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      What a Failed Speaker Vote Means for Kevin McCarthy and Republicans

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      Opening day in the House of Representatives is typically marked by the usual pageantry and the fleeting promise that this Congress will work better than the last. That hope could be immediately dashed this year if the House fails to elect a speaker on the first ballot and descends into a floor fight unprecedented in modern times.A small band of Republican misfits have vowed to vote against Kevin McCarthy, the party’s nominee for speaker. With a razor-thin majority, just five Republicans voting against him could deny Mr. McCarthy the gavel. This would be no small event. The House last failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot in 1923, and it’s only happened once since the Civil War.Electing a speaker is a responsibility given the House by the Constitution. Allowing the process to unravel into chaos would diminish the entire body and destroy Americans’ confidence in the new Congress. Mr. McCarthy still has time to reach an agreement with his critics, and he should do all within reason to secure the speakership on the first vote. Otherwise, a self-serving power play by a small group of Republicans threatens to make a mockery of the institution and further cement the notion that the party is not prepared to lead.A failed vote would badly weaken Mr. McCarthy or whoever the new speaker will be. The House is a majoritarian institution, and a speaker’s power is ultimately derived from the ability to produce the 218 votes needed to do business. If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will make very clear from the outset they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities, such as funding the government or preventing a credit default by lifting the debt ceiling, both of which will be required later this year.Should Mr. McCarthy come up short on the first ballot, it could take several more votes — and days — until we have a new speaker. But no matter who ultimately emerges as the top House Republican, the prolonged spectacle would leave the Republican majority hopelessly damaged from the start, along with the institution of the House itself.The Constitution requires that the House elect a speaker, and the vote takes priority over all other business. Nothing else can be done until the question is resolved. The House votes on a speaker before it formally adopts the set of rules governing the body. The incoming members of Congress won’t even be sworn in until after they choose a speaker.Without House rules in place, the body operates on precedent and basic parliamentary procedure. The precedent holds that a person must have a majority of those present and voting to be elected speaker. Those absent or voting “present” are not counted in the total, and thus can lower the number needed to win a majority. Even when things run smoothly, it is a time-consuming process. Over more than an hour, all 435 members are called alphabetically, and each shouts the name of their choice.While members are not bound to vote for a nominated person — or even for a member of the House, for that matter — the Congressional Research Service found that from 1945 to 1995, not a single member voted for anyone other than their party’s nominee. However, as our politics has become more fractured, a smattering of members have protested the party’s nominee by voting for someone else.None of these recent protest votes have derailed the election of a speaker, however — while a failed vote Tuesday would bring the House into a state of uncertainty no member has seen in their lifetime.The House cannot function until a speaker is elected and sworn in. Thus, the immediate order of business would be to simply vote again. The last time the first vote failed, 100 years ago, it required nine ballots over three days to name a speaker. In 1856, the speakership wasn’t resolved until the 133rd ballot.After a failed vote, the procedural options for both Mr. McCarthy and his detractors would be quite limited. Before another roll call vote, the House may entertain nominating speeches, whereby any member can rise and speak in favor of a candidate. While nominations are typically brief, this process may present an opportunity for Mr. McCarthy’s allies to make the case for his speakership. Lengthy nominating speeches could also be used to buy time while members work to reach an agreement in real time on the House floor. But the process could also unleash a circus on the floor, with Republican detractors using the opportunity to question Mr. McCarthy’s fitness for the job.Lawmakers could decide to change the process whereby a speaker is elected. Twice the House has voted to allow a speaker to be elected by a plurality rather than a majority vote. Both instances predated the Civil War and came only after weeks or, as in 1856, months of deadlock.The House could also move to adjourn, whether to a date or a certain time. Republicans may want to stop the voting to hold a meeting and attempt to resolve the matter privately. But, like everything in the House, adjourning requires a majority, which could prove difficult. House Democrats are unlikely to want to aid Mr. McCarthy, while those Republicans blocking him may not want the balloting to stop.In the event of a stalemate, Mr. McCarthy could face an important strategic question: Keep members on the floor voting while he seeks to cut a deal, or invite an even more unpredictable closed-door meeting of his conference? He may find that the best way out is through — by continuing to vote in a test of wills with people who are defying the choice of their conference.In the House, if you have a majority of the votes, you can do anything you want. If you don’t, you can’t do much of anything. It is easy to imagine several rounds of voting taking place in succession before someone wins or members relent and adjourn.Mr. McCarthy won an overwhelming vote within the House Republican conference to be the next speaker. Those opposing him know they are badly outnumbered, but they simply don’t care. Representative Andy Biggs has offered himself as a token opposition candidate. Though he has been fund-raising aggressively off his bid, Mr. Biggs has no chance to become speaker; if Mr. McCarthy fails, it will be a different Republican who takes the gavel. But the agitators’ objective isn’t to win the speakership for one of their own; it is to weaken Mr. McCarthy or whoever emerges as the next speaker of the House. The embarrassment indeed may be the point.The dissident members believe a weak speaker would make them more powerful. In truth, it would benefit no one.Brendan Buck is a communications consultant who previously worked for Republican speakers Paul D. Ryan and John Boehner.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      George Santos Goes to Washington as His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus

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      Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.In two years, George Santos went from being a little-known also-ran to a beacon of the Republican Party’s unexpected resurgence in a deep-blue state. But a swirling cloud of suspicion surrounds Mr. Santos, just as he is poised to take the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to swear to serve Constitution and country.Mr. Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.Mr. Santos would join Congress facing significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Mr. Santos has been hard to reach. He has not answered telephone calls, text messages or emails asking him to respond to The Times’s reporting. Earlier this week, Mr. Santos’s lawyer responded to an email asking about his campaign’s unusual spending, saying it was “ludicrous” to suggest the funds had been spent irresponsibly. Mr. Santos did not answer an email sent to him and his lawyer on Friday asking for comments about new reporting on the discrepancies in his past.Members of his own party have called for more detailed explanations of his behavior, and Nick LaLota, also a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, has called for a House ethics investigation.Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News on Thursday night that he was “pretty confident” that the House Ethics Committee would open an investigation into Mr. Santos. He added, “What Santos has done is a disgrace. He’s lied to the voters.”New York Democrats also made it clear they want to subject Mr. Santos to deeper scrutiny. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader, has said Mr. Santos is “unfit to serve.” Representative Ritchie Torres said he planned to introduce the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act — the SANTOS Act — that would require House candidates to provide details of their backgrounds under oath.The lawmaker who may have the most significant role in his future in the House, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has been silent when asked about The Times’s reporting and Mr. Santos’s interviews supporting it.It remains unclear how the controversy might affect Mr. Santos’s debut in Congress, including his committee assignments. Mr. Santos told NY1 last month that he hoped to serve on the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, based on his “14-year background in capital markets” and a “multicultural background.” He has since admitted to misrepresenting his work in financial services, while aspects of his heritage have been called into question.New reporting by The Times brings a clearer picture of his earlier life into view, including information about the gaps in his personal history, along with discrepancies in how he described his mother’s life.Mr. Santos has said that he grew up in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become “the first female executive at a major financial institution.” He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died “a few years later.”In fact, Ms. Devolder died in 2016, and a Brazilian community newspaper at the time described her as a cook. Mr. Santos’s friends and former roommates recalled her as a hardworking, friendly woman who spoke only Portuguese and made her living cleaning homes and selling food. None of those interviewed by The Times could recall any instance of her working in finance, and several chalked the story up to Mr. Santos’s tendency for mythmaking.His apparent fabrications about his own life begin with his claims about his high school. He said he attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious private institution in the Bronx, and said he dropped out in 2006 before graduating and earning an equivalency diploma. A spokesman for Horace Mann said that the school had no record of his attending at all.By 2008, court records show, Mr. Santos and his mother were living in Brazil, just outside Rio de Janeiro in the city of Niterói. Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store and spent nearly $700 in 2008 dollars using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show.Mr. Santos has denied that he committed crimes in the United States or abroad. But the Brazilian record shows that he admitted the fraud to both the police and the shopkeeper.“I know I screwed up, but I want to pay,” he wrote in a message to the store’s owner on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, in August 2009. “It was always my intention to pay, but I messed up.”In November 2010, Mr. Santos and his mother appeared before the police, where they both admitted that he was responsible. On Sept. 13, 2011, a Brazilian judge ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case. Three months later, a court official tried to subpoena him, but he could not be found.By that time, he was back in New York, working at a Dish Network call center in College Point, Queens, company records show.Interviews with half a dozen former friends and colleagues, several of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified to avoid being dragged into Mr. Santos’s controversies, suggest that he was reinventing himself when he moved back to New York, and that he would continue to do so in the years to come. They portray Mr. Santos as a striver, whose tendency toward embellishment and one-upsmanship left them with doubts about his many claimed accomplishments.He told some that he had been a journalist at a famous news organization in Brazil, but none could find his name on its website. He said that he was taking classes at Baruch College, but none of his friends remembered him studying. He bragged of Wall Street glory but often seemed to be short on cash, at times borrowing from friends whom he didn’t always repay. When he joined a travel technology company called MetGlobal, Mr. Santos portrayed himself as a man with family money. But two former co-workers said that the pay was modest and the work didn’t square with Mr. Santos’s depiction of himself as a financier passing time after bad bets left him on the outs on Wall Street.Not everything in Mr. Santos’s stated biography was a lie. A LinkBridge document supports his claim that he was a vice president. Several former colleagues confirmed he worked for MetGlobal, for a subsidiary called HotelsPro. And records examined by The Times appeared to corroborate his claim that he received his high school equivalency degree in New York in 2006.In 2016, Mr. Santos left for Florida, public records show, around the time that HotelsPro was opening an office in Orlando. Mr. Santos told Newsday in 2019 that he went there briefly for work. He received a Florida driver’s license and was registered to vote there in the 2016 election.Those who knew him recalled that Mr. Santos had long been a follower of Republican politics, and that he railed against Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio, who was then the mayor of New York.One who was close to Mr. Santos was Pedro Vilarva. Mr. Vilarva met Mr. Santos in 2014, when he was 18 and Mr. Santos was 26. Mr. Vilarva found him charming and sweet. They dated for a few months before Mr. Santos suggested they move in together. Mr. Vilarva said he felt on top of the world — even if he said he did find himself footing many of the bills.“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Mr. Vilarva recalled. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work,” he said.Things began to unravel between the two men in early 2015, Mr. Vilarva said, after Mr. Santos surprised him with tickets to Hawaii that turned out not to exist. Around the same time, he said he discovered that his cellphone was missing, and believed Mr. Santos had pawned it.The betrayal prompted him to plug Mr. Santos’s name into a search engine, where he found that Mr. Santos was wanted by Brazilian police.“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.Looking back, Mr. Vilarva said, he was young and gullible: He wanted to believe Mr. Santos’s many stories and believe in the life that they shared. Today he is worried about the impact Mr. Santos might have as an elected official.“I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands,” he said.André Spigariol More

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      Paul Pelosi, el marido que se ocupa de las tareas mundanas

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      La pareja de Nancy Pelosi fundó una firma de inversión en capital de riesgo, pero desde que la presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes optó por la política, es quien compra las toallas de cocina y el guardarropa de ella.WASHINGTON — La presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, Nancy Pelosi, estaba pegada a la transmisión de CNN la noche que siguió a las elecciones de 2020, mientras su esposo, Paul Pelosi, sentado cerca de ella, abría un paquete.“¿Qué es eso?”, le pregunta a su marido en una escena del nuevo documental de HBO, Pelosi in the House, dirigido por su hija Alexandra Pelosi.“Toallas de cocina”, le responde el hombre con un ápice de ironía mientras revienta el papel burbuja del embalaje. Nancy Pelosi sonríe y luego vuelve a concentrarse en la cobertura electoral.Este es solo un ejemplo de una dinámica que se observa a lo largo de todo el filme: Paul Pelosi, quien fue brutalmente agredido en la residencia de la pareja en San Francisco por un atacante cuyo objetivo, según se dijo, era la presidenta de la Cámara Baja, se ocupa de lo que su familia denomina el “negocio de vivir”. Esto le da a su esposa, quien dejará su cargo el 3 de enero cuando los republicanos asuman la mayoría de la Cámara de Representantes, la libertad de enfocarse en su trabajo político.Es el tipo de relación que las mujeres que se dedican a la política rara vez mencionan, pero que a veces puede marcar la diferencia entre el éxito y el fracaso: una pareja dispuesta a ocuparse de las tareas mundanas y del rol de apoyo que tradicionalmente recaía en las esposas de los políticos. Y aunque los Pelosi tienen una buena posición económica y pueden contratar toda la ayuda que necesitan en su hogar, el documental muestra que ser cónyuge de una figura política puede significar simplemente estar presente y luego hacerse a un lado.En el transcurso de la película, mientras Nancy Pelosi atiende asuntos por teléfono con el exvicepresidente Mike Pence, el senador Chuck Schumer o Joe Biden, quien entonces era candidato a la presidencia, Paul Pelosi, de 82 años, un empresario multimillonario que fundó una firma de inversión en capital de riesgo, a menudo está en el mismo espacio atendiendo las necesidades cotidianas de la vida en común.En una escena, la dirigente está en pijama elaborando estrategias en una llamada con el representante demócrata de Nueva York Jerrold Nadler, sobre el primer juicio político al presidente Donald Trump mientras Paul Pelosi, sentado frente a ella, habla por celular con un contratista que está intentando entrar a su casa en San Francisco para reparar una ducha averiada.“No sé qué le pasó a esa llave”, dice Paul Pelosi, usando una palabrota.La pareja se conoció cuando eran estudiantes universitarios en un curso de verano en la Universidad de Georgetown en 1961. Se casaron dos años después y tuvieron cinco hijos en seis años. Nancy Pelosi dedicó los primeros años de su matrimonio a ser madre y ama de casa en San Francisco y no se postuló al Congreso sino hasta cumplir más de 40 años. Lo que sucedió después fue algo que Paul Pelosi jamás pudo haber imaginado para su esposa ni para su familia, según su hija.“Creo que esto no era lo que él tenía en mente en 1987”, dijo Alexandra Pelosi en una entrevista, en referencia al año en que su madre fue elegida por primera vez al Congreso. “Él solo tuvo que aceptarlo”.La pareja tuvo cinco hijos en seis añosPeter DaSilva para The New York TimesSegún su hija, a Paul Pelosi nunca le picó el bicho de la política. Le prohíbe a su familia hablar del tema en la mesa durante la cena. Pero con el correr de los años, ha estado al lado de su esposa en sus momentos políticos más importantes y ha asumido muchos de los deberes domésticos. Lava los platos, lidia con contratistas, paga las facturas y compra la ropa de Nancy Pelosi.“Ella nunca ha ordenado toallas de cocina en su vida”, dijo Alexandra Pelosi. “Eso es algo que él siempre ha hecho. Él hace las compras, desde las toallas de cocina hasta el vestido Armani”.“Tiene a Armani guardado en sus números de marcado rápido”, añadió, en referencia al diseñador italiano Giorgio Armani, uno de los favoritos de su madre. “Es esposo a tiempo completo”.Alexandra Pelosi compartió más detalles: “El vestido que usó para la cena de Estado, lo mandó pedir él y se lo envió a mi hermana para que se lo probara”. (Se refería al vestido de noche dorado de lentejuelas de otro diseñador italiano, Giambattista Valli, que su madre lució en diciembre en una cena de Estado en la Casa Blanca para recibir al presidente de Francia, Emmanuel Macron).El documental, que se centra en el ascenso y los logros profesionales de Nancy Pelosi, deja entrever cómo estar casada con una pareja comprensiva ayuda a crear un espacio laboral para una mujer que, durante años, fue la fuerza política más poderosa del Partido Demócrata en los tiempos recientes.Con excepción de Hillary Clinton, pocas mujeres en la política han alcanzado la estatura de Pelosi y no hay muchos esposos como el suyo. El expresidente Bill Clinton fungió un papel de pareja de apoyo durante las dos campañas presidenciales de Clinton, pero luego de haber tenido él su turno.Doug Emhoff ha asumido el papel de reparto como pareja de la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris, pero eso ha significado que él mismo se ha convertido en figura pública por derecho propio. Pelosi nunca ambicionó nada como eso.“Él es una persona privada con una vida privada y una colección muy interesante de amigos, algunos de los cuales son republicanos”, dijo Alexandra Pelosi. “Él no buscaba este estilo de vida”.Sin embargo, se adaptó, aseguró su hija. “Toda mujer necesita a un Paul Pelosi”.Los Pelosi se conocieron en 1961 durante un curso de verano en la Universidad de Georgetown.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEn una escena del documental, Pelosi estaba limpiando los platos de desayuno en bata mientras su esposa hablaba con Pence. En un momento, ella se puso en mute y le mandó besos volados a su marido.En una escena filmada en la campaña presidencial de 2020, Nancy Pelosi estaba al teléfono con Biden aconsejándole “no te vayas mucho a la izquierda”. Paul Pelosi estaba sentado junto a ella, leyendo su iPad y medio poniendo atención a la conversación de su esposa.Él parecía cómodo con su papel de reparto.“¿Estás haciendo fila para tomarte una foto con la presidenta de la Cámara?”, le gritó detrás de la cámara su hija a Paul Pelosi en una reunión en el Capitolio de Estados Unidos antes de uno de los discursos de Trump, mientras Nancy Pelosi estaba haciéndose fotos con gente que quería retratarse con ella.“Ay, sí”, bromeó él.El año siguiente, ahí estaba una vez más, sentado y botaneando mientras Pelosi trabajaba.“Me enteré que Paul Pelosi andaba aquí”, bromeó su hija.“Solo vine por los pistachos”, dijo él.Cuando ella se preparaba para ingresar al recinto de la Cámara —donde al final rompería el discurso de Trump y lo desestimaría como un “manifiesto de falsedades”— su esposo estuvo con ella en el despacho ofreciéndole apoyo moral.“Te ves fabulosa, cariño”, le dijo Pelosi.Pese a sus apariciones en el documental, Paul Pelosi no siempre está al lado de su esposa, como sucedió en mayo, cuando sufrió un accidente automovilístico en el condado de Napa, California, y después se declaró culpable de un cargo de conducir bajo el efecto del alcohol. Nancy Pelosi estaba al otro lado del país, preparándose para dar un discurso de graduación en la Universidad de Brown.“Está presente en los días importantes”, dijo Alexandra Pelosi. “En realidad solo lo hace porque ella le dice que tiene que ir. Las personas de este ámbito necesitan una familia que las apoye en los días importantes”.En octubre, Paul Pelosi fue atacado con un martillo en la residencia de la pareja en San Francisco por un hombre que más tarde se dijo que buscaba agredir a la presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes. Aunque sufrió lesiones graves en la cabeza, en los últimos días se le ha visto acompañando a su esposa en diversos eventos, como la ceremonia de develación de su retrato en el Capitolio y la celebración de los Kennedy Center Honors.Sin embargo, la cineasta afirmó que su padre aún debe enfrentar un largo camino para su recuperación. “Tiene días buenos y días malos”, explicó y comentó que tiene estrés postraumático y se agota con facilidad.El ataque contra el hombre que ha sido el pilar silencioso de la vida de la familia Pelosi ha ocasionado estragos en todos sus integrantes. En una entrevista reciente con Anderson Cooper de CNN, la presidenta de la Cámara Baja dijo: “Para mí, esta es la parte realmente difícil, porque Paul no era el objetivo y él es quien está pagando el precio”.“No buscaba a Paul, sino que iba por mí”, agregó.Su hija expresó que uno de los aspectos más incómodos de esta terrible experiencia ha sido la atención pública que se ha centrado en una persona que siempre ha intentado eludirla.“Él ha evitado el protagonismo todo lo que ha podido”, afirmó. “Casi llegó al final sin que nadie supiera quién es”.Annie Karni es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca. Anteriormente cubrió la Casa Blanca y la campaña presidencial de 2016 de Hillary Clinton para Politico, y cubrió noticias locales y política en Nueva York para el New York Post y el New York Daily News. @AnnieKarni More

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      Trump tax returns: key takeaways from the records release

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      AnalysisTrump tax returns: key takeaways from the records releaseAssociated Press in WashingtonThe former president had a bank account in China, failed to donate in 2020 and claims Democrats ‘weaponized’ his taxes In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.Trump tax returns show China bank account as six years of records releasedRead moreThe thousands of pages of returns were the subject of a prolonged legal battle after Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the White House.Here are some key takeaways from a review of the documents:Trump had a bank account in ChinaDuring a 2020 presidential debate, Trump was asked about having a bank account in China. He said he closed it before he began his campaign for the White House four years earlier.“The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe,” Trump said. “I was thinking about doing a deal in China. Like millions of other people, I was thinking about it. I decided not to do it.”The tax returns contradict that account. Trump reported a bank account in China in his returns for 2015, 2016 and 2017.The returns show accounts in other foreign countries including the UK, Ireland and St Martin in the Caribbean. By 2018, Trump had apparently closed all his overseas accounts other than the one in the UK, home to one of his flagship golf properties.The returns do not detail the amount of money held in those accounts.No reported charitable giving in 2020In the final year of his presidency, Trump reported making no charitable donations. That was in contrast to the prior two years, when Trump reported about $500,000 (£414,060) worth of donations. It is unclear if any of the figures include his pledge to donate his $400,000 presidential salary back to the US government. He reported donating $1.1m in 2016 and $1.8m in 2017.Money from the arts worldTrump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild and a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting residuals as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to the tax returns.Trump has made cameo appearances in various movies, notably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but his biggest on-screen success came with his reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice.Trump reported paying a little more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in “book writer” fees. In 2015, Trump published the book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, with a ghostwriter. The same year, Trump reporting receiving $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.Trump vows paybackTrump broke political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as a candidate or as president. Now Republicans warn that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential information.Trump underscored that in a statement on Friday morning, after his returns were made public.Kayleigh McEnany a ‘liar and opportunist’, says former Trump aide Read more“The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” he said. “The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”Republicans on the House ways and means committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or supreme court justices. Democrats countered with a proposal to require the release of tax returns by any presidential candidate – legislation that is unlikely to pass, given that Republicans take control of the House next week.Republicans cannot disclose Joe Biden’s tax returns – because they are already public. Biden resumed the longstanding bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, disclosing 22 years’ worth of filings during his 2020 campaign.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS taxationUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Trump says tax returns release will ‘lead to horrible things for so many people’ – as it happened

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      Donald Trump has responded to the release of his tax returns by Democrats on the House ways and means committee, saying that they “show how proudly successful I have been”.In a statement released by his campaign, Trump pushed back against the move, saying: “The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.”He continued: “The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”It’s nearly 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of today’s developments on Trump’s tax returns and more:
      Despite Trump previously pledging that he would forgo his $400,000 salary if he became president, his tax returns indicate otherwise. According to Trump’s tax returns, he reported $0 in charitable giving in 2020 – his last year in office. In 2017, Trump donated $1.8 million and approximately half a million dollars in 2018 and 2019 each.
      The Biden administration on Friday finalized regulations to protect hundreds of thousands of streams, wetlands and other waterways across the country. The new rules repeal a Trump-era rule federal courts threw out and environmentalists said left waterways vulnerable to pollution.
      In addition to listing China as a foreign country that had a Trump-tied bank account, Trump also listed business income, taxes and expenses in several other countries on his tax returns. Those include Israel, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, India, Qatar, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, South Korea and Brazil, among others.
      Texas Democratic representative Lloyd Doggett has responded to the release of Tump’s tax returns, saying that “Americans should be outraged” by how little the former president paid in federal taxes in recent years.“I think it’s really outrageous… Here is the most powerful man in the world, the self-described clever genius who brags of his wealth almost daily and he did not pay taxes that the most modest wage earner in this country would pay,” he told MSNBC.
      Daniel Goldman, now a congressman-elect from New York but in a former role lead Democratic counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, has a question about what the Trump tax returns released today show: “Trump had bank accounts in China while he was in office until 2018. Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency.”
      President Joe Biden is granting full pardons to six people, the White House has announced. In a statement released on Friday, a White House spokesperson said that the pardons are for six individuals “who have served their sentences and have demonstrated a commitment to improving their communities and the lives of those around them.”
      On Thursday, in a recount triggered by the closeness of the first count, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Kris Mayes, was declared the winner for a second time, beating the Republican candidate, Abe Hamadeh. As the Associated Press reports, though, Mayes won the recount by less than she won the first count, finishing “280 votes ahead … down from a lead of 511 in the original count [with] the reason for the discrepancy not immediately clear.”
      Donald Trump’s tax returns indicate that he held overseas bank accounts while he was president. One page of the returns indicate the United Kingdom, Ireland, China and Saint Martin as foreign countries where Trump’s financial accounts were located. Tax records reviewed by the New York Times in 2020 revealed that Trump paid nearly $200,000 in taxes to China, according to the outlet.
      The House ways and means Republican leader Kevin Brady of Texas has responded to the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns, calling it a a “political weapon” and a “regrettable stain.” “Going forward, all future Chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders or even the Supreme Court justices themselves,” he said.
      Democratic representative Don Beyer of Virginia has compared Donald Trump to former president Richard Nixon in light of Trump’s tax returns release. In a statement released on Friday regarding Trump’s returns, Beyer, who sits on the House ways and means committee, said: “Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflict of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone.”
      Donald Trump has responded to the release of his tax returns by Democrats on the House ways and means committee, saying that they “show how proudly successful I have been”. In a statement released by his campaign, Trump pushed back against the move, saying: “The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.” He continued: “The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”
      The release of Donald Trump’s tax returns follows a congressional report released earlier this month that revealed that Trump and his wife Melania did not pay any federal income tax in 2020. The report also found for a few years, the couple reported negative income and little or no tax liability. In addition, it found that the Internal Revenue Service failed to carry out mandatory audits of Trump during his first two years as president.
      House Democrats have released former president Donald Trump’s tax returns that span over six years. The release of the returns marks the latest blow for Trump who was impeached twice by the Democratic-led House and was later acquitted by the Senate. In a written statement, Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee said, “Our findings turned out to be simple — I.R.S. did not begin their mandatory audit of the former president until I made my initial request,” the New York Times reports.
      An Arizona man who participated in the January 6 riots told the January 6th Select Committee that the “crazy” conspiracy theories about him working with the government has deeply affected his life. In an interview released on Thursday, Ray Epps told the committee that he has received death threats and that his grandchildren were bullied at school following far-right conspiracy theories that he was working for the FBI.“The only time I’ve been involved with the government was when I was a Marine in the United States Marine Corps,” Epps, who was a supporter of Donald Trump, said.
      Donald Trump’s former communications director has called Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last White House press secretary a “liar and an opportunist.” According to testimony released on Thursday, Alyssa Farah Griffin was asked by the January 6th Select Committee where McEnany “fell” after the 2020 election. In response, Farah Griffin said, “I’m a Christian woman…so I will say this. Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist.”
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we end today’s live blog on the politics of Capitol Hill and beyond. Have a great weekend! Despite Trump previously pledging that he would forgo his $400,000 salary if he became president, his tax returns indicate otherwise.According to Trump’s tax returns, he reported $0 in charitable giving in 2020 – his last year in office.In 2017, Trump donated $1.8 million and approximately half a million dollars in 2018 and 2019 each, the tax returns indicate.The Biden administration on Friday finalized regulations to protect hundreds of thousands of streams, wetlands and other waterways across the country.The Associated Press reports: The new rules repeal a Trump-era rule federal courts threw out and environmentalists said left waterways vulnerable to pollution.The rule defines which “waters of the United States” are protected by the Clean Water Act. For decades, the term has been a flashpoint between environmental groups that want to broaden limits on pollution and farmers, builders and industry groups that say extending regulations too far is onerous for business.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Army said the reworked rule was based on definitions in place before 2015. Federal officials said they wrote a “durable definition” of waterways to reduce uncertainty.More from the Associated Press here:Biden administration drafts new rules to protect streams and wetlandsRead moreHere’s some interesting lunchtime reading from Andrew Lawrence about Maxwell Frost, the Florida congressman-elect who is set to become the first Gen Z member of Congress. Safe to say, Frost’s move to Washington has not proved entirely smooth sailing…When the Guardian last visited 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost, in September, he was campaigning to become the first Gen Z member of the US Congress, and driving Uber shifts to make ends meet in the meantime. In early November he defeated his Republican rival, Calvin Wimbish, by a considerable margin, winning 59% of the vote in Florida’s 10th congressional district, which includes Orlando and many of its surrounding theme parks.Frost’s life has only become messier since. Chiefly, he has yet to sort out his living accommodation in Washington DC, and must decide whether to keep paying rent for the Orlando home he shares with two others, as well as working out how to foot these bills until his $174,000 (£142,000) federal salary kicks in. He says: “I’ll probably crash on someone’s couch in DC for the first month at least.”Even finding potential roommates among his fellow representatives brings unforeseen challenges for the congressman-elect, who has been back and forth for freshman orientations. “A lot of people are looking to get their roommates before 3 January,” says Frost. “I just can’t operate on that timeline. Even after I start getting paid it’s not like I’m flush in one day. I have a lot of debt.” Earlier this month he vented on Twitter about being turned down for a DC apartment due to bad credit: “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have the money,” he wrote.Read on:‘I’ll be crashing on someone’s couch till I get paid’: life as the first Gen Z congressmanRead moreIn addition to listing China as a foreign country that had a Trump-tied bank account, Trump also listed business income, taxes and expenses in several other countries on his tax returns. Those include Israel, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, India, Qatar, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, South Korea and Brazil, among others. In response to the release, Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois tweeted: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Releasing six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns…should help us understand any connections to foreign entities that may have influenced his decision-making as president.”Releasing six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns ensures transparency with the American people, and should help us understand any connections to foreign entities that may have influenced his decision-making as president. https://t.co/4jqYmofdf9— Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) December 30, 2022
      Texas Democratic representative Lloyd Doggett has responded to the release of Tump’s tax returns, saying that “Americans should be outraged” by how little the former president paid in federal taxes in recent years. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I think it’s really outrageous…both with regard to Trump personally and with regard to Trump’s Internal Revenue Service administration. Here is the most powerful man in the world, the self-described clever genius who brags of his wealth almost daily and he did not pay taxes that the most modest wage earner in this country would pay,” Doggett told MSNBC.
      “Nothing in one year, $75o dollars a year and others, all of this related to claims for big losses, big deductions, big credits, taking advantage of every loophole and because of the sorry job that Trump’s IRS did, we don’t know how many of these were legal loopholes, for the rich and how many of them were unjust and illegal” he said, adding, “Americans should be outraged by that.” “Here is the most powerful man in the world…and he did not pay the taxes that the most modest wage earner in this country would pay…Americans should be outraged by that”: Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Trump’s tax returns. pic.twitter.com/dWLS2FMpxo— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 30, 2022
      Daniel Goldman, now a congressman-elect from New York but in a former role lead Democratic counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, has a question about what the Trump tax returns released today show:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Trump had bank accounts in China while he was in office until 2018. Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency.
      What business was Trump doing in China while he was president?On the subject of Republicans, China and investment arrangements, here’s some further reading from the Guardian’s Lloyd Green:American muckrakers: Peter Schweizer, James O’Keefe and a rightwing full court pressRead moreOur Washington bureau chief, David Smith, and Sam Levine have filed their first report on today’s main politics news, the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns.Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns were made public by a congressional panel on Friday, ending the former president’s long-running effort to break precedent and keep them secret.The returns date from 2015 to 2020 and span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, and more than 3,000 pages from Trump’s businesses. Sensitive information such as social security and bank account numbers have been redacted.A House of Representatives report released earlier this month analyzed the documents and showed Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last full year he was in office. From 2015 to 2020, Donald and Melania Trump had several years in which they reported negative income and little or no tax liability.The report also found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to conduct mandatory audits of Trump during his first two years in office. By contrast, there were audits of Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, according to the White House.Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the ways and means committee, said in a statement: “A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility.”He added: “We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that. This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hoped to find.”Full story:Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns made public by US House panelRead morePresident Joe Biden is granting full pardons to six people, the White House has announced.In a statement released on Friday, a White House spokesperson said that the pardons are for six individuals “who have served their sentences and have demonstrated a commitment to improving their communities and the lives of those around them.”.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“President Biden believes America is a nation of second chances, and that offering meaningful opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation empowers those who have been incarcerated to become productive, law-abiding members of society,” the statement added.
      “The President remains committed to providing second chances to individuals who have demonstrated their rehabilitation – something that elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree our criminal justice system should offer.”The pardoned group include individuals who served in the US military, survived domestic abuse, and volunteer in their communities.More elections news from Arizona, a swing state where pro-Trump Republicans have of late caused a lot of trouble with claims of electoral fraud in races in which they were beaten.On Thursday, in a recount triggered by the closeness of the first count, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Kris Mayes, was declared the winner for a second time, beating the Republican candidate, Abe Hamadeh.As the Associated Press reports, though, Mayes won the recount by less than she won the first count, finishing “280 votes ahead … down from a lead of 511 in the original count [with] the reason for the discrepancy not immediately clear”.In a statement, Mayes said she was “excited and ready to get to work as your next attorney general and vow to be your lawyer for the people”.The AP continues:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Outside court, Mayes attorney Dan Barr said the results should give the public confidence in elections, despite the adjustments in vote totals as a result of the recount.
      ‘They didn’t just do a rubber stamp of what it was,’ Barr said. ‘They did a careful evaluation of the votes and they came up with a different result. And so I think people should have a lot of confidence in the process.’
      Hamadeh said the discrepancies in the latest results from his race were shockingly high. ‘My legal team will be assessing our options to make sure every vote is counted,’ he said. Hamadeh hasn’t conceded to Mayes.The Arizona governor’s race was also close, but not close enough to trigger a recount. The Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, won it, by a little more than 17,000 votes. The Republican candidate – the pro-Trump election denier Kari Lake – went to court over her defeat, but lost.Some further reading:Arizona judge declines to sanction Kari Lake for lawsuit challenging electionRead moreDonald Trump’s tax returns indicate that he held overseas bank accounts while he was president. One page of the returns indicate the United Kingdom, Ireland, China and Saint Martin as foreign countries where Trump’s financial accounts were located. A bank account in China.#TrumpTaxReturns pic.twitter.com/CLdBvFhK9U— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) December 30, 2022
      Tax records reviewed by the New York Times in 2020 revealed that Trump paid nearly $200,000 in taxes to China, according to the outlet. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump accused his oppponent Joe Biden of being “weak on China” and claimed that the Biden family was “selling out our country” to China. The House ways and means Republican leader Kevin Brady of Texas has responded to the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns, calling it a a “political weapon” and a “regrettable stain.”In a statement issued on Friday, Brady said: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“With the publicly released transcript of Democrats’ secret executive session, Americans now have confirmation that there was never a legislative purpose behind the public release of these confidential records and that the IRS was conducting audits prior to Democrats’ request.
      “Despite these facts, Democrats have charged forward with an unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since Watergate.
      “Going forward, all future Chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders or even the Supreme Court justices themselves.
      “This is a regrettable stain on the Ways and Means Committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it.”Democratic representative Don Beyer of Virginia has compared Donald Trump to former president Richard Nixon in light of Trump’s tax returns release. In a statement released on Friday regarding Trump’s returns, Beyer, who sits on the House ways and means committee, said: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflict of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone.” Beyer went on to add: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud. As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.” Donald Trump has responded to the release of his tax returns by Democrats on the House ways and means committee, saying that they “show how proudly successful I have been”.In a statement released by his campaign, Trump pushed back against the move, saying: “The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.”He continued: “The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”The release of Donald Trump’s tax returns follows a congressional report released earlier this month that revealed that Trump and his wife Melania did not pay any federal income tax in 2020.The report also found for a few years, the couple reported negative income and little or no tax liability.In addition, it found that the Internal Revenue Service failed to carry out mandatory audits of Trump during his first two years as president.For more details, read Sam Levine’s reporting here:Donald Trump’s tax returns released by US House committeeRead moreTrump previously responded to the committee’s decision to release his returns, calling it an “outrageous abuse of power”..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“There is no legitimate legislative purpose for their action. And if you look at what they’ve done, it’s so sad for our country,” he said, adding, “It’s nothing but another deranged political witch hunt which has been going on from the day I came down an escalator in Trump Tower.”House Democrats have released former president Donald Trump’s tax returns that span over six years. The release of the returns marks the latest blow for Trump who was impeached twice by the Democratic-led House and was later acquitted by the Senate. In a written statement, Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee said, “Our findings turned out to be simple — I.R.S. did not begin their mandatory audit of the former president until I made my initial request,” the New York Times reports.Stay tuned for more details as we review the returns. An Arizona man who participated in the January 6 riots told the January 6th Select Committee that the “crazy” conspiracy theories about him working with the government has deeply affected his life. In an interview released on Thursday, Ray Epps told the committee that he has received death threats and that his grandchildren were bullied at school following far-right conspiracy theories that he was working for the FBI. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}”The only time I’ve been involved with the government was when I was a Marine in the United States Marine Corps,” Epps, who was a supporter of Donald Trump, said. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We had a tour bus come by our home and our business with all these whacked out people in it…There are good people out there that was in Washington. Those aren’t the people that’s coming by our house. This attracts — when they do this sort of thing, this attracts all the crazies out there,” he added. In his interview, Epps identified Republican representatives including Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene as congress members who helped spread the conspiracy theories about him. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I mean, it’s real crazy stuff, and [Massie] brought that kind of stuff to the floor of the House. When that happened, it just blew up. It got really, really bad…Him and, gosh, Gaetz and Greene, and, yeah, they’re just blowing this thing up. So it got really, really difficult after that. The crazies started coming out of the woodwork.”Donald Trump’s former communications director has called Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last White House press secretary a “liar and an opportunist.”According to testimony released on Thursday, Alyssa Farah Griffin was asked by the January 6th Select Committee where McEnany “fell” after the 2020 election.In response, Farah Griffin said, “I’m a Christian woman…so I will say this. Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist.”Farah Griffin went on to add that McEnany was a “smart woman” and “not an idiot.”.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“She knew we lost the election, but she made a calculation that she wanted to have a certain life post-Trump that required staying in his good graces. And that was more important to her than telling the truth to the American public.”For more details on Farah Griffin’s testimony, check out Martin Pengelly’s reporting here:Kayleigh McEnany a ‘liar and opportunist’, says former Trump aide Read moreGood morning, Guardian readers!The House ways and means committee is scheduled to release the former president’s tax returns today, after the panel’s vote last week.The documents are expected to include Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2021 and will be the first formal release of his financial records from his time as president. Last month, the Democrat-controlled committee obtained the returns as part of an investigation into Trump’s taxes, following a lengthy court battle that resulted in the supreme court ruling in the committee’s favor.The committee’s report released last week revealed its findings that the Internal Revenue Service broke its own rules by not auditing Trump for three of the four years of his presidency. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns.We will be bringing you the latest updates surrounding the release, so stay tuned. More

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      For Democrats, Spending Package Marked One Final Opportunity

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      For all their accomplishments in the past two years, Democrats face a far tougher environment to see most of their priorities through.WASHINGTON — Democrats began the year with an ambitious to-do list that included providing billions of dollars in pandemic aid, reviving lapsed expanded payments to most families with children and giving Afghan refugees a pathway to citizenship.By December, they had one final opportunity to enact their remaining priorities by shoving them into a 4,126-page, $1.7 trillion spending package that would avoid a government shutdown. But in the scramble to assemble a package that could get support from both parties, many of those goals were left out.Now, Democrats may have to wait a long time for another chance as they enter a new legislative world.Despite their strong showing in the midterm elections, Democrats will most likely struggle to win the support needed to enact priorities that eluded them while the party controlled Washington for the past two years.Republicans, poised to take charge of the House on Tuesday with a slim majority, have threatened to force deep spending cuts as they pledge aggressive negotiating tactics. And even though Democrats will expand their slim Senate majority by one seat, a few of the most reliable Republican negotiators will have been replaced by more hard-line conservatives.The compromise spending package highlights how difficult it will be for lawmakers to fulfill the basic responsibility of governance and keep the government funded, let alone reach agreements on broader policy. Just two returning House Republicans supported the spending measure, as party leaders and senior lawmakers urged opposition — even on measures they had supported including in the package.“We are going to reclaim this body’s integrity in service to the American people after this institution covers itself in disgrace one last time under Democrats’ one-party rule,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader still laboring to secure the votes needed to become speaker, said in a speech condemning the spending package when it passed the House.What’s In the $1.7 Trillion Spending BillCard 1 of 7A sprawling package. More

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      Advice From Pelosi’s Daughter: ‘Every Woman Needs a Paul Pelosi'

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, a multimillionaire venture capitalist recovering from a brutal attack, has long taken care of the couple’s “business of living,” including shopping for the speaker’s clothes.WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was glued to CNN the night after the 2020 election, while her husband, Paul Pelosi, sat nearby unwrapping a package.“What is that?” she asked him in a scene from the new HBO documentary, “Pelosi in the House,” directed by their daughter Alexandra Pelosi.“Dish towels,” Mr. Pelosi responded with a hint of irony as he popped the bubble packing. Ms. Pelosi smiled and then turned her attention back to the election coverage.It was just one instance of a dynamic on display throughout the film: Mr. Pelosi, who was brutally attacked at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker, takes care of what their family refers to as the “business of living.” That leaves his wife, who will step down as speaker when Republicans assume the House majority on Jan. 3, free to focus on her work.It is the kind of relationship that women in politics rarely talk about, but can sometimes help make the difference between success and failure: a partner willing to take on the mundane tasks and supportive role that traditionally fell to political wives. And although the Pelosis are wealthy and can get all the household help they need, the documentary captures that being a political spouse can mean simply showing up, and then standing off to the side.Throughout the film, as Ms. Pelosi does business on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Chuck Schumer or Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was then a presidential candidate, Mr. Pelosi, 82, a multimillionaire businessman who founded a venture capital investment firm, is often in the same room dealing with the day-to-day necessities of their lives.In one scene, Ms. Pelosi was in her pajamas strategizing on a call with Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, about the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump while Mr. Pelosi, sitting across from her, was on his cellphone dealing with a contractor trying to access their San Francisco home to fix a broken shower.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Who Is George Santos?: The G.O.P. congressman-elect from New York says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé appears to be mostly fiction.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.The G.O.P.’s Fringe: Three incoming congressmen attended a gala that drew white nationalists and conspiracy theorists, raising questions about the influence of extremists on the new Republican-led House.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.“I don’t know what happened to that key,” Mr. Pelosi said, using an expletive.Paul and Nancy Pelosi met as college students while taking a summer class at Georgetown University in 1961. They married two years later and had five children in six years. Ms. Pelosi spent her early years in the marriage as a stay-at-home San Francisco mother and did not run for Congress until she was in her 40s. What followed was nothing that Mr. Pelosi ever pictured for his wife, or his family, according to his daughter.“I don’t think this is what he signed up for in 1987,” Alexandra Pelosi said in an interview, referring to the year Ms. Pelosi was first elected to Congress. “He just had to get over it.”The couple had five children in six years.Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesMr. Pelosi, according to his daughter, never caught the political bug. He forbids political talk at the dinner table. But over the years he has been at his wife’s side at her big political moments, and has taken on many of the duties of the homemaker. He does the dishes, deals with contractors, pays the bills and shops for Ms. Pelosi’s clothes.“She’s never ordered dish towels in her life,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “That’s what he’s been doing forever. He does the shopping for her, from the dish towels to the Armani dress.”“He’s got Armani on speed dial,” she added, referring to the Italian designer Giorgio Armani, one of the speaker’s favorites. “He’s the full-service husband.”Ms. Pelosi had more to say: “The dress she wore to the state dinner; he ordered it for her, and he sent my sister to go try it on.” (Ms. Pelosi was referring to a gold sequin gown by another Italian designer, Giambattista Valli, that her mother wore to a White House state dinner early this month for President Emmanuel Macron of France.)The documentary, focused on Ms. Pelosi’s rise and professional accomplishments, offers glimpses into how a marriage to a supportive spouse helps create the space for a woman’s work — in her case, operating years as the most powerful political force in the Democratic Party in recent years.Other than Hillary Clinton, few women in politics have risen to Ms. Pelosi’s stature, and there are not many male spouses like her husband. Former President Bill Clinton played the role of supportive spouse during Mrs. Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, but after he had already had his turn.Doug Emhoff has assumed a supporting role to Vice President Kamala Harris, but that has also meant becoming a public figure in his own right. Mr. Pelosi never wanted anything close to that.“He’s a private person with a private life with a very interesting collection of friends, including Republicans,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “He didn’t sign up for this life.”But, she said, he has made it work. “Every woman needs a Paul Pelosi.”The Pelosis met in 1961, while taking a summer class at Georgetown University. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn one scene in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi was scraping breakfast dishes in a robe while his wife spoke on the phone to Mr. Pence. At one point, she put herself on mute and blew kisses at her husband.In a scene shot during the 2020 presidential campaign, Ms. Pelosi was on the phone with Mr. Biden advising him “don’t go too far to the left.” Mr. Pelosi was sitting next to her, reading his iPad, only half paying attention to his wife’s conversation.Mr. Pelosi appeared at ease in his supporting character role.“Are you in line to get a picture with the speaker?” his daughter shouted at him from behind the camera at a gathering at the U.S. Capitol ahead of one of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union addresses, while Ms. Pelosi was working a photo line.“Oh I am,” he joked.The following year, there he was again, sitting and snacking while Ms. Pelosi worked the room.“I heard Paul Pelosi was here,” his daughter joked.“I just came for the pistachios,” he said.As Ms. Pelosi prepared to enter the House chamber — where she would eventually tear up Mr. Trump’s speech and dismiss it as a “manifesto of mistruths” — her husband was with her in her office offering moral support.“You look great, hon,” Mr. Pelosi told her.Despite his appearances in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi is not always at the speaker’s side, including in May, when he was in a car accident in Napa County, Calif., and afterward pleaded guilty to a single count of driving under the influence of alcohol. Ms. Pelosi was across the country, preparing to deliver a commencement address at Brown University.“He’s there for the days that matter,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “It’s really just because she says you have to come. These kinds of people need a family to be there for support on days that matter.”In October, Mr. Pelosi was beaten with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker. He suffered major head injuries, but has appeared in recent days by Ms. Pelosi’s side, including her portrait unveiling at the Capitol and at the Kennedy Center Honors celebration.Still, his daughter said he was on a long road to recovery. “He has good days and bad days,” she said, noting that he has post-traumatic stress and tires quickly.The attack on the man who has been a quiet pillar of the Pelosi family life has taken a toll on all of them. The speaker told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a recent interview that “for me this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target, and he’s the one who is paying the price.”“He was not looking for Paul, he was looking for me,” she added.His daughter said one of the most uncomfortable parts of the ordeal has been the glare of the public spotlight on a person who has tried to avoid it.“He’s remained out of the limelight as much as he could,” she said. “He almost got to the end without anyone knowing who he was.” More

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      What Can the House Do to Address George Santos’s Falsehoods?

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      The representative-elect’s long list of fabrications has raised questions about whether he will even be allowed to take his seat next week. But House Republicans have shown little appetite for punishing him.On the campaign trail, Representative-elect George Santos, a Republican who ultimately flipped a Democratic seat in New York, misled voters about his work and educational history, his family’s heritage, his past philanthropic efforts and his business dealings.His litany of fabrications has raised questions as to whether Mr. Santos, who was elected last month to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, will be allowed to take his seat next week when Congress convenes or thrown out once he is sworn in.But House Republican leaders, who have so far remained silent amid the persistent questions about Mr. Santos, are unlikely to punish him in any significant way. Even if they could force him out of Congress, it would prompt a special election in a swing seat, setting up a potential blow to the party’s already precarious majority.And Mr. Santos has pledged to vote for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, for speaker next week as Mr. McCarthy faces a rebellion on the right and needs every vote he can get.Here are some of the options for addressing Mr. Santos’s falsehoods.Could the House refuse to seat him?The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that a person who met the constitutional requirements for office in the House of Representatives could not be refused a seat once elected. In that case, Powell v. McCormack, the court suggested that a permissible remedy for the House, should it try to exclude one of its duly elected members, would be a vote to expel the lawmaker once he or she was seated.House leaders could, in theory, band together to try to defy that precedent and force Mr. Santos to challenge the move in court. But Republicans have no appetite to do so.Could he be expelled?In theory, yes. Practically, probably not.Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states that “Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”While the Constitution grants the House broad authority to cast out one of its own, there has long been internal debate over whether lawmakers can be expelled for behavior from before they took office.Some Republicans, for example, argued that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, should not have been stripped of her committees for her social media posts from before she was elected. In the posts, she endorsed executing top Democrats, suggested that a number of school shootings were secretly perpetrated by government actors, and repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories.But House Republican leaders are unlikely to want to expel Mr. Santos in the first place.Only 20 members of Congress have been expelled from either chamber: five from the House and 15 from the Senate, according to the Congressional Research Service. Seventeen of those expulsions were related to disloyalty to the United States during the Civil War era, occurring only after the secession of the Confederate states.The others — including the most recent instance, the expulsion in 2002 of Representative James A. Traficant Jr., Democrat of Ohio — occurred after representatives were convicted on public corruption charges.Could he be removed from office in some other way?Mr. Santos could choose to resign if he faces pressure from party leadership to do so, or if he is placed under an ethics investigation and no longer wishes to bear the costs of legal representation and stress that come with those proceedings.There is no mechanism for voters to recall a member of the House of Representatives.What punishments could the House dole out?The House Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers who have historically shied from punishing their colleagues, has not commented on Mr. Santos’s case and is in a state of limbo until a new Congress is seated on Jan. 3. Its investigations are known to drag on for months or even years and seldom result in significant punishment.Should House Republican leadership want to mete out some sort of punishment, they could move to censure him, a mostly symbolic gesture that requires a simple majority vote and sometimes is accompanied by a fine. After a lawmaker is censured, he or she must stand in the well of the House while a rebuke is read.House Republican leaders could also choose not to seat Mr. Santos on any committees or to relegate him to backwater committees. More