Wednesday to block the funding, Schumer wrote:
The GOP blocked funding for Ukraine, Israel, humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, the Indo-Pacific
We offered a golden opportunity for a border amendment vote of their choosing if it can get 60 votes – they rejected it
Republicans need to get serious and stand up for democracy
Massachusetts’s Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley has condemned the censure of New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman.Following the vote, Pressley addressed the House and called the censure “just the latest in this chamber’s shameful history of telling Black and brown folks they don’t belong in Congress”.She added:
Congressman Bowman has taken accountability for his mistake and even Republicans on the [House] ethics committee agree that this is a waste of time. We’ve got 99 problems but a functional government of a Republican majority is not one of them.
Republicans are disconnected, dysfunctional, discriminating and a disappointment to the American people.
New Hampshire’s Democratic representative Chris Pappas, who voted to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, told Axios:
I voted to table this resolution because we have far more pressing issues to tackle for the country.
But at the end of the day, representative Bowman broke the law when he pulled the fire alarm during House proceedings and has since pled guilty. The resolution was a straightforward condemnation of his actions, and I voted yes.
Florida’s Democratic representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost has also hit back at Republicans following their vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, calling it “pathetic”.In an tweet on Thursday, Frost wrote:
House Republicans just spent time and taxpayer money to censure one of the people’s champions, Jamaal Bowman.
They did this while they have members who aided and abetted the January 6th insurrection.
Pathetic.
In response to the House’s vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Maga Republicans “have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority”.He said:
Extreme Maga Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censuring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct by their own members including but not limited to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and engaging in efforts to irresponsibly and illegitimately target president Joe Biden and his family.
Why are extreme Maga Republicans wasting so much time on these efforts to target Democratic members of Congress, target president Biden?… It’s because the extreme Maga Republicans have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority.
Rashida Tlaib has criticized House Republicans following the vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman.In an impassioned address, she said:
“So desperate. You all [are] so desperate to distract from the fact that you all have nothing, nothing to improve the lives of the American people or end the ongoing genocide [in Gaza]. So now you’re trying to shift the focus by baselessly attacking Rep. Bowman to score cheap political points, comparing him to the white supremacists on January 6th, who were smashing windows in the Capitol, you all, and screaming ‘Hang Mike Pence!’
Your inability to govern is so obvious to the American people. You all can’t even find enough Republicans to vote to pass a budget or keep a speaker. This is yet another attempt to silence a person of color in this chamber.”
Last month, the Republican-majority House voted to censure Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza which has killed over 21,700 Palestinians in the last two months. More

The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.In an exchange that has now gone viral, Stefanik, a graduate of Harvard, pressed Elizabeth Magill, the president of UPenn, on Tuesday to say whether students calling for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined under the university’s code of conduct. In her line of questioning, Stefanik appeared to be conflating chants calling for “intifada” – a word that in Arabic means uprising, and has been used in reference to both peaceful and violent Palestinian protest – with hypothetical calls for genocide.“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill replied, in a reference to distinctions in first amendment law. “It is a context-dependent decision.” Stefanik pushed her to answer “yes” or “no”, which Magill did not.The backlash was swift and bipartisan.“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting – and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”The White House was joined by several Jewish officials and leaders in condemning the university presidents’ testimony before the US House committee on education and the workforce, at a hearing called by Republicans titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the simple response was “yes, that violates our policy.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Shapiro urged UPenn’s board to meet soon, as a petition calling for Magill’s resignation garnered thousands of signatures. According to CNN, Penn’s board of trustees held an “emergency meeting” on Thursday.The liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe noted that he rarely agreed with Stefanik, a far-right Trump ally, but wrote: “I’m with her here.”The Harvard president Claudine Gay’s “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends”. Tribe added.Republican presidential candidates also seized on the episode, folding it into their broader criticism of the US’s elite institutions as too “woke” and liberal.In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Ron DeSantis, who has led the rightwing crackdown on higher education as Florida’s governor, said the college presidents’ lack of moral clarity was a reflection of the liberal orthodoxy permeating higher education.“I think what this has revealed is the rot and the sickness that’s been festering inside higher education for a long time,” said DeSantis, a graduate of Harvard Law School who is running for president. He continued: “They should not be these hotbeds of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. But that’s what they’ve become.”Amid a surge in youth activism around the conflict, university leaders have struggled to balance the free speech of some pro-Palestinian activists with the fears of Jewish students who say the rhetoric crosses a line into antisemitism. In a number of cases, schools have responded by banning campus groups supportive of Palestinian rights.During their appearances, Magill, Gay and Sally Kornbluth of MIT all expressed alarm at the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses, some of which have triggered federal investigations by the Department of Education. In response, the presidents said they had taken steps to increase security measures and reporting tools while expanding mental health and counseling services. They also said it was their responsibility to ensure college campuses remain a place of free expression and free thought.In a new statement on Wednesday, Gay stated: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”Magill also sought to clarify her remarks to the committee in a video statement, in which she said her response to Stefanik’s question was an attempt to parse the university policies stating that speech alone is not punishable. But in doing so she said she failed to acknowledge the “irrefutable fact” that such speech represents a “call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetuate.“I want to be clear, a call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening – deeply so,” she said, adding: “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.”In the video, posted to X, Magill said the university’s policies “need to be clarified and evaluated” and committed to immediately convening a process to do so.Some free speech advocates expressed alarm at the possibility that universities may respond to the backlash by adopting speech-restrictive policies that depart from the protections of the first amendment, which governs government actors including public schools. But the universities at issue in Tuesday’s hearing are all private. Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called Magill’s comments on re-evaluating Penn’s policies a “deeply troubling, profoundly counterproductive response” to the anger.“Were Penn to retreat from the robust protection of expressive rights, university administrators would make inevitably political decisions about who may speak and what may be said on campus,” it said in a statement. The result of placing new limits on speech, it said, would mean “dissenting and unpopular speech – whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal – will be silenced”. More