House Republicans can’t find consensus on anything. First, they can’t get enough votes for Jim Jordan (R-OH), possibly because of their intimidation against holdouts and insurrectionist Jordan’s refusal to admit that Joe Biden was legally elected as president in 2020. Then Jordan supporters won’t support the idea that Patrick McHenry (R-NC) could expand Speaker responsibilities until next January before another attempt to elect a Speaker. Chip Roy (R-TX) is on record as being “violently” opposed to the idea. The Republicans can’t even figure out how to carry out the plan. The only way that proposal can fly is with Democratic support which they won’t provide for nothing, and McHenry doesn’t even want the job.
The drama in the House Speaker debacle changes minute by minute. After claiming he won’t immediately run for Speaker in the morning of the third day, Jordan says he will in the afternoon. He met with holdouts, but a participant in the secret meeting said Jordan didn’t make any progress. The idea of an interim Speaker has been scrapped—for the meantime. The remaining House leadership–Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (MN) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (NY)—are all firmly opposed to the idea. One thing all Republicans agree on: they are angry, but not necessarily for the same reasons.
By the evening, Jordan’s office said that he will have a news conference at 8:00 am EST and a House vote at 10:00 am. Until a decision is made, the House has four people with Speaker in their designation:
- Deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), ousted over two weeks ago but still pretends as if he has some powers while he works out his former office and holds news conferences in the place designated for House speaker news conferences.
- Speaker-designate Jim Jordan (R-OH), who can call votes in the full House for Speaker.
- Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC) who has no power.
- Former Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who left the position after Democrats lost the position when Republicans took the House majority and calls herself “Speaker Emerita.”
GOP House members are so pathetic that they blame Democrats for the massive dysfunction in the chamber. How even far-right conservatives can believe this fantasy is hard to believe. Republicans:
- Instigated and executed the coup to remove Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from being Speaker.
- First nominated Steve Scalise (R-LA) for Speaker and forced him to quit within 24 hours.
- Replaced Scalise with Jordan.
- Couldn’t get the 217 votes to make Jordan Speaker.
Using a talking point from Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) tried to push the myth on Fox that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was too weak to win the House Speaker if Democrats were in power. Chaffetz said that Jeffries, a Democrat, had now lost 17 ballots for Speaker after host John Roberts ask how fast Jeffries would win Speaker if Democrats controlled the House. In the minority party with 212 members compared to 222 (now 221) GOP House members, Jeffries had the highest total on 13 of those 17 rounds of votes, more than the top Republican.
The House has now been without a Speaker for 17 days, 15 days longer than at any other time. Without a Speaker, the government shuts down in 29 days—although it might shut down even with a Speaker. An election of Jordan would likely guarantee a government shutdown this year.
In more bad news for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), Sidney Powell, a licensed Dallas-based lawyer, has pled guilty to six misdemeanor charges of conspiracy in Fulton County (GA) in exchange for leniency and her truthful testimony in this case and other ones against DDT. She is the second of 19 co-defendants in the RICO case to flip on DDT by pleading guilty. Her trial had been scheduled in coordination with another lawyer, Ken Chesebro, to begin on October 23. Powell’s attorney had claimed his client had nothing to do with the breach in Coffee County voting machines, but Powell admitted to the conspiracy, including her paying employees to SullivanStrickler to copy voter data in the country “without authority” and to “interfere with, hinder and delay” the duties of the country elections director, Misty Hampton, who is one of the co-defendants.
A key DDT adviser in his inner circle after the 2020 election, Powell was present at an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020, where DDT proposed seizing voting machines from key counties, deploying the National Guard to rerun the election, and appointing Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election. In the plea agreement, she didn’t plead guilty to “moral turpitude” so that she can keep her license, but she is writing a letter of apology to Georgia citizens.
Jury selection proceeds Friday for Ken Chesebro, accused of helping orchestrate the meeting of contingent electors in December 2020 to cast electoral votes for DDT after Biden’s victory in the state.
The Supreme Court has agreed to delay the redrawing of Louisiana redistricting maps after GOP legislators gerrymandered Black voters out a district. The court’s unsigned one-sentence order gave no instructions, reasoning, or noted dissents in not putting on hold a 5th Circuit Court decision. Previously, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately, repeating an earlier Supreme Court statement that litigation should be resolved in time for the 2024 congressional elections.
Last year, a federal judge found that Louisiana’s map likely violates the Voting Rights Act for the one-third Black voters in the state with only one of six congressional districts conducive to allowing Black residents to make a choice. Louisiana didn’t follow the order to draw a new map, and the Supreme Court put the case on hold while considering one from Alabama in June 2022, allowing the GOP map to be used for the 2022 election. The state elected five White Republicans and one Black Democrat for Congress. The high court voted 5-4 in June 2023 to require a new map from Alabama, but Lousiana AG—and now governor-elect—Jeff Landry argued that the federal judge’s ruling removed the legislature’s opportunity to draw a new map. The Supreme Court promised to issue a decision by January 2024; this is the result.
The right wing will have a twisted response to the Israel war as long as conspiracy theories spread. Alex Jones, who owes $1.5 billion for his lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre, recently joined DDT’s adviser Steve Bannon to promote a crazy theory. Watch for this one to appear on social media.
The Hamas attack is a globalist plot with China in the center when Biden gave Iran mullahs $6 billion (he didn’t) who gave it to Hezbollah which gave it to Hamas. The U.S., according to Bannon and Jones, gave $80 billion-plus weapons and equipment to Afghanistan two years ago. (It didn’t.) China can then destabilize the U.S. and drive world nations away from a Western uni-power to unseat the dominance of the U.S. Bannon said that China and Iran orchestrated the Israel-Hamas crisis as a continuation of the 10,000-year-long crusade by the “Persians” against the West. He explained that the same unnamed instigators are trying to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of office in “exactly the same playbook they ran on Trump.”
Bannon finished by advertising the purchase of gold as a “hedge” for “time immemorial” for people to save themselves. Jones went back to his own show to amplify this globalist conspiracy. He claimed that Biden’s administration and military contractors helped engineer the war to provide big profits to corporations, expand surveillance, and control populations around the world by exploiting fear. Globalists failed to “gain control” through Covid, the “climate scam,” or the Ukrainian war, according to Jones, so the plotters “move to war in Gaza.” Therefore, Netanyahu and and Biden are following directions from the New World Order.
To free hostages, Biden had briefly released the sanction on Iran’s $6 billion, to be used only for humanitarian purposes, that Iran made when DDT allowed Iran to sell oil to South Korea. Iran did not get one cent of the money, and it is no longer available to the country. The U.S. left $7.12 billion in Afghanistan because it couldn’t take the materiel out of the country.
The city of San Marcos (TX) has been charged $175,000 to pay Wendy Davis and three other Democrats because the police refused to stop DDT supporters from harassing a Biden campaign bus on Interstate 35 before the 2020 election. Officers and professional staff are also required to undergo training on responding to violence, voter intimidation, and ways to develop community trust, according to a legal settlement.
Dozens of trucks aggressively surrounded the bus and drove dangerously around it while honking and shouting. Called for help, a city corporal said “we’re not going to escort a bus.” He said that the Biden bus should drive aggressively and they’ll be okay. The 911 dispatcher responded, “Or leave the [campaign] train.” San Marcos is still employing the police officers who failed to rescue people fearing for their safety. A federal judge had already sanctioned San Marcos for failing to preserve phone and email records related to the incident. Earlier in 2023, two of eight defendants in a second lawsuit accusing eight DDT supporters of participating in a “politically-motivated conspiracy” in the episode. The case against the other six is still pending.
Nel's New Day 