Connect with us

Politics

G.O.P. Congress Struggles to Do the Basics Amid Party Infighting

Published

on

G.O.P. Congress Struggles to Do the Basics Amid Party Infighting

Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who leads the Appropriations Committee and is a longtime party political strategist, observed on Wednesday that congressional majorities are typically lost either through overreach or dysfunction.

Congressional Republicans seem to be opting for the latter.

“Right now we don’t look as functional as we need to look,” Mr. Cole acknowledged as the House and Senate strained to get some of their most basic work done in the face of bitter internal divisions and increased finger-pointing among Republicans.

With midterm elections approaching and control of both chambers at real risk, Republicans are struggling to pass essential legislation, let alone the political messaging bills typical of the months running up to Election Day.

The House floor was frozen on Tuesday and ground to a standstill for several hours on Wednesday as Republican leaders pleaded for votes and cut side deals. Two of those hours were spent laboring to win a preliminary vote to begin debate on a series of bills — what used to be considered a routine step until the current Republican majority assumed power and rank-and-file lawmakers, noting their party’s vanishingly slim margin of control, latched on to such moments as leverage.

Advertisement

Now the routine step has become an extraordinary travail for Speaker Mike Johnson, who is constantly toiling to please various Republican factions, cognizant that a misstep, or any reliance on Democratic votes to pass bills, could draw a challenge that could cost him his job.

“We live in a period where leaders are afraid of their members, and members are afraid of their voters,” said Mr. Cole.

On Wednesday, heated discussions were prevalent on the Republican side of the aisle. Lawmakers shouted at each other across the House floor. Mr. Johnson huddled with holdouts and defectors, beseeching them to get in line. Deals were cut, then reneged on and renegotiated, and even the G.O.P. budget plan — normally a unifying measure — stalled for more than five hours as unrelated disputes were hashed out behind closed doors.

“Guys, this is why they say lawmaking is like watching sausage be made,” a beleaguered Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday evening.

Some Republicans even accused their colleagues of being in the pocket of the pesticide industry — the sort of pointed critique usually aimed at members of the opposing party if made at all, since lawmakers do not like to remind voters about the influence of political contributions.

Advertisement

Other Republicans shrugged off the escalating political combat as the way business is done these days.

“It should be a fist fight on everything,” said Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee. “It shouldn’t be easy.”

But the congressional temperature was rising high enough that one former Republican House member from Texas, Mayra Flores, urged her ex-colleagues to take it behind closed doors.

“There is no reason to turn every issue into a public spectacle online,” Ms. Flores wrote on X, saying she was “honestly embarrassed” by the conduct of some of her former colleagues. “The country is facing real challenges, and constant public infighting only makes the work harder.”

Republican leaders, trying to break a logjam that threatened to derail their entire immediate agenda, relented on Wednesday and agreed to rework a major farm policy measure that is historically one of the more popular bills before Congress. But its path remained unclear because of a dispute over ethanol tax credits and opposition from a handful of Republican lawmakers who opposed a liability shield for pesticide producers that has outraged the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Advertisement

“This is causing cancer and it is making people sick,” Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, said as she urged reporters to investigate members of the Agriculture Committee and the donations they get from pesticide producers.

After sundown, Republicans got stuck on the budget resolution providing the framework for $70 billion in funding for President Trump’s immigration crackdown as they tried to quell protests over Mr. Johnson’s handling of the farm bill. The budget outline finally passed on a party-line vote, but it was a mark of the G.O.P. difficulties that a surge of money for tough immigration enforcement embraced by nearly all Republicans was almost sidelined by the farm bill furor.

The House voted to extend a surveillance law that the intelligence community says is critical to identifying potential terrorist attacks, but the Senate almost immediately said the House bill was unacceptable and that it would be sending back an alternative with barely 24 hours left before the statute was set to lapse.

What lawmakers were not talking about was how to break loose bipartisan legislation, passed in the Senate but stalled in the House, that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security after a more than 70-day shutdown, as the administration warned that funding for paying workers was again about to run out.

Top House Republicans blamed Senate Republican leaders for mishandling the legislation and then trying to jam it down the throat of the House. They said the fact that the measure explicitly says that “zero” dollars should be expended for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol is untenable for some Republicans, who fear they could be attacked for defunding the police.

Advertisement

Mr. Cole said the House wants changes, which could again slow the bill in the Senate.

“All of this is created by bad management in the Senate and by not being open and transparent with us in the House,” he said.

But Senate Republicans believe they had a deal with Mr. Johnson to pass the spending bill weeks ago, when he publicly endorsed it.

The standoff has tested the patience of the usually even-tempered Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, who reacted testily this week when Mr. Johnson suggested that his chamber wanted unspecified modifications.

“You’d have to figure out what they were doing and whether or not it materially affects in any way the bill that we passed not once, but twice, by unanimous consent,” Mr. Thune said, noting that he and Mr. Johnson jointly announced an agreement to pass the funding legislation on April 1, and that it still had not reached the House floor.

Advertisement

Should it get there, it would likely attract sufficient Democratic support to offset any Republican defections. But that is one of the reasons Mr. Johnson has been reluctant to move forward, since turning to Democrats to help pass legislation can upset his right wing and lead to a challenge to his leadership.

As he assessed the situation, Mr. Cole said that splintered Republicans had a clear choice: put aside their differences and move ahead, or face the consequences.

“You can either be part of a functional majority and get almost everything you want,” he said, “or you can hold out and get nothing and be in the minority next time.”

Megan Mineiro and Michael Gold contributed reporting.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Politics

Trump’s Plaques on the Presidential ‘Walk of Fame,’ Fact-Checked and Annotated by Historians

Published

on

Trump’s Plaques on the Presidential ‘Walk of Fame,’ Fact-Checked and Annotated by Historians

In a well-trafficked walkway linking the West Wing to the White House residence, President Trump has recast history with gold-lettered plaques that summarize each of the 47 U.S. presidencies.

They are peppered with falsehoods, misrepresentations, insults, praise, self-promotion and erratic capitalizations.

Advertisement

Attendees at a Rose Garden dinner mingled near the plaques in May. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

The Times photographed each plaque and asked eight historians who have studied and written about both Democratic and Republican presidents to examine and annotate the exhibit, which spans 5,400 words.

Advertisement
  • Nicole Anslover

    Florida Atlantic University

  • Portrait of Douglas Brinkley

    Douglas Brinkley

    Rice University

  • Portrait of David Greenberg

    David Greenberg

    Rutgers University

    Advertisement
  • Portrait of Timothy Naftali

    Timothy Naftali

    Columbia University

  • Portrait of Larry Sabato

    Larry Sabato

    University of Virginia

  • Portrait of Daryl Scott

    Daryl Scott

    Morgan State University

  • Portrait of Marc Selverstone

    Marc Selverstone

    University of Virginia

  • Portrait of Sean Wilentz

    Sean Wilentz

    Princeton University

    Advertisement

The historians noted that the plaques are not a dispassionate museum display. Rather, they said, they are a skewed narrative of history by Mr. Trump, with him as the protagonist. The plaques are written in Mr. Trump’s signature hyperbolic style, as seen in his social media posts.

Asked about the plaques, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, ​said, “As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself.” The Times shared the historians’ observations with the White House, which declined to comment on the specific points in the annotations. It also declined to provide details on the sources Mr. Trump and others used to write the plaques.

Advertisement

Mr. Trump showed the plaques to New York Times reporters in January. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

The commentary surrounding more recent presidents — like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama — adopts a sharper and more partisan tone. While entries for earlier presidents are less combative, they recast history in a way that favors Mr. Trump’s priorities and the unprecedented actions of his administration. The exhibit “is not so much bad history as it is anti-historical,” said Sean Wilentz, an American history professor at Princeton University.

Tariffs are mentioned 18 times. Major scandals are left out (Teapot Dome), or not explained (Watergate). The Monroe Doctrine — which Mr. Trump has misinterpreted, historians say, and used to justify U.S. interventions in the Western Hemisphere — is repeatedly lauded.

The White House ballroom project — which is still under construction and caught in a legal battle — is described as already built. Mr. Trump himself appears in the capsules of six predecessors. And the description of the first year of his second term takes up more space than the summaries for the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt combined.

Advertisement

Below is the full, unedited text of the plaques, along with a selection of historians’ comments that has been edited for clarity. While the annotations offer insight across the plaques, they are not meant to be comprehensive. Unannotated copy may also include falsehoods or misrepresentations.

Advertisement

Explore the plaques, with  annotations from historians

To choose a presidency, click on a numbered box or search by name. To see a historian’s annotation, click on a highlighted phrase.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Politics

House Dem lashes out at GOP efforts to probe foreign donations with stunning claim on motive

Published

on

House Dem lashes out at GOP efforts to probe foreign donations with stunning claim on motive

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., lashed out at Republican efforts to investigate a Democratic fundraising apparatus on Wednesday afternoon, characterizing the ongoing fraud probe as the most recent instance of GOP retribution against Black women in power.

“Over and over again, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has harassed Black women with bogus lawsuits,” Sewell said on Wednesday morning.

Sewell’s criticisms come as as Republican lawmakers probe ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising and campaign organization, and its CEO and president, Regina Wallace-Jones, for potentially accepting illegal donations.

In particular, House Republicans are demanding that ActBlue turn over international communications, probing whether the organization knowingly misled lawmakers and dodged subpoenas to hide weaknesses in its screening process to weed out illegal, overseas donations.

Advertisement

DEM FUNDRAISING GIANT IN THE HOT SEAT AS GOP LAWMAKERS DEMAND ANSWERS OVER DODGED SUBPOENA

Ranking Member Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala. speaks during a House Administration Subcommittee on Elections hearing on Capitol Hill on May 20, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The review by lawmakers coincides with an April request from President Donald Trump to investigate the group.

“There is evidence to suggest that foreign nationals are seeking to misuse online fundraising platforms to improperly influence American elections,” the White House said in a press release.

Wallace-Jones has called the investigation baseless, maintaining that ActBlue applies high scrutiny for its donations processing.

Advertisement

JASMINE CROCKETT CLAIMS TRUMP IS ‘TERRIFIED OF SMART, BOLD BLACK WOMEN’ AFTER PRESIDENT’S ‘LOW IQ’ JAB

Regina Wallace-Jones of Palo Alto soaks up the first evening of the DNC Convention at the United Center in Chicago, IL on Monday, August 19, 2024. (Photo by Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

“Our approach is multilayered, with checks and confirmations occurring throughout the donation process to verify donors and donor information,” she told Fox News Digital in a statement earlier this year.

Among other safeguards, Wallace-Jones said the organization requires Card Verification Values (CVVs) for credit card donations, uses IP addresses, a kind of digital footprint, to identify foreign-sourced contributions, applies an industry-standard Address Verification System (AVS) and manually reviews donations.

To Sewell, the investigation into ActBlue and Wallace-Jones is tainted by other investigations into black women who have crossed Trump in the past.

Advertisement

“This investigation is just one more example of Republicans and President Trump using power of his office to harass and intimidate anyone willing to challenge him. The Trump Department of Justice has used its power to intimidate and victimize communities of color, especially Black Americans,” Sewell said.

ACTBLUE CHIEF HEADS TO CAPITOL HILL HOT SEAT AS DONOR FRAUD PROBE INTENSIFIES

A banner featuring an image of President Donald Trump is displayed on the facade of the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 20, 2026. (Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Image)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“We should not forget the harassment of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, the harassment of the New York Attorney General, Tish James and the harassment of our colleague Congresswoman LaMonica McIver,” Sewell said, listing off a number of similar cases.

Advertisement

“It is not surprising that this Republican-led committee is now attacking ActBlue and its CEO, Ms. Wallace-Jones,” Sewell said.

Continue Reading

Politics

Democrat Fiona Ma, Republican Gloria Romero to face off in race for lieutenant governor

Published

on

Democrat Fiona Ma, Republican Gloria Romero to face off in race for lieutenant governor

State Treasurer Fiona Ma and former California Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero have been declared the two winners of a crowded primary election for lieutenant governor, securing themselves spots on the November ballot.

Ma is a Democrat. Romero is a former Democrat who said she registered as a Republican after splitting with Democrats over the push to oust President Biden as the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.

Both were declared as the top-two winners by the Associated Press. Under California’s primary system, the first and second place finisher advances to the November general election, regardless of their political affiliation.

Ma is a certified public accountant serving as state treasurer. She previously sat on the California Board of Equalization and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She also served three terms in the California Assembly.

Advertisement

Romero is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. She served as a Democrat in the Assembly and state Senate, becoming the Senate’s first woman majority leader in 2005.

Other notable candidates included former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and Josh Fryday, a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet. Both are Democrats.

The position is largely ceremonial. The lieutenant governor serves on various boards that oversee the University of California, California State University and community college systems, and can be called upon to break a tie in the state Senate. If the sitting governor dies, resigns or is removed from office, the lieutenant governor would assume the role.

Ma and Romero have offered some similar viewpoints. Both candidates previously expressed support for the death penalty and opposition to the state’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

Neither candidate supports the controversial Billionaire’s Tax Act. Romero, however, has further vowed to shun all potential tax increases.

Advertisement

Ma and Romero will now face off in November. The winner will replace Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who is finishing her second term and could not seek reelection. Kounalakis instead ran for state treasurer.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending