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Congress GOP

Mike Johnson’s ‘Extremely Tenuous’ Speakership Is Coming To A Humiliating End

When the next Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, one of the first things you can expect to see transpire is a vote to remove Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).

On Thursday, Johnson watched as a bipartisan funding bill to keep the U.S. government running through the holidays went down in flames after both Donald Trump and Elon Musk signaled they didn’t want it to pass.

Mychael Schnell of The Hill explained Johnson’s precarious position as he tries to please members of the House GOP caucus and the Trump-Musk coalition, which appears to be a co-presidency, even though Musk wasn’t on the ballot.

“The fact that Mike Lee and, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene also are floating other people for speaker, including Elon Musk, is a reflection of their discontent with speaker Johnson, and that’s the significant part here,” Schnell noted. “The House is going to gather in the chamber on Jan. 3 to select the next speaker of the House, and while Mike Johnson was unanimously nominated by his conference last month for the gavel, his grip on that looks extremely tenuous right now.”

“There’s at least one Republican, Tom Massie, who’s already saying he will not support Johnson on Jan. 3,” Schnell added. “I’ve spoken to a number of others who say they are uncertain, and they are very upset with how speaker Johnson is currently handling the spending deal. Talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene for a second, she was somebody who led the motion to vacate against Johnson earlier this year, then ultimately said she would support him. The fact that she is now floating somebody else shows how deep this discontent is with the Republican conference, and it is a worrying sign for Mike Johnson as he heads into the speaker vote next month.”

“I will note the whole conversation in the lead up to this spending fight was Republicans were saying, we are watching so closely to see how Mike Johnson handles this, this will determine if we can support him in January,” Schnell concluded “Right now, it’s not going well for him.”

While it’s certainly fun to watch Johnson get dealt a giant dose of karma, his imminent downfall raises a troubling question: Who will replace him? Might it be a hardcore MAGA maniac like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) or some other right-wing extremist who is only too happy to do the bidding of both Musk and Trump? If so, we could be in for some very dark days ahead.

 

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Congress Donald Trump

Jasmine Crockett Has The Perfect Clapback To Donald Trump’s Latest Absurd Demand

Even though he doesn’t become president for another month, Donald Trump is already making ridiculous demands of Congress that he seems to believe have validity.

Trump has even decided to insert himself into the process of passing a federal budget to avoid a government shutdown before funding expires on Friday, just days before Christmas.

Specifically, Trump is insisting that an increase in the debt ceiling be included in the bipartisan package that has been making its way through the House of Representatives, The Hill reports.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appeared caught off guard Wednesday as President-elect Trump demanded that a debt ceiling hike be paired with a stopgap government funding bill, rejecting a sweeping bipartisan plan to avert a government shutdown this week.

Trump said in a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance that while the party wants disaster aid and support for farmers — issues that are tackled in the temporary funding plan — he wants Congress to pass a “streamlined spending bill” that doesn’t give Democrats “everything they want” and has “an increase in the debt ceiling.”

Trump’s demands didn’t sit well with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, “This quote unquote ‘mandate’ that MAGA thinks exists, it ain’t going nowhere because they literally can’t do the basics. We have passed the least amount of bills in this Congress because of the Republicans.”

“Listen, I ain’t got no favors for you, Trump. When you get here then yes, you will have the House, the Senate as well as the White House and y’all can see if y’all can figure it out. But right now, I am not trying to shut down this government…” Crockett added, making it clear she has no plans to take marching orders from a rapist president-elect who thinks he can issue edicts via social media.

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Congress Elon Musk GOP WTF?!

Rand Paul Suggests Making Elon Musk Speaker Of The House

When he donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk apparently managed to purchase the entire Republican Party, too

Sen. Rand Paul provided irrefutable evidence of that this morning on the social media platform that Musk happens to own.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul wrote on Twitter/X. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it .  . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds)”

Could Musk qualify for the post of leading the House of Representatives? Perhaps, but would that be a good idea? After all, his only qualification is being the richest man in the world and Trump’s benefactor. Also, the fact that he was born in South Africa might be a sticking point, especially since he’d then be in the presidential line of succession.

Also, the fact that Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX, has millions of dollars in contracts with the federal government would raise serious conflict of interest questions.

Sen. Paul’s harebrained suggestion was immediately met with online pushback. Here’s a sampling:

https://twitter.com/Vincinnatus/status/1869726376854766076

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GOP Social Media WTF?!

GOP Lawmaker Mocked For Posting Photo Of Star Wars Prop He Claims Is A ‘Crashed Drone’

Pennsylvania GOP state senator Doug Mastriano announced on Twitter/X that he had located one of the drones that have been spotted hovering over areas in the Northeastern United States over the past several days, but was quickly humiliated when the photo included with his online posting proved to be a prop from the “Star Wars” movie franchise.

“It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers nor has taken any action to get to the bottom of the unidentified drones. The fecklessness of this administration was on display last year when a Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to fly over the entire continental United States before being shot down. Such should be viewed as a threat to our nation and citizens and action is long overdue. We have recourses and assets in our arsenal to get answers, but I suppose Ukraine is more important to the White House. January 20th can’t come soon enough,” Mastriano wrote.

Has Mastriano never seen a “Star Wars” film, or is he just trying to stir up fear over a situation that has drawn national interest?

Whatever the reason, the senator was sternly rebuked by others on Twitter.

Categories
Abuse of Power Donald Trump

Trump’s First ‘Red Alert’ Moment Is Here – And It Should Terrify Every American

A Democratic senator is warning that despite not having taken the oath of office yet, Donald Trump is already causing a “red alert” moment that doesn’t bode well for what will happen once he is formally president for a second term.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) was a guest on Jen Psaki’s show Monday evening, with Psaki noting that Trump was instilling a “culture of fear” by intimidating news organizations with threats of lawsuits if they dare to criticize him.

Citing a $15 million defamation lawsuit settlement paid by ABC News for daring to call Trump a “rapist” (which he is, according to a New York judge), Psaki stated, “If you’re Trump and his team, what does that teach you? It teaches you that tactics like this can work, and that you should keep at them.”

And sure enough, Trump did exactly that, announcing at a Monday press conference that he plans to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll that predicted he would lose to Vice President Kamala Harris by 4 points. The poll came out just weeks before the election. Trump and his attorneys claim the poll was “election interference.”

Psaki continued: “Trump and his team decide they don’t like something, they employ threats and pressure and intimidation to change the thing they don’t like, and it works. And that means they’re incentivized to do it again.”

“It’s important to remember that what this pattern could lead to is a country where journalists don’t feel comfortable speaking truth to power, where elected officials don’t hold people accountable.”

That led Murphy to warn, “I think this is a red alert moment.”

“There are not just two things in this world: democracies and dictatorships,” he said. “There are all sorts of countries in this world that occupy a gray zone.”

If the press stops holding Trump accountable for his actions, Murphy noted, democracy in the United States is doomed.