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    Ousted House speaker McCarthy says Johnson shouldn’t fear losing job: ‘I don’t think they could do it again’

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    The embattled speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, should not be “fearful” of the motion to remove him filed by the far-right extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene, said Kevin McCarthy – who last year became the first speaker ejected by his own party when another extremist, Matt Gaetz, moved against him in the same way.“Speaker Johnson is doing the very best job he can,” McCarthy told CBS on Sunday, two days after Greene filed her motion. “It’s a difficult situation, but the one [piece of] advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is: do not be fearful of a motion to vacate. I do not think they could do it again.”“They” – the Trumpist far-right of a far-right party – did it to McCarthy in October. Gaetz, from Florida, filed a motion to vacate the speakership – a move made possible by concessions won when the right put McCarthy through 15 votes to secure the speaker’s gavel nine months before.McCarthy, from California, told CBS Gaetz had been “trying to stop an ethics complaint”.“It was purely Matt coming to me trying [to get] me to do something illegal to stop the ethics committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became a speaker.”Gaetz was investigated by the House ethics committee over allegations of sexual misconduct also subject to investigation by the US Department of Justice. The congressman denies wrongdoing.Gaetz’s motion to eject McCarthy was supported by seven other Republicans and succeeded when Democrats declined to vote to keep the speaker in place.Johnson succeeded McCarthy after three Republican leadership figures – Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer – failed to gain sufficient support, in a more-than-three-week process that left the House leaderless.Johnson has now passed two spending bills with Democratic support, keeping the federal government open but committing what was McCarthy’s chief sin in the eyes of the right.Greene was not among the Republicans who moved against McCarthy but on Friday she moved against Johnson. Rightwing Republicans expressed frustration with Johnson but many also reproved Greene. Congress left Washington for a two-week recess without Greene bringing the motion up for a vote.Republicans have a two-vote majority, soon to dwindle to one. Democrats are seen as likely to support Johnson should Greene press ahead and try to remove him but also likely to extract concessions for doing so, most prominently including Johnson allowing a vote on new funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia.In line with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president seeking a second term in the White House, Johnson has refused to bring to the floor a Ukraine aid package which passed the Senate with bipartisan support.McCarthy, who left Congress last year, told CBS: “I don’t think the Democrats will go along with [Greene’s motion]. Focus on the country. Focus on the job you’re supposed to do, and actually do it fearlessly. Just move forward.“We watched what transpired the last time. You went three weeks without Congress being able to act. You can’t do anything if you don’t have a speaker. I think we’ve moved past that. We’ve got a lot of challenges.“Those are the issues the country is actually looking [at], on the economy and others. If we focus on the country and what the country desires, I think the personalities can solve their own problems.” More

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      Liars, expulsions and near-fistfights: Congress plumbs the depths in 2023

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      Before House Republicans left for their holiday recess this month, they addressed one last matter of business. They did not take up an aid package for Ukraine or pass an appropriations bill to fully fund the government through the fiscal year.The House chose instead to vote along party lines to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though Republicans have failed to uncover any proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said of the vote. “The American people deserve better.”The vote was a fitting end to a year defined by new lows on Capitol Hill. From removing a House speaker to expelling an indicted member and issuing threats of violence, 2023 saw Congress explore new depths of dysfunction. And it all started with a days-long speakership race.The battle for the gavel (part one)After a disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, Republicans took control of the House in January with a much narrower majority than they had anticipated. That created a math problem for Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California and the conference’s presumed speaker nominee.Instead of the uneventful process seen in past speakership elections, McCarthy failed to win the gavel on the first ballot, as roughly 20 hard-right members of the Republican conference opposed his ascension. The gridlock forced the House to hold a second round of voting, marking the first time in a century that the chamber failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot.The standoff lasted for four long days and necessitated 15 ballots in total. Just after midnight on 7 January, McCarthy won the speakership with a wafer-thin majority, in a vote of 216 to 212. He would hold the job for just nine months.On the brink of economic collapseAs soon as Republicans (finally) elected a speaker, attention turned to the most pressing matter on Congress’s agenda for 2023: the debt ceiling.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, warned that the debt ceiling, which represents the amount of money the US government is allowed to borrow to pay its bills, had to be raised or suspended by early June to avoid a federal default and prevent economic catastrophe.Despite those urgent warnings, hard-right members of the House Republican conference appeared prepared to let the US default on its debt in an attempt to force steep government spending cuts. With just days left before the expected default deadline, both the House and the Senate passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025.The bill passed the House with a vote of 314 to 117, as 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supported the measure. But 71 House Republicans opposed the bill, accusing McCarthy of cutting a horrendous deal with Biden. One Freedom Caucus member, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, mocked the deal as “insanity”.In retrospect, the Freedom Caucus’s attacks on McCarthy marked the beginning of the end of his speakership.The indicted senator from New JerseyAs House Republicans clashed with each other, the Senate grappled with its response to a member accused of corruption so rampant that it bordered on comical. In late September, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, was charged in connection to what prosecutors described as a “years-long bribery scheme”.The indictment accused Menendez of exploiting his role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee to promote the interests of the Egyptian government in exchange for kickbacks. A raid of Menendez’s home, conducted in 2022, revealed that those kickbacks allegedly included a Mercedes-Benz convertible, $500,000 in cash and 13 gold bars.Even as more of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate called on him to step down, Menendez insisted he would not resign, claiming he had been “falsely accused” because of his Latino heritage.Pete Aguilar, a Democrat of California and the highest-ranking Latino member of the House, said of those claims, “Latinos face barriers and discrimination across the board in so many categories, including in our justice system. This is not that.”The chair is declared vacantThe next near-disaster for Congress came in September, when the government appeared to be on the brink of a shutdown that would have forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without a paycheck.But that fate was avoided because, with just hours left before the government’s funding was set to run out, McCarthy introduced a mostly clean bill to fund the government for 45 days. In the House, the bill won the support of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans, but 90 Republicans opposed the legislation.Democrats and hard-right Republicans alike said McCarthy had “folded” in the funding negotiations, failing to secure the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. Outraged by the bill’s passage, Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, introduced a motion to vacate the chair, forcing a chamber-wide vote on removing McCarthy as speaker.The motion passed, with eight Republicans joining House Democrats in voting for McCarthy’s ouster. Seated in the House chamber, McCarthy let out a bitter laugh as he became the first speaker in US history to ever be ejected from the job.The battle for the gavel (part two)McCarthy’s removal prompted another speakership election, and this one somehow proved even more chaotic than the days-long spectacle that unfolded in January.Republicans initially nominated the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for the speakership. But Scalise was forced to withdraw from the race days later because of entrenched opposition to his nomination among hard-right lawmakers. The caucus then nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, who attempted to pressure his critics into electing him as speaker by holding multiple unsuccessful chamber-wide votes. Jordan dropped out of the race when it became clear that opposition to his speakership bid was only growing.The election reached its peak level of absurdity on 24 October, when Tom Emmer of Minnesota withdrew from the race just hours after becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. By then, it appeared even Republicans had grown tired of their manufactured crisis. Republicans’ fourth and final speaker nominee, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, won the gavel in a party-line vote, bringing an end to weeks of turmoil that had become the subject of nationwide mockery.‘You are a United States senator!’The fourteenth of November was a special day on Capitol Hill because it offered an opportunity for members of both the House and the Senate to embarrass themselves.In the House, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy as speaker, accused McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys. Burchett then chased after McCarthy to confront him, but the former speaker denied the allegation.“If I’d kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground,” McCarthy told reporters.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican of Oklahoma, challenged one of the witnesses at a committee hearing to a fistfight. Mullin had previously clashed with the witness, the Teamsters union president, Sean O’Brien, over social media and suggested they settle their score with a physical fight.“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked.“I’d love to do it right now,” O’Brien replied.“Then stand your butt up then,” Mullin said.“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien shot back.The chair of the committee, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then intervened to prevent any violence and offered this pointed reminder to Mullin: “You know, you’re a United States senator.”From Congress to CameoThe House kicked off the final month of the year with a vote to expel George Santos, a freshman Republican from New York who had been indicted on 23 federal counts related to fraud and campaign finance violations.Santos had been plagued by controversy since before taking office, as reporters discovered he had fabricated most of the life story he shared with voters. A congressional investigation uncovered that Santos had spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account on Botox treatments, luxury items at Hermès and payments to OnlyFans, an online platform known for its sexual content.Faced with that mountain of evidence, more than 100 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to expel Santos. The 311-114 vote made Santos only the sixth member of the House ever to be expelled from Congress.Without his day job, Santos has turned his attention to Cameo, which allows D-list celebrities to make money by filming short personalized videos for fans. Reports indicate Santos is already raking in six figures on the platform.Goodbye, KevinSantos is not the only House members leaving Congress this year. McCarthy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he would resign from the House at the end of December. McCarthy’s decision brought an end to a 17-year career in the House that encapsulated the Republican party’s shift away from small-government conservatism and toward Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” philosophy.Despite his humiliating fall from power, McCarthy expressed unbroken faith in Americans’ goodness and in “the enduring values of our great nation”.“I’m an optimist,” McCarthy declared.That makes one of us, Kevin. More

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      Brawny billionaires, pumped-up politicians: why powerful men are challenging each other to fights

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      The first rule of insecure masculinity fight club? Tell everyone about it. And I mean everyone. Tweet about it, talk to reporters, shout about it from the rooftops. Make sure the entire world knows that you are a big boy who could beat just about anyone in a fistfight.Twenty twenty-three, as I’m sure you will have observed, was the year that tech CEOs stepped away from their screens and decided to get physical. Elon Musk, perennially thirsty for attention, was at the center of this embarrassing development. The 52-year-old – who challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat in 2022 – spent much of the year teasing the idea that he was going head-to-head with Mark Zuckerberg in a cage fight. At one point he suggested the fight would be held at the Colosseum in Rome.Don’t worry, you didn’t miss it. The fight never happened and will never ever happen for the simple reason that Musk would get destroyed by Zuckerberg, who has been obsessively training in mixed martial arts (MMA) and won a bunch of medals in a Brazilian jiujitsu tournament. The only way Musk will actually follow through with the cage match is if he manages to get his hands on some kind of brain-implant technology that magically transforms him into a lean, mean, fighting machine. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Neuralink, Musk’s brain-chip startup, was working on that brief right now. Although seeing as the company is under federal investigation after killing 1,500 animals in testing– many of which died extremely grisly deaths – it may be a while before any such technology comes to fruition.Musk and Zuck aren’t the only tech execs looking to get physical. Vin Diesel-level biceps have become the latest billionaire status symbol. Just look at Jeff Bezos: his muscles have increased at about the same rate as his bank account. The Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, has also been working on getting swole. Back in June, Chesky told the Bloomberg writer Dave Lee that he’d “challenge any leader in tech to bench press”. He added: “I’ve been waiting for these physical battles in tech. It’s just so funny.”It’s not just tech bros. Politicians are at it too. Over the summer, Robert F Kennedy Jr posted a video of himself doing push-ups while shirtless with the caption “Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!” Which may or may not have been prompted by Biden once challenging an Iowa voter and Donald Trump to a push-up contest.I don’t know how good Kevin McCarthy is at push-ups, but he’s certainly fond of shoving. In November, the former speaker bumped into the congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee and reportedly elbowed him in the back. Burchett then chased after him, calling him a “jerk” and a “chicken”. McCarthy, it seems, was angry that Burchett had helped oust him from the speakership in October, making him the first speaker in US history to have been removed by his own side.Just a few hours after that altercation, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, challenged Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a physical confrontation during a Senate committee hearing on labor unions. Mullin, a former businessman who regularly boasts about his prowess as an MMA fighter, was miffed that O’Brien had once called him a “greedy CEO” and a “clown” on Twitter. He decided to settle his private grievance during a public hearing and the two agreed to have a fight right there and then – yelling at each other to “stand your butt up” and get started. Eventually Bernie Sanders got them to calm down.Just pause for a moment and imagine acting like this in your own job. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that if I challenged a colleague to a fight and started yelling at them to “sit their butt down” in the middle of a public meeting, I would face some sort of consequences. In the Mullins case, the meltdown doesn’t seem to have had any impact on his career. It may have even increased his popularity among his base. Politicians routinely seem to be held to a lower standard than the rest of us.If you ignore the fact that we’re being ruled by people with enormous egos and no self-restraint, then there is an amusing element to all this. But more than anything, it’s just pathetic, isn’t it? All these grown men so clearly worried about their masculinity that they feel the need to puff out their chests and show everyone just how strong they are.The one per cent’s desperate shows of bravado are part of a broader insecurity about masculinity in the west that plenty of snake-oil salesmen and opportunists are exploiting for all it’s worth. In 2022, for example, the rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson came out with a documentary called The End of Men that argues testosterone counts are plummeting and “real men” are an endangered species. The documentary was full of bizarre ways to counteract this, including testicle tanning. I’m not sure how many tech bros and politicians are regularly exposing their balls to red-light therapy, but there does seem to be a widespread preoccupation with “bromeopathic” ways to increase testosterone. Testosterone blood-test “T parties” are apparently a growing trend among tech types: a bunch of founders get together and find ways to raise their T.Do whatever you like in private, I say. Tan your testicles, go to T parties, organize push-up competitions. Just don’t foist your masculine insecurities on the rest of us. Stop challenging each other to public fights and getting into brawls in government. It seems to be easy enough for women to follow this advice, doesn’t it? I mean … has a female CEO or politician ever tried to organize a public fistfight with a female counterpart? I’ve got a weird feeling the answer is “no, they would be a complete laughingstock if they did”, but if anyone can find me a recent example then I’ll eat my hat. Or – on second thoughts – I’ll throw my hat in the ring and fight Elon Musk myself in the Roman Colosseum. Consider that a challenge. More

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      McCarthy endorses Trump for president: ‘We’re very honest with each other’

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      Former US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the Oval Office while also expressing interest in joining his administration should he win, even though loyalists of the ex-president drove the congressman into an early exit.While serving as a House leader, McCarthy did not formally endorse Trump’s campaign for a second presidency, though the California representative was generally supportive of his fellow Republican. But, four days after announcing in an opinion column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that he was leaving Congress at the end of December, McCarthy appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and made clear that he backed Trump’s attempts to return to power.“I will support the president,” McCarthy told the show’s anchor Robert Costa on Sunday while discussing his post-congressional plans. “I will support president Trump.”After he confirmed those remarks were an endorsement of the former president, who is grappling with a multitude of pending criminal charges, McCarthy was asked by Costa if he would be “willing to serve in a Trump cabinet”.McCarthy replied, “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job – yes.”He went on to say that he worked together with Trump for the Republicans to seize what is now a four-seat majority in the House after a showing in the 2022 midterms that was widely considered to be underwhelming for their party.“Look, I worked with president Trump on a lot of policies,” McCarthy said. “But we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with each other.”McCarthy lost his hold on the House speaker’s gavel in October after he relied on Democratic support to keep the federal government funded and open. As retaliation, the far-right, pro-Trump faction in the House that helped make him speaker after enduring 15 votes for the role last year ensured he became the first ever ejected from the role by his own party.It was a bitter twist for McCarthy, who had taken the far-right position 146 other congressional Republicans did when they voted to object to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.McCarthy and his GOP colleagues maintained that position after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and breached its walls on 6 January 2021. Trump even received a visit at his Mar-a-Lago home from McCarthy shortly after the failure of the Capitol attack plunged the defeated president into an apparent depression, according to the Liz Cheney book Oath and Honor.McCarthy’s support at one point prompted Trump to affectionately refer to him as “My Kevin” at one point.After his ouster, McCarthy pledged that he would not resign from Congress, saying he had “a lot more work to do”. But months of behind-the-scenes tension, including an alleged physical attack on Tennessee Republican House member Tim Burchett, appeared to change his mind and convince him to step away in the coming weeks instead of when his term expires in early 2025.McCarthy on Sunday said “Trump needs to stop” campaigning on promises of exacting revenge against his political enemies if returned to the Oval Office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“America doesn’t want to see the idea of the retribution,” McCarthy said. “If it’s rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you’ll see that.”Despite Trump’s gloomy message, McCarthy predicted Trump would clinch the White House, help Republicans expand their numerical advantage in the House and retake a majority in the Senate if the Democrats nominate Biden for re-election.Much of McCarthy’s congressional agenda was blunted by Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, where the party has a 51-49 edge.Trump faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with civil litigation over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, and a Wall Street Journal poll published Saturday showed Trump leading Biden 47% to 43%.“If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win,” McCarthy said. “I believe the Republicans will gain more seats in the House and the Republicans will win the Senate.” More

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      California hometown sheds few tears for retiring McCarthy: ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kevin’

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      For the brief period that he stood at the pinnacle of national politics, Kevin McCarthy cast an odd sort of light on Bakersfield, his unfashionable, hardscrabble home town in southern California that might never have penetrated the national consciousness without him.The city has none of the trappings of what we think of when we think of the Golden state – no beaches, no cable cars, no redwood forests, and only an intermittent view of the Tehachapi mountains, depending on the intensity of the smog that rises from the inland oilfields and large tract farms that provide its lifeblood. The Beach Boys never immortalized Bakersfield in song – and neither, for the most part, has anyone else.Yet for the past year, as McCarthy struggled to lead the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the city has enjoyed a quirky notoriety as the place that formed the man that wielded the speaker’s gavel, albeit for an agonizingly – and historically – short time.Journalists from national publications have dutifully made the trek up from Los Angeles in search of the sandwich counter that McCarthy ran as a young man inside his uncle’s strip-mall yogurt shop (both long gone), or to eat a steak and pasta lunch at Luigi’s, which McCarthy once lauded as the kind of place that is reliably hopping by 11am because the good, hardworking people of Bakersfield start their jobs at sunrise.The reporters would try to figure out whether the city saw McCarthy as the smiling, happy-go-lucky favourite son portrayed by his friends and allies, or just another ambitious politician more interested in building his power base in Washington DC than in serving his local constituents.How much did McCarthy love Bakersfield, and how much did Bakersfield love him back? The responses were mixed then, and they remain mixed now.“If you went through the wringer he went through, I suspect there’s a little humiliation, a little embarrassment. Maybe he’s licking his wounds and wants to go off into the sunset,” said Greg Perrone, president of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly, an activist group that hews to McCarthy’s right. “Still, I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t finish the term that he was elected to serve. That’s not what we expect from our elected leaders.”The critical voices that fill the letters column of the local paper, the Bakersfield Californian, have been quite a bit blunter. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kevin,” two of them wrote last week. One added: “You haven’t represented us in a very long time.”Local Republican officials have been quick to sing McCarthy’s praises since the announcement of his retirement from Congress, calling him optimistic, unafraid of hard work, a patriot, and a “tremendous advocate for the Central Valley”. But others less beholden to him have been notable mostly by their silence.Bakersfield’s mayor, Karen Goh, who has been photographed with McCarthy on passingly few occasions since she took office seven years ago, issued no statement. When invited to comment on ways in which McCarthy had helped the city in his 16 years in Washington, she told the Guardian she was too busy to respond.McCarthy’s district, California’s 20th, extends well beyond Bakersfield into the farmlands of Kern and Tulare counties and into the suburbs of Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley. It was redrawn before the last election to make it more solidly Republican, relieving McCarthy of any significant pressure to fight for his own congressional seat. He scarcely visited during last year’s campaign, focusing instead on raising hundreds of millions of dollars for more competitive districts in California and the rest of the country.That focus has not always gone down well with his constituents, especially in Bakersfield, whose population has grown significantly more diverse since the days when it was a refuge for poor white farmers from the Dust Bowl and their descendants, giving the area an Oklahoma flavor with rock-ribbed conservative attitudes to match. The city is now majority Latino, and party registration between the two major parties is close to even.Still, the city may be less remarkable for its changing political complexion than for its relative lack of political engagement. In recent election cycles, Bakersfield and Kern county have seen some of the lowest voter turnout rates in California – just 34% for the 2022 mid-terms, and 58% for the presidential race in 2020 when the statewide average was more than 70%.Nothing about the place is friendly to politics, starting with a notable lack of public space. Amid the sprawl of highways and mini-malls and residential subdivisions, most political protests – including recent pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations – have been confined to the sidewalks at the intersection of Stockdale Highway and California Avenue, on the western end of town, where the corners are demarcated by a Mobil station, a Shell station, a McDonald’s and a Chick-Fil-A.Most local political offices are in business parks where the doors stay locked to anyone without an appointment. McCarthy’s own district office rarely engages with the public or with reporters.With McCarthy now on his way out, Bakersfield’s political profile is likely to dwindle even further. The city has other, mostly dubious claims to fame – as one of the most dangerous places in America for pedestrians, and as an area with one of the highest incidences of police shootings. The city’s website is currently touting a more cheerful statistic – that an obscure financial website named WalletHub has ranked it the 96th best city in the United States to have fun.That’s slightly less fun than Overland Park, Kansas, in the Kansas City suburbs, but a touch more fun than Toledo, Ohio, where Saturday nights were once infamously described in a John Denver song as “like being no place at all”. Bakersfield’s city leaders are taking that as a compliment. More

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      Who will step up in California politics as McCarthy exits and Pelosi steps back?

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

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      Kevin McCarthy, ousted House speaker, says he will leave Congress at end of the year – US politics live

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      In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      The Senate has begun a procedural vote on Joe Biden’s national security supplemental funding request. Sixty votes are required surrounding the $106bn Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan funding.So far, there are 30 yes’s and 29 no’s. The voting remains underway.In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      A new school board president in Pennsylvania was sworn in on Monday on a stack of frequently banned books.In a video posted by the Recount, Karen Smith, the new Central Bucks school board president can be seen saying her vows on a stack of six banned books.According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the books include Night by Elie Wiesel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Flamer by Mike Curato, and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kukin.According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), between 1 January and 31 August, OIF reported 698 to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles.The ban marks a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022, OIF said.Four Republican presidential candidates are set to meet onstage in Alabama tonight for the fourth Republican presidential debate.The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Four White House hopefuls will meet onstage in Alabama for the fourth Republican presidential primary debate, the smallest lineup yet as the window for denting Donald Trump’s lead narrows.Wednesday night’s debate, hosted by the cable network NewsNation at the Moody Music Hall at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, offers one of the last major opportunities for the candidates to make their case to Republican voters before the party’s nominating contest begins next month.The two-hour event will feature Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, who are locked in an increasingly combative scrap to be the second-place alternative to Trump. They will be joined by Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, who both trail far behind.Read the full story here:Joe Biden has announced that his administration is approving another $4.8bn in student debt cancellation for 80,300 people.In a statement released on Wednesday, the president said that this brings the total debt cancellation that his administration has approved to $132bn for over 3.6 million Americans.Biden said:
      Today’s announcement comes on top of all we’ve been able to achieve for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years.
      This includes: achieving the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so that borrowers who go into public service get the debt relief they’re entitled to under the law; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the Save plan.
      The Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement in which he said the US will be “better off without Kevin in office”:
      In his short time as speaker, Kevin McCarthy managed to plunge the People’s House into chaos in the name of serving one person and one person alone: Donald Trump. At every turn, Kevin sought to give his puppet master a lifeline, even after the horrific events of January 6, and spent his embarrassing speakership bending the knee to the most extreme factions of the MAGA base. This anticlimactic end to Kevin’s political career is in line with the rest of his time on Capitol Hill – plagued by cowardice, incompetence, and fecklessness. Our country will be better off without Kevin in office, but his failed tenure in the House should serve as a stark warning to the country about the future of the GOP – no matter how much he kowtowed to the extreme right, no matter how much he kissed the ring, none of it was MAGA enough for the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.
      Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers has vetoed a Republican bill that would have banned gender-affirming care including surgeries and hormone treatments for minors in the state.In a statement released on Wednesday, Evers said:
      I promised I would veto any bill that makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ folks and kids—and I keep my promises.
      George Santos, the expelled Republican representative from New York, is reportedly making six figures by selling Cameo videos.The Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:The disgraced lawmaker George Santos is reportedly making six figures by selling videos on the platform Cameo, generating more income than his previous salary as a US congressman, Semafor first reported.Santos, a former Republican representative from New York state, was expelled from Congress last Friday following a blistering ethics report that detailed his misuse of campaign funds.Since his removal, Santos has been publishing videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. The disgraced congressman has drastically increased the price of his videos, now selling them for $400 a pop from his initial $75-per-video price point.Read the full story here:Here is a video Kevin McCarthy released surrounding his resignation announcement:In the video, McCarthy said:
      Traveling the country and serving with all of you, I have encountered far more people that want to build something than those who want to tear it down. I have faith in this country because America is more than a country, America is an idea.
      Today, I am driven by the same purpose that I felt when I arrived in Congress but now it is time to pursue my passion in a different arena.
      Joe Biden has responded to a question on whether he thinks there are any Democrats who could beat Donald Trump other than himself.”Probably 50 of them,” replied Biden.He then went on to say, “I’m not the only one who can beat him, but I will beat him.”In response to Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement, California’s Democratic representative Adam Schiff said:
      “My dad asked me recently what I thought of Kevin McCarthy. In light of his retirement, I figured I’d share …”
      He went on to post a video in which he spoke about McCarthy, saying, “I think he’s a bad egg.”South Carolina’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement:
      I wish Kevin McCarthy well in his future endeavors to help the conservative cause. Kevin has much to be proud of, rising through the ranks to Minority Leader and Speaker of the House. He navigated the Republican Party through some of the most turbulent periods in recent history, getting results in difficult circumstances.
      “He will be missed, but I am sure his contributions to the future of the Republican Party will be enormous.”
      California’s Democratic representative Eric Swalwell, who predicted earlier this week that McCarthy would leave Congress, has responded to McCarthy’s resignation with a check mark emoji.Earlier this week, Swalwell tweeted:
      “With Santos gone, you’re hearing it here first: the next GOP member to leave Congress will be@SpeakerMcCarthy. No way he stays. A guy who kidney punches his colleagues from behind is too afraid to serve out a full term with them. I bet he’s gone by end of year. What say you?”
      In an odd and fairly threatening post, Georgia’s Republican representative Majorie Taylor Greene responded to the news of Kevin McCarthy resigning, saying:
      “Well..
      Now in 2024, we will have a 1 seat majority in the House of Representatives.
      Congratulations Freedom Caucus for one and 105 Rep who expel our own for the other.
      I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship.
      Hopefully no one dies.”
      Kevin McCarthy’s resignation will come before the special elections which are expected to take place either next February or March to fill the vacancy left by George Santos who was expelled from the House last Friday.With McCarthy gone, there will be two Republican vacancies in the House. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘A bully’: McCarthy accused of shoving Republican who helped oust him

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      A US radio reporter witnessed a remarkable altercation on Tuesday at the US Capitol between Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican speaker eight rightwingers including Burchett ejected from the role last month.Claudia Grisales, of NPR, said: “Have NEVER seen this on Capitol Hill: while talking to Tim Burchett after the GOP conference meeting, former speaker McCarthy walked by with his detail and McCarthy shoved Burchett. Burchett lunged towards me. I thought it was a joke, it was not. And a chase ensued.”According to Grisales, Burchett yelled, “Why’d you elbow me in the back, Kevin?! Hey Kevin, you got any guts!?” and called McCarthy a “jerk”.Grisales said: “I chased behind with my mic.”McCarthy, she said, told Burchett: “I didn’t elbow you in the back.”Burchett said: “You got no guts, you did so … the reporter said it right there, what kind of chicken move is that? You’re pathetic, man.”Telling Grisales he was “stunned”, Burchett said the clash was his first communication with McCarthy since he helped make him the first speaker ever removed by his own party.Last week, McCarthy told CNN Burchett’s vote to remove him was “out of nature” and accused him and his fellow rebels of “car[ing] a lot about press, not about policy, and so they seem to just want the press and the personality”.Burchett said then McCarthy was “bitter”.McCarthy has flirted with or reportedly indulged in physical confrontations before. In January, as rightwingers forced him through 15 votes to become speaker, he confronted Matt Gaetz of Florida on the House floor. Mike Rogers of Alabama, a McCarthy ally, had to be restrained. Gaetz eventually became the ringleader of McCarthy’s removal.In a new memoir, meanwhile, the retired anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger, from Illinois, details two times he says McCarthy shoved him.Kinzinger says McCarthy “tried to intimidate me physically. Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber. As he passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.“If we had been in high school, I would have dropped my books, papers would have been scattered and I would have had to endure the snickers of passersby. I was startled but took it as the kind of thing Kevin did when he liked you.“Another time, I was standing at the rail that curves around the back of the last row of seats in the chamber. As he shoulder-checked me again, I thought to myself, ‘What a child.’”On Tuesday, McCarthy did not immediately comment. At the Capitol, Burchett spoke to CNN.“I was doing an interview with Claudia from NPR, a lovely lady,” he said. “And … at that time I got elbowed in the back. And it kind of caught me off guard because it was a clean shot to the kidneys. And I turned back and there was there was Kevin, and … it just happened and then I chased after him.“Of course, as I’ve stated many times, he’s a bully with $17m in a security detail, and he’s the type of guy that when you’re a kid would throw a rock over the fence and run home and hide behind his Mama’s skirt.“He hit me from behind … that’s not the way we handle things in East Tennessee. We have a problem, somebody’s gonna look him in the eye.”Being hit in the kidneys, Burchett said, was “a little different. You don’t have to hit very hard to cause a little bit of pain, a lot of pain. And so he … just denies it or blames somebody else or something. But I just backed off because … I wasn’t gaining anything from it, if everybody saw it.”Burchett said the incident was “symptomatic of the problems that [McCarthy’s] had in his short tenure as speaker … he wouldn’t turn around and face me. He kept scurrying and trying to keep people between me [to] handle it.” More

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      in Elections

      Kevin McCarthy dismissed Liz Cheney warning before January 6, book says

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      When Liz Cheney warned fellow Republicans five days before January 6 of a “dark day” to come if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, the then House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, swiftly slapped her down.“After Liz spoke,” the former Wyoming representative’s fellow anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger writes in a new book, “McCarthy immediately told everyone who was listening, ‘I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference. She speaks for herself.’”Five days after Cheney delivered her warning on a Republican conference call, Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Biden’s win.McCarthy’s statement, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.Kinzinger details McCarthy’s “notably juvenile” intervention – and even what he says were two physical blows delivered to him by McCarthy – in Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, which will be published in the US this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds convicted, some with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack, and acquitted a second time when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. When the dust cleared from the January 6 attack, McCarthy was among 147 House and Senate Republicans who still voted to object to results in key states.Like Cheney, Kinzinger, from Illinois, sat on the House January 6 committee, then left office. Unlike Cheney, who was beaten by a Trump ally, Kinzinger chose to retire.Cheney has maintained a high profile, warning of the threat Trump poses as he leads polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, 91 criminal charges (17 concerning election subversion) and assorted civil threats notwithstanding, and refusing to rule out a presidential run of her own.Kinzinger has founded Country First, an organisation meant to combat Republican extremism, and become a political commentator. In his book, he says he responded to McCarthy on the 1 January 2021 conference call by issuing his own warning about the potential for violence on 6 January and “calling on McCarthy to say he wouldn’t join the group opposing the electoral college states.“He replied by coming on the line to say, ‘OK, Adam. Operator, who’s up next?’”Such a “rude and dismissive tone”, Kinzinger says, “was typical of [McCarthy’s] style, which was notably juvenile”.McCarthy briefly blamed Trump for January 6, swiftly reversed course, stayed close to the former president and became speaker of the House, only to lose the role after less than a year, in the face of a Trumpist rebellion.Kinzinger accuses McCarthy, from California, of behaving less like a party leader than “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”. And while characterising McCarthy’s dismissal of Cheney’s warning about January 6 as “a little dig”, Kinzinger also details two physical digs he says he took from McCarthy himself.“I went from being one of the boys he treated with big smiles and pats on the back to outcast as soon as I started speaking the truth about the president who would be king,” Kinzinger writes.McCarthy “responded by trying to intimidate me physically. Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber. As he passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.“If we had been in high school, I would have dropped my books, papers would have been scattered and I would have had to endure the snickers of passersby. I was startled but took it as the kind of thing Kevin did when he liked you.“Another time, I was standing at the rail that curves around the back of the last row of seats in the chamber. As he shoulder-checked me again, I thought to myself, ‘What a child.’”Kinzinger is not above robust language of his own. Describing Trump’s Senate trial over the Capitol attack, the former congressman bemoans the decision of the Republican leader in that chamber, Mitch McConnell, to vote to acquit because Trump had left office – then deliver a speech excoriating Trump nonetheless.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger writes, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.” More