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October 2, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Monday morning.
The House of Representatives — the most volatile organ in our body politic — is lurching from crisis to crisis thanks to the dysfunction inside the GOP conference.
Less than 24 hours after Congress averted a government shutdown, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — reviled by many House Republicans — went on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday and told Jake Tapper that he’d file a motion to vacate, challenging Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s hold on the gavel.
Gaetz acknowledged his effort is likely to fail, suggesting Democrats “probably will” come to McCarthy’s rescue. Gaetz then criticized McCarthy for even considering the possibility of remaining speaker with Democratic support — despite the fact that Gaetz spent weeks courting Democrats in his bid to topple McCarthy.
Once Gaetz files his motion, the GOP leadership has two days to schedule a vote. There are some preliminary steps that have to take place before the vote on that motion, though. One is called a “Question of consideration.” If a majority of the House simply doesn’t want to deal with this issue, they can kill it. Read more about that here.
The Republican leadership could also try to hold the vote immediately, although attendance will be the key here. Some pro-McCarthy lawmakers have argued to us that they should preempt Gaetz’s motion with a motion to vacate of their own. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus discussed this option, although Democrats in that group are unlikely to do so without some nod from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
In any case, a McCarthy ally will offer a motion to table Gaetz’s proposal.
At that point, McCarthy’s best hope is that a large group of Democrats either sit out the vote or vote present, thus lowering his threshold to win without formally backing the speaker. Or Democrats vote to table the motion, arguing they don’t want to be dragged into a Republican civil war.
As of late Sunday, key members of the Problem Solvers Caucus and the Blue Dog Coalition — the centrist Democrats most likely to help McCarthy — hadn’t heard from the speaker’s team nor their own leadership. They’re not free agents here, of course. Jeffries will have to decide how to respond to all this.
The math here for McCarthy is tricky. It’s feasible that there will be 20 or more Republicans who could vote against him. That would have to be offset by an equal amount of Democratic yes votes, which is what Gaetz wants.
The question then becomes can McCarthy really survive inside the Republican conference after losing that many GOP votes? McCarthy’s leadership team knows that’s problematic. McCarthy will run into trouble on rule votes and other party-line procedural measures if he relies on Democrats to keep him in the speaker’s chair.
Making it more dicey for McCarthy is that Gaetz has signaled he’ll keep filing these motions until the speaker is gone. But this threat cuts both ways. Gaetz loses the shock value of his motion every time he offers it. McCarthy, though, risks having his support slowly melt away as members tire of walking the plank for him.
But here’s another question: Could McCarthy move to change the motion-to-vacate rule after Gaetz attempts to boot him — assuming the speaker survives it? That’s come up in some conversations we’ve had with McCarthy’s allies. He’d need 218 votes to do so, meaning Democrats would have to back him up there, too.
Are we convinced McCarthy will get through this? No, not at all. McCarthy very well could be a former speaker by the end of this week. And anyone who tells you definitively that they know what’s going to happen is delusional or isn’t being honest.
But we can say the following:
No. 1: McCarthy doesn’t want his career to end at Gaetz’s hands. The speaker’s friends think Gaetz isn’t fit to serve in Congress, much less have a say in who’s speaker.
No. 2: McCarthy has about 200 solid GOP votes he can count on. No one else in the Republican Conference can match that — not at this moment. That could change. But it’s the reality as of now.
No. 3: The universe of potential yes votes for ousting McCarthy is small. Twenty to 30 Republicans at most. So the lobbying effort is narrow but very intense.
No. 4: Gaetz is unmovable. There’s nothing that McCarthy can offer him to go away.
No. 5: You should expect McCarthy’s allies to move against Gaetz. If the Ethics Committee sanctions Gaetz — we first reported the Florida Republican was under investigation back in June — then the pro-McCarthy faction will blow this up. Gaetz has repeatedly blamed McCarthy for that probe.
No. 6: House Republicans — and Democrats too — don’t want to undergo the chaos of an extended floor fight over the speakership. January’s debacle is seared in everyone’s memory.
No. 7: If McCarthy gets Democrats to back him in some way, Gaetz and his supporters will say the speaker bought them off somehow. The House Republican Conference could become even more unstable.
No. 8: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer aren’t really taking part in the effort to defeat the Gaetz motion. McCarthy is relying far more on close allies including Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Garret Graves (R-La.), as he did back in January.
— Jake Sherman, Mica Soellner, Max Cohen and John Bresnahan
Tomorrow: Join us at 9 a.m. ET for a conversation with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) about national security and foreign policy. There’s still time to RSVP to attend in person at the Hilton Washington, D.C. Capitol Hill or on the livestream!
Coming Tuesday AM: We’re launching our latest editorial project, The Future of Cybersecurity, tomorrow just as Cybersecurity Awareness Month begins. Over the next four weeks, we’ll dive into the issue, including how it’s playing out in the government and private sector, the legislative prospects as well as key players to watch. Don’t miss!
HOUSE DEMOCRATS
What will Jeffries do?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries faces his most significant test since becoming the chamber’s top Democrat. Will he help save Kevin McCarthy’s speakership?
Ask those close to Jeffries and they say the burden is on McCarthy here. Either McCarthy decides he wants to try to keep his job and makes the necessary overtures — and concessions — to Jeffries, or he doesn’t. But to Democrats — and this is really important — the onus is on McCarthy to reach out and begin those conversations.
There’s a lot happening behind the scenes. Jeffries has shot down our questions recently about how he’d respond to a motion to vacate filed against McCarthy, saying he doesn’t “answer hypotheticals.” But Jeffries and his leadership team have very much been working through the options.
Jeffries won’t announce a decision without first consulting the full House Democratic Caucus. His No. 2, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, sent a letter to Democrats Sunday afternoon essentially telling everyone to wait for a caucus consensus to emerge.
For Jeffries, there are conflicting political dynamics at play:
McCarthy: Jeffries actually has a pretty decent relationship with McCarthy. And it came after a handshake agreement they made just before the start of this Congress to treat each other better than their recent predecessors had. We wrote all about that in September.
But Jeffries is “really pissed” at McCarthy over how the GOP leader handled the floor debate on the clean CR this past weekend, according to several Democrats close to leadership. And McCarthy’s comments Sunday accusing Democrats of wanting a government shutdown made things much worse.
House Democrats say they privately asked GOP leaders for 90 minutes to scrub the bill and review it with their caucus. They were denied that courtesy, with McCarthy moving immediately for a vote in which he’d need overwhelming Democratic support.
McCarthy’s actions further added to the erosion of trust that began when he walked away from the bipartisan debt limit agreement made this spring with President Joe Biden. Even if McCarthy and Jeffries reach some kind of deal for a coalition style of governing, Democrats worry they can’t trust the speaker to uphold his end of any bargain.
“People have a lot of ambivalence because they don’t trust him,” one senior Democratic aide told us.
Progressives: Jeffries has extremely strong goodwill inside the House Democratic Caucus right now. We can’t overstate that. He’s been a steady, capable hand since taking over for Nancy Pelosi. In fact, Jeffries — some progressives say — is more inclusive than the last leadership regime. Jeffries has also repaired relationships with liberals he used to dismiss as “the far left.”
But progressives hate McCarthy. Many of them think he’s no better than any other leader the GOP conference would elect. So why save McCarthy, they ask? Plus, they’d be helping Republicans look like capable stewards of government, which clearly isn’t true. And keeping McCarthy’s really successful fundraising operation in place — all when Democrats are just a handful of seats away from the majority — is a particularly tough pill to swallow.
“It’s not up to Democrats to save Republicans,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “I don’t think we give up votes for free.”
Moderates: Yes, there are some moderates who want to help McCarthy. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) has said as much publicly, and several others have told us the same privately. In some ways, it’s good politics for them back home. And moderates are generally the strongest institutionalists in the party.
And yes, some of them have talked with GOP moderates about ways to make the House work better, including a new rules package that empowers centrists in both parties. There were many other “concessions” being floated over the weekend, but there haven’t been any substantive conversations between McCarthy and Jeffries, and that’s what matters.
Some McCarthy allies vow the California Republican will make no concessions to Democrats. We’ll see how that goes.
Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), who chairs the center-left New Democrat Coalition, told us she thinks Jeffries has all the leverage in the situation.
“McCarthy can’t get to 218,” Kuster said. “At the end of the day, Jeffries is the Wizard of Oz — he is the one behind the curtain.”
One more thing: We’ve covered House Democrats for a long, long time. They have their own share of ideological clashes and party infighting. But burning the place down and seeing what comes next just isn’t in their DNA. In short, they don’t have the “Damn the torpedoes” mentality that many House Republicans do.
That being said, Jeffries and his leadership team are a younger generation. They aren’t as tied to the “institutionalist” school of thought that was the governing bedrock for House Democrats for so long. Stay tuned!
— Heather Caygle
PRESENTED BY WALMART
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WASHINGTON X THE WORLD
A big Ukraine fight on the horizon
News: Speaker Kevin McCarthy has told the White House that he wants a full briefing for House members on the administration’s strategy in Ukraine. That briefing could come as soon as this week, according to sources familiar with the matter. We’ll see if that gets delayed with the chaos inside the House Republican Conference.
This is the first chapter in the frantic push to get a new tranche of Ukraine aid through Congress.
Let’s start here: McCarthy is a supporter of Ukraine aid. And President Joe Biden seemed to suggest on Sunday that he’d made a deal with McCarthy over getting a vote on a future Ukraine aid package.
But about half of the House GOP is opposed to sending even minimal amounts of new aid to Kyiv. One-hundred-seventeen House Republicans voted against $300 million to train the Ukrainians — the kind of assistance that the United States has been sending since before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of his neighbor.
Ukraine’s supporters on the Hill understand that it’s going to be incredibly difficult for the House to pass another aid package.
So what are McCarthy’s options? More accurately, what are the Biden administration’s options?
In the GOP leadership’s view, the Biden administration needs to make a very compelling case for aid. McCarthy’s conference is filled with rank-and-file Republicans who think the White House has no strategy for winning the conflict and Kyiv is going to be an endless money pit. That said, the administration did offer a briefing around the time President Volodymyr Zelensky was in D.C. last month, but the House Republican leadership refused, as we scooped.
So for the White House, the Senate might be their best hope. The upper chamber, of course, is filled with a healthy supermajority of supporters of Ukraine aid. Chief among them is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
And the Senate already has a potential legislative vehicle to use to get this done. The aforementioned $300 million that the House passed — with Democratic votes getting it over the finish line — was already sent over to the Senate. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday took an initial procedural step to put the bill on the Senate’s legislative calendar.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) held up final passage of the stopgap spending bill Saturday night until he got a commitment from Senate leaders that a Ukraine aid package would be pursued. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, McConnell and top appropriators affirmed this in a statement released shortly after the vote.
Several senators have since suggested to us that the Senate could attach the Biden administration’s full-year Ukraine request — which will be tens of billions of dollars — to the $300 million bill and send it back to the House. McCarthy would then have a choice to make.
Note: Congress may also need to approve new transfer authority for Biden to send weapons to Ukraine from existing U.S. stockpiles. This authority was left out of the CR stopgap bill. The administration has said this is a crucial aspect of the United States’ support for Ukraine.
— Jake Sherman, Max Cohen and Andrew Desiderio
Despite impasse, top GOP staffers believe Ukraine funding will increase
Well, a government shutdown was averted at the last minute. But 92% of top Hill staffers who responded to our survey, The Canvass, expect a shutdown this year.
To be fair, it looked like a real possibility on Friday night. And it could still happen when the current 45-day spending deal runs out mid-November.
One major sticking point that has made the funding fights even more contentious is whether to continue aid for Ukraine.
While such a provision wasn’t included in the continuing resolution adopted over the weekend, 72% of top GOP staffers and 74% of Democrats say Congress will pass legislation this year increasing Ukraine funding. The survey was conducted Sept. 5-22 in partnership with LSG.
House Republicans have been vocal about their opposition to more funding for Ukraine. But lawmakers in both parties are working to deliver a new tranche of aid to the country before the end of this year.
Defense Department approps: Seventy-nine percent of respondents said Congress would increase Pentagon funding this year. Staffers from both parties were closely aligned on this.
Interested in taking part in our survey? The Canvass provides anonymous insights each month from top Capitol Hill staffers and K Street leaders on key issues facing Washington. Sign up here if you work on K Street. And click here to sign up if you’re a senior congressional staffer.
— Robert O’Shaughnessy
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THE GOLDEN STATE
Newsom to appoint Laphonza Butler to fill Feinstein’s Senate seat
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is appointing Laphonza Butler to the Senate to fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat.
Butler, a longtime Democratic activist, currently serves as the president of EMILY’s List, an organization that boosts pro-abortion rights Democratic women in elections. Newsom’s choice was first reported by Politico.
On Sunday, we scooped that Newsom’s appointee will be free to run for a full Senate term in 2024 and that there will be no precondition that this is simply a temporary replacement.
So if Butler decides to run for a full term, that would have an immediate impact on the 2024 race. Butler will have the advantage of incumbency. Currently, Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter are among those running for the seat.
Newsom had previously suggested he’d only appoint someone who didn’t want to run for a full Senate term in 2024 because this could interfere in the state’s ongoing primary process. Before that, Newsom said he would appoint a Black woman.
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) was pushing Newsom to appoint Lee, a longtime House member.
Senate Democratic leaders expect that Butler will be sworn in by the middle of this week, preserving Democrats’ 51-seat majority in the chamber. The Senate is returning to session tomorrow evening and is expected to vote this week on nominees for the federal bench and the State Department.
Feinstein, who died at age 90 last week at her Washington home, will lie in state at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday. Her funeral will be held on Thursday.
— Andrew Desiderio and Jake Sherman
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