The Daily - Speaker McCarthy Has Lost Control of His House

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Earlier this month, a group of hard-right Republicans hijacked the floor of the House of Representatives in protest against Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The mutiny, staged by nearly a dozen members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, raised questions about whether the speaker could continue to govern his slim and fractious majority.Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The Times, explains how and why this small group of members made the chamber ungovernable.Guest: Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: In early June, members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus refused to surrender control of the floor, forcing Republican leaders to scrap votes for the week and leaving speaker Kevin McCarthy facing what he conceded was “chaos.”The group effectively shut down the House floor, calling the speaker’s fiscal compromise with President Biden a betrayal.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Ever since Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives last year, there have been predictions that a small group of far-right members would make the chamber ungovernable. Over the past few weeks, that prediction has proven correct. My colleague Annie Carney explains. It's Tuesday, June 27th.

Annie, it is very nice to see you, and welcome back. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. We wanted to talk to you because over the past couple of weeks, something started happening in Congress that we wanted to be here. We wanted to talk to you because over the past couple of weeks, something started happening in Congress that we wanted to better understand. Lawmakers from both parties, Democrats, Republicans, had just passed this big last-minute deal to avoid a U.S. financial default on its debt. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief. And then, right after that, strange things started to happen within the Republican-controlled House.

So pick up the story there and tell us about that. What's been happening is that over the last few weeks, Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, has basically lost control of his chamber. President Biden, he received a lot of blowback from far-right members of his conference, the Freedom Caucus, who are livid that he didn't follow through on promises he made to them, specifically on spending cuts, and basically feel like they got rolled at this whole process. You know, they're aware that they have a ton of power in this dynamic of the House where there is a four-seat majority. And they think they have a power-sharing agreement with Kevin McCarthy. So after that debt deal, where they feel like they were sold out, they use that power to get back at Speaker McCarthy.

Huh. And how do they get back at him? They could have tried to get rid of him, called a snap vote on the House floor to remove him as Speaker. They chose not to do that. Instead, they did something that's arguably more painful and could be a more ongoing torture of the Speaker. And what is that painful, ongoing torture? What these far-right members of the House did was they shut down the floor of the House. On June 6th, they create this blockade that makes it impossible for Republicans to bring a bill to the floor for a vote. Well, just explain that. I mean, how do you blockade the House floor?

This gets a little in the weeds, but it's fascinating. House floor. This gets a little in the weeds, but it's fascinating. For a bill to get a vote on the floor, first the House has to pass a rule. Typically, no one pays attention to a rule vote. It's just a procedural measure, and it's just a party line vote. So the adage is vote party on the rule, vote your conscience on the bill. So the adage is vote party on the rule, vote your conscience on the bill. But what happened here was these far right members who wanted to block the floor voted with Democrats to bring down the rule.

If the rule vote in order to then keep anything from being introduced on the floor. Yes, and that completely freezes the floor. That means that they are standing in the way of the Republican agenda, and it's at a standstill. McCarthy had meetings all day with these members who are on strike, basically,

and at the end of the day, they ended up canceling a whole week of floor action and basically sending people home because there was no agreement. So House Republicans decide to punish their own leader by making it impossible for anything to happen on the House floor, including anything by their own party, I assume. They're just shutting it down. That's right. So how does this blockade end? The way the blockade ends is not with some big agreement that means this will never happen again. The blockade ends on the terms of the Freedom

Caucus members. They end it because there was a bill they felt very passionate about and needed to pass. It was a gun-related conservative issue that they really liked. So they ended it on their terms, and they made it very clear they weren't removing this threat that they can shut down the House floor for a day, a week, as long as they want. Okay. So, Annie, that's the first major episode in this post-debt ceiling, I guess we could call it, mutiny by hard right House Republicans. And it very much undermines Speaker McCarthy's authority. So what happens next? What happens next is they find another way to disobey McCarthy and sort of disrupt his control of the floor, which is by using something that's known as a privileged resolution. which is by using something that's known as a privileged resolution.

This is a tool that any member can use that basically allows you to introduce a resolution and it goes around the speaker. It bypasses any committee work and floor schedule that the leadership controls, and it just allows you to bring this resolution directly to the floor. Right, because normally a resolution has to go through a series of bureaucratic steps, basically an approval process before it gets anywhere near the House floor. Right, because normally a resolution has to go through a series of bureaucratic steps, basically an approval process before it gets anywhere near the House floor. But you're saying that this thing called a privilege resolution allows a House member to basically skip all those steps, go rogue. And I'm guessing that this tool has been around for a while, but that its use is deeply frowned upon. This has been around for a while, yes, and McCarthy has pleaded with his members, don't use these to try and control the agenda on the

floor. He said to them, part of what we agreed during the fraught speakers race was a return to regular order. This is not regular order. Regular order means going through committees. It doesn't mean just bringing up something on your own that you want to do and forcing a vote on it. But a lot of these pleas he does in these conference meetings every week really fall on deaf ears. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Clause 2A1 of Rule 9, I seek recognition to give notice of my intent to raise a question of privileges of the House. So on June 13th, a Republican lawmaker named Anna Paulina Luna, she's a freshman from Florida, part of the Freedom Caucus, uses one of these privilege resolutions to try and censure Adam Schiff. Ethics that Representative Schiff lied, made representations, and abused sensitive information.

Adam Schiff is the former Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who gained a lot of fame and hatred on the right because he was the lead prosecutor in Trump's first impeachment trial. Right. So he's long been a Republican political target, but now Luna decides that she wants to censure him. For conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not.

For falsely claiming that there is evidence of collusion between Trump campaign and Russia and the first impeachment. And she decides to fine him. Sixteen million dollars. Sixteen million dollars. Wow. A figure she says she comes up with because it's half the cost of what that impeachment trial cost. And the Committee on Ethics shall conduct an investigation into Representative Adam Schiff's lies, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information. Okay. Wow.

And just as a reminder, Annie, a censure is a rare and a very public form of rebuke. It's kind of like an official scolding from Congress. And here you're saying that already severe measure, it sounds like, is being paired with a very severe financial fine that might bankrupt your average congressperson. Yeah, for sure. The House has only censured two other people in the last two decades. And these were for much more concrete and serious issues. They censured Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, a few years ago for tweeting out violent depictions of himself striking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword. And then Charlie Rangel, the former Democratic congressman from New York, was censured for serious financial and campaign misconduct. Those are the only two examples in the past 20 years. And now this one, which really seems to be politically motivated as payback from a Trump loyalist

against a person who has long been a political target, especially for Trump. Got it. And what's the reaction from Speaker McCarthy to this resolution, which, as you've described it, is intended to go around him? Well, even before she brings it up, he is trying to talk her out of it. That's what people I spoke with told me. He tries to convince her, you're doing Schiff a huge favor here. You might end up helping elect him to the Senate. He's currently running for California Senate seat. Do this through a committee. Like that's regular order. Don't do this. The other argument they make to her is this doesn't have the votes. They're pretty convinced that she can't pass this,

especially with that $16 million fine, which is something that a lot of Republicans actually opposed finding a member of Congress in that manner. But she expressed great confidence that she had the votes. She's on the warpath. So what happens that day is it actually does fail, and it looks like she really miscalculated, and lots of, I think, 20 Republicans voted against it to block the resolution.

So as McCarthy has predicted, it doesn't succeed. It doesn't succeed. And this is a little example right here of his loss of control. This is a waste of time on the House floor. It's a bit of an embarrassment for the whole team here, including McCarthy. Adam Schiff, meanwhile, is sending out fundraising email after fundraising email. I'm their number one target. And I heard a lot of hand-wringing from moderate Republicans saying,

we don't like Adam Schiff either, and we're making an in-kind donation to his Senate campaign here. In other words, they felt this was not only a bit of an embarrassing breakdown of the system, but just politically kind of stupid. Politically stupid. So they're frustrated on multiple levels by this ploy. Got it. But Luna is not deterred by this failure. In fact, she tweets out that she's playing four-dimensional chess and this is all part of her grand plan. And McCarthy's House leadership works with her to figure out a way to make this

resolution actually work. What that means is dropping the $16 million fine, and then they get behind it, and McCarthy supports it, and she's back on the floor with her privileged resolution to censure Adam Schiff, and this time... The yeas are 213 and the nays are 209. It passes along party lines, and they officially do censure a member for the third time in two decades. House will be in order.

It was a kind of dramatic moment on the House floor where Democrats started chanting, shame, shame, shame from the well. Wow. the well. Wow. So thinking back to where we began, McCarthy could not prevent that embarrassing legislative blockade. He couldn't stop the ultimate censoring of Adam Schiff, even though he originally tries to. It sounds like the best he can do in this new world in which far-right Republicans are openly rebelling against him is to kind of guide something that he hates into something that he hates less. So this does not sound like it's going super well for Speaker McCarthy. That's exactly right.

The best he can do in these situations is kind of mitigate the damage. And that's what he's done. And he knows every day that his troubles are not behind him and are only probably getting worse. And what happens the same week as the shift censure is McCarthy has to do this all over again when another member surprises him with a privileged resolution. And this time the stakes are even higher. resolution. And this time the stakes are even higher. We'll be right back. So, Annie, tell us about this next unpleasant surprise that Speaker McCarthy encounters from his Republican colleagues.

The next thing that happens that same week is another member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. Gentlewoman is recognized for six minutes. This time it's Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my impeachment bill that will hold Joe Biden accountable for the dereliction of one of his most basic duties. She brings a privileged resolution to the floor. For the first time in 24 years, a House Republican-led majority is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against a current president. And this time it's introducing articles of impeachment against Joe Biden. She also gives no one a heads up that she's planning to do this. And what grounds does Congresswoman Boebert cite for introducing articles of impeachment?

The Biden border crisis and massive wave of illegal immigration has fueled a record-breaking fentanyl crisis. She claims that he deserves to be impeached because he has failed to secure the southern border and that he has knowingly failed to enforce immigration laws. She doesn't exactly lay out proof of high crimes and misdemeanors that is typically the bar for impeaching a president. Every member should vote to hold President Joe Biden accountable. Mr. Speaker, I yield. Gentlewoman yields back. Gentlewoman yields back.

I mean, that's about as big as it gets. Impeaching a president, she wants to do that without consulting with the Speaker of the House. Yes, without going through committees, without building a case. It's unheard of. And most of her colleagues are livid about this and think it's basically like a stunt impeachment. But, you know, a lot of Republicans talked about impeaching Biden during the campaign, and here she is delivering on that promise. It also strikes me that this feels a lot like

the censure of Adam Schiff in that it's a privileged resolution that feels like it has a lot to do with avenging the enemies of Donald Trump. It does, and it comes on the heels of Trump being indicted by the Justice Department, which, you know, has Republicans railing against a two-tiered justice system. The House is the one branch of government that they still control, and so a few of them have decided that this is the most productive way to get back. To impeach President Biden? Without a real sense of what crimes he committed, yes.

So what does Speaker McCarthy do in this case? What is his response to this privileged resolution act of rebellion? This is a terrible position for him and for most of the members in his conference. McCarthy is very aware that impeachment is unpopular with voters, and he tries to convince them that this is not how you do a real impeachment. You don't do it in two days. You build a real case. You present the case to voters to convince them that there are really crimes that need to be prosecuted. He tells them in their closed-door conference meeting, you know, like, we vote on this,

we send this over to the Senate, it has no chance of passage in a Democrat-controlled Senate. And he kind of tells them, like, is this the majority we want to be? If this is how we want to be, like, we're going to be a two-year majority. We're going to lose control of the House. Well, can you explain that?

What does he mean exactly? He means that this looks like a joke. It looks like a political stunt. And it doesn't resonate with voters. Voters care about the economy. They care about inflation. They care about the cost of a gallon of milk. Voters want lawmakers looking like they're doing serious work that affects their lives. And I think McCarthy is trying to say here, doing a flimsy impeachment where we haven't even laid out the case to voters of why we have proof of high crimes and misdemeanors,

that's how you squander your majority. Right. He's saying this is how we lose the next election. This is how a four-seat Republican majority becomes a Democratic majority by pulling things like this. So he's saying don't do it. He's saying don't do it.

The problem is some of the people he's saying that to likely don't care if they're in the majority or in the minority. If you think about a bomb thrower or someone who is really not here because they want to legislate, but because they want to get attention or disrupt how government works, you can do that from either side. So he has a good argument that resonates with a lot of members, but a lot of members couldn't care less. Right, and I'm guessing Congresswoman Boebert is one of those lawmakers who couldn't care less, but what does she say in response to this plea?

Well, she does end up finding a deal with McCarthy, Well, she does end up finding a deal with McCarthy, which is that they will take a vote which would refer her impeachment articles to two powerful committees, to the Homeland Security Committee and to the Judiciary Committee, where they will investigate these border issues, these immigration issues, and take up the issue of impeachment through a committee. So she gets to save face and say, I got the ball rolling on a Biden impeachment, which is something that we've talked about for months. Now we have committees really looking into it. McCarthy got to head off a painful vote for members and did not actually have to do an impeachment vote on the House floor. And a lot of times, the way people kind of bury legislation they don't want to deal with

is just to refer it to committees. So I've heard from a lot of moderate Republicans who hope that this was the last we ever hear of Boebert's impeachment articles, and they just die a quiet death in the Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees. We'll see. Right. There's always the chance that those articles of impeachment come out of that committee and are referred to the full House. I mean, Annie,

once again, if we think about McCarthy's playbook here, it feels like his best option, as with the Schiff censure, was to water down an act of rebellion here once again, rather than truly snuff it out. Exactly right. He, again, kind of found a way to divert this, to make it less painful for his members, to make it less painful for himself, to make it less embarrassing for Republicans. But still, what did we do this last week in the House?

We covered them considering impeachment articles brought by one of the far-right members of the conference who are dictating what the business on the floor is this week, as they did when they shut it down completely. So he's doing the best he can in each one of these cases. It's almost like playing whack-a-mole, trying to put each one of these down in a way that causes him and the conference the least pain. of this Congress, that the Republican majority would be so small that it would empower a few of these firebrands, like your Lauren Boeberts, whose actions would color how voters view the entire Republican Party. And you mentioned that McCarthy worries aloud that this is going to result in Republicans losing the House. I'm kind of curious, based on your reporting, if that's a widely held view, that this campaign of vengeance, this mutiny against McCarthy, if they could lose the House majority next year. And this is exactly the kind of behavior and the kind of bills that will ensure that. And this kind of

behavior is exactly what makes them all so livid at members like Lauren Boebert. If McCarthy is right, and these far-right House members are putting the entire party on a very dangerous political path, what can McCarthy do about it? I mean, it sounds like there's not much he can do, but are there any options? got elected in the first place and then oversees a two-year narrow Republican majority. But that is what he is openly worrying is about to happen. Yes, he's openly worrying about that possibility. And I think he doesn't think particularly long-term like that. I think he's on a day-to-day whack-a-mole lifestyle right now where he has to deal with the fire in front of him. lifestyle right now where he has to deal with the fire in front of him. And his MO is like, live another day, survive another day. I think that he does still have a lot of confidence from a large majority of his members who think like this is an impossible situation. And it's not exactly clear who could be handling this any better. It's a terrible job, a terrible dynamic,

and he doesn't have much control. So, Annie, what is going to be the next chapter of this saga for the House Republicans? The next chapter of this saga becomes a lot more serious. When Congress comes back from their recess that they start this week, they have some actual serious business before them, like passing important spending bills, funding the government, staving off a government shutdown. So the stakes are going to be dealing with the same lack of trust and anger

that all grew out of the debt ceiling deal he forged with Biden, while also have to pass really important bills. That's what awaits him after recess. Sounds like a dream for him. Dream job. Well, Annie, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you, Michael.

Next week, when the House returns from recess, Republicans are expected to consider a set of resolutions, both introduced by far-right members, that would seek to expunge the two impeachments of former President Trump on the grounds that the original cases against him were unconstitutional. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Dear friends, today I once again address all citizens of Russia. On Monday, in his first public remarks since a rebellion against his government was called off,

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the revolt failed because, quote, the entire Russian society united. The speech appeared to be aimed at projecting unity and stability after the most serious challenge to Putin's power in decades. But in it, he offered a major concession to members of the militia who staged the rebellion, In it, he offered a major concession to members of the militia who staged the rebellion, saying that if they wished, they could move to neighboring Belarus and rejoin their leader, Yevgeny Progozhin, who led the rebellion. And... Let me see that. I'll show you an example.

Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came out. Look. On Monday night, CNN published an audio recording from 2021 in which former President Trump shared classified information about a possible plan of attack against Iran with writers who lacked security clearances. The recording has become a centerpiece of the special counsel's indictment against Trump for taking classified documents from the White House

and refusing to return them. It is highly confidential. This is secret information. Look at this good fact. In the recording, Trump acknowledges to those in the room that the material he's showing off is highly sensitive and explicitly states that he had not declassified them.

See, as president, I couldn't declassify them. Now I can't, you know, but this is so cool. Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Will Reed, Carlos Prieto, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Devin Taylor.

Contains original music by Alisha Ba'itu, Diane Wong, Brad Fisher, and Rowan Emisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landferk of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.