John,

Yesterday afternoon — just before we passed our fourth budget extension in the last five months — I spent about 20 minutes talking with three other members of Congress.

We were in between votes, and we were standing just off the House floor in the aisle that wraps around the back of the room.

This was our topic:

Is there any way a Ukraine bill can pass?

We figured there are three ways it could still happen.

First, the Speaker could just bring it to a vote, either as a standalone bill or (more likely) coupled with a southern border bill.

The problem with that is that he’d probably get fired. As I’ve mentioned before, his right-flank simply isn’t going to accept any major bipartisan legislation — and certainly not with respect to Ukraine, for which they are now staunchly opposed to any more defense funding.

Making matters worse, the Speaker is about to use a lot of his remaining political capital with his right-flank by passing a bipartisan budget that they’re going to strongly oppose. If he follows that up by calling for a vote on Ukraine/southern border, I honestly think his right-flank would move to fire him immediately.

“Well Jeff, maybe this time the minority party could provide the votes to save him.”

Ok, let’s game that out. The right-flank tries to fire the Speaker, but this time a handful of votes from the other party save him. Now we’ve got a very conservative Speaker who only has his job by virtue of Democratic votes. Imagine what life is like for him. Absolute rage within his ranks, the entire conservative media ecosystem dedicated to attacking him, and a serious risk of being primaried and ending his whole political career.

Maybe you’d tell him to do it anyway, but I’m just saying, that’s what he’s picturing in his head when you tell him that. He’s picturing political doom.

So let’s call that possibility unlikely. Up next is the super-rare discharge petition. This is a procedural tool designed to go around the Speaker and force a vote on a bill. The catch here is that it takes a majority of members of Congress to agree, which would mean at least a handful of members of the majority party would have to openly side against the rest of their party. Once again, think about what life for those members would become as they are instantly branded as villains within their party’s media ecosystem.

It’s possible that a handful of members of the majority could go to the Speaker and tell him they’re going to join the discharge petition unless he brings the matter to a vote as a way to motivate him — but then again, maybe the Speaker would prefer that they go around him. That would let the vote move forward while letting him claim that he was opposed all along.

The third path we discussed involves tacking Ukraine funding onto another budget bill. I think this has all the problems mentioned above, but it might dilute them a bit because the Speaker could at least claim that it was necessary to accomplish something else that most of them want, like passing a defense budget.

The easy way to think about all this is just:

My sense is the Speaker would like to support Ukraine, but hasn’t figured out a way to do that without his political career smashing against the rocks. I believe he’s trying, and part of trying means being publicly wishywashy so as to keep his right-flank at bay until the moment he makes a decision.

One last point: I think we’d be in the roughly same situation even if the old Speaker hadn’t been fired. Maybe worse. He’d probably have less room to maneuver than the new Speaker because he was perceived to be less conservative. None of this is the direct result of the old Speaker being fired - rather, this is what happens when the right-flank is big enough (and motivated enough) to use its veto on virtually every bipartisan bill. It’s been the defining political feature of this Congress, and it just keeps getting applied to different scenarios.

Campaign update — last one before the primary

In my campaign for Attorney General, the super PAC that is secretly linked to the other party continues to blast away — TV, mail, and text messages.

It’s all designed to look like it’s coming from a group supporting my opponent, but it’s not. It’s just the other party trying to be sneaky by spending about $1m to try to beat me in the primary so they won’t have to run against me in the general.

And yet, the hundreds of thousands of people seeing those ads don’t know that. Folks just think they’re normal ads — not a mass deception campaign designed to fool them.

Because all of you responded so strongly to our last two emails about this, we were able to fund two solid weeks of honest, straightforward messaging. We are still being heavily outspent, but we’re using the funds you contributed to blunt the impact of all those ads.

We’ve got four days to go, and we need to fund that last gap. We don’t need the most you can do, we just need you to keep us going through Tuesday.

To do that, you can go here (ActBlue) or here (non-ActBlue), with both options directly funding our campaign — they’re just different platforms for folks who have a preference for one or the other.

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

You’ve been amazing. I’m truly thankful. The next time you hear from me will be the day after the primary — hopefully, with good news.

Here we go.

Best,

Jeff

P.S. And if you haven't voted yet, take Avery’s advice and go vote! Find your location here.