The Buck Passes and House Republicans Are Afraid

The action in Washington DC has shifted back to Capitol Hill for the moment.

Legislation effectively banning the TikTok social media app passed the House yesterday, and will likely be ignored by the Senate. Former Special Counsel Robert Hur testified; and Republicans were hoping for a day of ridiculing President Biden’s memory. Democrats came prepared and turned the hearing into an exploration of candidate Trump’s shortcomings. And Congress passed –and the President signed– a must pass assortment of funding bills, meaning that part of the government is funded along the lines of a budget that should have been effective last October. The deadline for funding the other 70% of the government is just a week away.

But the really big news had to do with the continued shrinking of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. There’s always a certain amount of churn in the lower chamber on general election years, and the do-nothingness of last year’s session made disgust into a bipartisan affliction.

The intention of “I’m quitting” has passed the lips of 43 House members and eight senators. 

The increasingly toxic environment in the lower chamber has frustrated members, along with polarization, all-too-often manifesting itself through a small caucus aligned with Donald Trump that refuses to compromise.

What mostly happens are elected officials calling each other names, accusing members of the other party of being hatemongers, using procedural tactics to punish one another, engaging in bullying, and even reportedly participating in altercations.

On Wednesday, Colorado Republican Ken Buck, who’d already announced his end of term exit, decided that enough was enough. He’s quitting, effective Friday, March 22. The move caught Congress — including House Republican leadership — by surprise.

The Freedom Caucus member didn’t even bother to inform Speaker Mike Johnson of his intention, telling reporters “This place just keeps going downhill…Mike Johnson's ability to talk me into staying here, is going to be as successful as his ability of talking to me into unconstitutional impeachments.”

Tis decision narrows House Republicans’ already-slim majority even further, meaning they’ll only hold 218 seats of 435, and that they can afford to lose just two votes if they want to pass any measures on a partisan basis.

Dan Rather quipped on social media: 

• As of today, Speaker Mike Johnson is two bad colds away from having to reach across the aisle to get anything done, such as keep the government open and functioning.

There’s a media frenzy in progress over Rep. Buck’s insinuation that there are more impending departures:

• “I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about.”

The annual conference of House Republicans has fewer than 100 members signed up. "I'd rather sit down with Hannibal Lecter and eat my own liver," a GOP member of Congress told Juliegrace Brufke at Axios.

One member immediately affected by Buck’s departure is Lauren Boebert, the gun slinging nutcase, who’d abandoned her current district to run for his seat in the general election.

Now she’ll have to resign in order to run in the special election to replace Rep. Buck for the final six months of his term, further damaging the House GOP. She’s opted not to run, meaning she’ll be facing a  candidate with the powers of incumbency come November.

True to form, Rep. Boebert conjured up a conspiracy to explain her predicament, claiming that the “uniparty” got Buck to resign so they could “rig” the election against her.

Come November, incumbent Republicans running for Congress will carry the burden of shame, as the squabbling will only intensify with the party’s presumptive nominee manipulating the far right to ensure that nothing gets done except investigations of Biden administration officials.

Already Speaker Johnson has left the House motion on impeachment of Homeland Secretary Mayorkas to rot rather than send it to the Senate where it would promptly be round-filed and  ridiculed

The House, for the time being, belongs to Donald Trump, and his destructive tendencies can only make a Democrat-run chamber more likely.

 Speaking of taking over things that don’t matter, the Trump family’s ascension into power at the Republican National Committee is already causing problems. About five dozen employees have been fired and somewhere in that crowd there are probably a handful of staffers who will seek revenge. Keep the popcorn handy as the summer months progress.

The RNC’s community outreach program designed to facilitate outreach to various minority groups across the country is one of the first programs to wither away with the Trumpies in charge. MAGA!

***

Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links

***

Conservatives want you to work until you die by Joshua P. Hill at New Means

• But conservative influencers have a different calculus. Their devotion to capitalism, combined with their enclosure in a strange little world of sycophants and hustle culture and finance bros, makes them unable to realize how radically unpopular these ideas are. It shouldn’t be hard to see that “work up until the moment of your death” is an idea that will always be hated by most people, but podcast guys whose job it is to make millions spewing the worst ideas known to humanity apparently can’t see that.

• To be fair, their job isn’t just spitting out terrible ideas day after day. It’s also to shift the window towards the far-right in multiple ways. Economically, we see politicians proposing raising the retirement age and we also see a roll-back of child labor laws. These ideas are both immensely unpopular, so someone has to shift the window a bit. One way we see changes in what people deem acceptable here is the increased airing of extreme positions, which make bad but less severe proposals seem relatively better in comparison. We see this pattern from the far-right ecosystem again and again.

***

New Federal Judiciary Rule Will Limit ‘Forum Shopping’ by Plaintiffs via the New York Times

• The panel of federal judges who set policy for the rest of federal judiciary on Tuesday announced a new rule intended to curb the practice in civil cases with nationwide implications, like the mifepristone suit.

• In such cases, where plaintiffs are seeking a sweeping remedy, like a nationwide injunction, the judge will be assigned at random from across the district instead of defaulting to the judge or judges in a particular courthouse.

• Forum shopping has been used for years by litigants from across the political spectrum who file suit in districts and appellate circuits where they believe the pool of judges will play to their advantage.

***

US firm that paid indicted FBI informant tied to Trump associates, records reveal via The Guardian

• An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents.

• Smirnov is now accused of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme with executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Smirnov’s accounts to the FBI, beginning in 2020, that federal prosecutors now say are fabrications, served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens.