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Notes -
Today's scheduled drama revolves around the last-minute efforts to pass a continuing resolution funding the government for 45-days, with Congress coming in on a weekend. There's a lot of complex politics going on, between a right-wing faction that seems as interested in drama as day to day governance, Democratic interests in more expansionist efforts, the matters of Ukraine, and some politicians not being present due to COVID or death. With a bill getting through the House on widely-bipartisan efforts (with 90 Republicans and only 1 Democratic Representative voting no), some Republicans are pondering whether this will be seen as an admission of weakness. The current one's a fairly far cry from the much more significant cuts that previously faced both Democratic . That's fairly standard politics, though.
Instead, we have something hilarious:
(Bowman later voted for the bill.)
There's obvious comparisons to Other High-Profile Incidents though they're pretty inapt; as funny as Bowman photoshopped into the Lectern Thief's or Qanon Shaman's faces is, the lack of trespassing does matter. Between this, Santos pretending he's a whole lot more interesting than he was, The Squad playing with edgy racism, and Boebert giving an inexpert handjob during the showing of Beetlejuice, all we need now is a pregnancy and a Congressman buying shitty alcohol with a fake id to complete the whole high school bad decisions spread. To really complete the farce and the metaphor, Bowman's background includes some time spent as work at a school that would suspend or expel people for this. Bowman's claim to have confused an alarm system and a door release is not especially likely, but it's enough of a fig leaf that I'll be surprised if the House GOP's resolution to expel him goes anywhere, let alone the potential charges for falsely pulling a fire alarm in DC. Bowman's district is 84% Democratic, so it'd not mean anything even if he were to voluntarily resign, and it's not like he's Menendez.
Maybe he'll end up with a token fine? I'd be surprised.
Which doesn't matter, but eventually you run into the "that's how escalation works" bit.
This isn't made explicit in much of the coverage but Bowman pulled the fire alarm in the nearby Cannon House Office Building and not the Capitol Building. The NYT article says that the Office Building was evacuated as a result but doesn't say whether there was any disturbance in the Capitol Building as a result.
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