Category: US House

Kevin McCarthy’s rude awakening

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Kevin McCarthy is learning you can get torched when you try to make everyone happy, especially after an insurrection.

Why it matters: The House Republican leader had been hoping to use this year to build toward taking the majority in 2022, but his efforts to bridge intra-party divisiveness over the Capitol siege have him taking heat from every direction, eroding his stature both with the public and within his party.

The latest proof: McCarthy’s digital director, Caleb Smith, sent a blast email to a group of GOP communications staff Saturday afternoon asking them to show their support for his boss. Continue reading.

Calls mount for Republican Rep. Scott Perry to resign for reported role in effort to overturn Georgia election

Calls are mounting for U.S. Rep. Scott Perry to resign after a report late Saturday exposed his “significant role” in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

Perry, a Republican from York County, connected President Donald Trump with a Justice Department official to try to remove the acting U.S. attorney general from his post and pressure Georgia lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential contest, according to The New York Times. 

The congressman did not respond to questions from The Times before publication. He also did not immediately respond to questions from the USA TODAY Network on Saturday night. Continue reading.

Lawmakers move to oust extremists from military

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Lawmakers are taking matters into their own hands to prevent white supremacists and other extremists from joining and remaining in the military.

Following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the subsequent revelation that nearly 1 in 5 people charged in connection with the riot have some form of military background — Congress plans to insert language into this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to address extremism at the Pentagon and other federal agencies.

“The attack on our Capitol was an insurrection fueled in large part by groups that espouse the same extreme white supremacists’ views groups that actively recruit veterans and from the ranks of our military,” Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) said in a statement to The Hill. Continue reading.

GOP congressman deletes tweet saying he met with ‘Stop the Steal’ and told them to ‘keep fighting’

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Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) quietly deleted a tweet he posted saying that he met with the “Stop the Steal” rioters ahead of their armed insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. He told them at the time to “keep fighting.”

Sessions was caught deleting the tweet by Inside Elections reporter Jacob Rubashkin, who was combing through a series of deleted tweets by elected officials.

“Had a great meeting today with folks from “Stop the Steal” at our nation’s Capitol. I encouraged them to keep fighting and assured them I look forward to doing MY duty on January 6,” he said, including hashtags #StopTheSteal and #legalvotescount. Continue reading.

Texas Republican Will Hurd gives GOP a brutal lesson on civics and political reality

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Texas Republican Will Hurd drew upon his six years in Congress and nine years as a clandestine CIA officer in a hard-hitting new op-ed published by The Washington Post.

Hurd, who did not seek re-election in 2020, warned that the 2022 midterms will be consumed by ads highlighting the connections between the GOP and the deadly insurrection by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

“Republicans have lost seven of the last eight national popular votes, and it only took four years for us to lose the House, Senate and the White House. Republicans aren’t going to achieve electoral success by being seen as the party that defends QAnon extremists who advocate the murder of the former vice president. Nor will we see success by supporting white supremacists who call a Black police officer the n-word while that police officer puts his life on the line to protect democracy. Every Republican on the ballot in 2022 will face campaign attack ads that affiliate them with the domestic terrorists who charged the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,” he warned. Continue reading.

CNN Host Destroys Rep. Cawthorn With Simple Question About Election ‘Fraud’

The freshman had riled up Trump supporters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, but now admits “the election was not fraudulent” after being challenged to back up his claims.

Two weeks after riling up a crowd of Trump supporters with claims of election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn tried to rehabilitate his stance on the presidential election on Saturday night—only to have his entire argument fall apart in spectacular fashion.

Pressed by CNN’s Pamela Brown to explain what evidence had motivated him to contest the election results in the first place, Cawthorn visibly struggled to string together a coherent argument.

“The things that I was not objecting to the election on behalf of was things like Dominion voting machines changing ballots, or these U-Haul trucks pulling up filled with ballots for Joe Biden as president. The thing I was objecting for is things like, like I said in the state of Wisconsin, particularly in the town of Madison … there was an appointed official in that town who actually went against the will of the state legislature and created ballot drop boxes, which is basically ballot harvesting that was happening in the parks,” he said. Continue reading.

Judge says Treasury must give Trump 72 hours before releasing tax info to Democrats

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A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary order that will require the Treasury Department to give former President Trump‘s personal lawyers 72 hours notice before providing Trump’s tax returns to House Democrats.

Judge Trevor McFadden, a judge in federal district court in Washington, D.C., appointed by Trump, directed the Treasury Department and IRS to provide Trump’s personal lawyers with the three-days notice before providing the former president’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The order lasts until Feb. 5. Continue reading.

Calls grow for 9/11-style panel to probe Capitol attack

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Momentum is growing on Capitol Hill for an independent 9/11-style commission to investigate why law enforcement agencies were not better prepared on Jan. 6 when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, breached the building and threatened to assassinate the nation’s top leaders.

Rank-and-file House Democrats are calling for a bipartisan commission that would more broadly focus on the growing threat of domestic terrorism and violent extremism after this month’s insurrection. And top Republicans on the House Administration, Homeland Security and Oversight committees — Reps. Rodney Davis (Ill.), John Katko (N.Y.), and James Comer (Ky.) — have rolled out legislation creating a Jan. 6 commission that would be comprised of five Democrats and five Republicans.

The effort got a big boost this week when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it was all but inevitable that Congress would create a commission. Continue reading.

Trump is gone, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is keeping up the cult

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President Biden had been on the job for not quite 28 hours when Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, announced in a video clip from the Capitol basement, sans mask, that she had “just filed articles of impeachment on President Joe Biden.”

She filed these articles “on” him based on things he allegedly did years before becoming president, because his very “residing in the White House is a threat to national security.”

Republicans love to say that Democrats were out to get Donald Trump from the start because one of their members, Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), first filed impeachment articles 11 months after Trump took office. Now we have H. Res. 57, “Impeaching Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States, for abuse of power…” — filed on Biden’s first full day in office. Continue reading.

Watchdog Says Organizer of Capitol Protest Turned Riot ‘Received Explicit Support’ from 2 GOP Reps

An ethics watchdog organization is alleging that two Republican members of Congress gave “explicit support” to at least one organizer behind the rally that later led to a riot at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6.

In an investigation request addressed to the House Office of Congressional Ethics on Friday, the Campaign for Accountability requested a probe to determine whether the alleged actions of Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona were in violation of federal law. The complaint also mentioned Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who was similarly accused of actions that the organization wrote “may have violated laws prohibiting sedition and insurrection.”

Biggs’ deputy chief of staff, Daniel Stefanski, denied Biggs’ involvement in the events that led to the riots in a statement shared with Newsweek. Newsweek contacted Gosar’s and Cawthorn’s offices for comment but did not receive responses in time for publication. Continue reading.