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US Politics
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Kevin McCarthy' is out. What's next?
So Kevin McCarthy today became the first speaker in American history to be removed from his job involuntarily, and the House is now going to be plunged into a period of uncertainty, with American governance losing the leader of one of its most important branches.
Patrick McHenry, a representative from North Carolina and an ally of Kevin McCarthy, is going to be the interim speaker and he will have to be able to execute most of the duties of the speaker, at least until there could be a new vote to replace him. But the question is going to be, who on earth has 218 votes to become speaker in this environment?
There's a small group of conservatives who are showing a lot of muscle here by taking McCarthy out, and they could do that to a future speaker as well, all over the issue of spending, and what's likely to happen now is that you get possibly flat funding on spending into next year. And the biggest loser from all of this could end up being Ukraine aid, because the same group that took McCarthy out are among the biggest opponents of additional Ukraine aid in the United States Congress, and that can make funding a new round of Ukraine aid well into 2024 a lot more difficult than the Biden administration was hope for.
So this could potentially have, this is a small vote that started with a disgruntled member from Florida, that could have massive geopolitical consequences that are felt for years.
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
What are the implications of the death of US Senator Dianne Feinstein?
Senator Dianne Feinstein died this week at age 90. She was the longest serving female senator in history and a former mayor of San Francisco who was a trailblazer for women in politics in the United States. She had been sick for a little while, leading to calls from fellow Democrats for her to step down from her seat and allow somebody younger to take over both the Senate seat from California and her coveted seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And after she announced her intention to retire this year, a number of California Democrats stepped up and said they were going to run for her seat. Governor Gavin Newsom, who clearly has national ambitions beyond California, has said he wants to fill her slot with an African-American and has said he intends to stay out of the primary race, which has caused some challenges for him, given that one of the candidates in the race is hoping to get a little benefit from being appointed to the seat.
One of the biggest questions is who will get her slot on the Judiciary Committee, which is now evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. If the slot isn't filled, then none of Biden's judicial nominees will be able to get out of the committee and get on to the floor. And while some Republicans have indicated that they are inclined to allow Democrats to fill the seat, not every Republican wants to do so because by blocking that seat from being filled, they can block all of Biden's judges.
So this could be an impasse that lasts for potentially a few weeks until there's likely to be a floor vote which would then appoint somebody new. But that could be one of the controversies coming out of this death.
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Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
How long will a US government shutdown last?
I'm here in Miami, Florida, which feels very far away from the drama happening in Washington, DC this week, where the House and Senate are unlikely to agree on a new government funding bill in time to stop a government shutdown from happening on Saturday night.
This raises a couple of key important questions. One, what are they fighting for? Well, there's a group of conservatives in the House who want to see deep deep spending cuts on appropriated spending. That means defense spending and all non-mandatory spending, like interest payments and Social Security and they're piqued that the government has grown quite a bit since pre-pandemic and they want to see about a 10% cut back to 2022 levels. And they're unlikely to get it because most other members of Congress are in favor of the debt limit deal that was agreed to earlier this year, which would have increased defense spending by about 3% and kept all non-defense discretionary spending flat.
Two, how are they going to get out of this thing? Well, no one's quite no one quite knows. There's some talk about a deal to exchange Ukraine money in order for border funds, some funds to secure the southern border and stop the flow of migrants coming over the border. But it's really unclear at this point whether or not that kind of deal can work out or if it can be worked out quickly given the deep divides between the House and the Senate.
And then three is how long is this thing going to last? And while it could be resolved early next week, some of the pain of the federal government shutdown starts to hit in for constituents, lawmakers. This could also potentially go deep into October. And as it goes deeper into October, the vast majority of members of Congress who want to see the debt limit deal be honored with the 3% increase in defense and 0% increase across the board that I talked about earlier. They may start to feel more pressure to agree to some additional cuts, which means that you could see those cuts be enacted into law as the price of the government reopen. Probably this will be resolved in the next week or so with another deal to extend current levels of funding until November, mid-November. And then we're going to be right back in the soup, having to deal with this all over again later this year.
So lots of drama still to come. Outlook is very uncertain and this could go on for weeks if not much longer than that.
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Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
Mitt Romney is retiring from the Senate. Will he be missed?
Utah Senator Mitt Romney and former Republican presidential candidate announced this week that he won't be running for reelection in the Senate to represent Utah in the next election cycle. Some people are speculating that this is because he might lose a primary challenge.
Romney remains pretty popular in his home state, but he does represent a dying breed of Republican, which is kind of a Reagan's Republican, Reagan's Republican. He's firmly from the pro-business country club wing of the party that has really been demolished by President Trump over the last several years as more populist Republicans, who have a stronger appeal to white working-class voters, have really taken over the party and trying to reshape it in President Trump's image. Romney was well-liked by some people in Washington, but not necessarily by his Republican colleagues in the Senate, where he was a bit of an oddball, supporting President Trump's impeachment, going against the tide of several other Republicans on a host of issues. And even though he ran as a conservative Republican in the 2012 nomination process that he won, he's now retiring with a reputation as a moderate Republican in today's party.
Romney always had kind of a difficult time fitting into the political world. He was obviously a businessman who was looking for ways to succeed, running as pretty liberal on issues like abortion when he was governor of Massachusetts and then positioning himself as, quote, “severely conservative” when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2012. And his legacy, however, is probably going to be mostly defined by his opposition to President Donald Trump over the last several years in his tenure as a Utah senator.
He'll probably be replaced by somebody further to the right of him. And the Senate itself is set to go through a generational transition as more of the old era Republicans start to retire and a new crop comes up. It's going to move the party in this much more populist direction.
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Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Who were the big winners and the big losers from this week's Republican debate?
Three clear winners were probably Vivek Ramaswamy, who's done pretty well in making a name for himself as a first time politician, and came across as likable and energetic, full of some fresh ideas that are probably going to appeal to a lot of Republican voters who were otherwise thinking about supporting President Trump. Two is Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and governor of South Carolina, who had herself a pretty good night scoring some points against Ramaswamy on foreign policy, and coming across as competent and credible. And of course, the third winner is Donald Trump, who didn't show up but kind of dominated the proceedings anyway and continues to be the front-runner even after the debate.
On the loser side, you had a couple of people who just didn't have great nights. Chris Christie got resoundingly booed for his strategy of attacking Trump and presenting himself as the alternative, or trying to create space for somebody else to get in that lane. Mike Pence really did nothing to distinguish himself. In fact, I kind of forgot he was up there at times, as I've forgotten that he's even running for president right now. Same with Tim Scott, who I think has a very great story and is a very likable guy, but just isn't resonating with a lot of Republicans.
And the biggest loser was probably Ron DeSantis, who's presented himself as the most credible alternative to Trump so far but has really been tailing off in the polling, has shown himself to be vulnerable to people like Ramaswamy, and last night didn't really do much to change that narrative. He kind of has his line of attack against the cultural left, which resonates with a lot of Republican voters. But there's no real reason to prefer him over President Trump at this point, and there probably aren't enough Republican voters who will do so, that will help propel him to the next level.
There won't be any votes cast in this election until Iowa, which is next year. And in the meantime, there's going to be another debate, probably also without Trump, in California, in late September. So, stay tuned for an entertaining Republican primary, but one that kind of feels like they're play-acting a little bit without the dominant force, former President Trump, up on stage.
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Is it really a Republican debate without President Trump?
Eight candidates are going to show up in Milwaukee this week in order to debate on stage for the right to be the Republican nominee for President, and all of them are going to be living in the shadow of the one candidate who won't show up: Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, who's been indicted four times for various criminal charges across multiple jurisdictions in Georgia, New York, Washington, and Florida.
Trump is dominating the Republican field right now, and even though he's not showing up for the debate, he's going to be the main topic, because every single one of these candidates who is going to be there, who met the RNC's strict qualifications to show up on stage, is going to be trying to distinguish themselves and take down his massive polling leads. So this contest this week isn't going to be about these candidates trying to get out ahead of one another. They're trying to break through so they can knock away at Trump's polling lead.
We're still months out from the first vote being cast in this election, and Trump right now looks unstoppable. Ron DeSantis is the only credible candidate who's in double digits on the polling, but his campaign has largely flailed out over the last several months, with his approval ratings dropping and his meager polling advantage over the rest of the field starting to droop. So, this is Trump's race to lose. He's not likely to show up for any of the debates because he's so far in front of the field. This is a great front-runner strategy of just ignoring everybody else and not even acknowledging that it's a real contest, and right now it looks like it isn't one.
So, the debate may be pretty entertaining, but it's going to be a lot less entertaining without Trump there. The debates in 2016 is where he really distinguished himself from the field and established himself as the greatest show on Earth in American politics. He'll try to dominate media through his post on Truth Social, and of course, the rest of the campaign is going to be him dominating because of his criminal trials.
So, tune in for the debate. Should be entertaining, could be a lot better, and we'll see if he shows up for the second one.
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Trump's fourth indictment: is this the one that does him in?
Former President Trump was indicted this week in Georgia on charges that he attempted to overturn the election results there. He was indicted along with a broad group of co-conspirators by a local prosecutor. And this case represents some more serious legal jeopardy for Trump because even if he wins the White House, there's not much he can do to either pardon himself or get the charges dropped. There's now four criminal indictments against the President, one in Manhattan on a relatively minor set of document charges that he probably won't go to jail for. Two in a federal courtroom, one in Florida and one in Washington DC about his mishandling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the election on the day of the Capitol riot on January 6th.
Both of those he could be convicted of, but if he wins the White House, he can either drop the charges against him if they're still pending or pardon himself. If he doesn't win the White House, then he faces some legal risk. However, in Georgia, whether or not he wins the White House, this case will be brought and he will be trialed. And if he's found guilty, the state may attempt to force the sitting president of the United States to go to jail. Truly an unprecedented situation. Never had anything like it in the United States. Never even had somebody facing criminal indictment like this, running for the White House. So this is going to be the dominant news story over the most of the campaign. Over the better part of the next year and a half, as President Trump sits in a courtroom in Georgia potentially with the cameras rolling or sits in the federal courthouse or the courthouse in Manhattan facing the hearing, the charges that are being leveled against him.
By day and then at night he goes out in campaigns in Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and talks all about how the system is corrupt and trying to take them down. And longer term, this is going to end up eroding support for law enforcement among Trump's Republican supporters, which is going to be ultimately bad for the rule of law as Republicans start to turn away from the local prosecutors and the federal law enforcement that are going after President Trump for what they believe are purely politically motivated issues. So, huge story. You're not going to be able to avoid it. He's the most famous man in the world. He's facing four trials overlapping to one degree or another that'll probably play out over the next several years. Good luck trying not to hear about that.
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