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January 6, 2023
Punchbowl News Presents
Introducing Tech – our newest policy vertical. From high-profile interviews with industry influencers & policymakers to key lobbying updates, Punchbowl News Tech will be your go-to for timely technology insights.
PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Friday morning. Today is the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to several figures who resisted former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the election, including U.S. Capitol Police officers Eugene Goodman, Harry Dunn, Aquilino Gonell and Caroline Edwards.
You don’t need us to tell you this, but the repercussions from that horrible day still reverberate for many – people who work on Capitol Hill and those who rely on Congress for their jobs. Trump remains under criminal investigation over his role in the insurrection, while another big trial of rioters starts today.
This summer’s blockbuster Jan. 6 committee hearings showed how much we didn’t know about what really happened that day. And the November elections demonstrated that much of the country hasn’t moved past the incident either, not nearly as much as many Republicans believed, at least.
So like everyone else, we’ll bow our heads and say a prayer for those who died or were injured in the incident, while hoping fervently that we never see anything like it again.
Pressure: McCarthy tries to push toward a showdown
The increasingly chaotic situation surrounding Kevin McCarthy and his bid to become speaker is highly fluid – to say the least.
As House Republicans enter the fourth day of this internecine struggle, the GOP leadership’s plans seemingly change at a moment’s notice. One minute they’re going to move to adjourn, the next, they’re ready to start another round of voting. At times it seems like significant progress is being made, only for that to turn out to be a mirage.
Yet GOP leaders now believe they’re reaching a tipping point. Either a large bloc of McCarthy’s 20 conservative opponents moves in his direction following yet another round of negotiations or McCarthy’s quest to become speaker may have stalled out permanently.
Let’s run down everything we know after a very long day and late night in the Capitol.
| → | Conference call this morning: House Republicans had planned to hold a conference call to explain to the rank-and-file the prospective rules package deal that leadership wants to cut with McCarthy’s opponents. We laid out the outlines of this hoped-for agreement in the PM edition last night and the AM edition on Wednesday morning. |
As of late last night, the call had not been noticed to the broader conference, so we’ll see whether it ultimately comes together.
McCarthy planned to use a conference call instead of an in-person meeting because such calls are easier to manage. In-person meetings tend to be unruly and unproductive. But leaders can choose who speaks on a conference call.
Should this call come together, McCarthy and his allies will lay out what they’ve decided and try to rally all 222 House Republicans behind it – or at least enough to make him speaker.
| → | The grind-it-out theory: McCarthy insists he doesn’t anticipate adjourning the House for any significant period of time – i.e. the weekend – until the speaker’s race is wrapped up. |
“We shouldn’t leave. Why should we leave if we haven’t got our work done?” McCarthy told us as he left the Capitol around 9:45 p.m. last night.
We asked McCarthy whether he’s concerned that at some point soon, even his allies will tell him to step aside in favor of another Republican, such as Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
“Have you seen any drop [in my support]? But you would’ve thought” that would occur, McCarthy added.
Then McCarthy repeated what’s at the core of his argument – which is also very true at this point: “Who else can get to 218?”
However, there are those around McCarthy who believe that he needs to wrap this up today or else his speaker bid is mortally wounded.
McCarthy doesn’t concur with that view, of course. McCarthy has kept his 200 or so supporters in line through three days and 11 rounds of voting. His emissaries have continued to negotiate with the opposition to find a way out of the stalemate. Few other party leaders could do that, McCarthy and his supporters argue. McCarthy is still 18 or so votes shy of becoming speaker and he vows to keep grinding until he’s holding the speaker’s gavel.
| → | Continue to drive a wedge in the opposition: McCarthy’s backers who have negotiated this proposal include: Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), French Hill (R-Ark.), Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), Garret Graves (R-La.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), plus Emmer and his chief deputy, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania. |
This team has burned the midnight oil negotiating with conservative hardliners led by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), among others.
As we’ve explained for days, if Roy is able to reach a deal with the pro-McCarthy faction on the rules package, Roy needs to bring along 10 or so Republicans with him. McCarthy can then try to pressure the final conservative holdouts to move to his side. It’s a high-wire act that needs to be executed impeccably. So far, it hasn’t yielded the results McCarthy has hoped for, obviously.
This is a huge test for Emmer and Reschenthaler, who will be the party whips in the GOP majority.
We wouldn’t be surprised to see “the vote” happen today. When we say “the vote,” we mean the tally where we see GOP leadership begin to clamp down on these conservatives to throw their support to McCarthy.
It’s important for Team McCarthy to continue to put pressure on conservatives. The longer this tentative rules deal sits out there, the more it’s going to get picked apart. And that will make it even harder for McCarthy to become speaker.
We asked Jordan, the incoming Judiciary Committee chair, if he thought the votes could come together Friday. He said, “I hope so, but we’ll see.”
– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
FLASHBACK
What McCarthy thought about the speakership in October
We traveled with Kevin McCarthy in October – ahead of the November election – and spoke to him about what it would take to become House speaker.
What he said then really sticks out to us now. And we wanted to run it again here because it shows how even McCarthy badly underestimated the challenges he would face, especially if the election results weren’t as strong as Republicans hoped.
Here’s McCarthy:
It’s interesting to read this after 11 failed ballots for speaker.
– Jake Sherman
THE SENATE
White House digs in on Garcetti with little signs of progress
On the first day of the new Congress, the White House officially re-nominated former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to serve as U.S. ambassador to India.
But there are few signs that Garcetti’s prospects for confirmation have advanced at all. His nomination has been stalled since President Joe Biden picked him in July 2021 amid claims that that Garcetti mishandled sexual harassment allegations in his mayoral office. Garcetti has denied that he was aware of the alleged behavior by a top aide.
Still, the White House isn’t giving up on Garcetti’s nomination. Olivia Dalton, the principal deputy White House press secretary, indicated that Biden is dug in on Garcetti, telling us that the ex-mayor “deserves swift confirmation to a post of crucial importance to our national security.”
We asked whether the White House has seen signs of progress that led to his immediate re-nomination this week. Dalton didn’t answer directly, referring to the 50-50 Senate’s confirmation of more than 800 nominees during Biden’s first two years in office.
“We’ve made clear the mayor is the president’s pick and we want floor action as soon as possible,” Dalton added.
The reality is, there is no movement here and Democratic aides said they were surprised that Garcetti was re-nominated. With several Republicans steadfastly opposed to Garcetti’s confirmation and vowing to block a unanimous consent request, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will have to devote precious floor time to Garcetti’s nomination if he wants to move it.
Before that happens, the Foreign Relations Committee will need to consider Garcetti’s nomination once again. During his confirmation hearing in December 2021, just one member — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — asked Garcetti about the sexual misconduct claims. He cleared that panel by a voice vote a month later, but formal holds from a few Republicans delayed floor consideration.
One of those holds was from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has since pulled back but has vowed to oppose the nomination on the floor and object to a unanimous consent request, if one is made.
Democrats have privately whispered for months that Garcett’s nomination is effectively dead, as we’ve reported. The White House is keeping it on life support — and it’ll ultimately be up to Schumer to decide whether it lives.
—Andrew Desiderio
REPUBLICANS IN ARRAY?
Centrist Republicans to America: We can govern, we promise!
News: As the speaker drama plays out, the centrist Republican Main Street Partnership is launching a national digital ad campaign to convince Americans that the majority of the House GOP Conference is ready to get to work.
It’s a tough sell for a party that has already undergone 11 speaker votes this week without coalescing around a candidate. But the RMSP is doing its best to push back on the “Republicans in disarray” message through a five figure-investment on digital platforms nationwide.
Here’s an example of the digital advertising the group is running, which takes aim at the anti-Kevin McCarthy contingent:
Sarah Chamberlain, the RMSP CEO, said the goal is to show most House Republicans “want to get to work for families across the country” and invite Americans to join a movement of “common sense conservatives who are focused on getting things done, not grandstanding.”
— Max Cohen
PRESENTED BY BOEING
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How to tackle crypto’s heavy emissions, according to crypto
CES has featured plenty of conversations around the future of crypto policy. One topic has loomed especially large for the sector: how to cut down on the digital currency’s massive energy consumption.
These talks are happening at a pretty dire moment for crypto. The sector is still in the midst of a prolonged economic downturn. And every day brings fresh, terrible headlines about the collapse of FTX and its disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
But complaints from climate-sensitive advocates targeting the amount of energy many crypto technologies require to function is much older. That said, there’s also robust debate about the usefulness of some commonly-cited figures – like the idea that Bitcoin infrastructure consumes as much energy as some small nations.
Bottom line, optimism and good PR doesn’t exactly abound for crypto right now. But if the sector is here to stay, insiders have some ideas about how these problems could be addressed.
At a CES panel Thursday in Las Vegas, several speakers pointed to carbon offsetting, a climate strategy increasingly popular across much of corporate America, that leading crypto companies could adopt. Under such a plan, companies can put money towards projects or certain instruments that supposedly take carbon out of the air or otherwise neutralize some amount of emissions.
Planting a bunch of trees is a typical, perhaps over-simplified, example of that kind of thing. There is skepticism about this approach – it’s not hard to imagine companies would rather throw money at small climate projects than make massive changes to their practices to reduce direct emissions.
But advocates say when done right, there’s more to carbon offsetting than checking boxes and hoping for the best. Kat O’Brien, chief partnerships officer at ClimateTrade, argued there was “a very rigorous process for approving carbon offsets and certifying” with some offset programs.
There could also be a use for decentralized finance in climate finance one day if you squint at the sector’s big picture promises. Could crypto developers find some way to automate the intense auditing that goes into a climate finance project? Maybe!
Here’s Jonmichael Hands, vice president of storage business development at the Chia Network, who argued crypto technologies could help reduce redundancies in carbon offsetting finance:
It’s important to remember that crypto is still new, and some of its technology could improve over time and reduce its energy consumption by a lot, backers say.
For now, big-picture crypto legislation from Congress remains a distant possibility. Lawmakers have expressed concerns about its energy use, yes, but priorities in near-term are simpler. For example, there is currently no federal law defining what a digital asset is. We should probably start there.
– Brendan Pedersen
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Punchbowl News Presents
Introducing Tech – our newest policy vertical. From high-profile interviews with industry influencers & policymakers to key lobbying updates, Punchbowl News Tech will be your go-to for timely technology insights.
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