Kevin McCarthy Left the House in an Anti-Democratic MAGA Mess

This content comes from the latest installment of our weekly Breaking the Vote newsletter out of VICE News’ D.C. bureau, tracking the ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic process in America. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

Once again, I’ll be hosting 1A on NPR today, covering the week for the House GOP, Trump in court, and a lot more. Check your local listings or download the pod! 

Fool House

Donald Trump, partially gagged in one trial, and facing a potential gag order in another, is willing to become the temporary Speaker of the House. 

Trump gave the magnanimous news to Fox yesterday, as Republicans scramble to find their way out of a self-inflicted leadership crisis that has its roots with, of course, Trump. Even though he may be endorsing Jim Jordan, some House Republicans are thrilled at the idea of Trump taking over stewardship of the very institution a violent mob attacked in his name less than three years ago. 

And that, right there, is the clearest distillation you could ask for of the GOP’s transformation to authoritarianism. Kevin McCarthy spends two years running for speaker by conspicuously working to cover up Trump’s crimes and helping to engineer a cover-up of Jan. 6. He limps into power only after making a series of humiliating concessions that guarantee Trumpist chaos agents like Matt Gaetz control his fate. 

Gavel in hand, McCarthy clings to it with even more feckless concession, like launching an impeachment inquiry he didn’t have the votes to launch, and providing raw Capitol Hill security footage for Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 propaganda effort. 

After all this insult to the democratic institutions he leads, and through a couple self-inflicted legislative crises, McCarthy is finally cut down. And it’s by the very same MAGA nihilists who held his strings all along. 

So naturally, House Republicans, or many of them anyway, are thrilled to give their support to the man who started this anti-democratic spiral in the first place. 

Why would Trump, scheduled to the gills with civil trials, depositions, criminal court dates and a presidential campaign, even nod at taking the job? The answer is obvious. Trump would use the job to force the government and the nation into crisis unless Congress defunds the criminal investigations against him. At this point the job can mean nothing more to him, and nothing less.

Of course this gambit actually coming to pass is highly unlikely, no matter how much Trump and his GOP acolytes would love it. Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, and other GOPs with an incentive to keep the party from dying must know that forcing 16 House Republicans representing districts won by Joe Biden to vote on a Trump speakership would make their party even more cracked up than it already is. 

Besides, there’s that pesky House GOP Rule 26(a), “A member of the Republican Leadership shall step aside if indicted for a felony for which a sentence of two or more years imprisonment may be imposed.” 

Maybe House Republicans should consider changing this rule. As far-fetched as a Trump speakership is, isn’t it time to clarify that that alleged criminality aimed at the heart of the Constitution is just fine in the Trumpist GOP? Kevin McCarthy just gave up his job trying to prove it. At least do the man the honor of knowing his legacy means something.

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Dismissal command 

Trump’s lawyers are moving on multiple fronts to try to keep his various criminal nightmares from ever seeing trial. On Thursday Trump’s team asked Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the 34-felony-count case in Manhattan alleging that Trump falsified business records as he paid Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their past affair. The motion, like many from around the Trump Crime Universe, reads like a campaign release, alleging that the case is a politically-motivated effort to keep Trump from running effectively for president. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s team moved for dismissal in the four-count federal coup case, on the grounds that Trump is immune from prosecution because all the alleged activities took place when he was president. Trump’s lawyers have been signaling this appeal since at least August, so we knew it was coming. And it’s not entirely laughable. 

Trump has reason to expect he can get at least an attentive hearing at the Supreme Court for his immunity claims here. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the immunity presidents enjoy against civil action for things they do while in office also extends to criminal liability. That may be a long shot, but again… this Court. 

But this motion is real mostly for its ability to create delay. Most appeals have to wait until a trial is completely finished. But presidential immunity is an interlocutory appeal, meaning it can go up the appellate chain now. If the appeals take a long time, that could make the March, 2024 trial date for the coup case slip. Which is surely a huge part of the point.

Coffee break

Fani Willis’s first guilty plea in the Fulton County RICO case could spell trouble for a bunch of other defendants. Scott Hall, aka “the bailbondsman,” admitted in court to 12 criminal acts in the voting machine breach part of the conspiracy. He’s agreed to five years probation, a relatively light sentence that’s typical of defendants who are first to plead out. 

But Hall’s connections all over the Coffee County plot and beyond spell trouble for other defendants, including Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and others. Remember, if you cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence, you have to tell the whole truth, or the deal’s off. Are other co-conspirators soon to cop a plea and flip? 

Shills to pay the bills

“We've lost everything, every dime… all of it is gone,” hot-side-of-the-pillow guy Mike Lindell told NBC News. Lindell says he’s broke, just as his lawyers say they can no longer rep him in the various election lie defamation suits against him because of unpaid fees. 

Ethics cleansing

The onslaught of coverage detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’s financial relationships with billionaires who have business before the Supreme Court paused just long enough for the court to start its new term this week. 

First up, the court rejected John Eastman’s bid to reverse a lower court ruling that exposed his emails under the crime/fraud exception. This started back when the January 6 committee subpoenaed Eastman’s emails about the coup plot, then a District Judge ruled attorney-client privilege doesn’t protect the messages because they contain evidence of a likely criminal conspiracy between Eastman and Donald Trump. 

Eastman is now a co-defendant in the Georgia RICO conspiracy and an unindicted (for now) co-conspirator in the federal coup case. The emails are now evidence, and Eastman wanted their exposure overturned. But the court refused to hear the case.

Here’s the biggest shocker: Clarence Thomas, for whom Eastman once clerked, seemed to get a pang of ethics, and recused himself from the case. Not only did Eastman work for Thomas, and not only did Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, actively support overturning the 2020 election, but Eastman’s emails argue that Thomas was probably the only justice who would support the constitutionality of the coup plot! Good stuff!

Map quest

Alabama Republicans’ long, defiant fight to dilute Black votes is over. For now. After two rounds at the Supreme Court and Republicans’ refusal to obey court orders, a panel of federal judges finally picked a special master’s map yesterday. That map will apportion power in the states seven-member congressional delegation. 

It assigns a second district with majority Black representation. That greatly increases the chances that Black voters, who’d been divided up by previous (and illegal, according to the courts) racial gerrymandering rounds, will have the power to pick their preferred candidate for Congress. Of course, this all goes back to Allen v Milligan, a Voting Rights Act Section 2 case that could have important knock-on effects in several other racial gerrymandering cases across the South. For instance…

The lowest country

The Supreme Court is set to hear yet another racial gerrymandering case next week. This one comes out of South Carolina, where a federal appeals court has already ruled that Republicans diluted Black voters’ influence by instituting an illegal gerrymander in one of the state’s seven congressional districts. 

Geaux try to vote

And now that Alabama has a new map re-empowering Black voters, Louisiana may not be far behind. But two conservative Appeals Court judges look like they’re teaming up to hijack the case, all to delay it long enough to help congressional Republicans hang on in 2024. Seems fishy. 

Reno function

New protections for election workers are going into effect in Nevada, including making harassment, intimidation, and threats a felony. That’s good, since Nevada is home to one of the most anti-democratic, conspiracy-fueled Trumpist movements in the country, and has seen massive turnover of election officials.

Minor threat

This kid has just about enough of North Carolina’s brazen gerrymandering!

“I never took the CPA exam, I never studied for it, so I don’t know all the various components of what GAAP is.”

— Former Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg, talking about Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in a deposition for Trump’s $250 million fraud case. 

Observe and report — Journalist John Harwood spent a career covering Washington at NBC, CNN, The New York Times and elsewhere. Now he’s with ProPublica, where he just delivered an interesting sit-down with President Joe Biden on protecting democracy. Harwood is also one of the clearest voices in Washington for a clear-eyed journalism that avoids a “neutral” stance between democracy and authoritarianism and instead pays attention to what’s at stake. 

So after you watch the Biden interview, check out Harwood’s Q & A with Brian Beutler of the Off Message blog. In my view, this is the kind of approach the media needs in order to faithfully cover politics, and especially Trumpism.

Cajun match — Louisianans go to the polls next week to elect a new secretary of state. The race has GOP candidates clamoring to show they can appease right-wing election conspiracists the most, at least rhetorically. The guy who might win wants the state’s (admittedly outdated) voting systems to move to an all-handcount system—which, according to experts, guarantees more errors and inefficiency. 

Be cruel to your school — Libs of TikTok has become an “anti-woke” sensation in right-wing circles for criticizing and ridiculing transgender youth, their parents, and the policy makers who try to support them. VICE News’ Tess Owen has the story detailing how many of the schools targeted by the account and its creator have become victims of bomb threats and other violent harassment. It’s further, irrefutable evidence of just how entrenched political violence is becoming on the hard right. And lest you think Libs of TikTok is just a voice of the fringe, lots of Republican lawmakers interact with it regularly. These are schools! 

The problem(s) with Rudy — Rudy Giuliani is still refusing to produce discovery in the defamation case Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss have against him. He’s facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctions, and his lawyer is suing him for $1.4 million in unpaid legal fees. Rudy’s broke, and he’s now a criminal defendant. What the hell happened to “America’s Mayor” and the former US Attorney who brought down the New York mob? 

Friends of Rudy have long been concerned about his drinking. Now prosecutors are pretty focused on it too. 

Kevin McCarthy got what he deserved.

FROM THE ATLANTIC

A movement to help embattled and stressed election workers.

FROM GOVERNING

Trump’s escalating violent rhetoric is straight out of the autocrat’s playbook. 

FROM THE GUARDIAN