McCarthy Out
Historic event. Predictable and absurd.
Remember, remember, the 3rd of October.
The date McCarthy was tossed out.
I know no reason
Why his many failures
Should ever be forgot
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"Kim Teehee would be the first Cherokee delegate in Congress"
Cherokee people and their tribal government, Teehee believes, should have always had a seat at the table where these decisions were made: The very treaty that saw her ancestors forced off their lands almost 200 years ago also promised Cherokee people a non-voting delegate seat in the US House. Now, the Cherokee Nation and Teehee — who was appointed to the job by the tribe's leaders — are mounting an aggressive campaign to see that promise fulfilled.
The Cherokee Nation's efforts to sit Teehee in the House have bipartisan support, but it's not immediately clear when or how congressional leaders will take up the issue in earnest. If she gets this seat, with spots on key panels and the power to speak on the House floor, Teehee hopes to help shape the next chapter of federal policy to benefit tribal governments and the people they serve. That includes addressing the epidemic of violence against Native women, saving the Cherokee language from extinction, and protecting funding for health care and housing.
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Hakeem Jeffries' speech
The other part of the House elections last night was that Jeffries finally officially became the first non-White leader of a congressional party. And, along with that, he delivered a hell of a speech.
Here is the excerpt when he ran through the alphabet (a small excerpt of his larger speech,) with the bolded parts being my favorites:
House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.
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Kevin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week ends after 15 rounds of voting
The next two years are going to be painful in the House based on this week.
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Speaker election drama not seen in 100 years
To which I say: So what?
Anyone trying to frame these Speaker elections as anything near a crisis is absurd. This is just inter-party drama playing out in public. Things which normally are concealed behind closed doors are being aired out in public. That's it.
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Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA 42nd) was sworn in on the first appearance of Clark Kent
Garcia — a Peruvian immigrant, former Mayor of Long Beach, California, and self-proclaimed "comic book nerd" — was elected US Representative for California's 42nd congressional district during the 2022 midterms. Ahead of his official induction into the role, he tweeted a photo of three items he'd selected to sit under the Constitution while he was sworn in:
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Jan. 6 Committee Announces Criminal Referrals
Historic.
Not a direct quote from the article, but the reporting online says these are the individuals named:
Obstruction of an Official Proceeding 18 U.S.C 1512
- Trump
- Clark
- Eastman
- Chesebro
Conspiracy to Defraud the United States 18 U.S.C 171
- Trump
- Eastman
- Clark
- Chesebro
- Meadows
- Giuliani
Conspiracy to Make a False Statement 18 U.S.C 371, 1001
- Trump
- Eastman
- Chesebro
"Incite," "Assist" or "Aid or Comfort an Insurrection" 18 U.S.C 2383
- Trump
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Peltola wins Representative seat for Alaska for Democrats
Democrat Mary Peltola has won a special election for the U.S. House in Alaska, defeating Republican Sarah Palin and becoming the first-ever Alaska Native to win a seat in Congress as well as the first woman to clinch the state's at-large district.
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Heather Cox Richardson on Monday's Jan. 6 Panel Session
I have really come to enjoy Heather's Substack and her daily insights and on thoughts on US politics. I was glad to get to read her summary and analysis of the January 6th committee's session from Monday as I did not get to follow it closely.
I especially found this insight interesting. In hindsight, it is logical, but it definitely wasn't something I had considered when McCarthy withdrew the Republican nominees from the committee.
Observers have commented that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a bad mistake in pulling his Republican nominees off the committee. He likely expected that such a move would discredit the committee, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) inclusion of Republicans Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) made the committee bipartisan anyway, and subsequent judicial decisions have concluded that the committee was constituted legally. What McCarthy really lost in pulling Republicans was not the ability to sway the story—the evidence is so clear that no one is challenging it—but the ability to create chaos and make it impossible for people to figure out what was happening, as Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) did at the first impeachment hearings for Trump by yelling over witnesses, badgering, and bullying.
The strategy of causing chaos to disrupt something that isn't going your way is a well known tactic in all areas of life. But I find myself most frequently thinking of it through the lens of chess.
Very often, when I am playing chess and I find myself in a losing position, I know that if I can cause some chaos and distract my opponent, it gives me some chance that they will mess up and either misorder their moves, or just genuinely make a blunder. Their misstep gives me a chance to pounce and regain the upper hand.
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Among the Insurrectionists at the Capitol
I am about 1/10th of the way through this article and it is single-handedly going to get me to subscribe to the New Yorker. It's some of the most well written prose I've read in a long time.
I know the white privilege portion of the Capitol riot has been well covered but this particular passage hammers it home:
A moment later, the door at the back of the chamber's center aisle swung open, and a man strode through it wearing a fur headdress with horns, carrying a spear attached to an American flag. He was shirtless, his chest covered with Viking and pagan tattoos, his face painted red, white, and blue. It was Jacob Chansley, a vocal QAnon proponent from Arizona, popularly known by his pseudonym, the Q Shaman. Both on the Mall and inside the Capitol, I'd seen countless signs and banners promoting QAnon, whose acolytes believe that Trump is working to dismantle an occult society of cannibalistic pedophiles. At the base of the Washington Monument, I'd watched Chansley assure people, "We got 'em right where we want 'em! We got 'em by the balls, baby, and we're not lettin' go!"
"Fuckin' A, man," he said now, looking around with an impish grin. A young policeman had followed closely behind him. Pudgy and bespectacled, with a medical mask over red facial hair, he approached Black, and asked, with concern, "You good, sir? You need medical attention?"
"I'm good, thank you," Black responded. Then, returning to his phone call, he said, "I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet."
"Any chance I could get you guys to leave the Senate wing?" the officer inquired. It was the tone of someone trying to lure a suicidal person into climbing down from a ledge.
"We will," Black assured him. "I been making sure they ain't disrespectin' the place."
"O.K., I just want to let you guys know—this is, like, the sacredest place."
It is hard to imagine that same tone of voice if the people he had been speaking to were Black Lives Matters protesters behaving exactly the same way. There's no way it would be the same calm tone in his voice.
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