Tangle - Republicans pick Kevin McCarthy for Speaker.

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

McCarthy is finally in. On Saturday, the 57-year-old Republican representative Kevin McCarthy from California was elected Speaker of the House after a historic 15 votes on the House floor over the span of five days. The process required more ballots than the House has needed to pick a Speaker since 1859, illustrating deep divisions in the Republican caucus.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (4:20), Today’s Story (6:01), Right’s Take (9:44), Left’s Take (14:33), Isaac’s Take (18:49), Your Questions Answered (23:13), Under the Radar (24:17), Numbers (24:57), Have A Nice Day (25:36)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and we are back after a pretty long extended two weekish break over the holidays. Anytime I take a break from Tangle, I always have, you know, that little voice in my head saying this is unfair to listeners. And every time I announce that I'm going to take a little break, I'm always truly blown away by the support and positive messages from everybody, all the listeners and

readers in this community. So I just want to say thank you. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday break and a great start to the new year. I'm personally feeling very rejuvenated and ready for what I think is going to be a wild year in politics and an exciting year for Tangle. So let's get right into it. First up, we're going to start with everything we missed during our break. So here is a rapid fire rundown of some of the major stories that happened. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared before Congress. Ukrainian officials said 54 of 69 missiles launched by Russia into major cities were intercepted by air defenses. Then, at least 63 Russian troops were killed by Ukrainian strikes on Russian barracks and

ammunition storage in the Russian-occupied eastern region over the weekend. In other international news, the Taliban-led Afghan government suspended primary school for girls, then barred women from working for any NGOs. China scrapped quarantines for travelers as it continues to dismantle its zero-COVID policy. China also sent 71 warplanes and several warships into waters near Taiwan after the U.S. adopted a defense spending bill that strengthens ties to the island nation. Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel's prime minister for the sixth time. Luis Inacio Lula de Solva was sworn in as Brazil's president for the second time, and retired Pope Benedict died at the age of 95.

In national politics, the Senate passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, which we'll cover in tomorrow's podcast. The House passed the Equal Pay for Team USA Act, six years of Trump's tax returns were released by Democrats, and Representative Jamie Raskin, the Democrat from Maryland, said he had a serious but treatable form of cancer, while Senator Bob Casey, the Republican from Pennsylvania, said he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and would be undergoing surgery in the coming months. Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Democrat from Michigan, surprised

colleagues by announcing her plans to retire, opening up another competitive seat in 2024. Elsewhere, Representative George Santos, the Republican from New York, admitted to fabricating his credentials. An Arizona judge ruled against Carrie Lake in her challenge to the state's election results. And Chris Mays, the Democrat, won a recount in Arizona's attorney general race by 280 votes. In legal news, Sam Bankman Freed agreed to be extradited to the U.S. and then pled not guilty. One of the ringleaders of a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Biden administration must keep Title 42 in place.

A main man was charged with attempted murder after assaulting three police officers with a machete in Times Square on New Year's Eve. Police are also investigating multiple shootings at the homes and offices of elected Democrats in New Mexico. In western New York, at least 44 people died as the result of a massive blizzard. In economic news, Amazon announced plans to lay off 18,000 workers just days before the result of a massive blizzard. In economic news, Amazon announced plans to lay off 18,000 workers just days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs last month. All right, that is it for the news we missed. Today, we are going to be covering Kevin McCarthy and the battle for the speakership. But before we jump into that story, as always, we'll start off with today's quick hits.

First up, thousands of supporters of Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who lost his election in October, stormed the National Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital. Number two, House Republicans say they will launch a new investigative panel this week that will demand copies of White House emails, memos, and other communications with big tech companies. Number three, a six-year-old student shot and wounded a teacher in Newport News, Virginia during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom. The teacher is facing life-threatening injuries, and investigators are trying to figure out where the six-year-old obtained a handgun. Number four, President Joe

Biden made his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office with a stop in El Paso, Texas on Sunday, and now he heads to Mexico City for a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Number five, the U.S. announced a $3 billion package of armored vehicles it will send to Ukraine just days after Ukraine denied reports that Russia killed over 600 Ukrainian personnel in a missile attack. Well, there it is. You've got five votes now. Five votes, which means that, once again,

this is the fourth roll call where Kevin McCarthy will not be elected speaker. Breaking news right now. As we take it back to Capitol Hill, there is no speaker. The voting is not over, but there was a tense exchange on the floor moments ago between Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy. A victory that almost didn't happen. That was easy, huh? It all came down to getting six hardline holdouts, not to yes, but to present.

On Saturday, the 57-year-old Republican representative from California was elected Speaker of the House after a historic 15 votes on the House floor over the span of five days. The process required more ballots than the House is needed to pick a speaker since 1859, illustrating deep divisions in the Republican caucus. McCarthy finally won the gavel by a 216 to 212 margin, winning with fewer than half of the total House votes after six Republicans opted out of the proceedings by voting present, lowering the total needed for a majority. On the 14th ballot, after vocal McCarthy detractor Representative Matt Gaetz,

the Republican from Florida, withheld his vote, Republican Representative Mike Rogers had to be physically pulled away from Gaetz on the House floor. Subsequent reports indicated Gaetz had agreed to vote for McCarthy, then balked during the actual vote. In our last edition, before the holiday break, we previewed the fight for the House Speaker, if you're interested in going back and listening to that. McCarthy replaces Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from California, who will remain in Congress but is stepped down from Democratic leadership. Democrats picked Hakeem Jeffries to be their minority leader in the House. In order to get the gavel, McCarthy spent weeks negotiating with a group of over 20 conservative members of the House, mostly from the Freedom Caucus, agreeing

to new rule changes in how the House functions in order to win their votes. Among those concessions, any member of the House can call a no-confidence vote on the Speaker to remove him. Pelosi had changed that rule to require a majority of members or House leadership to force a no-confidence vote. Hardline conservatives also earned a commitment to tie spending cuts to raising the debt ceiling. This year, Congress will need to raise the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on the national debt, which could set off an economic calamity. Republicans now say they plan to attach spending cuts to the must-pass bill. Relatedly, McCarthy said he will create a plan to balance the federal budget within 10 years, including long-term reforms to programs like Medicare and

Social Security. He also hopes to move back to regular order, which means voting on 12 appropriation bills individually rather than together in an omnibus bill. Finally, McCarthy also agreed to a review of ongoing arrests connected to the January 6th riot and criminal investigations of former President Donald Trump, more subcommittee roles for conservative members of his caucus, and procedural changes to legislation that include 72 hours to review any bill before it reaches the floor. The same members also got an agreement for a floor vote on establishing term limits for all House members. Other ideas were also discussed, and we expect more changes to

House rules and deals with individual members to make news in the coming weeks. Today, we're going to take a look at some commentary from the right and the left on McCarthy becoming Speaker and then my take. hate. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right is divided on the floor vote, with some criticizing the concessions McCarthy made and others celebrating them. Some argue McCarthy may have won the Speaker's gavel but has assured two years of chaos in the process. Others praise McCarthy's opponents for bringing accountability back to leadership in Congress. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said McCarthy's concessions may cost U.S. defense spending. Kevin McCarthy finally won enough votes to become Speaker of the U.S. House early Saturday on the 15th roll call. His latest concession turned 15 votes, and then enough of the last holdouts voted present to give him a majority. But the price of victory has been high, both in

lost authority for the new Speaker and perhaps in the ability of the new Republican majority to get anything done, the board said. Don't believe the happy talk that this was a healthy display of deliberative democracy. This was a power play. A group of backbenchers saw an opportunity to exploit the narrow GOP margin of five seats to put themselves in positions of power that they hadn't earned through seniority or influence with colleagues. They couched their demands and claims of high principle in fixing a broken house by returning to regular order. Some of what they sought could do some good, such as holding votes on all 12 spending bills for a change. But note that the rebel demands included gaining seats of

power for themselves. They won two seats on the rules committee that sets the terms for floor debate and amendments. This could narrow Mr. McCarthy's maneuvering room as he tries to put together majorities for legislation. They also want to pledge that the top-line budget figure for domestic discretionary spending in fiscal 2024 won't exceed what it was in fiscal 2022. That includes defense spending, which would have to fall by $75 billion if the cuts are split with non-defense accounts. In American Greatness, Roger Kimball said you can expect the changes to be mostly cosmetic. McCarthy is an unreliable ally for those on the right. He was only too happy to shovel billions of your and your children's money to Ukraine

while doing little to secure our southern border, Kimball said. McCarthy is from California, so naturally he likes to spend money. He even got behind such improvident and mendacious schemes as raiding Medicare to pay for the U.S. Postal Service. He was happy to fund the January 6th kangaroo court, grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, and support mandates for the useless, indeed dangerous, COVID vaccine for the military. In plain terms, his voting record is only intermittently conservative. Kevin McCarthy, in short, is a swamp creature masquerading as a swamp critic. The swamp loves its own, so it was no surprise that McCarthy eventually prevailed, just barely, he said. He did so at considerable cost to the power of the Speaker's office,

but also a considerable benefit to people who care about accountability. The bottom line is that McCarthy's prerogatives as Speaker have been curtailed, which is a good thing. At the same time, I get the distinct feeling that not a lot is going to change. Will there be a meaningful investigation of the January 6th protest at the Capitol? Will the partisan and grotesquely undemocratic actions of the January 6th committee presided over by anti-Trump fanatics receive the scrutiny they deserve? I doubt it. In Newsweek, Josh Hammer said the vote underscores the weakness of the Republican elite. Kevin McCarthy, first elected to Congress in 2006, has been an establishment figure since the day he arrived in Washington, D.C.

His political philosophy and guiding principles are, to this day, largely unknown, to the perhaps dubious extent they exist at all. True, he is a well-known prolific fundraiser who knows how to work a room full of donors, but what exactly has that accomplished for either the GOP or the conservative cause of late, Hammer asked. McCarthy is best understood as an empty suit and the quintessential swamp creature, someone who lives and breathes the DC game, who is cozy with K Street, and whose main lodestar is cutting deals and expanding political capital in order to boost his own political fortunes. It should be unsurprising, then, that his being proffered as such an inevitable choice for House Speaker, I've earned this job,

he hectored reluctant conservative congressmen on the precipice of the first failed ballot, would trigger a backlash. In virtually all facets of American institutional life right now, the left is winning. From the universities to the media to the corporate boardroom and everywhere in between, Hammer wrote, given that yawning power imbalance, the clear onus for scarce conservative-held political institutions is to efficiently and ruthlessly wield their power to resist the left's onslaught and advance a positive alternative agenda. Most conservatives from outside the Acela corridor are properly skeptical that, when it comes to the U.S. House, K Street's favorite Republican is the best person to envision and execute that agenda.

All right, that is it for the rightist thing, which brings us to What The Left Is Saying. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,

only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in

your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCcellvax.ca. The left criticizes House Republicans for once-in-a-century disorder and worries about what McCarthy's concessions mean for the future. Many say McCarthy has assured two years of congressional dysfunction. Some say there are lessons the progressive movement could learn. Dana Milibank said that in order to save himself, McCarthy destroyed the House. This is insurrection by other means. Two years to the day since the January 6th invasion of the

Capitol, Republicans are still attacking the functioning of government, Milibank said. McCarthy opened the door to the chaos by excusing Donald Trump's fomenting of the attack and welcoming a new class of election deniers to his caucus. Now, he's trying to save his own political ambitions by agreeing to institutionalize the chaos, not just for the next two years, but for future Congresses as well. He agreed to allow any member of the House to force a vote at will to vacate his speakership, essentially agreeing to be in permanent jeopardy of losing his job. He agreed to put rebels on the Rules Committee, giving them sway over what gets a vote on the House floor and in key committee leadership posts. He agreed to unlimited amendments to

spending bills, inviting two years of mayhem. He agreed to other changes that make future government shutdowns and a default on the national debt more likely, if not probable, Milibank said. Perhaps worst of all, the McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Conservative Leadership Fund, agreed that it would no longer work against far-right extremists in the vast majority of Republican primaries, a move sure to increase the number of bomb throwers in Congress. In Jacobin, Neil Meyer said the left should take notes on how the right played hardball. Democratic socialists fight for universal health care, an end to the climate catastrophe and mass

incarceration, and economic democracy. But if we're going to triumph over the forces of reaction and win these changes and more, we're going to need to learn to fight harder and smarter. Today, that means taking a page from the American political equivalent of the mafia, the right wing of the Republican Party, Meyer said. Every one of the concessions granted to the right bolsters the morale of its base and will strengthen its hand in Congress in the months to come. The Freedom Caucus racked up significant policy wins, and its leading cadres will now have coveted committee assignments to use as bully pulpits from which to propagandize. The right showed the way here,

not in the demands it made, most of those are specific to its own agenda of taking an axe to the federal government, but in how it made them, Meyer said. To achieve very different ends, we should be prepared to go to war against Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and others who otherwise have no sympathy for or interest in advancing our agenda. We need to win powerful bully pulpits In his substack, Ryan Grim said it's now up to Biden to neutralize the Freedom Caucus' demand for spending cuts. Especially in an environment where we've seen 8% inflation, that's a demand for a massive, massive cut, Grim wrote. that's a demand for a massive, massive cut, Grimm wrote. The last time Republicans won a debt ceiling standoff, Biden was vice president and the Obama administration agreed to the so-called sequester. They also agreed to create the Biden committee, which tried to land a grand bargain with then-Representative Eric Cantor. A grand bargain was a Washington fever dream for years

and would include some combination of tax increases and cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social spending. And the idea is that it will be massively unpopular, but if the parties do it together, then voters have nobody to take it out on. Setting aside the grotesquely anti-democratic sentiment behind it, it's also not true. For Cantor's effort, he was thrown out of Congress, Grimm wrote. The big risk for a Biden administration is Biden himself. He spent 40 years advocating for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and has generally believed that being a hawk on the debt and deficit is good politics. He's been able to bury those instincts these past two years, and it has paid off politically.

But when he was asked in October if Democrats would use their majority to eliminate the debt limit when they had a chance, he said doing so would be irresponsible. With the Freedom Caucus threatening a global default, it's deeply irresponsible not to have gotten rid of it. Alright, that is it for the right and theers saying, which brings us to my take. So he got the job. Throughout this whole speaker fight, I made one, I thought, rather obvious observation, which is that McCarthy was likely to win the gavel and would probably make some significant concessions necessary to do so. Commentators like Dana Milibank insisting that the Republican Party's right flank's disruption amounted to insurrection by other means strikes me as little more than hysterics. As I said in our last edition before the break, while the actual rules

being debated were meaningful changes, they were not nearly as absurd as many in the press made them out to be. In that edition, I said the motion to vacate rule, where any member of Congress can call a vote to remove a speaker, is an arcane rule McCarthy should ignore. A motion to vacate has only been used twice since 1910, and we just saw Pelosi successfully remove it as an option during her term as speaker, so I doubted it would be re-implemented. But even though I personally feel that way, it's impossible to ignore that this rule has been available to Congress for most of its history, and it's not unreasonable to put it back in place. Meanwhile, voting on 12 individual appropriation bills rather than one giant omnibus spending bill

is how Congress is supposed to work when members are doing their jobs. Giving members 72 hours to review the pork slipped into bills before taking a vote is just good government, not insurrection. Insisting that McCarthy not blacklist certain candidates for fundraising may help shovel money to some politicians I personally don't like, but it too is not an unreasonable ask from members of the Speaker's own party. And if members want to spend their time investigating how the COVID-19 response was handled, or big tech censorship, or the unanswered questions about January 6th, I don't think those are perilous signals of the end of democracy either. Do I expect those investigations to be done in good faith with Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, at the helm? No, I do not.

It'll be political theater and histrionics, and I'm sure they will occasionally veer off into absurdity and also probably stumble onto some startling revelations. But that's true of most of the congressional investigations we've gotten in the last 10 or 20 years. We can criticize the way those investigations are handled once there is actually something to criticize. The biggest, most obviously frightening issue here is the debt ceiling. We'll probably dedicate a whole issue to it when its time comes, but the rough outline is that Congress needs to regularly raise the limit on how much money the United States can borrow since we are always borrowing more money.

Now, I am someone who believes the national debt does actually matter, but I am also someone who worries about the possibility of a raucous and emboldened House majority leading us to a default, or even the threat of a default. If we emboldened House majority leading us to a default, or even the threat of a default. If we fail to raise the debt ceiling, there is pretty much unanimous agreement it would set off an economic catastrophe. In 2011, the game of chicken alone led to the U.S. having its credit rating downgraded, which hurt the dollar and caused a market plunge. The other possibility is that this game of chicken leads to cuts in social programs like social security, which is a wildly unpopular idea with voters. Without a magic eight ball,

it's hard to know exactly what spending cuts Republicans will demand if they decide to hold the debt ceiling hostage, but based on the party's history, it's pretty easy to assume. Proposing cuts to popular programs will be even more difficult at a time of high inflation, which makes everything more expensive already. And given their trouble picking the leader of their party, I have serious concerns that Republicans won't be able to tactfully force legislative concessions without causing serious harm to the economy. That is the number one issue I'm losing sleep over. Otherwise, removing any personal biases from the equation about this outcome, I think the reality of what just happened is something too few people are saying out loud.

They won. The roughly 20 members who forced these concessions are being called ultra-conservatives and terrorists and hostage-takers and far-right, but few people are calling them prudent or impactful or smart or effective. They were outnumbered nearly 20 to 1 on the Speaker vote and managed to change the shape of Congress and extract what they wanted despite not having a single legitimate alternative up for Speaker. They got it. They got what they wanted. They probably got more than they expected. There are lessons there for all minority factions across Congress. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Mark in Carver, Massachusetts. Mark said, hypothetical question for you.

What would your reaction have been if Elon Musk had approached you to be part of the Twitter files dump that Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss have been posting? I would have bought the first plane ticket I could to San Francisco. Seriously, that story is basically every reporter's dream. At least the real ones. One thing I always tell folks who question the bias and motivations of the media is that, above all else, reporters, actual journalists, they want to break news first. They want scoops and access other reporters don't have. That usually trumps any personal bias. It's why a reporter who may have voted for Trump would also report a legitimate

negative story about Trump if they got their hands on it before anyone else. So yeah, if the richest man in the world reached out to me to offer access to Twitter's internal communications, I would have dropped everything I was doing and run to the story. communications, I would have dropped everything I was doing and run to the story. Alright, next up is our under-the-radar section. The Federal Trade Commission has proposed a rule that would ban U.S. employers from imposing non-compete clauses on workers, effectively making it easier for people to switch jobs and join competitors of their current employer. Supporters of the rule change argue non-compete clauses contribute to wage stagnation because switching jobs is one of the best ways to get a raise. Opponents argue that by facilitating

retention, non-compete clauses allow companies to promote workers internally and invest in current employees. The Associated Press has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. 133 was the number of voting rounds it took to elect a speaker in 1855, the most in U.S. history. The number of months that vote took to resolve was two. The number of votes McCarthy got in the first round of voting for Speaker was 203. The number of votes McCarthy got in the 15th and final round of voting was 216. The number of Republicans who voted present on the final ballot was six, effectively allowing McCarthy to win with just 216 votes. The number of Democrats who voted for Akeem Jeffries on every vote was 212.

And finally, last but not least, our have a nice day story. A teenage girl's previously incurable cancer has been cleared from her body with the first use of a revolutionary new type of medicine. Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital successfully used base editing on a child named Melissa with T-cell leukemia. Chemotherapy and a bone transplant had failed to slow Alyssa's leukemia. The doctors used the newly developed technique, which involves modifying genetic cells inside Alyssa's body, to direct them to kill the cancerous T-cells. She's still being monitored, but the early signals are very good, and the cancer in her body is now undetectable. BBC News has the remarkable story

and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. In case you missed it, I suggest, highly recommend going back and checking out some of last week's reader interviews. We got a lot of really positive feedback on that. And as always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership

and become a subscriber. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media

manager, Magdalena Vakova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tutampo.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, Thanks for watching. and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.