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      What is ‘motion to vacate’ – the procedure to oust Speaker McCarthy?

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      The Republican US House of Representatives speaker, Kevin McCarthy, faces an attempt by members of his own party to oust him because he passed a stopgap funding measure with Democratic support to avoid a government shutdown. Representative Matt Gaetz, a hardline Republican lawmaker, said he would file what’s called the “motion to vacate”.What is the motion to vacate?The motion to vacate is the House’s procedure to remove its speaker. The chamber’s current rules allow any one member, Democrat or Republican, to introduce the motion. If it is introduced as a “privileged” resolution, the House must consider it at some point, although it could be delayed with procedural votes.If the motion to vacate comes to the House floor for a vote, it would only need a simple majority to pass. Republicans currently control the House with 221 seats to 212 Democrats, meaning if McCarthy wants to keep his speaker’s gavel, he cannot afford to lose more than four votes.How can one member do this?McCarthy endured a brutal 15 rounds of voting in January before being elected as speaker, during which he agreed to multiple concessions increasing the power of Republican hardliners.One was the decision to allow just one member to put forward a motion to vacate, which meant that hardliners could threaten McCarthy’s speakership at any time.This was a change from the rules in place under his Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, when a majority of one party needed to support a motion to vacate to bring it to the floor.Who is behind the push to oust McCarthy?Republican Representative Gaetz, a firebrand from Florida and perpetual thorn in McCarthy’s side, has repeatedly threatened to file a motion to vacate. The speaker has been unfazed. In a 14 September closed-door meeting of House Republicans, McCarthy dared Gaetz to bring a motion to the floor.Others including Representatives Dan Bishop and Eli Crane have also suggested they would support a motion to vacate.Has the motion to vacate been used before?The motion was first used in 1910, when Republican speaker Joseph Cannon put forward the motion himself to force detractors in his own party to decide whether they supported him or not, according to the House Archives. The motion failed.In 1997 Republican speaker Newt Gingrich was threatened with a motion to vacate. Although he managed to tamp down resistance and avoid an actual resolution being filed, he resigned in 1998 after disappointing results in the midterm elections that year.In 2015 Republican Representative Mark Meadows filed a motion to vacate against Republican speaker John Boehner. It did not come to a vote, but Boehner resigned a few months later, citing the challenges of managing a burgeoning hardline conservative faction of his party. More

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      ‘Let’s have that fight’: McCarthy and Gaetz go to war over shutdown deal

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      Simmering hostility between Republicans over the bipartisan deal that averted a government shutdown descended into open political warfare on Sunday, a rightwing congressman saying he would move to oust Kevin McCarthy and the embattled House speaker insisting he would survive.“We need to rip off the Bandaid. We need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” the Florida representative Matt Gaetz told CNN’s State of the Union, saying he would file a “motion to vacate” in the next few days.McCarthy, Gaetz said, lied about “a secret deal” struck with Democrats to later pass money for Ukraine that was left out of the compromise agreement, and misled Republicans about working with the opposition at all.The bill keeping the government funded for 47 days passed the House on Saturday night 335-91, 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in support. It cleared the Senate 88-9 and was signed by Joe Biden.In remarks at the White House on Sunday, Biden said the measure extending funding until 17 November, and including $16bn in disaster aid, prevented “a needless crisis”.But, Biden said: “The truth is we shouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s time to end governing by crisis and keep your word when you give it in the Congress. I fully expect the speaker to keep his commitment to secure the passage of support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression.”Asked if he expected McCarthy to stand up to extremists, Biden replied: “I hope this experience for the speaker has been one of personal revelation.”McCarthy hit back at Gaetz, branding him a showman “more interested in securing TV interviews” than keeping government functioning.“I’ll survive,” McCarthy told CBS’s Face the Nation. “You know, this is personal with Matt. He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid.“… So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get it over with it, and let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us into shutdown and I made sure the government didn’t shut down, then let’s have that fight.”Gaetz said he would no longer hold to an agreement made in January to support McCarthy in exchange for concessions including a hard position on federal funding. That deal included a loosening of rules to allow a single member to file a motion to vacate, the beginning of the process to remove a speaker.“The only way Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House at the end of this coming week is if Democrats bail him out, and they probably will,” said Gaetz.“I’m done owning Kevin McCarthy. We made a deal in January to allow him to assume the speakership and I’m not owning him any more because he doesn’t tell the truth. And so if Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy by bailing him out I can’t stop them. But then he’ll be their speaker, not mine.”McCarthy would need 218 votes to keep his job. Some senior Democrats said they would not vote to save him and would back the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, instead.“Kevin McCarthy is very weak speaker,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told CNN, saying she would support Gaetz’s motion.McCarthy “has clearly has lost control of his caucus. He has brought the US and millions of Americans to the brink, waiting until the final hour to keep the government open and even then only issuing a 4[7]-day extension. We’re going to be right back in this place in November.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to reporters on Saturday, Jeffries said the deal represented a “total surrender by rightwing extremists”.Republicans loyal to McCarthy also attacked Gaetz and the rightwing House Freedom Caucus for their “destructive” pledge to oust the speaker.“What I just heard was a diatribe of delusional thinking,” Mike Lawler of New York told ABC’s This Week. “They are the reason we had to work together with House Democrats. That is not the fault of Kevin McCarthy, that’s the fault of Matt Gaetz. He’s mealy mouthed and, frankly, duplicitous.”Relations between the speaker and Gaetz reached a new low with a testy confrontation in a meeting on Thursday. Gaetz accused McCarthy of orchestrating a social media campaign against him, the speaker saying he did not rate the congressman highly enough to do so.On Sunday, Gaetz insisted “this is about keeping Kevin McCarthy to his word, it’s not about any personal animosity”.Gaetz claimed McCarthy reached a “secret deal”, promising to introduce a standalone bill to continue funding Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russian invaders.A growing number of Republicans object to the US helping pay for the war. Gaetz said: “However you think about [Ukraine funding], it should be subject to open review [and] analysis, and not backroom deals, so I have to file a motion to vacate against speaker McCarthy this week.”On ABC, Gaetz said he did not expect to have enough votes to remove McCarthy immediately, “but I might have them before the 15th ballot”, an allusion to the time it took to elect the speaker in January.“I am relentless, and I will continue to pursue this objective,” Gaetz said. “And if all the American people see is that it is a uni-party that governs them, always the Biden, McCarthy, Jeffries government that makes dispositive decisions on spending, then I am seeding the fields of future primary contests to get better Republicans in Washington.”Shalanda Young, Biden’s budget director, blamed Republicans for bringing the government to the verge of a shutdown, and urged Congress to take a longer-term view.“We need to start today to make sure that we do not have this brinkmanship, last-minute anxiousness of the American people,” she told ABC. “Let’s do our jobs to not have this happen again. Let’s have full-year funding bills at the end of these 47 days.” More

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      McCarthy worked with Democrats to pause the US shutdown. Now his job is at stake

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      In more normal political times, the successful prevention of a government shutdown might be cause for celebration. For Kevin McCarthy, it may instead mark the beginning of the end of his speakership.After failing to pass a more conservative stopgap spending bill on Friday, the House Republican speaker introduced a different proposal extending government funding for 45 days and allocating $16bn for disaster relief aid. That bill the House on Saturday in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in supporting the legislation.In a worrisome sign for McCarthy, 90 House Republicans opposed the bill. The speaker still managed to secure the support of most of his conference, but he expressed exasperation with the hard-right holdouts who blocked his initial stopgap proposal, which included severe spending cuts for most federal agencies.“It is very clear that I tried every possible way, listening to every single person in the conference,” McCarthy told reporters on Saturday. “If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.”Indeed, McCarthy spent the weeks leading up to the 1 October shutdown deadline attempting to appease his hard-right colleagues. On Thursday night, House Republicans approved three longer-term appropriations bills that included some of the steep cuts demanded by the hard-right Freedom Caucus.McCarthy had hoped that the House’s ongoing work to pass appropriations bills would diffuse the concerns of Freedom Caucus members, many of whom said they would not back a stopgap bill in any form. But those holdout members were true to their word, opposing every proposal that would extend government funding and prevent a shutdown.When McCarthy’s original stopgap bill came up for a vote on Friday, 21 Republicans opposed the measure. The hard-right blockade easily sunk the bill because of House Republicans’ extremely narrow majority.In the end, McCarthy was forced to take a course of action he had avoided for weeks: passing a short-term funding bill with the help of House Democrats. Although Democrats expressed disappointment that McCarthy’s proposal did not include additional funding to support Ukraine’s war efforts, they ultimately provided the speaker with the support he needed to get the bill across the finish line.The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, celebrated the bill’s passage as a complete surrender by McCarthy and his allies, given that the legislation did not include the severe funding cuts outlined in the speaker’s original proposal.“We went from devastating cuts that would have impacted the health, the safety and the economic wellbeing of the American people, in 24 hours, to a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people across the board,” Jeffries said on Saturday. “The American people have won. The extreme [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans have lost. It was a victory for the American people and a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists, who throughout the year have tried to hijack the Congress.”Hard-right Republicans had warned that they would move to oust McCarthy as speaker if he collaborated with Democrats on a funding bill, and they have the means to do so. Under the current House rules, it only takes one member to bring a motion to vacate, which forces a vote on removing the sitting speaker. McCarthy’s detractors would only need a simple majority to unseat him.Hard-right Republicans appeared ready to make good on their threat after the stopgap proposal passed the House. As the House moved to adjourn on Saturday, congressman Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican of Florida, was seen trying to get the attention of the presiding member for another matter of business. The House adjourned before Gaetz could be recognised, but the chamber will be back in session on Monday, when hard-right lawmakers will have another opportunity to take action against McCarthy.Gaetz previewed a potential effort to oust McCarthy on Tuesday, saying in a floor speech, “The one thing I agree with my Democrat colleagues on is that for the last eight months, this House has been poorly led, and we own that, and we have to do something about it. And you know what? My Democrat colleagues will have an opportunity to do something about that, too, and we will see if they bail out our failed speaker.”If McCarthy is banking on Democratic support to keep his gavel, he may be sorely disappointed. Politico reported Saturday that Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, was instructing her colleagues not to come to McCarthy’s aid in the event of a vote on vacating the chair.Despite the grim state of affairs, McCarthy appeared ready for battle on Saturday. After withstanding 15 rounds of voting to win the speakership in January, McCarthy said he wouldn’t go down without a fight.“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room,” McCarthy told reporters. “I’m going to be a conservative that gets things done for the American public, and whatever that holds, so be it because I believe in not giving up on America.”The coming days will determine what the future holds for McCarthy, but if Gaetz and his allies are successful, the House could soon be looking for a new leader. More

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      Democrat Jamaal Bowman pulled fire alarm on Capitol Hill before House vote

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      Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm on Saturday in a Capitol office building before a House vote on a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.The alarm prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated and triggered outcry from Republicans including the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who compared the New York congressman’s actions with those of the January 6 rioters.“I was really appalled watching Democrats’ actions today, to delay it, to get a shutdown,” said McCarthy amid Democrats’ complaints that they did not have sufficient time to review the bill Republicans released last-minute in an attempt to avoid a government shutdown.“That’s a new low,” he said, adding, “We watched how people have been treated if they’ve done something wrong in this Capitol. It would be interesting to see how he is treated and what he was trying to obstruct when it came to the American public.”Brian Steil, a Republican Wisconsin representative and chair of the House administration committee, announced that an investigation into the incident is underway.Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she is calling on the justice department to prosecute Bowman “using the same law they used to prosecute J6 defendants for interfering with an official proceeding”.Meanwhile, the Republican representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York said that she is drafting a resolution to expel Bowman, tweeting, “This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school. This action warrants expulsion & I’m introducing a resolution to do just that.”Malliotakis’s fellow Republican representative Elise Stefanik echoed similar sentiments, tweeting, “A Democrat member of Congress just committed a felony by pulling the fire alarm to try to delay and stop a Congressional vote to fund the government.”In DC, falsely pulling a fire alarm is considered a misdemeanor.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for Bowman said, “Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” adding, “The congressman regrets any confusion.”Speaking to reporters, Bowman said, “I thought the alarm would open the door.”It remains unclear whether Bowman will be prosecuted.The 45-day funding resolution, which Bowman and a majority of Democrats ultimately voted in favor of, passed with a 335-91 vote in the House. The bill is now with the Democrat-majority Senate, and lawmakers have until midnight on Sunday to pass it and send it to president Joe Biden to sign into law before a government shutdown. More

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      US House passes stopgap funding bill under the wire without funding for Ukraine

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      The House passed a bill Saturday to extend government funding for 45 days, sending the legislation to the Senate with just hours left to avert a federal shutdown. Unless Joe Biden signs a funding bill before midnight, the government will shut down.The bill passed the House in an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in supporting the legislation. Ninety Republicans opposed the bill.The bill – unveiled by the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, just hours before the final vote – would extend funding through 17 November and allocate $16bn for disaster aid. The House bill does not include additional funding for Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.McCarthy introduced the bill under suspension of the rules, meaning he needed the support of two-thirds of House members to advance the proposal. Although Democrats criticized the bill’s lack of Ukraine funding, they ultimately provided McCarthy with the support needed to get the legislation across the finish line.Speaking after the vote, McCarthy expressed disappointment that a large share of his conference opposed the bill, but he said the intransigence displayed by hard-right Republicans left him with no other option.“It is very clear that I tried every possible way, listening to every single person in the conference,” McCarthy told reporters. “If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, celebrated the bill’s passage, saying: “[‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans have surrendered. All extreme rightwing policies have been removed from the House spending bill. The American people have won.”Prior to the House vote, the Senate had planned to hold a vote at 1pm ET on a separate stopgap spending bill, which would also keep the government open until 17 November and provide some funding for Ukraine’s war efforts as well as disaster relief aid.But the Senate vote was stalled after Republicans said they wanted to wait to see whether the House would be able to pass McCarthy’s proposal before the midnight deadline. In light of the movement in the House, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he would not support advancing the Senate bill for the time being.“It looks like there may be a bipartisan agreement coming from the House,” McConnell told reporters at the Capitol. “Under these circumstances, I’m recommending a no vote, even though I very much want to avoid a government shutdown.”Now that the House has passed McCarthy’s bill, all attention turns to the Senate. Although Senate Democrats have voiced displeasure about approving a bill that does not include Ukraine funding, the House bill currently represents their only option to prevent a shutdown. Because of procedural hurdles, the Senate cannot hold a final vote on its own bill until Sunday at the earliest, when a shutdown would have already started.The rare weekend session came one day after the House failed to pass McCarthy’s initial stopgap bill, which would have extended government funding for another month while enacting steep spending cuts on most federal agencies.McCarthy’s proposal was rejected by 21 House Republicans, as hard-right members continued to insist they would not support a continuing resolution. Hard-right Republicans threatened to oust the speaker if he teamed up with Democrats to keep the government open, a viable threat when it only takes one member to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. Despite the criticism from his hard-right colleagues, McCarthy downplayed threats to his speakership on Saturday.“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” McCarthy told reporters. “There has to be an adult in the room. I am going to govern with what is best for this country.”As lawmakers made progress in their efforts to extend funding, the federal government was bracing for the possibility of the first shutdown in nearly five years. The White House has warned that a shutdown would force hundreds of thousands of government workers to go without pay, jeopardize access to vital nutritional programs and delay disaster relief projects.“Extreme House Republicans are solely – solely – to blame for marching us toward a shutdown. That is what we’re seeing right now,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, similarly blamed Republicans for a potential shutdown – although he used more colorful language to describe his congressional colleagues.“The damage to our nation’s reputation and critical programming, and chaos for America’s families is because of a small group of [Republican] peckerheads in the House,” Fetterman said on Saturday. “This national upheaval is inflicted by choice over nothing except Fox News face time and tributes to the lunatic fringe from their district.” More

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      House Republicans to meet after stopgap measure to avert shutdown fails by 232 to 198 votes – US politics live

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      From 4h agoThe House rejected a short-term spending bill aimed at averting a government shutdown, dealing a blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and likely cementing the chances of a shutdown less than 48 hours away.The bill, known as a continuing resolution, failed by a vote of 198 in favor to 232 opposed.Twenty one Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill. Hard-right members of McCarthy’s conference refused to support the bill despite its steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions, calling it insufficient.McCarthy is planning to meet with the GOP conference on Friday afternoon to discuss next steps. Ahead of the vote, he all but dared his hard-right colleagues to oppose the package. “Every member will have to go on record where they stand,” he said.Despite McCarthy’s concessions, members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus remained adamant on Friday that they would not support a continuing resolution.The Senate is scheduled to take another procedural vote at 1pm on Saturday to advance its stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown.Donald Trump plans to attend at least the first week of his $250m civil fraud trial brought by the New York attorney general Letitia James, according to court documents.James sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. The trial is scheduled to start on 2 October.Trump’s plan to attend the trial was revealed in court filings in a separate lawsuit Trump filed against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, according to a Politico report. The former president had been scheduled to undergo a deposition in the case on Tuesday in Florida, but the documents show that Trump’s attorneys “requested to reschedule his deposition so that he could attend his previously-scheduled New York trial in person.”The filings state:
      Through counsel, Plaintiff represented that he would be attending his New York trial in person—at least for each day of the first week of trial. He also stated that, because of the trial, he would be unavailable on any business day between October 2, 2023 and the end of his trial.
      US district judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled a 16 October hearing on federal prosecutors’ request for a limited gag order in the case charging Donald Trump with scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Special counsel Jack Smith had requested a gag order barring Trump from making inflammatory and intimidating public statements about potential witnesses, lawyers and other people involved in the case.Smith’s proposed order would bar “statements regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses” and “statements about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating.”Trump’s lawyers earlier this week denounced the gag order request as a “desperate attempt at censorship”.National parks across the US will close to visitors as soon as Sunday if Congress is unable to avert a government shutdown, the Department of Interior has announced.“Gates will be locked, visitor centers will be closed, and thousands of park rangers will be furloughed,” the interior department wrote in a news release on Friday.
      Accordingly, the public will be encouraged not to visit sites during the period of lapse in appropriations out of consideration for protection of natural and cultural resources, as well as visitor safety.
      The plan, outlined in an updated National Parks Service (NPS) contingency plan, emphasizes the need to protect park resources and ensure visitor health and safety.The decision marks a notable departure from how the national park system was handled under the Trump administration during the last government shutdown. During a funding stalemate that stretched for 35 days through the end of 2018 into 2019, officials ordered parks to remain accessible to the public while they were without key staff, resources and services.That decision culminated in destruction and chaos at some of the country’s most cherished landmarks such as Joshua Tree national park, with high levels of vandalism, accumulation of human waste and trash and significant risks to ecosystems and unsupervised visitors.The US stands just days from a full government shutdown amid political deadlock over demands from rightwing congressional Republicans for deep public spending cuts.Fuelled by bitter ideological divisions among the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, funding for federal agencies will run out at midnight on 30 September unless – against widespread expectation – Congress votes to pass a stopgap measure to extend government funding.It is an event with the potential to inflict disruption to a range of public services, cause delays in salaries, and wreak significant damage on the national economy if it becomes prolonged.At the heart of the looming upheaval is the uncertain status of the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who is under fire from members of his own party for agreeing spending limits with Joe Biden, that members of the GOP’s far-right “Freedom Caucus” say are too generous and want to urgently prune.Here are seven things you should know about the looming shutdown.As part of his plea deal, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties”, a misdemeanor.He will serve five years of probation as part of the sentencing agreement, Judge Scott McAfee said during a hearing in Fulton county superior court.He also agreed to a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities, the judge said.Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in the Georgia election interference case, becoming the first defendant in the Fulton county case to take a plea deal.Hall was charged in relation to the alleged breach of voting machine equipment in the wake of the 2020 election in Coffee county.Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts as part of a negotiated deal. He appeared before Judge Scott McAfee on Friday afternoon after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors.Addressing Hall, the judge asked:
      You understand that you’re pleading guilty today because you believe there exists a factual basis that supports the plea, and you are pleading guilty because you are, in fact, guilty?
      Hall replied:
      Yes sir.
      Back at the government shutdown, as it were, the National Organization for Women, or Now, has called for leaders in Washington to get their act together.In a statement, Christian F Nunes, Now’s national president, gets slightly ahead of events, presuming no solution will be found before midnight tomorrow, the final funding deadline.It’s a powerful statement, all the same:
      Congress has failed in its most basic function. The extremists who control the House of Representatives have shut down the government – out of incompetence, ignorance, and cruelty.
      “This is not just about politics – far from it. When you’re living day to day, paycheck to paycheck, wondering how you’ll cope with a shutdown is chilling to the core.
      “Real people will be harmed because of this inexcusable partisan gamesmanship. For weeks, they’ve been dreading this day – not knowing if they’ll be able to pay the rent, afford childcare, or feed their families.
      “Those who are responsible for today’s shutdown are causing fear and uncertainty to be felt not only by government workers and their families, but by millions more who are impacted by this crisis – starting with the 7 million women and children who rely on vital nutrition assistance, but will be turned away when the funds dry up just days from now.”
      The shutdown is being driven by hard-right House Republicans, opposing Kevin McCarthy, a speaker from their own party, and refusing to compromise on policy priorities including reducing funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia and advancing various “culture war” proposals also unacceptable to Democrats who control the Senate and the White House.Nunes continued:
      It couldn’t be clearer – these extremists are willing to cause such disruption, pain, and uncertainty because they’d rather tear down the government than make it work.
      “And now they’re holding every function of government hostage until their extremist demands are met—including more restrictions on abortion, cutting access to Social Security and Medicare, allowing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and slashing funding for cancer research, safe and clean drinking water and making our elections less safe, and making it harder to vote.
      “Now members are calling on their representatives to shut off the shutdown. Not in months or weeks, but days or hours. They may not feel the pain they cause, but we know people who do.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly set to end his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run as an independent instead.According to Mediaite, Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, a nephew of President John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October.“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.Kennedy is an attorney who made his name as an environmental campaigner before achieving notoriety as a prominent vaccine skeptic, particularly over Covid-19.He has often flirted with controversy, not least in a podcast interview released this week in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.Polling has shown Kennedy performing relatively well against Biden, the incumbent president, in the Democratic primary, but not close to posing a serious threat.However, Biden aides are reportedly nervous about the possible impact of third-party candidates in a likely presidential election match-up with Donald Trump.Polling shows widespread belief that at 80, Biden is too old to serve an effective second term in the White House. Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among the public that he could be unfit to return to office.Whether Kennedy, the Green Party pick, Cornel West, or a notional nominee backed by No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, a third-party candidate is widely seen to be likely to peel more support from Biden than Trump, thereby potentially handing the presidency to the Republican.Rightwing figures (prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist) have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.As cited by Mediate, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win … because his party’s radical elements, what we call the woke, have embraced this fascist clampdown on language.”On Friday, as observers digested news of Kennedy’s imminent change of course, the author Michael Weiss referred to infamous electoral sabotage carried out by Roger Stone and other Republican operatives when he said: “The ratfuckery was self-evident from day one.”But not everyone thought Kennedy’s move would be bad for Biden.Joe Conason, editor of the National Memo, said: “Go Bobby! Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality. (That’s Trump, not Biden.)”More:Retiring as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the army general Mark Milley directed a parting shot at Donald Trump, the president he served but who he seemed to call a “wannabe dictator”.Speaking at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, this morning, Milley said of the US armed forces: “We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.“We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Trump, who nominated Milley in 2019, did not immediately comment. But Milley’s struggles to contain Trump, particularly in 2020, the tumultuous final year of his presidency, have been long and widely reported.Such struggles concerned foreign policy, as Milley and other officials sought to stop the erratic president provoking confrontations with foes including China and Iran.But Milley and others also had to keep the US military out of domestic affairs, as Trump chafed against nationwide protests for racial justice, openly yearning to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and thereby call in the army.Last week saw publication of an in-depth profile by the Atlantic, in which Milley again expressed his regret over an infamous appearance with Trump in June 2020, when the president marched from the White House to a historic church, slightly damaged amid the protests, in an attempt to project a strongman image.The Atlantic profile prompted Trump to rail at Milley again, calling a widely reported conversation in which the general sought to reassure his Chinese counterpart that Trump would not order an attack “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”Milley has said he has taken “adequate safety precautions” against potential threats from Trump supporters perhaps also encouraged by the words of Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican congressman who told supporters Milley should be hanged.Full story:The House GOP leadership have made the following changes to the House floor schedule:Members are advised that votes are now expected in the House tomorrow, Saturday 30 September 2023.This is a change from the House GOP leadership’s previously announced schedule.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Republicans to work with Democrats to avert a shutdown by putting a bipartisan stopgap funding bill on the House floor for a vote when the measure arrives from the Senate, according to a Washington Post report.“Republicans face a clear choice: put the bipartisan continuing resolution on the floor of the House for an up-or-down vote and we can avoid the extreme Maga Republican shutdown and end this nightmare,” Jeffries said.
      Or fail to put the bipartisan continuing resolution sent over from the Senate on the floor of the House for an up-or-down vote because your objective, apparently, as extreme Maga Republicans is to shut the government down.
      The top three House Democrats held a last-minute press conference after the vote on a stopgap funding measure failed.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that House Democrats met this morning and are “unified in the position that we support” the Senate’s bipartisan continuing resolution.From the Hill’s Mychael Schnell:The House GOP conference will meet at 4pm ET after a measure on a stopgap funding bill that would have averted a federal shutdown failed.Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, has been denied in his attempt to move his case from state court to federal court. More

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      House votes against stopgap bill in blow to McCarthy as shutdown highly likely

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      The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, suffered another embarrassing defeat on Friday, after hard-right lawmakers tanked his stopgap funding bill that would have averted a federal shutdown on Sunday morning.McCarthy’s proposed stopgap measure, which would have funded the government for another month while enacting severe spending cuts on most federal agencies, failed in a vote of 198 to 232, as 21 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the legislation.With less than 36 hours left before government funding lapses, McCarthy appeared to be out of options to prevent a shutdown. Speaking to reporters before the vote, McCarthy tried to pitch the stopgap proposal as a means of buying time to continue negotiations over longer-term spending bills.“We actually need a stopgap measure to allow the House to continue to finish its work – to make sure our military gets paid, to make sure our border agents get paid as we finish the job,” McCarthy said.But that argument failed to sway the hard-right members of McCarthy’s conference, who have insisted for weeks that they would not back any short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution. With such a narrow House majority, McCarthy could only afford to lose a handful of votes within his conference to pass the continuing resolution without any Democratic support. The bill cleared a key procedural hurdle on Friday afternoon, but the proposal could not garner enough support for final passage.Republican leaders informed members that votes were now expected in the House on Saturday, suggesting McCarthy may try again to pass a continuing resolution, but expectations for some kind of breakthrough were low on Friday afternoon.In an attempt to appease the holdouts heading into the Friday vote, McCarthy has worked to advance a series of longer-term appropriations bills that include some of the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. On Thursday night, the House successfully passed three of those bills, but an agricultural funding proposal failed amid criticism from more moderate Republicans.Despite McCarthy’s concessions, members of the hard-right House freedom caucus remained adamant on Friday that they would not support a continuing resolution.“The continuing resolution being offered today is a bad deal for Republicans,” the congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the leaders of the holdouts, said in a floor speech before the final vote. “That’s why I’m voting against it.”The unrelenting blockade staged by Gaetz and his allies has enraged some of the more moderate members of the House Republican conference – including Congressman Mike Lawler, who represents a New York district that Joe Biden won in 2020.“There’s only one person to blame for any potential government shutdown and that’s Matt Gaetz,” Lawler told reporters. “He’s not a conservative Republican; he’s a charlatan.”McCarthy’s continuing resolution also included severe spending cuts for most of the federal government, sparking impassioned criticism among House Democrats. Every member of the House Democratic caucus opposed the continuing resolution, leaving McCarthy with no option for passing the bill.“Once again, extreme Republicans in the House have demonstrated their complete and utter inability to govern,” the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said after the vote. “We are in the middle of a Republican civil war that has been ongoing for months and now threatens a catastrophic government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans.”Meanwhile, the Senate continued to work on its own bipartisan spending proposal, advancing the bill in a vote of 76-22 on Thursday. That measure would keep the government funded until 17 November, and it includes roughly $6bn in funding each for disaster relief efforts and aid for Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut House Republicans have roundly rejected that bipartisan bill, denouncing the additional funding for Ukraine and arguing it does not go far enough to curtail government spending. After the failed vote on Friday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called on McCarthy to face the reality of the situation.“The speaker has spent weeks catering to the hard right, and now he finds himself in the exact same position he’s been in since the beginning: no plan forward, no closer to passing something that avoids a shutdown,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “The speaker needs to abandon his doomed mission of trying to please Maga extremists, and instead, he needs to work across the aisle to keep the government open.”With each chamber rejecting the other’s proposal, it remained highly unclear on Friday afternoon how lawmakers could reach an agreement to keep the government open. As the federal government braced for a shutdown, the White House lambasted McCarthy for conceding to hard-right Republicans, after the speaker reneged on a funding deal he had struck with Joe Biden this spring.“Extreme House Republicans are solely – solely – to blame for marching us toward a shutdown. That is what we’re seeing right now,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, also mocked McCarthy for promising to go without pay during a shutdown, which could furlough hundreds of thousands of federal workers.“That is theater,” Young said at the White House. “I will tell you: the guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck. That’s real. And that’s what makes me angry.”With less than two days left before government funding lapses on Sunday morning, a shutdown appeared to be a virtual certainty. More

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      US shutdown moves ever closer as McCarthy digs in over stopgap deal

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      A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, dug in on Thursday, vowing he will not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans’ struggle to unite around an alternative.Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government’s roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers and curtail government services.But the House and Senate are pursuing different paths to avert those consequences, even though time is running out before government funding expires after midnight on Saturday.The Senate is working toward passage of a bipartisan measure that would fund the government until 17 November as longer-term negotiations continue, while also providing $6bn for Ukraine and $6bn for US disaster relief.The House, meanwhile, has teed up votes on four of the dozen annual spending bills that fund various agencies in hopes that would cajole enough Republicans to support a House-crafted continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government and boosts security at the US border with Mexico. It’s a long shot, but McCarthy predicted a deal.“Put your money on me; we’re going to get this done,” he said in a CNBC interview. “I think we can work through the weekend. I think we can figure this out.”Lawmakers were already weary from days of late-night negotiating. The strain was evident at McCarthy’s closed-door meeting with Republicans on Thursday morning, which was marked by a tense exchange between the speaker and Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, according to those in the room.Gaetz, who has taunted McCarthy for weeks with threats to oust him from his post, confronted the speaker about conservative online influencers being paid to post negative things about him. McCarthy shot back that he wouldn’t waste his time on something like that, Gaetz told reporters as he exited the meeting.McCarthy’s allies left the meeting fuming about Gaetz’s tactics.With his majority splintering, McCarthy is scrambling to come up with a plan for preventing a shutdown and win Republican support. The speaker told Republicans he would reveal a Republican stopgap plan, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, on Friday, according to those in the room, while also trying to force Senate Democrats into giving some concessions.But with time running out, many GOP lawmakers were withholding support for a temporary measure until they had a chance to see it. Others are considering joining Democrats, without McCarthy’s support, to bring forward a bill that would prevent a shutdown.With his ability to align his conference in doubt, McCarthy has little standing to negotiate with Senate Democrats. He has also attempted to draw Joe Biden into negotiations, but the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Congress and the White House had already worked out top-line spending levels for next year with an agreement this summer that allowed the government to continue borrowing to pay its bills.McCarthy was deviating from that deal and courting a shutdown by catering to Republicans who said it didn’t do enough to cut spending, he said.“By focusing on the views of the radical few instead of the many, speaker McCarthy has made a shutdown far more likely,” Schumer said.Biden also sought to apply more pressure on McCarthy, urging him to compromise with Democrats even though that could threaten his job.“I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Biden said.The White House, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, notified staff on Thursday to prepare for a shutdown, according to emails obtained by the Associated Press. Employees who are furloughed would have four hours on Monday to prepare their offices for the shutdown. More