►The Washington Post looks at why House Speaker Mike Johnson won’t lose the Speaker’s gavel (yet) despite making the same mistakes as his predecessor:
In his 11-month tenure, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has had to rely on Democrats to fund the government five times.
This week will be the sixth, when the House is expected to pass a bipartisan plan to fund the government beyond Sept. 30. (The vote is expected Wednesday and will need the support of two-thirds of the House to pass.)
Yet committing what has become the original sin for GOP House speakers — negotiating with Democrats on spending bills — isn’t costing Johnson his job, as it (partly) did with former speakers Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio) and to a lesser extent Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)…
…With the election just six weeks away and control of the House a toss-up, a speaker’s fight is in no Republican’s interest.The real test comes with the election, whose outcome will be a main driver of Johnson’s fate. If Republicans lose the House, they won’t vote to elect a speaker — and Republicans would most likely not support Johnson as minority leader.
If Republicans win control of the House with a comfortable margin, Johnson has a good chance of being elected speaker again. But he’ll also have to navigate another funding battle with a Dec. 20 deadline — just two weeks before the vote for speaker on Jan. 3 — and how he handles it will play a major role in whether he prevails.
That’s why the Dec. 20 government funding deadline could lead to a shutdown and a bitter leadership race all rolled into one.
Johnson’s idiotic attempt to tie a continuing resolution to a silly election “security” bill went down in flames last week, forcing the Republican Speaker to once again negotiate a spending deal with Democrats.
► In related news, data from Navigator Research shows that 7 in 10 Americans believe it is never okay to threaten to shut down the federal government…even if they agree with the cause being used as justification for a potential shutdown.
► The Hill newspaper reports on the latest bizarre claim by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump:
Former President Trump on Monday told women he would protect them if he is elected and attacked his opponent, Vice President Harris, as “very dumb” during a rally in the key battleground of Pennsylvania.
Trump at one point sought to directly address the women in the audience as polls have shown him trailing Harris with that demographic of voters. He read an extended version of a Truth Social post from over the weekend in which he said women would be happy and “no longer thinking about abortion” if he is elected.
“I make this statement to the great women of our country. Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are paying much higher prices for groceries and everything else than they were four years ago,” Trump said.
“I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end. It will end,” Trump said. “Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector.” [Pols emphasis]
It’s perfectly alright if any of that made you shiver.
►Noelle Phillips of The Denver Post reports on a long-awaited verdict in the March 2021 shooting at a King Soopers in Boulder:
The three-and-a-half-year saga surrounding the Boulder King Soopers massacre came to a grueling end Monday as families of the 10 people killed inside the store alternated between offering forgiveness, calling on vengeance from God and begging America to end the horror of mass shootings.
Family members cried as they recounted the lasts they had with those killed — final hugs, phone calls, scoops of ice cream and wishes for a good night’s sleep.
“To me, justice is putting an end to mass shootings in America,” said Erika Mahoney, whose father Kevin Mahoney was shot to death in the grocery store parking lot. “This all needs to stop.”
Mahoney spoke Monday during the sentencing hearing for Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who an hour earlier had been convicted of 55 crimes in the March 22, 2021, mass shooting at a King Soopers on Table Mesa. Killed, in addition to Mahoney, were Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Teri Leiker, 51; Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.
Boulder County District Court Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced Alissa to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 10 counts of first-degree murder. She also gave Alissa 1,334 years in prison, to be served consecutively, for 38 counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and six counts of illegally possessing a high-capacity magazine.
► If you’ve always wondered what Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs) actually does, this story from The Associated Press might help:
They are the U.S. House’s frequent fliers — representatives who have traveled the country and the world on official business paid for by private interest groups. Over the past decade, they have accepted nearly $4.3 million for airfare, lodging, meals and other travel expenses.
Almost one-third of those payments — just over $1.4 million — covered the costs for a lawmaker’s relative to join the trip.
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican, took his wife Jeanne Lamborn on nearly every privately funded trip he took between 2012 and 2023. Sponsors ranging from The Heritage Foundation to The Aspen Institute to The German Marshall Fund of the United States underwrote almost $90,000 in costs for Jeanne Lamborn for 15 separate trips she took with her husband. The couple traveled the globe, staying in posh hotels and resorts in London, Vancouver, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Nairobi, Buenos Aires and Reykjavik, as well as locales in the U.S., the records show.
A spokesperson for Lamborn did not respond to two emails and a call to his Washington office seeking comment. [Pols emphasis]
► The infighting within the Colorado Republican Party never ceases to get more ridiculous. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently visited Colorado and posed for a photo with theoretical “interim chair” Eli Bremer and CO-08 candidate Gabe-ish Evans.
Meanwhile, theoretical “current chair” Dave Williams continues to get paid. Via The Colorado Sun’s “Unaffiliated” newsletter:
The Colorado GOP paid embattled Chairman Dave Williams’ consulting firm $34,000 in August, the party’s single biggest expense last month.
The party categorized $26,000 of that as “deferred payment of services.” The remaining $8,000 was categorized as “chairman consulting.”
The payments come as Williams is battling in court to keep his job as his opponents seek to replace him with Eli Bremer, who also claims to be the party’s chairman after a vote in August organized by Williams’ critics. The Colorado GOP also reported paying $25,000 into a trust account for legal expenses from the firm representing Williams in a lawsuit filed by Bremer seeking to dislodge him from the party’s leadership position.
The Colorado GOP reported spending a total of $103,000 in August, none of which appears to have gone to help any Republican campaigns in the state. [Pols emphasis]
That last sentence really tells you everything you need to know about the state of the Colorado Republican Party.
► NBC News reports on some updated poll numbers in the race for President:
A double-digit increase in popularity, rising Democratic enthusiasm and an early edge for representing “change” have vaulted Vice President Kamala Harris forward and reshuffled the 2024 presidential contest, according to a new national NBC News poll.
With just over six weeks until Election Day, the poll finds Harris with a 5-point lead over former President Donald Trump among registered voters, 49% to 44%. While that result is within the margin of error, it’s a clear shift from July’s poll, when Trump was ahead by 2 points before President Joe Biden’s exit.
► The Washington Post looks at extraordinary measures being taken by some election offices in order to get ahead of dumb conspiracy theories:
As Pinal County (AZ) officials prepare for another election with the former president on the ballot, they are trying to combat that distrust with radical transparency. Among their strategies:
♦ Pinal County officials quickly built a $32 million election headquarters that more than quadrupled the previous space and has walls of windows so that more observers can more easily watch the vote-counting process. They added more cameras inside and out to create a trove of surveillance footage.
♦ Election workers now strap GPS devices onto the cages that transport equipment and ballots to and from polling sites, creating a record of every movement. The need for this came after trying to disprove rumors in 2020 that a school bus filled with voting equipment had been abandoned in a nearby desert town.
♦ The wiring for machine tabulators runs through see-through grates instead of behind drywall so that officials can prove that the equipment is not connected to the internet and possibly hackable, a popular false theory.
♦ County leaders launched an outside review of the election and cybersecurity systems to “unequivocally prove the integrity” of the process after a Republican county leader raised doubts about the legitimacy of the July 30 primary. The outcome is expected in October.
► School districts in California will need to create policies to restrict cell phone use by students under new legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
►Jason Blevins of The Colorado Sun explains why 14 U.S. Senators are pushing for new protections related to climbing in wilderness areas.
► Ariana Figueroa of Colorado Newsline reports on congressional testimony from victims of school shootings:
The devastating effects of school shootings continue well after shootings occur, according to survivors, experts and educators who spoke at a roundtable U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee Democrats held Monday.
Democrats scheduled the discussion after the recent school shooting in Georgia, where two students and two teachers were killed. Witnesses told the panel the psychological trauma of a school shooting lingers long beyond the events themselves.
“In the months and years after a mass shooting, young people injured or wounded in the attack experience continuing fear, pain, trauma and disorientation, and struggle to hang on to what is left of their lives,” the top Democrat on the committee, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, said.The roundtable came just after the one-year anniversary of the White House establishing its Office of Gun Violence Prevention. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are scheduled to speak about gun violence at the White House Thursday.
There have been 404 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a group that studies gun violence in the U.S.
►The Colorado Sun’s “Unaffiliated” newsletter discusses the latest battle in CO-08:
Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo is running a new TV ad in the 8th Congressional District attacking her Republican opponent state Rep. Gabe Evans by calling him an “extreme MAGA Republican,” comparing him to U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, and by claiming that he wants to ban abortion and invalidate gay marriages.
Evans has said that he wouldn’t support a federal abortion ban, and a spokesperson told The Sun this week that he believes “the state should not be in the position of dictating who can and cannot get married.” Evans plans to vote “yes” on a November ballot measure that would strip a prohibition on same-sex marriage from the Colorado constitution and supports the Respect for Marriage Act passed in 2022, which requires the federal government to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.
The Caraveo campaign’s claims about his stance on gay marriage stems in large part from a letter to the editor Evans wrote in 2004, when he was 17 years old, in which he called it a “bad idea” that will have a “terrible effect … on our society.” He wrote that allowing gay marriage would open the door to parents being able to marry their children and siblings, as well as incest, pederasty and bestiality.
The spokesperson pointed out how young Evans was when the letter was written and that “he shared the same position as Obama and many Democrats at the time.”
► As The New York Times reports, Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito has some serious explaining to do — to a lot of different people in his life:
Shortly after taking the oath of office, the first-term congressman hired his longtime fiancée’s daughter to work as a special assistant in his district office, eventually bumping her salary to about $3,800 a month, payroll records show.
In April, Mr. D’Esposito added someone even closer to him to his payroll: a woman with whom he was having an affair, according to four people familiar with the relationship. The woman, Devin Faas, collected $2,000 a month for a part-time job in the same district office.
Payments to both women stopped abruptly several months later, in July 2023, records show, around the time that Mr. D’Esposito’s fiancée found out about his relationship with Ms. Faas and briefly broke up with him, according to the four people.
Mr. D’Esposito has not been publicly accused of wrongdoing, but his employment of the two women, which resulted in the payment of about $29,000 in taxpayer funds, could expose him to discipline in the House of Representatives.
Yikes!
ICYMI
► If you need another message to convince someone not to support Donald Trump in 2024, here’s a good one from The Washington Post:
The tobacco industry is banking on Trump’s chaotic approach to public health — and pliable views on policy — as it confronts a new challenge to its bottom line: efforts by regulators in the Biden administration to ban menthol cigarettes, which represent 36 percent of the cigarette market.
The top corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC is a subsidiary of Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States and the maker of Newports, the No. 1 menthol brand in the country. The subsidiary, RAI Services Company, has given $8.5 million to the super PAC, called Make America Great Again Inc., federal records show. The company does not appear to have contributed money to groups backing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Big Tobacco’s bet on Trump shows how corporate interests believe the former president can be swayed by campaign donations — and brought into line even on issues where he has shown some independence from GOP orthodoxy, said former U.S. officials and industry lobbyists. The contributions represent a muscular move by the company into presidential politics. A Reynolds PAC funded by employee contributions donated just $25,000 to a Trump campaign committee in 2016, and the company contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2017. These entities do not appear to have made contributions in the presidential race in 2020. A Reynolds representative did not respond to detailed questions about the company’s political giving or its interactions with Trump.
It’s simple, really: Figure out where Big Tobacco stands…and go stand somewhere else.
September 24, 2024 10:17 AM UTC
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