Speaker Mike Johnson has once again lost a battle against hardline conservatives for control of his own House floor — and he has no clear way out.
A small group of GOP hardliners, led by firebrand Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, effectively seized the floor from Johnson this week, refusing to allow him to move on their own party’s priorities until Republican leaders come up with a plan to pass President Donald Trump’s federal elections overhaul bill.
By Tuesday afternoon, Johnson was forced into one of the most humiliating possible positions for a House speaker: He conceded he could not regain control of the chamber and instructed members to leave Washington early. It’s the second straight week that GOP leaders have had to scrap their plans, this time losing out on nearly an entire week’s agenda.
Reminds me of Eric Cartman. “Screw you guys. I’m going home.”
When Trump refused to sign the Housing Bill, a lot of people expected Johnson to adjourn the house to avoid it becoming law. This is on-brand for him.
They work six months out of the year for six figures and they get to go home early, what a country
America has voted to allow this for decades. Too late to bitch about it now.
Can’t we just get them all together and false flag the entire area? Like some huge political thing where most of the established politicians who have been politicking for decades get together for politics or cannibalistic child rape or whatever else they do… and then we make it 'splode.
We could blame it on Iran. They’d probably be willing to take the credit, and that could really bring our countries closer together. We’d nominate them for all of the peace prizes.
Theyll make sure to pick someone really rancid as their designated survivor.
No Kiefer Sutherlands here.
The worst Speaker in a generation, at least.
agreed, and that’s a hard record to beat what with Hastert still being alive
CNN was purchased by the Ellison family (along with CBS), you think they are still a trusted news source?
What are your specific concerns about the article?
Being aware of bias and potential concerns about accuracy is good, but it’s not just some catch-all thing where you dismiss something entirely because it may be biased or because you have this broad bottom that it’s untrustworthy. That just leads to either a) total hypocrisy or b) being forced to dismiss everything, because everything is biased. And trust is something that you always have to test and reaffirm. Sources are trustworthy because they continue to pass those tests.
Noting the bias of the source is just step one. If you’re not willing to do the rest of the steps then you’re not actually contributing anything.
I’m expecting that CNN is going through or will go through an overhaul that shifts their editorial stance to the right similar to what happened at CBS. Right after the acquisition CBS cancelled their segment on El Salvador’s CECOT prison and then fired the correspondent responsible for it. Bari Weiss has no broadcast journalism experience and is firing correspondents including Scott Pelley and dozens of others. They shuttered their radio division. The Ellisons are not just involved in business and media. They are supplying Israel with computer systems that are being used against Gaza and Lebanon- they are using an AI targeting system to kill people and destroy vital infrastructure like hospitals and schools.
All of the playbooks to take over and control a society involve controlling the media. This isn’t a trivial matter and it’s happening. So yeah I asked if people see any changes happening at CNN yet.
I’m expecting exactly the same thing. But we don’t assume that reality conforms to our expectations. We assess. We judge. We use fact based examinations of empirical evidence
Dismissing the validity of a piece of reporting because you have a vague feeling about the source is how MAGA got where they are. We can do better than that.
Even a source like Fox News can produce good - or at least useful - reporting from time to time.
I didn’t dismiss the validity of the article. I was actually asking people if they’d seen changes at CNN yet. I think it’s hard to read tone through text. I can see how you might think I was asking people if they “think they are still a trusted news source” rhetorically but I was actually seeking information. Maybe comments isn’t perfect place for discussion of the news outlet
If democrats were smart…they’d take advantage of republican disunity and move to vacate the speaker’s seat…
Jeffries may not be my favorite democrat, but he did manage to keep the party together for how many votes last time?
I’m all for screwing with Johnson in every way possible, but let’s not get excited about Jeffries. We elected Biden to deal with MAGA, and he and the MAGA comedy act of Schmuck & Jeffries helped them get right back into office.
Jeffries had his chance, and he did a piss poor job of it. He’s doesn’t get a second chance. What he should get, along with his buddy Schmuck, is a Congressional subpoena, to find out which Sociopathic Oligarchs paid him to not offer any resistance to MAGA at all.
I keep forgetting that Johnson isn’t even the most extreme of them. He’s still a giant weasel.
His job is just to have a haircut that makes it seem sensible to do whatever it is that they want to do.
The Most Fabulous Squeaker of the House, Mikey ‘Mouse’ Johnson, ladies & gentlemen!
GOP have really shown us how well they don’t know how to govern effectively.
It isn’t as much as not knowing how to govern as much as they just don’t want to. They are managing a power shift away from those that do. Only there to grab power and if they can also fit some grift in they will.
i suppose this is when the bipartisan housing bill that dipshit refused to sign gets vetoed.
Could be the whole plan. An unsigned bill becomes law if Congress remains in session, or gets the “pocket veto” if they leave, isn’t that the rules?
Too bad they got the master surveillance and internet censorship bipartisan Bill through before this happened
The senate version is too far apart, and it would have to be fixed in conference. Which they can’t do if the house isn’t in session.
Priorities, naturally. And the very very very first thing they ever did was a tax cut for billionaires…
Absolute scumbags.
There really needs to be some way for the minority party to step in and do the work if the majority cannot function.
In Canada we call an election.
The problem is that the American system isn’t parliamentary. There isn’t a button to push to reset Congress.
Well, there might be one button…
0000 0000 dammit!
0000 0001 dammit!
0000…
4545 4545 oh shitYou got it right the first time unless they’ve changed the codes since the cold war
Well, you might say that is one of the problems.
Like in a bowling alley, when the ball doesn’t trip the sensor and the pins don’t reset…canada has that for government?
I want one!
Pretty much. If the current party in power is not able to gain sufficient support for confidence motions (there are a number of things that qualify as a confidence motion, the budget being a big one) Then the Governor General (the official representative of the King / Queen) can offer control to another party if they ARE able to gather that support, or simply call an election.
Technically the (currently King) is our head of state, but for most functions our Prime Minister fills that role. The current government losing confidence of parliament is one of the functions where the King still holds de facto power in addition to de jure power.
Note that while they are titles held by the same person, the titles of King of Canada and King of the United Kingdom are legally distinct, and while referring to his role in Canadian governance, it is appropriate to refer to Charles III as King of Canada specifically, and inappropriate to use his other titles in that context. Mostly because the King of the United Kingdom has no role in our government, but the King of Canada does.
canada chucks another ball down the lane?
(is joke i know you press the button and wait for the employee to walk down the gutters and kick the pin resetter and then run away because kicking pin resetters has killed a lot of people but it’s how you get them to work)
It’s called a “confidence vote”. It’s not every bill, and I forget what makes it confidential, but if budgets and big things don’t get passed parliament has no confidence in the government and an election happens. The two states of governance are A: a majority government where the ruling party has enough votes to pass anything they like. And B: a minority government that would have to make concessions and entice the other parties to vote with them. Minority governments are better IMO because they theoretically represent more people.
Iirc, it’s when the governing party proposes a bill and it fails to pass, it triggers a vote of confidence, and if that vote goes against them, then there’s an election. Or the governing party can ask the governer general (represents the king… Yeah, I know) to call an election.
One thing I’ve never understood: y’all declare you have no confidence in the government but you have enough confidence to trust it to run a fair election?
It’s not the citizens having no confidence in the government, it’s the other members of parliament. If the government cannot get a majority of MPs to support their bill, they have lost the confidence of parliament, which will trigger and election (or technically could have the GG assign government to another party who DOES have the confidence of parliament, though to my knowledge that has never happened, but it is a tool in their toolbox).
Our federal elections are run by Elections Canada, which reports to parliament as a whole, not to the Government of Canada. It is a non-partisan agency. We have a similar setup in the provinces with each having their own provincial election agency. I am unsure how it is handled in the territories.
Elections are held by Elections Canada, not the governing parties. There are constitutional laws that must be followed for elections, such as spending, how long campaigns last for, how/where voting stations are covered, etc.
Just another way the US is an Alpha Democracy. (as in, still full of bugs that got fixed in later versions.) At least I live in California which does a great job on elections.
The government doesn’t run the election, especially if they are not in absolute majority
It’s a vote on something that the government must pass to keep control, such as a budget; if they don’t get the votes, then it’s “no confidence in this government” therefore now the GG calls the rest of the leaders in to try to form another government. If that fails, then the GG forces an election. Elections are entirely separate from governance and changing the rules is very difficult so it doesn’t get fucked up easily.
We have rules too, but the despot in chargge tramples on the rules, and his toadies in Congress and on the Supreme Court let him. He already had Musk and his DOGE goons get rid of most of the career government workers who normally carry out the rules. Elections are supposed to be run by the various states, and that’s given us hope for changing control of Congress at the midterms in November, but he is trying to wrest control of the whole election process.
There are many layers and interpretations of confidence there that you mix up. I’m assuming this works somewhat like where I live. Its the confidence that the government is in a functional state/working somewhat efficient vs the confidence of fair elections. There are mamy ways where parties can essentially block progress or the government in general. That’s somewhat fine and can be an important instrument to use (especially when in the opposition). But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the people causing it want to get rid of fair and free elections. Some kind of “shutdowns” and other grind locks can be very detrimental to a government and there need to be a mechanic to be able to solve them. In this case: We have no confidence the current parliament with the current distribution of seats is working as it should be. We tried everything, we need to restart.
Since it’s a quite drastic process, it’s not something invoked lightly.
Under the current circumstances, with an administration that’s actively working to restrict and gerrymander away the voting power of anyone who’s not on their side, and firing many of the nonpartisan government employees who might get in their way by refusing to rig the process and results, I don’t think we can have enough confidence in our government to call a vote of no confidence, even if it were in our Constitution.
That’s a good answer. I was just going to quote Elections Canada: “Elections Canada is the independent, non-partisan agency responsible for conducting federal elections and referendums.”
The moment a bill doesnt pass it instantly triggers our government dissolving and a new election, up here.
Honestly… Well regulated state militias were supposed to exist for a reason. The founding fathers weren’t able to see the technology of the future but they were able to see the oppression of the future. They wrote the Constitution with their terms at their time. Modern politicians have chosen to abandon most aspects of the Constitution. But they were in there for a reason.
The founding fathers envisioned that every state, every community, any brotherhood or fellowship of men and or women would have a standing army that they could summon anytime to stop federal overreach, as well as the overreach of the corrupt and shiftless. that is the entire purpose of the second amendment.
The founders were, by a majority, against elections and wanted Presidents to be appointed by Congress. Americans care far too much about what those slave-owning shits intended. It was after all a quarter of a millennium ago.
The founders … wanted Presidents to be appointed by Congress.
So, like a… prime congressman? All the
ministerscongressmen vote in a PrimeMinisterCongressman to form the executive?I agree with them entirely. The US is currently paralysed by a system where you need both a president and congress to agree before you can do anything, so if you have one opposed to the other then the entire government is basically useless and unable to reform anything until the president/balance of congress changes.
A parliamentary system avoids that problem by design - if the PM can’t get enough votes from the parliament, then he doesn’t have enough to “form a government” (I.e. become PM) in the first place. And if he ever loses majority support in parliament and thus can’t pass any bills, then parliament can kick him out via a No Confidence vote with simple majority support, so that someone who does have majority support (or gains it via negotiating support from independents/minor parties) can become PM themselves and the government is able to function.
Switching to a parliamentary system would be the quickest and easiest method of preventing another situation like Obama’s uselessness for most of his presidency because of a Republican-controlled senate.
They can oust the speaker with a very small number of defections that would achieve a majority. There’s no motivation for the minority factions within the majority to do so though - the only chance they have of passing their hardline agenda is by refusing to give the majority the ability to do anything. This isn’t a problem if you have a much larger majority but they’re barely holding onto the title right now.
Unfortunately, the rebels are on the far right. They may vote to oust Johnson, but they’ll never vote to give Jeffries or any other Democrat the speakership. We’d be back in the endless cycle of Speaker votes that brought Johnson into power.
Are there any examples of the majority party electing a Speaker from the opposing party?
Seems like a given that they wouldn’t vote for Jeffries
The closest example seems to be Nathaniel Banks, in 1855. He was in the Know-Nothing party, which was a smaller third party of the time.
Exactly. Even if it’s just a couple of republicans, there are enough who don’t like Johnson that it could happen…
Then 12 or 15 votes later, the rpublicans look like morons…again.
Too bad establishment republicans have neither the spine, or the moral fortitude to not roll over and assume the position.
Republicans are conservatives, authoritarians, the most important thing for them is adherence to the group. If they valued anything else more, they wouldn’t be Republicans.
There is. They can find enough willing defectors from the majority faction to become the majority themselves, vacate the chair and install someone else as speaker. If you’re talking about a way for the minority to seize control of the chamber against the will of the majority, well, I challenge you to find a way to describe the rules for how that should work in a way that isn’t easily gameable.
The problem is that would be extremely short lived, even if it succeeds. And it won’t succeed because from the perspective of most of the minority republicans, democrats are far, far, worse.
The Democrats could help put someone like Cassidy into the speakership. (But, you know, from the house.)
Someone who doesn’t say they’re running the protection program. Someone who will exercise the power of Congress as a co-equal branch of government. Someone who will stop ceding congressional power to Trump. Hell, maybe even someone who would help restore the independence of independent executive agencies.
Likely would be someone on the way out, but good enough for now. I feel like all that isn’t asking for much, just the basic duty of the job.
yes, it’s really hard to find common ground with a faction that believes as few people should have the right to vote as possible.
I swear he does this biweekly
He was picked precisely because he’s a spineless, vulnerable back bencher.
He doesn’t fundraise well enough to threaten party members with money. He doesn’t have a large popular base of support within the public. And he doesn’t even play well with the billionaire class to get Elon Musk to yell at people for him.
The only reason he hasn’t been tossed out like Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy is because there’s nobody to replace him.
