Big Capitol Hill news: Speaker Mike Johnson has installed several veteran Republican oversight operators atop the House task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Frederick Hill will be the staff director. Hill is a veteran of the House Oversight Committee and was a key aide in Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) chairmanship of the panel in the early days of the Obama administration.
Lauren Holmes will be deputy staff director. Holmes is also an Oversight alum who is now the general counsel of the House Small Business Committee. Like many in House GOP legal circles, she graduated from George Mason University’s law school.
Bill Burck will be one of two special counsels. Burck is about as high profile as they come in Republican leader circles. A lawyer with a pair of degrees from Yale, Burck is the global managing partner of Quinn Emanuel. He has represented Don McGahn, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and former Special Counsel Robert Hur.
The task force’s other special counsel is Jon Skladany. Skladany, also a George Mason law graduate, was staff director to the House Oversight Committee. He’s currently special counsel at Jenner and Block. Skladany has run previous investigations into the Secret Service.
Hill and Holmes traveled to Butler, Pa., last week to visit the site of the attempted assassination. The pair also met with Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), the task force chair.
A few quick observations: That Johnson made these appointments shows his team’s intricate involvement in this panel. And that Republicans have tapped seasoned figures shows the influence the GOP will exert on this committee.
Walzing into 2024 race: In tapping Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen a fellow ideological traveler, a politician who has shifted his views on a host of topics to fit the Democratic Party of the moment.
The 60-year-old Walz has been in public office for 17 years, spending much of his congressional tenure safely in the ideological middle of the House Democratic Caucus. In Congress, Walz occasionally sided with Republicans on gun laws, earning an A mark from the NRA while also working with the GOP to craft agriculture policy critical to his southern Minnesota district.
Progressives, however, say he’s one of theirs: a champion of free college tuition, free school lunches and transgender rights. To the left — including the Democratic Socialists of America — Walz is a welcome departure from the corporate Democrats that the base has come to loathe.
But to his detractors, Walz is a progressive ideologue who let BLM protestors burn Minneapolis to the ground, issued driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants and aligned with progressives on transgender policy.
Much like Harris, the once crusading anti-crime district attorney, Walz can be everything to everybody at the same time. Walz’s stances give fodder to his conservative detractors and hope to his liberal supporters, yet he doesn’t fit neatly into either political camp.
This, in many ways, is a blessing and a curse for the Harris-Walz ticket. Republicans have sharply criticized Harris for shifting her view on a number of issues, including fracking and single-payer health care. Walz will likewise get hit by the Trump campaign on his leftward turn, especially as Minnesota governor.
For example, in 2006, Walz campaigned on sending undocumented immigrants back to their home country to reapply for citizenship. As governor, he signed a bill last year allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
But the working hypothesis about the race is that none of this truly matters. Former President Donald Trump has been on every side of nearly every contemporary political issue under the sun. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) bashed Trump before becoming a Trumpian. So let’s not go overboard about shifting on critical issues of the day.
The political calculation behind choosing Walz isn’t terribly complex to comprehend. Team Harris thinks that they can put Pennsylvania in play with or without Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ticket. At Tuesday evening’s rally in Philadelphia, Shapiro proved himself to be a more-than-able orator willing to boost the Harris-Walz ticket from the outside.
Harris’ vibes with Walz aside, the thinking is that the Minnesota governor can help Harris win critical Midwest states and serve as a very-affable contrast to the more cerebral Vance.
And how about Shapiro? There are those in the Democratic Party who say that Harris committed political malpractice by not putting Shapiro on the ticket. And, of course, if Harris loses Pennsylvania, it will have been. But we heard from several House Democrats who were truly worried about the union vote if Shapiro made it onto the ticket. Harris needed to put any down-ballot drama behind her.
Let’s note one other fascinating dynamic at play in this race. Three of the four top candidates — Harris, Walz and Vance — came from humble beginnings. Vance maybe even more than the two Democrats, although Harris and Walz went to far more modest colleges than Vance.
Yet Trump — beloved by the middle class and the non-college educated — is the son of a mega-rich New York developer and landlord. Trump also does nothing but play up his own billionaire status.
