Here Are the Nine Contestants

In the 1950s, there was a TV show on NBC called Queen for a Day in which women would tell tales of woe about their financial or emotional situations. Some needed medical care for a sick child, or a hearing aid, or a new refrigerator. Many cried as they made their cases. At the end of the show the studio audience voted by clapping. The woman who got the most decibels won. She would be draped in a sable-trimmed velvet robe while the host read a list of extra prizes she was getting in addition to what she had requested. Many of the prizes were donated by companies who thought the huge good publicity greatly outweighed the cost of the product or service they were donating. Today we have GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, where fake elector Cathy Latham is still stuck at $22,000 and 2,800 prayers.

The House seems to be running a variant of this; call it Speaker Candidate for a Day. The contestants all tell the audience (the GOP caucus) why they deserve to be speaker more than the other contestants, and then someone is chosen to be speaker-designate for a day. Then the full House drops a new refrigerator on that person and it starts all over. For tomorrow's show, the deadline has now passed and there are nine contestants. This evening they will all make their case and today or tomorrow one of them will be the so-called winner. Whether someone who gets even 100 votes can suddenly get the entire caucus behind him and get 217 votes on the floor of the House remains to be seen. Here are the contestants, in alphabetical order.

• Jack Bergman (R-MI): He is a retired Lieutenant General and can make the case that he is devoted to his country. He is chairman of the Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. Four Michigan Republicans have endorsed him. He wants all Republicans to agree to support the guy who gets the most votes on the secret ballot. Good luck with that. Also good luck with him being the guy who gets the most votes. He could well be the guy who gets the least number of votes. Former flag officers do not tend to serve in leadership positions in Congress, generally speaking.
  
  
• Byron Donalds (R-FL): He is Black. That makes him stand out in a crowd of Republican congressmen as there are not a lot of Black men (four in total) in that group. And he is an ultraconservative member of the Freedom Caucus. That really makes him stand out. He has repeatedly said that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president. That doesn't make him stand out at all. If the entire Republican caucus was unwilling to vote for an experienced white FC member, Jim Jordan (R-OH), as speaker, an inexperienced Black guy could have a problem.
  
  
• Tom Emmer (R-MN): As the highest ranking House Republican who hasn't already been chewed up and spit out, Emmer is the logical choice as he has won caucus-wide elections before. He is currently majority whip. He also once ran the NRCC, which means that everyone he gave money to, back when he controlled the money faucet, ought to be grateful to him. Yesterday, Kevin McCarthy endorsed him. In fact, much of the Republican establishment supports him. His campaign comes down to his promise that he will never make a promise he can't fulfill. Given the tiny margin the speaker will be working with, the only way to fulfill that promise is to never promise anything to anyone. Is he a shoo-in? Not exactly, as there is one important Republican who strongly opposes him: a guy named Donald Trump. Trump's gripe? Emmer voted to certify Joe Biden's election. Although Emmer is qualified and popular, there is a pretty good chance that Trump will convince many Republicans to pick someone else. Emmer might well get the most votes within the caucus and thus become the official nominee, but woe be it to any Republican who votes for him on the floor of the House. We strongly suspect there will be at least five Trumpy holdouts on the floor vote. So if Emmer gets the caucus nod with a bare plurality, he is likely to be speaker candidate for a day, and then we start all over.
  
  
• Kevin Hern (R-OK): As chairman of the large conservative Republican Study Group, Hern is well-known and well-liked. He owns 18 McDonald's franchises near Tulsa, OK, as well as a hog farm, a bank, and multiple other businesses. He is very wealthy and has called welfare spending "tragic." If mothers on welfare worked hard, they could also own 18 McDonald's franchises and a hog farm and wouldn't need welfare. Simple, right? He also voted to overturn the election, so Trump could get behind him if it comes to that. Hern's campaign pitch: "People want to be heard, they want to be valued, and I think that's what you're seeing right now. There's a lot of historical relationships that some are not going to ever be able to work around, and I don't have those negatives out there." What does that mean? Did he just say something? If so, we can't figure out what it is.
  
  
• Mike Johnson (R-LA): As a lawyer and former radio host, Johnson is good at speaking, so he thinks he'd make a great speaker. As a lawyer, he worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is aimed at increasing the influence of Christianity in public schools. While in the Louisiana House, he sponsored legislation to protect people who wished to discriminate against gay people. In the U.S. House, he supported Donald Trump's attempt to ban anyone from seven Muslim countries from entering the U.S. He also opposes the use of medical marijuana. Johnson is a close ally of Trump, having served on his defense team during both impeachment trials in the Senate. He chaired the Republican Study Committee before Hern got the job. Now he is vice chairman. In a letter to his colleagues, he suggested that he is their man because he will humble himself before God every day. Nice try, but God is not a voting member of the caucus.
  
  
• Dan Meuser (R-PA): His pitch is to be inclusive, by which he means all members of the Republican caucus should be part of policy making, not just the speaker. Members who think the speaker has too much power might support him. In 2020, he opposed counting the electoral votes from four states, including his own state. Meuser is a backbencher and not well known so it seems unlikely he will be able to beat heavyweights like Emmer and Hern in the secret ballot.
  
  
• Gary Palmer (R-AL): Palmer is another backbencher with delusions of grandeur. He is a member of the FC and the Republican Study Committee. Also, he voted to reject the electoral votes in four states. But that is unlikely to do the job since other, better-known, members have the same qualifications.
  
  
• Pete Sessions (R-TX): Now we come to a heavyweight. He once chaired the NRCC, so a number of members owe their seat to him and now is the time to call in those chits. He was also a previous chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, so he understands the legislative process well, just in case some Republicans get inspired and decide to pass some laws. He is now in his 11th term, so he has plenty of experience. He also voted against certifying Biden's election. In Republicanland, trying to overturn an election gets you bonus points. Back in St. Ronald of Reagan's day that wasn't the case, but now it is. Sessions is a bit more moderate (say, less radical) than most of the others.
  
  
• Austin Scott (R-GA): He ran against Jordan on a lark and got 81 votes. This gave him a swelled head and thoughts that the next 136 should be easy. It won't be. Since he voted to certify Joe Biden's election, Donald Trump will oppose him if he gets the caucus nod, which seems unlikely, even though he has been in the House since 2011. His pitch: "I don't necessarily want to be the Speaker of the House. I want a House that functions correctly, but the House is not functioning correctly right now." Good point there, Austin, but if you don't want the job, why are you running for it? Fortunately, you will get your wish and will not be elected speaker.
  

So there you have it. When we put a quick table together for Sunday's post, we used whether or not a member signed the election denying amicus brief as our decider for whether or not a member was an election denier. Turns out, even the contenders who did not sign the brief stepped up to try to toss out some EVs. They're all election deniers. Sigh.

We think it would be impressive if any of the nine candidates got even a majority of the caucus. We think the most likely candidates to come out on top of the secret ballot are Emmer, Hern, and Sessions, but all three of them will have a tough battle to get to 217.

Yesterday on CNN, Liz Cheney castigated the House Republican Conference and said the Party has lost its way. She said: "We have to have a party that gets back to advocating those conservative policies, gets back to embracing the Constitution. That is not what the Republican Party is doing today." She is not running for speaker but didn't rule out running for president (as an independent). If she wants to, she needs to get started now. She clearly couldn't win but might get enough votes from traditional Republicans to sink Trump. She definitely would not mind being a spoiler if Trump were the victim. The problem is that she might end up giving Democrats who really don't want to vote for Biden a non-Trump alternative. (V)

What the Polls Say about the Mess in the House

It's bad news. As the House struggles and fails to perform its most basic function—electing a speaker—how are the American people responding? Are they incensed that Republicans can't govern? Nah. It's all inside baseball to them and they are not paying any attention to it. Here we are, writing about the speaker's race day after day and nobody cares. Well, maybe our readers care, but our readers do not represent the country very well. A recent Yahoo/You Gov poll shows that only 17% of U.S. adults are even following what is going on in the House. If you know the other 83%, please ask them to check out our site. Thanks.

On the other hand, despite not following the daily ins-and-outs of who is the speaker candidate du jour, a CNN poll shows that 74% of U.S. adults disapprove of the Republicans in Congress. In other words, people don't follow the details, but they have picked up the general idea that congressional Republicans are not doing their job well. Or at all.

And people sort of realize that the problem is the Republicans, not Congress. A Quinnipiac University poll asked whether the parties are looking out for themselves or for the country. For both parties, Americans think they are putting themselves first, but for the Democrats it is by a 34-point margin and for the Republicans it is by a 50-point margin. For anyone watching the speaker's race in detail, it is hard to say what is going on there helps the country, but only a handful of people are paying attention to the speaker's race.

Along the same lines, Quinnipiac asked if either chamber could respond to a crisis. Here the Democratic-run Senate did much better than the nominally Republican-run House, with 54% confident that the Senate could respond to a crisis while only 35% were sure the House could respond to a crisis.

These results are unfortunate for the Republicans, because before the dog and pony show in the House began, Republicans were moving up in the polls in many ways. In particular, for the first time in history, Republicans were thought to be better on the economy than the Democrats. Republicans also were faring better on questions like which party would make the country more prosperous (53% to 39%) and which is better at dealing with international terrorism (57% to 35%).

Of course, the longer the speaker battle goes on, the more the news seeps out and begins to be more widely known. If it goes on so long that it results in a government shutdown, then even the most news-phobic people will become at least somewhat aware of what is going on and why. (V)

The House Is Forcing the Senate to Act

The Senate usually defers to the People's House on spending bills, but the People's House has become a madhouse, which, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "a place where there is no order and control." Seems to fit.

The senators see this and are starting to prepare their own spending bills. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said: "We can't just sit and wait." Consequently, the Senate is now working on spending bills to keep the government open, as well as Joe Biden's request for assistance for Ukraine and Israel. The latter bill being worked on contains $61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $14 billion for increased U.S. border security, $10 billion for humanitarian aid, and a few smaller items. Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) support the bill, so it is likely to pass the Senate fairly quickly. The bills to keep the government open may be a bit more contentious.

While the border spending does not relate to Ukraine or Israel, it is a sweetener to pressure Republicans to vote for the bill. Imagine what will happen to a Republican who votes against it. A primary opponent will scream: "Biden was willing to spend billions to increase border security and my jackass of an opponent voted against it."

Of course, the big question is what happens when it lands on the House's doorstep. If there is a speaker fairly soon, the bill can be brought up using the regular order. While some Republicans oppose aid to Ukraine and some Democrats oppose military aid to Israel, there are almost certainly enough votes to pass the bill.

But what if there is no speaker in sight? Could Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry bring it up for a vote? Technically, he could just announce that the bill the Senate passed is now up for a vote. The members would then vote and if it passed, it would go to Joe Biden's desk for a signature.

That's when the fun would start. It is far from clear that McHenry has legal authority to bring a bill to the floor for an up-or-down vote, absent a vote of the full House giving him speaker-like powers. There would almost certainly be a court challenge led by opponents of the bill. It might even be bipartisan. McHenry knows that and has said he doesn't want to do anything except help elect a real speaker. He might even resign his pro temporeship rather than hold a vote on one or more spending bills. If he resigned, then the next person on the secret list would become pro tem and the show would start all over again.

The Constitution explicitly states that each chamber of Congress is to make its own rules. This means that the Supreme Court is unlikely to intervene in a dispute about what the pro tem can do and what he can't. More likely it would refuse the case or say: "It is up to the House to make its own rules; that is not our job." Needless to say, this could lead to chaos, with the House badly divided and Biden trying to spend money appropriated in a bill that may not have been approved according to House rules.

The confusion and ambiguity could be avoided if the House voted to give the pro tem just the power to bring Senate-approved spending bills to the floor for a vote and only in this session of Congress. However, such a bill might not pass since some members of the House think it would create a bad precedent that could be misused in the future. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) quoted The Princess Bride and said a vote to empower McHenry is "mostly dead." Others have noted that the speaker is second in line to the presidency. Would that hold for a pro tem who had just been given some speaker-like powers?

Kerry Kircher, the top House lawyer from 2011 to 2016, said: "What is the wise course of action probably depends on how desperate the country becomes for House action if the House cannot muster a formal, affirmative vote." (V)

Sidney Who?

As part of his par-for-the-course Truth Social rampage over the weekend, Donald Trump sent this out:

Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN [sic], AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!! MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS. In fact, she would have been conflicted...

Who knows why she would have been conflicted, or why Trump would have cared, since he has no problem with conflicts of interest among the attorneys working on his documents case. In any event, it is objectively false that Powell was not his lawyer. He announced her hiring on Twitter:

There was also a press conference where all of these attorneys were introduced as Trump's representation. She was removed from the team after a relatively short time because she proved to be looney tunes, but she was certainly Trump's lawyer.

We are struggling to understand how Trump thinks this claim is helpful to him. Our best and only guess is that by announcing that she wasn't his lawyer, he thinks he is persuading his base that anything she says, and any plea deal she reaches, has nothing to do with him, and does not reflect upon him. Perhaps that helps him politically, by some very small measure.

On the other hand, we can certainly understand how this claim is harmful to him. First, if he does not think he was ever represented by Powell, then it certainly does not say good things about his ability to recall details. Second, if he did not think Powell was his lawyer, then any claim of attorney-client privilege, even a longshot one, is dead. Third, if he did not think Powell was his lawyer, then any defense of "my lawyer told me it was OK," even a longshot one, is also dead.

Trump just keeps saying things that make defending him more and more difficult. His lawyers must be tearing their hair out. Perhaps he's so frightened and/or angry, he's lost control. Perhaps he thinks he can taint any and all jury pools. Perhaps he's all-in on the notion that the only way through his troubles is to get reelected president, and that winning in court is irrelevant. Whatever is going on, we think his ability to bend reality to his will, honed over more than half a century, is about to let him down. (Z)

Case about Disqualifying Trump Can Go Forward in Colorado

As we have pointed out several times already, the Fourteenth Amendment states that folks who have engaged in an insurrection against the United States have thereby forfeited their right to hold federal or state office. Various groups in various states have filed lawsuits to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot based on this Amendment. One of the court cases that is the farthest along is in Colorado. Trump has made a series of motions to throw the case out. The judge tossed them all in the paper shredder.

On Friday, Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace threw out more of Trump's motions to drop the case. He has one more still pending, but in light of Wallace's previous rulings, that one is virtually certain to fail as well. If the judge tosses that one as well, a trial will begin on Oct. 30 to decide a number of novel legal questions.

The main question to be decided in the trial is whether Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has the power to remove Trump from the ballot if he is the Republican nominee. Note that even if the judge rules that Griswold has that power, the verdict will not require her to remove him. That will be her decision.

In the trial, the Colorado Republican Party will argue that state law gives the parties, not some election official, the power to determine who their nominees are. Wallace has already swatted that idea down, saying if the parties could overrule state law (and the Constitution), then they could nominate people who didn't qualify due to age, citizenship, or residency. She wrote: "Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion."

In her ruling Friday, Wallace cited a 2012 opinion from Justice Neil Gorsuch when he was a Denver-based appeals judge. He wrote that the states have the power to "exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office." Of course, this ruling doesn't determine whether Trump engaged in an insurrection but would seem to give Griswold the power to ban Trump from the ballot. If she decided to exercise that power (assuming Judge Wallace approves), then Trump could sue and the case would certainly end back in Gorsuch's (and John Roberts') laps.

Colorado isn't a swing state, so it probably doesn't matter what Griswold does. Trump isn't going to get Colorado's 10 electoral votes no matter what. However, a Supreme Court decision empowering secretaries of state nationwide to boot Trump from the ballot could have profound implications as the secretaries of state in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are all Democrats. (V)

Sen. Scott Is Toast

That's Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), not Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). Politico's lead story yesterday was about how badly Scott is faltering. Not only is he polling under 2%, but now his hometown newspaper has called on him to drop out of the presidential race and support Nikki Haley. Ouch. Painful.

When your own team is against you, maybe there is a message there. The reasoning of the Post and Courier is clear. The editors are Republicans and don't think Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden, so they want some other Republican to be the GOP nominee. They don't think Scott has the right stuff. They think Nikki Haley has it. They note that she is rising in the polls, is raising plenty of money, and is willing to challenge Trump openly. She gets extra credit for her foreign policy and diplomacy expertise what with Ukraine and Israel now being high on the agenda and possibly still there on Jan. 20, 2025. The editors wrote: "Many presidential candidates have had more impressive foreign policy credentials than Ms. Haley. But the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations leaves the rest of this year's GOP field in the dust. And she combines experience with a hawkishness that our nation needs: one that will stand up to Hamas—and to Russia and China and all the other nations and players that are coalescing into an axis of totalitarianism and anti-Americanism."

This is just the quasi-endorsement of one small paper, but given it is from Scott's hometown, surely the message will sink in that his quest for the top job is over. And de facto, so is his quest for the bucket of you-know-what. He can't be on a ticket with Haley because they are from the same state. Neither Trump nor Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) would pick him because, well, he's Black and that would alienate many of their racist supporters. He seems to be popular enough in South Carolina, where 26% of the population is Black, so he can stay in the Senate for years to come. But we expect him to drop out of the presidential race before long. He's just not viable anymore. (V)

Supreme Court Wades into Social Media Disinformation

Social media is rife with disinformation and malinformation, some of it accidental but a lot of it intentional. Social media gives malign actors, foreign and domestic, a fantastic platform to spread lies. The federal government would like the tech companies to police their platforms and remove postings that are clearly false. Some of them don't want to. Elon Musk is leading the way here, even if it destroys his $44 billion investment in Twitter. That's not serious money to him. Other platforms are not so much against the idea of removing lies but find it hard to draw the line. How big does a lie have to be to warrant removing it? And policing millions of user-generated comments every day is expensive, since AI is not even close to being up to the job, so thousands of employees are needed to handle the vetting.

So, as usual, the Supreme Court gets to make the call. What the Founding Parents thought of as the least important branch of government nevertheless seems to be the decider a lot of the time.

Specifically, the Biden administration has been pressuring social media companies to clean up their acts and remove lies and filth from their platforms. The companies sued the administration on the grounds that the First Amendment says the government can't block anyone's speech and certainly can't tell companies to do it to their users. A district judge in Louisiana agreed with the companies and ordered the government to stop bothering them. His order barred the administration from "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit modified the ruling somewhat, saying that the government could not coerce companies into removing false content, but allowed the government to politely ask companies to do so as long as there were no (implied) sanctions for refusing to do so.

On Friday, the Supreme Court blocked the lower court injunction until it could decide the case on its merits. It will hear oral arguments this year or next and rule by June. Five social media users have said that the government is curtailing their rights to free speech and it doesn't matter whether what they say is true or false, the government has no business trying to censor them based on the First Amendment. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from Friday's order to block the lower court injunction. They criticized the majority for being too lenient on the administration. Of course, they know it is Donald Trump and conservatives generally who are doing the lying and don't want to be censored. (V)

Dean Phillips May Challenge Biden in the Primaries

Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-MN) has told House Democrats that he plans to run against Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. Phillips is a millionaire businessman who founded a gelato company. Gelato is good stuff, so he made a lot of money. He could use it to self-fund his campaign. Of course, House Democrats might tell him in no uncertain terms that all a run would do is help Donald Trump win the presidency, something Phillips doesn't want. Probably what he wants is more than the 15 minutes of fame everyone is entitled to. His colleagues may talk him out of it, but there is a good chance he will run.

Running would consist of filing to get on the ballot in New Hampshire. If Biden is not on the ballot there and the only Democrats are Phillips and Marianne Williamson, he might be able to win the primary—unless Biden's supporters in New Hampshire organized a serious write-in effort. Phillips' beef with Biden is that the president is too old.

Some Democrats are none too pleased with Phillips. One of them, Ron Harris, a member of the DNC, has indicated his displeasure by filing to run against Phillips in the DFL primary in Phillips' MN-03 district. The district is north, west, and south of Minneapolis and is mostly suburban, with a bit of farmland around the outer edges. It has a PVI of D+8. Harris' pitch is going to be that Phillips is disloyal and that he, as a DNC member, can be counted on to be loyal to Biden and the Democrats. Consequently, this stunt could cost Phillips his seat in the House without turning it over to a Republican. (V)

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