- Rep. Kevin McCarthy describing...the only two possible outcomes of his bid for Speaker.

Are we seriously still doing this?
 

• Folks, we still don’t have a House speaker. And I just want to say that if women were at the helm of a political debacle that had crippled the U.S. government like this, they would never let us hold office again. [Ed. note: Lauren Boebert would like a word!] After pretending for days that he wouldn’t give in to the ultra right-wing mob, Kevin McCarthy did, of course, concede to even the most unreasonable demands from members of the Freedom Caucus and their fascist brethren. The thing is, it didn’t work. 
   

• The gang of 20 House Republicans gumming things up have switched up their votes a few times during this process, moving from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), to Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), to Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and so on. Donalds himself actually switched his vote from McCarthy to Jordan in Tuesday’s final vote, although Jordan has continually advocated voting for McCarthy. Donalds is currently one of only four Black Republicans in the House. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), a Black congresswoman, called Donalds a “prop” and said, “Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress — it’s pathetic.” Get his ass, Cori!!
   

• So that brings us up to this afternoon: McCarthy offered in effect to let the insurgents control the House leaving him speaker-in-title-only. A figurehead. A puppet. And at first blush it won him zero votes. There are simply only so many different ways to convey “Kevin McCarthy lost another speaker’s ballot,” but he actually lost several on Thursday, along with an early effort to adjourn the House so he could take his humiliation behind closed doors.

But wait, it gets better. And also worse, somehow?
 

• By Thursday night, Team McCarthy began touting *another* deal, after how many failed votes? Eleven. Let me repeat: Eleven! Failed! Votes! Just another man who doesn’t understand that no means no! As he has done before, McCarthy hoped to convince the press that he has momentum on his side, but for now it’s…momentum to faceplant again tomorrow.
   

• By close of business Thursday, McCarthy was able to muster enough support to adjourn the House, which he wouldn’t have had to do if he’s actually managed to wrangle the votes he needs to become speaker. Also by then, disgraced former president Trump was posting dank memes depicting himself as speaker. (In fairness to Trump, he did get one vote.) Everyone is clearly hanging by a thread. But if Kev-O can’t pull it together overnight, he will be just about out of options. He’s already given away everything he has, and the weekend is fast approaching—just the thing that might make his own supporters decide to throw in the towel. 

We’ll pick this up tomorrow and hopefully have a new Speaker by 2026.

On the heels of a highly-publicized water-contamination crisis in Jackson last fall, Mississippi continues to suffer from Republican austerity policies obliterating the state’s infrastructure. The state’s health-care crisis has become dire enough that medical groups have renewed their calls to call for an overhaul of the entire system of care as the State Legislature’s 2023 session begins. Hospitals are closing across Mississippi because the Republican legislature has continually refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and since 2013 Republicans in the State House have rejected more than $10 billion from the federal government, which could have been used towards that goal. This has led hospitals to seek private buyers, as Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned in November that without an influx of funding, 54 percent of the state’s rural hospitals could close. Mississippi is already the poorest state in the U.S. with the worst health outcomes, including during the pandemic. That Republican lawmakers have routinely refused federal funding that could help hundreds of thousands of their constituents, potentially saving thousands of lives, is one of the most transparent examples of the craven depths of conservative ideology in modern American politics.

The Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule to ban employers from imposing noncompete clauses on their workers, which could increase worker earnings by nearly $300 billion per year. Huge!

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) announced today that she will not seek reelection in 2024. Authoring the legislation that disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried lobbied for tends to do that to you. 

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone wrote a letter to top House Republicans, calling on them to publicly condemn political violence ahead of the two-year anniversary of the attack. The letter was signed by more than 1,000 military veterans, active duty members, and law enforcement, and hand-delivered to the GOP reps today by dozens of military veterans. 

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but conveyed that he has an “excellent prognosis, as well as the benefit of exceptional medical care.” 

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) is in the process of making several major campaign hires that together look suspiciously like a Senate campaign team, which would set him up to challenge Pharma Money Barbie/Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). Music to our ears.

In an attempt to address the deluge of Republican attacks against his administration, President Biden announced new immigration restrictions today, including an expansion of programs to remove people quickly without letting them seek asylum. Whether or not this is a smart concession to make to Republicans is dubious, as they will attack Democrats over arriving immigrants and asylum seekers no matter their numbers or the orderliness of the border. The new program will expand Biden’s use of “parole” authority to allow 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela to enter the United States each month so long as they have U.S. sponsors. Those who try to immigrate without this authorization will face rapid expulsion to Mexico, as the country has agreed to take back 30,000 people from those nations each month. These changes are likely to draw challenges from immigration advocacy groups and have already angered many on the left, but the White House contends that the measures “will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration, and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways.”

South Carolina’s draconian six-week abortion ban was struck down by the state’s Supreme Court, which rightly concluded that six weeks is insufficient time for people to know they are pregnant and seek an abortion. 

President Biden plans to mark the two-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection tomorrow by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal for the first time in his term to 12 individuals, including Capitol law enforcement officials and election workers who rejected disgraced former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. 

Maura Healey was sworn in as governor of Massachusetts, both the first woman and the first openly queer person to hold the position. And most importantly, she can hoop.

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has shown what his physicians are calling “a remarkable improvement over the past 24 hours,” after his heart stopped following a tackle in a Monday football game against the Cincinnati Bengals.