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      Did gerrymandering keep Republicans from a bigger majority? Absolutely not | David Daley

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      Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, will soon have the challenge of leading a three-seat Republican majority. He has an interesting theory about why the Republican edge will be so slender. Last week, on Fox News, he blamed Democratic gerrymandering.While it’s always a delightful surprise to hear a Republican leader express concern about the evils of gerrymandering, Johnson has the facts and the math completely backwards.The truth is the opposite: Republicans drew the district lines of nearly three times as many US House seats as did Democrats – 191 to 71. Republicans gerrymandered more than three times as many seats than Democrats. They started from a position of power after drawing historic gerrymanders in 2011 that lasted a decade in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina. And the Republicans’ gerrymandered advantage was preserved and protected by the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court.Johnson is right about one thing: he holds the speakership because of gerrymandering – but because of the election rigging done by his own side.The Republican party’s three-seat majority would not exist at all without a new, mid-decade gerrymander in North Carolina that gift-wrapped the Republicans the three additional seats that made the difference. Before the Republican-controlled state supreme court upended North Carolina’s congressional map, the purple state elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans. (When Democrats controlled the court, they mandated a fair map, not a Democratic one; when Republicans took over, the gerrymander returned.)And what happened after the newly seated Republican court destroyed the balanced map and returned it to the Republican legislature to be tilted in its direction? The new map produced 10 Republicans and four Democrats. Many experts believe it could yet elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The gerrymander handed Johnson the three seats that made him speaker. Without it, Democrats might even control the House.Johnson, quite simply, couldn’t be any more wrong. Both parties certainly gerrymandered where they could. But Republicans had the power to gerrymander far more districts in far more places.Overall, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, it all adds up to a 16-seat edge for Republicans nationwide. “The bias in this cycle’s maps strongly favors Republicans due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest,” a Brennan report concludes.There are no redistricting angels. The US supreme court made sure of that with their 2019 decision in Rucho v Common Cause, which closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering cases at exactly the time when lower-court judges appointed by both parties had found the tools they needed to determine when partisan gerrymanders went too far.But when the Republican court ended the possibility of a national solution, it launched a game of mutual assured destruction: the Republican party built its advantages in state legislature and Congress throughout the 2010s via redistricting. With no hope of help from neutral courts in leveling tilted playing fields in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere, Democrats were left with little choice but to maximize gerrymanders of their own. This is terrible for voters. It’s bad for democracy. Sometimes it is even hypocritical. Yet doing nothing while Republican gerrymanders run wild isn’t a better strategy and presents no moral victory.So in 2021, Democrats turned a 13-5 map in Illinois into a 14-3 edge, gaining one seat and wiping away two from the Republicans. (Illinois lost a member in reapportionment.) Democrats also helped themselves to an additional seat in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico, and retained their gerrymander of Maryland. This year, a court-ordered redistricting in New York resulted in one additional Democratic seat, and mildly strengthened a handful of others, each by no more than a percentage point. (Only one flip in New York this cycle can be attributed to redistricting.)Those are the only gerrymanders Johnson wants you to know about. The truth is that they are dwarfed by what Republicans did themselves.Start in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, the governor, oversaw an aggressive and likely unconstitutional gerrymander that netted the Republican party four additional seats, wiped away two historically Black districts and created a wildly disproportional 20-8 Republican delegation.The North Carolina gerrymander added three more seats. This was hardball politics to the core: national Republicans deeply wired into Leonard Leo’s court-packing, billion-dollar dark money entity helped fund the takeover of North Carolina’s state supreme court. The new Republican majority quickly did the national party’s dirty work and overturned a year-old decision that created the balanced 7-7 map and enabled the Republican state legislature to radically tilt it toward Republicans.Florida and North Carolina alone account for more Republican gerrymanders than Democratic ones. They don’t stop there.Republicans gerrymandered two additional seats in Texas, creating an unbalanced 25-13 Republican delegation. In Ohio, Republicans lawlessly stiff-armed the state supreme court not once, not twice, but seven times to preserve gerrymanders of the state’s legislature and congressional delegation. A federal court packed with Federalist Society and Leonard Leo acolytes allowed them to get away with it.Republican judges similarly abused the legal process to allow Wisconsin to get away with its congressional gerrymander which awards the Republican party a 6-2 edge in the ultimate swing state. The US supreme court slow-walked cases on racial gerrymandering, which also accrued, unsurprisingly, to the Republicans’ benefit.In Tennessee, the Republican party wiped a Democratic seat in Nashville off the map by cracking the blue city in half and attaching small pieces to conservative, rural districts. They played similar tricks with swing seats in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and reinforced a Republican seat in Omaha, Nebraska, swapping suburban areas for more Republican, rural ones. It might well have tipped Democratic this year otherwise.Republican hardball with Iowa’s redistricting commission added another seat. In Arizona, Republicans didn’t bother playing games at all; they simply hijacked the entire process by taking over an obscure state board that vets the commissioners and packing the field of supposedly independent chairs with longtime partisans, friends and family of Republican leadership, and business acquaintances. Arizona now consistently sends a 6-3 Republican-dominated delegation to Washington, even in years where Democrats all but sweep statewide offices.Mike Johnson doesn’t want to admit it, but Republican gerrymanders are the only reason he will wield the gavel for another term.Whether Democrats should control the chamber is a trickier question; Republican candidates did win four million more votes nationwide. Yet the “national popular vote” for the House is a statistic that has also been distorted and made meaningless by gerrymandering. Uncompetitive gerrymandered seats generate weak opposition and lower voter turnout. Nearly all of that bulge comes from states where gerrymanders gutted competitive elections and created Republican delegations wildly disproportionate to the presidential vote: Florida, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina.Fair maps and competitive contests in those Republican and mixed states – rather than districts rigged so one side comes away with three-quarters of the seats in a 50/50 state – would make the “popular vote” look entirely different. (It is, of course, equally exciting to see Republican leaders talk about the popular vote as it is to hear them discuss gerrymandering concerns.) No one would look at the results in nations where district lines have been so drastically warped and suggest that they reflect the will of the people. We shouldn’t either.Johnson’s gaslighting, however, probably has a deeper purpose. He may well be laying the groundwork for a Republican package to change how we vote. What if the Republican party advanced a package of redistricting “reforms” that actually reverberated to their advantage – say, ending any consideration of race, counting population based on citizenship rather than all residents, requiring congressional districts to be drawn by the legislature and not an independent commission, and making it more difficult to challenge maps in the courts? Or if they required prioritizing “compactness”, which could naturally pack Democratic voters in a handful of urban districts and benefit the party that is spread out more efficiently?We live in a gerrymandered nation twisted into extremism by one side as eager to warp the map as they are to protect their ill-won gains. And every time you think it can’t get worse, or harder to overcome, Johnson’s mistruths suggest that it very much still can.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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      Trump first-term inquiry into leakers led to invasive searches, report finds

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      A Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation aimed at finding leakers during Donald Trump’s first presidency resulted in invasive searches of congressional staffers’ phone and email records, often without specific cause or the prior approval of the attorney general, a report published on Tuesday has found.In findings that may trigger concerns of how Trump’s incoming administration will behave, the department’s inspector general concluded that DoJ lawyers overreached their authority in their inquiries aimed at discovering who was leaking classified information in 2017, in the early phases of the president-elect’s first stint in the White House.The phone records of two Congress members and 43 staffers – including 21 Democrats and 20 Republicans, along with two holding non-partisan roles – were sought in an aggressive effort to find the source of leaks following the firing of James Comey, the former FBI director, who was ousted by Trump.Although Michael Horowitz’s 96-page report did not identify those whose records had been searched, CNN reported that they included Kash Patel, whom Trump has nominated to be the next FBI director. Patel was a staff member of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee at the time of the DoJ leak inquiry.Others included the then House member, and recently elected Democratic senator, Adam Schiff – branded as an “enemy within” by Trump in his successful recent presidential election campaign – and Eric Swalwell, another Democratic representative.DoJ prosecutors also sought the records of journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN as part of the investigation.The subpoenaing of reporters’ records during the first Trump administration has been previously reported and was described as “simply, simply wrong” by Joe Biden in 2021, leading to the DoJ announcing it would no longer seek a legal process to find out journalists’ sources.Since his first presidency, Trump has pledged to jail reporters who do not divulge their sources on stories he considers to have national security implications – a threat now carrying greater weight with his imminent return to the White House.Horowitz said many of the congressional records had been obtained without just cause and, as such, put Congress’s constitutional oversight function of the executive branch at risk.“[D]ozens of congressional staffers became part of the subject pool in a federal criminal investigation for doing nothing more than performing constitutionally authorized oversight of the executive branch,” he wrote.“We believe that using compulsory process to obtain such records when based solely on the close proximity in time between access to the classified information and subsequent publication of the information – which was the case with most of the process issued for non-content communications records of congressional staff in the investigations we examined – risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch.”The report said DoJ prosecutors did not take into account important constitutional principles governing the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.The subpoenas requested records of whom staff had spoken to and for how long, rather than the content of their conversations.However, even such limited requests amounted to an encroachment on Congress’s constitutional powers, the report suggested.It stated: “Even non-content communications records – such as those predominantly sought here – can reveal the fact of sensitive communications of members of Congress and staffers, including with executive branch whistleblowers and with interest groups engaging in First Amendment activity.”Criticism of the department for over-zealousness during Trump’s first administration seems ironic given his insistent claims that it was weaponised against him after he left office to press criminal charges that he has dismissed as a political witch-hunt and which he has demanded be purged.It may also foreshadow developments in his forthcoming presidency after he nominated a staunch loyalist, Pam Bondi, as attorney general, after his original pick, Matt Gaetz, stepped aside amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to bring the DoJ under direct White House control, in contrast with the quasi-independent status it has held since the Watergate era.He has also spoken of using it to pursue his political opponents and enemies. More

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      White House says ‘Trump will inherit economy primed for growth’ in defense of Biden record – US politics live

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      White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Donald Trump will inherit a good economy, thanks to Joe Biden’s policies over the past four years.She also announced that Biden would promote his economic accomplishments in a speech on Tuesday, after government data released today showed that hiring remained strong in November.“Just today, we learned more than 220,000 jobs were created last month, making this the only presidency in 50 years to have job growth every single month,” Jean-Pierre said.“Over the last four years, the president has rejected trickle-down economics and written a new economic playbook that builds the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. This is a strong foundation for years to come … Trump will inherit an economy primed for growth.”Vice president-elect JD Vance backed Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI director, saying he is in a “very good spot” for Senate approval.Still, Vance was unsure whether he would join Patel on Capitol Hill next week, according to CNN, where Patel is expected to meet with senators.“I don’t know what I’ll be doing next week. We’re fully behind Kash’s nomination, and I’m not even sure if— I’m not sure where I’m gonna be tomorrow, much less next week, but we’re fully supportive of Kash’s nomination. I actually think he’s in a very good spot for his nomination,” Vance said.Melania Trump called her husband’s win “incredible” during her first post-election interview with Fox & Friends.“We are very, very busy … I’m establishing my transition team. And also, working on my office, putting my office together, and also, you know, organizing the residence and packing,” Melania Trump, who is set to return to the White House as first lady in January, said during the interview.She also announced her new Christmas ornament collection during an appearance on Fox News on Friday. One of the ornaments is priced at $90, while the other ornaments are $75 each.“After I left the White House, I established my Web3 and Web2 platforms where I design and offer collectibles like ornaments each season,” she said. “This is the third season, and there are many other collectibles available now.”The 2024 collection, titled Merry Christmas, America!, has four designs: a golden star with “USA” in the center, a golden Lady Liberty, a red-white-and blue snowflake, and a golden clover. Each ornament has Melania Trump’s signature.JD Vance defended Pete Hegseth after he toured western North Carolina, which was ravaged by Hurricane Helene in September.Vance said that Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick deserved a Senate confirmation hearing rather than a “sham hearing before the American media” over allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking of alcohol.“Pete Hegseth is going to get his hearing before the Senate armed services committee, not a sham hearing before the American media. We believe that Pete Hegseth is the right guy to lead the Department of Defense,” Vance said. “We’re not abandoning this nomination.”North Carolina Democrats have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block a Republican candidate’s effort to throw out 60,000 votes in a state supreme court race that a Democrat leads by just a few hundred votes.Allison Riggs, a Democrat on the state supreme court, appears to have defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by a little more than 700 votes in the race. A recount has already confirmed Riggs’ victory once, and a second recount tallying a sampling of precincts in each county is ongoing.Democrats are closely watching the race because they need to win it to have a chance at retaking control of the court in a few years. Republicans currently have a 5-2 majority on the court.After the election, Griffin’s campaign challenged the validity of 60,000 voters. The challenged voters include those whose voter registration lacked either a driver’s license or Social Security number, those who are the adult children of North Carolinians living abroad, and overseas voters who submitted ballots without voter ID. Many of the challenges rely on legal theories that have already been rejected by the courts.Several eligible voters have already spoken out in frustration against the challenges, saying they are eligible voters and have been casting a ballot without issue for years. Riggs’ parents are among those whose votes are being challenged.“Instead of respecting the results of the election, Jefferson Griffin and Republicans are attempting to throw out over 60,000 votes. Those 60,000 voters are Republicans, Democrats, veterans, seniors, teachers, our neighbors. No North Carolinian deserves to have their vote thrown out in a callous power grab – but this is no surprise from the party of insurrectionists,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement.Among other issues, the lawsuit says that Griffin’s mass challenges are essentially an effort to conduct a mass purge of voters after election day. Doing so would violate a federal law that prohibits purging voters within 90 days of a federal election.“North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to throw out 60,000 lawful votes to overturn Justice Allison Riggs’ victory is a brazen and callous attack on the rule of law and North Carolinians’ right to vote, but it isn’t surprising. From trying to take power away from the newly elected Democratic governor to threatening to overturn the will of the voters, Republicans will stop at nothing in their quest for power,” said Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee.Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria early into the country’s civil war, is alive, his mother said following a meeting with Biden administration officials at the White House.“The best thing that we want to share with you is that we have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government, Austin Tice is alive. Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that, and so I think that is the most important thing,” Debra Tice said at the National Press Club.The press conference was held as rebels have swept across Syria in recent days, seizing major cities from president Bashar al-Assad’s forces. It is unclear who was behind Tice’s kidnapping in August 2012, but the Biden administration believes Syria’s government is holding him. Here’s more on what we know about Tice’s captivity, and the efforts to free him.Donald Trump will head to Paris this weekend to attend the reopening of Notre Dame.Joe Biden will not be there, but first lady Jill Biden will be in attendance at the ceremony to mark the church’s return after it nearly burned down in a fire five years ago.“The president has had a scheduling conflict, which is why he was not able to attend,” Jean-Pierre said, when asked about why Joe Biden would not attend.Here’s more on Trump’s trip in the midst of political chaos in France:White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Donald Trump will inherit a good economy, thanks to Joe Biden’s policies over the past four years.She also announced that Biden would promote his economic accomplishments in a speech on Tuesday, after government data released today showed that hiring remained strong in November.“Just today, we learned more than 220,000 jobs were created last month, making this the only presidency in 50 years to have job growth every single month,” Jean-Pierre said.“Over the last four years, the president has rejected trickle-down economics and written a new economic playbook that builds the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. This is a strong foundation for years to come … Trump will inherit an economy primed for growth.”Former Biden administration official Jesse Lee pointed out on X that if Donald Trump stops the US Postal Service from electrifying their fleet, it will likely cost jobs.Fox Carolina reports that a manufacturer of the new electric vehicles for the postal service planned to hire 1,000 people to make them. That hiring would presumably be in jeopardy if Trump cancels the plan.“Trump planning to kill 1,000 jobs in South Carolina right off the bat,” Lee wrote.Donald Trump is considering canceling efforts to electrify the United State Postal Service’s fleet once he takes office, Reuters reports.The president-elect campaigned on killing electric vehicle incentives enacted during Joe Biden’s term to combat the climate crisis, and Reuters says his transition team is looking for ways to cancel contracts with vehicle manufacturers for electric vehicles that will be used by the postal service to move mail.Here’s more on the potential plan, from Reuters:
      The move, which could be unveiled in the early days of Trump’s administration that begins on Jan 20, is in line with Trump’s campaign promises to roll back President Joe Biden’s efforts to decarbonize US transportation to fight climate change – an agenda Trump has said is unnecessary and potentially damaging to the economy.
      Reuters has previously reported that Trump is planning to kill a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases, and plans to roll back Biden’s stricter fuel-efficiency standards.
      The sources told Reuters that Trump’s transition team is now reviewing how it can unwind the postal service’s multibillion-dollar contracts, including with Oshkosh Corp (OSK.N) and Ford (F.N), for tens of thousands of battery-driven delivery trucks and charging stations.
      Oshkosh shares fell by roughly 5% to 105.65 per share after the Reuters report.
      Oshkosh and Ford did not respond to requests for comment.
      In 2023, Congress gave USPS $3 billion as part of a $430 billion climate bill to buy EVs and charging infrastructure. It plans to buy some 66,000 electric vehicles to build one of the largest electric vehicle fleets in the nation by 2028.
      As part of that, Oshkosh is expected to deliver about 45,000 electric vehicles, with the remaining coming from mainstream automakers like Ford, according to the USPS. The initial batch of 14,000 chargers are being supplied by Siemens, ChargePoint and Blink, according to the USPS.
      JD Vance on Friday surveyed damage from Hurricane Helene and talked to first responders in western North Carolina in one of his first public appearances since the November election.The hurricane struck in September and caused at least $53bn in damage in North Carolina, according to government estimates.Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited the Fairview volunteer fire department. There, he learned that the building had flooded with 4-6ins of water and that roughly a dozen people contracted walking pneumonia as they responded to the hurricane’s destruction.“At the height of it, I imagine y’all were working nonstop,” Vance said.After the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US economy added more jobs than forecast in November, President Joe Biden said that “America’s comeback continues.” The unemployment rate, on the other hand, ticked higher last month.“This has been a hard-fought recovery, but we are making progress for working families,” Biden said in a statement.“While there is more to do to lower costs, we’ve taken action to lower prescription drug prices, health insurance premiums, utility bills, and gas prices that will pay dividends for years to come.”New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez officially announced her bid to serve as ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the key investigative arm of the legislature.“The responsibility of leading Democrats on the House Oversight Committee during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House is a profound and consequential one,” the progressive lawmaker said in a letter released Friday.Ocasio-Cortez seeks one of the most influential positions in the House as Democrats work to counter the incoming Trump administration and monitor the president-elect and his allies.These allies have pledged to retaliate against opponents and disregard political norms in Washington.“We must do all that we can, now, to mark a different future for the American people,” reads Ocasio-Cortez’s letter, “one that inspires us to reject the siren calls of division, corruption, and authoritarianism through a shining example of a government that works for the people, by the people – one that sees their struggles and fights for them, not just the powerful and the wealthy.”If Democrats regain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, the new Oversight chairperson would have significant authority to issue subpoenas and investigate the Trump administration.Democratic representative for South Carolina, James Clyburn, said President Joe Biden should issue preemptive pardons for some of the people who have attacked President-elect Donald Trump, although it is not how the pardon power was intended.“We have to use the pardon system, or the clemency system, to get everything in order to address the current situation that we live in,” Clyburn told CNN.These comments come as the Biden administration considers the possibility of him granting mass pardons to a broad range of public officials to protect them against the possibility of retribution and revenge from Donald Trump when he assumes power.After a federal appeals court upheld a law banning TikTok across the US unless the it was sold off by its China-based parent company, the viral video app posted the following statement on X:“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue. Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”Donald Trump and JD Vance have gone to bat for defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who has faced allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement that could imperil his Senate confirmation. Trump said Hegseth “is doing very well”, while Vance said he and the president-elect have “got his back”. We’ll see if those statements move any wary senators. Meanwhile, TikTok suffered a setback when an appeals court rejected its attempt to block a law that will force its Chinese parent company to cut ties with the popular social media app by mid-January or face a ban. However, the story is far from finished: TikTok is expected to appeal to the supreme court, and Trump has made an about-face on the issue, saying he supports keeping TikTok available.Here’s what else is going on today:

      Trump aides believe that Hegseth is on track for confirmation, despite several Republicans saying the stories about his personal conduct make them hesitant to support him.

      Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, says his lawmakers will find ways to work with the “Department of Government Efficiency”, so long as what it proposes is a good idea.

      Joe Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for potential targets of retaliation, once Trump takes office. At least one Democratic senator thinks such a move would be a bad idea.
      At his press conference today, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party is willing to work with the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), as long as what it proposes is reasonable.“It’s unclear to me what exactly the objective is related to this so-called DOGE initiative. From our perspective, we want a federal government that is effective and efficient in equilibrium. And, to the extent the other side of the aisle shares that objective, which is what is right for the American people, then we’ll see if there’s common ground as possible,” Jeffries told reporters.The GOP will remain the majority party in the House of Representatives beginning next year, but only by a mere two seats. Jeffries implied that their slim control of the chamber will make working with the Democrats essential:
      It’s clear that the incoming House Republican majority will not be able to do much without us. More

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      Ocasio-Cortez bids to become top Democrat on key House committee

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez formally launched her bid to become the lead Democrat on the House oversight committee, setting up a race against the veteran representative Gerry Connolly for a crucial minority leadership position.The 35-year-old New York congresswoman’s announcement comes as Democrats are reshaping their committee leadership, with the oversight committee set to play a critical role in challenging potential actions during the next second Trump administration.In an official appeal to her colleagues, Ocasio-Cortez wrote that the role carries “a profound and consequential” responsibility. She argues that her generation of lawmakers is ready to take on leadership responsibilities, positioning herself as a fresh alternative to more established party members.Connolly, a 74-year-old longtime representative from Virginia, is Ocasio-Cortez’s primary challenger and represents the experienced counterpoint. With 16 years in Congress and touting a track record of protecting federal employees, he offers a more traditional approach to the committee leadership.The competition reflects broader dynamics within the Democratic party – a tension between political veterans and energetic progressive voices seeking to take the reins on political strategy.The contest will be decided by the Democratic caucus’s steering and policy committee through a secret ballot, followed by a full caucus vote. Outgoing oversight committee ranking member Jamie Raskin is staying neutral in the race.The oversight committee remains a powerful platform, even from the minority position. It is meant to examine government operations, and its jurisdiction spans a wide range of issues including potential government waste and corruption and investigating federal agencies and presidential administrations.While Democrats cannot control subpoenas or hearing agendas during the next session, the ranking member can still influence public discourse and push back against the Republican legislative agenda. The final decision is expected in the coming weeks. More

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      in Elections

      House Blocks Release of Matt Gaetz Ethics Report as Republicans Close Ranks

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      The House on Thursday night blocked the release of a damaging Ethics Committee report about former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, as Republicans voted to bury it, an expected move that makes it less likely the materials will ever be made public.Republicans closed ranks to turn back two nearly identical Democratic-written resolutions that would have forced the release of the report on the ethics panel’s yearslong investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use by the former congressman.They did so by moving to refer both measures back to the committee, which has so far refused to make public its conclusions.The vote on the first resolution was 206 to 198, almost entirely along party lines, with nearly all Republicans voting to block the report’s release and Democrats voting to make it public. The vote on the second measure, which included language about preserving the records but also demanded their release, was 204 to 198, also almost all along party lines.Just one Republican, Representative Tom McClintock of California, sided with the Democrats.Democrats have continued to press for the release of the ethics report, even though Mr. Gaetz has resigned from Congress and removed himself as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, at least in part because the ethics report was complicating his confirmation process.Speaker Mike Johnson has said that because Mr. Gaetz is no longer a sitting member of Congress, the release of the report would set a bad precedent in the House and has urged the Republican-led committee not to release its findings.Democrats have argued that burying the report is concealing credible allegations of sexual misconduct.“No workplace would allow that information to be swept under the rug simply because someone resigned from office,” Representative Sean Casten, the Illinois Democrat who has spearheaded the move to release the report, told ABC News.Mr. Gaetz has denied all of the allegations.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, called the question of releasing the report “moot” since Mr. Gaetz has resigned.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“The member being referenced in the resolution has actually resigned from the House of Representatives; therefore, the question is moot,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, said on the floor Thursday night, moving to refer the resolution back to the committee.Since 2021, the House Ethics Committee has been investigating allegations about Mr. Gaetz. That year, it opened an inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations as well as claims that Mr. Gaetz misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, among other transgressions.The secretive, bipartisan committee met earlier on Thursday for close to three hours to discuss the report, but all of its members were mum as they left the meeting.After the session, the committee issued a terse statement saying that it “met today to discuss the matter of Representative Matt Gaetz. The committee is continuing to discuss the matter. There will be no further statements other than in accordance with committee and House rules.” More

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      US House hearing with Secret Service descends into screaming match

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      A hearing examining the Secret Service’s response to the assassination attempts against Donald Trump went off the rails on Thursday, when a screaming match broke out between the agency’s acting director, Ronald Rowe, and a Republican representative.The hearing, hosted by the House taskforce established shortly after the first assassination attempt against Trump in July, was meant to explore the steps that the Secret Service has taken to improve security measures of protectees, but Pat Fallon, a Republican of Texas, took the questioning of Rowe in a different direction.Fallon displayed an enlarged photo from a commemoration of the September 11 attacks in New York, which both Joe Biden and Trump attended earlier this year. Fallon accused Rowe, who was standing directly behind Biden and Kamala Harris in the photo, of taking the place of the special agent in charge that day and endangering the president’s security for the sake of a photo op.Rowe replied that the special agent in charge had been just out of the picture’s view, and he attacked Fallon for politicizing the September 11 attacks.“I actually responded to Ground Zero. I was there going through the ashes of the World Trade Center,” Rowe said.“I’m not asking you that,” Fallon interrupted, raising his voice. “Were you the special agent in charge?”Rowe yelled back: “I was there to show respect for a Secret Service member that died on 9/11.”Fallon suggested that Rowe, who is not expected to stay on as director once Trump takes office in January, had placed himself in better view to “audition” for the role in case Harris won the presidency.“Do not invoke 9/11 for political purposes,” Rowe told Fallon.“I’m not,” Fallon replied. He accused Rowe: “You endangered President Biden’s life, Vice-President Harris’s life, because you put those agents out of position.”Rowe denied that charge, telling Fallon: “You are out of line.”The chair of the committee, Republican Mike Kelly, repeatedly banged his gavel until the shouting subsisted. The heated exchange came as the Secret Service faces intense scrutiny over its security practices, which attracted widespread condemnation following the assassination attempt against Trump.The agency was pilloried for failing to ensure proper safety precautions at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman wounded the then presidential candidate and fatally shot an attendee named Corey Comperatore. Rowe’s predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned amid bipartisan criticism of her agency’s handling of security at the rally.At the hearing on Thursday, Rowe described the events surrounding the assassination attempt as an “abject failure”.“July 13 was a failure of the Secret Service to adequately secure the Butler Farm Shows site and protect president-elect Trump,” Rowe said. “That abject failure underscored critical gaps in Secret Service operations, and I recognize that we did not meet the expectations of the American public.”Rowe offered his condolences to Comperatore’s family and outlined a series of changes his agency had pursued since the July attack, including creating an aviation unit for drone surveillance of protection sites and streamlining communication with local authorities.“Let me be clear: there will be accountability, and that accountability is occurring,” Rowe told the taskforce. “It is essential that we recognize the gravity of our failure. I personally carry the weight of knowing that we almost lost a protectee and our failure cost a father and husband his life.”Since its formation in July, the taskforce has conducted 46 interviews and reviewed roughly 20,000 pages of documents, Kelly reported on Thursday. The taskforce is expected to release a final report on its findings in the coming days. More

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      House ethics committee to vote on publication of Matt Gaetz report

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      The House ethics committee will on Thursday vote on whether its long-awaited report investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and potential illegal activities involving former Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz will be made public.The report in question details allegations that Gaetz engaged in illicit drug use, misuse of campaign funds and sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl, and allegations of obstructing the House investigation. Gaetz has consistently denied the claims.The move comes weeks after Gaetz’s resignation from Congress and his withdrawal as a potential Trump administration nominee when it became clear he did not have enough support from senators to survive a confirmation hearing. Democrats, led by Representatives Sean Casten and Steve Cohen, attempted to force the report’s release through privileged resolutions, arguing that transparency is crucial.Casten’s resolution, sent to the House two days before the vote, said that withholding the report would “undermine the committee’s credibility and impede the safety, dignity, and integrity of legislative proceedings”.But should the committee side with chair and Mississippi Republican Michael Guest, the vote would fall flat, following the argument that the panel’s investigative jurisdiction ends when a member leaves Congress.“He’s no longer a member,” Guest told reporters on Thursday. “He is no longer going to be confirmed by the Senate because he withdrew his nomination to be the attorney general.”But if the committee vote comes to an impasse – a possibility due to the 50-50 ideological split – a full floor vote would be brought to the House on Thursday night, putting all lawmakers on record.The decision would either grant or hide public access to a report that has been years in the making, and which allegedly contains detailed findings about claims of sexual misconduct involving an underage girl and potential drug use.The report’s potential revelations could have significant political implications, particularly as Gaetz is rumored to be considering a bid for Florida governor in 2026 or seeking another role in the incoming Trump administration.The investigation, which has gone on for years, gained additional scrutiny after Gaetz’s associate Joel Greenberg pleaded guilty in 2021 to paying women and an underage girl for sexual services. More

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      Democrats aim to force release of Matt Gaetz ethics report

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      Congressman Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, introduced a privileged resolution on Tuesday demanding the House ethics committee release its investigative report on former representative Matt Gaetz, even after Gaetz withdrew from consideration after being nominated to be Donald Trump’s attorney general, amid sexual scandal.Casten’s resolution calls for immediate public disclosure of the committee’s draft report, including conclusions, recommendations and supporting materials, with provisions to protect sensitive information and witness identities.The ethics committee’s investigation was centered around serious allegations against Gaetz, including potential sexual misconduct, inappropriate congressional behavior, misuse of campaign funds, using illicit drugs, and possible bribery. Gaetz has consistently denied these claims.Casten’s move came weeks after he led 97 House Democrats in signing a letter requesting the report’s release. In this case, the resolution will force a House vote within two legislative days, though Republican leadership is expected to resist.Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has opposed releasing the report in the past, arguing that ethics investigations typically conclude when a member leaves Congress. Gaetz resigned from the House as soon as Trump nominated him to become attorney general, and when he stepped aside eight days later after it was clear he would struggle to be confirmed even with a Republican majority in the Senate, he indicated he would not seek to return to Congress.However, Casten has often pointed to previous cases, such as the 2011 investigation of former Representative Eric Massa, where investigations continued after a member’s resignation.“The committee on ethics has, on many occasions, released its reports on former members,” Casten said in a statement. “Resigning from Congress should not allow members to avoid accountability for allegations as serious as those faced by Matt Gaetz.”Johnson’s office did not reply to a request for comment on whether his stance has changed. The Republican ethics committee chair, Michael Guest, declined to comment when asked if the committee would now release the report.Congresswoman Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the committee, declined to comment.The ethics committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday to discuss next steps concerning the congressional investigation. More