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Notes -
Following up on my post from yesterday welcome to day 2 of the United States House of Representatives attempt to choose a Speaker. The current favorite is former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) though he has been unable to gather the needed majority (or even plurality) of votes of members of the House needed to secure the Speakership. As of the third ballot yesterday there were some 20 Republican holdouts against McCarthy, of which he needs at least 13 in order to get more votes than Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) the Democratic Party nominee for speaker. The fourth ballot is currently underway and interestingly the Republican protestors seem to have changed their candidate from Jim Jordan (R-OH) to Byron Donalds (R-FL). Overnight it seems Trump has re-endorsed McCarthy for Speaker, we'll see if that moves the needle for the Republican holdouts. As of the time of this writing Donalds has acquired 7 votes, more than enough to keep McCarthy from acquiring the majority and likely guaranteeing a fifth ballot.
Assuming McCarthy eventually becomes Speaker (something I still think is the most likely outcome) how does he effectively run the House? The Republican majority is quite narrow (222-212) meaning the defection of only five Republicans can sink any legislation he wants to bring. Effectively this is a similar problem to the one Democrats faced in the Senate this last term, where the support of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were required for them to effectively utilize their 50+tiebreaker majority.
ETA:
At the end of the fourth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
So Trump's continued endorsement does not seem to have moved any of the holdouts to McCarthy. One member (I missed who) changing their vote from McCarthy to Present has to be concerning for McCarthy. Since election requires a majority of votes cast for a person (Present votes don't count) if more Members follow it decreases the total needed for election. If those Present votes are coming from McCarthy then that moves Jeffries closer to being elected Speaker, as the current plurality vote haver.
I wonder if this is the new strategy from moderate Republicans. Threaten to vote Present and lower the threshold and get the Democrat selected Speaker unless the holdouts get behind McCarthy. Presumably the holdouts would prefer even McCarthy to Jeffries. It would take 12 (I think) members voting Present to put Jeffries over the top, assuming he gets all 212 Democratic Party votes.
ETA2:
At the end of the fifth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
No movement from the prior vote. Trying to understand how one side or the other break the stalemate here. Doesn't seem like anyone has attempted to put forward a compromise candidate. Seems unlikely McCarthy supporters are persuaded to back the HFC candidate in the needed numbers, though they have peeled one off and another is voting Present. Seems unlikely the HFC members come back to McCarthy. In 1855 when the House had failed to choose a Speaker after two months and over 150 votes the majority agreed to elect whoever got a plurality as Speaker to finally end the voting. Maybe that's a possibility here but would be pretty risky since Jeffries has consistently been the plurality winner. All it would take is 6 HFC members staying strong and you'd have a Democrat Speaker of a majority Republican House (who could immediately remove him if they wanted).
ETA 3:
At the end of the sixth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
Still no movement. No idea how this stalemate gets broken.
ETA 4:
After returning at 8pm ET the House adjourns until noon tomorrow by a vote of 216 to 214.
The main difference between the Democratic issues with the Senate in the previous Congressional cycle is that the Democrats actually needed to try to get legislation passed. The Republicans in the House don't have that burden, as any partisan policies they'd try to enact would just get instantly shot down by the Senate or the President. This makes the Speaker's job a lot easier since all he really has to do is obstruct Biden's agenda, and maybe have enough unity to launch performative investigations like the Dems did with the Jan 6 commission.
I agree that trying to pass meaningful legislation with a majority that's this slim and rowdy would be very difficult if not outright impossible, but McCarthy doesn't have to do that.
IMO those are not performative investigations to me like Jan 6.
The gaslighting, censorship, big-tech/alphabet agency merger etc are very real issues to me. I don’t see a way to deal with them without having hearings. Msm won’t cover it. Official corruption by Biden is a lesser but still important issue. COVID/Fauci investigations. These are the only issues that matter to me.
Would also like some antitrust investigations and discussions on how to deal with Aaple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Non of these companies exists today with the antitrust enforcement microsoft faced in the early 2000’s.
The information environment has collapsed in this country. The focus of this house should be on working to illuminate this issue and working to improve the information environment. None thing else matters.
And it would be nice to begin to work on the next big thing. The social media wars of 2015-2022 are nothing compared to Turing Test passing AI chatbots hitting the market from 2025-2035.
How is any investigation into Fauci not performative? I understand that a lot of people didn't like his recommendations, including myself at times, but the guys was an advisor. He had no real power when it came to the pandemic, just outsize influence. And this influence is completely Trump's responsibility. There was no natural reason for Fauci to be the face of COVID—the head of the CDC would have made more intuitive sense then an infectious disease expert from NIH—but Trump and his advisors felt that a respected expert would be more credible than a political appointee. And when the respected expert who was appointed for his credibility started saying things that Trump found politically inconvenient, now he needs to be behind bars. Trump tried to minimize Fauci's role but by that point he was already America's accepted expert and would still make a ton of TV appearances. Any congressional hearing is just going to be a bunch of scientifically illiterate politicians arguing with one of the nation's leading experts. They may get a few soundbites that will be replayed on Fox News that they can use for fundraising, but other than that the whole thing will be quickly forgotten.
I'm not sure the difference is there. If whatever the guy says is getting done, then it's power. If the guy says knowingly false things, or gives advice that is not to the best interest of the advised, that's fraud. Just like if you hire a lawyer, he doesn't have the power to force you to follow his advice, but if he lies to you and defrauds you, he is still liable. There's certain relationships where there's an assumption of trust and duty of honest service and government advisor is certainly one of such relationships.
To a measure, any investigation would be performative because DoJ under Biden (well, actually under any Republican too) would never prosecute a Democrat, and especially not Fauci, and the House has no power of independent prosecution, as far as I know. That said, just airing out all the dirty laundry has its own value, as would having Fauci on witness stand and having him publicly declare he didn't know about anything bad and forgot everything he was doing (which he inevitably will, as does everybody in such a situation). It's not justice, but at least it'd be a tiny step in a direction of justice. Sometimes, however sad it is, it's the most we can hope for.
Comparing Fauci to a lawyer that has a fiduciary duty to his client suggests to me that you don't actually understand the responsibilities and law surrounding what the poster you're reply to alluded to. These two roles are nothing alike.
I am not claiming they are legally the same thing. I am claiming there are many situations (all of them legally different, yes) where you have no power to force somebody to follow your advice, and yet have the responsibility to give that advice honestly and with the interests of advised in mind. And if you do not do that, you will be considered doing something wrong and likely be open to sanctions. How exactly the sanctions would look like in each particular case, and what laws govern each particular case, is immaterial - what is material is the responsibility.
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Nothing alike legally, perhaps, but laws are just fever dreams BS'd up by some guy in a powdered wig. Whereas: morally? Why is it not analogous?
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