A Future-Congress Problem

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

As every long-time couple does, my partner and I have a lexicon of recurring jokes and catchphrases. One he brought to the mix is the coda on deciding to push off an unpleasant task until later: “That’s a future-Kate problem.” Present-Kate then will embark on the leisurely activities of her choosing while, say, her laundry pile (Mount Clothesimanjaro) continues to grow.

Congress decamped on Thursday for the long August recess, not to reconvene in Washington D.C. until early September. Did both chambers leave their work in a good place, easily able to pick back up and finish the appropriations process before the fiscal year ends and a shutdown looms on October 1? Ha.

The Senate, to its credit, got all 12 spending bills through committee — something the head appropriators, Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) were eager to tout.

“For the first time in five years, this committee finished passing all twelve individual appropriations bills with overwhelming bipartisan votes, under incredibly tough circumstances — and all before the end of July,” they said in a press release.

They added that it’s the first time the Senate Appropriations Committee has been led by two women. Those bills still need to get through the full Senate, but the largely bipartisan success out of committee bodes very well.

The House has much less to brag about.

There, House Republicans have passed a handful of bills out of committee that are dead on arrival in the Senate, hung with riders that restrict abortion, slice out gender-affirming care and quash diversity initiatives. Some are even more laser-focused, with one provision aimed at giving anti-abortion protesters in Washington D.C. a payday.

They were only able to pass one bill through the full chamber, amid a nasty floor fight, and (unlike the Senate) are not expected to encounter smoother waters ahead. As evident from the howls of House Democrats, those bills are little more than messaging documents with virtually no bipartisan buy-in — meaning they’ll need the votes of the far-right members for whom obstruction and power flexes have become second nature.

This is all setting the stage for an unbelievably messy — and probably very slow — conference committee process, when the two versions of each funding bill must be reconciled. The House’s right flank insists on the culture war provisions; Senate Democrats respond with something like “over our dead bodies.” All the while, the clock ticks a possible shutdown ever closer.

“I have been talking to our members about what’s going to be a brutal September,” House Appropriations Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told Politico.

But that’s a future-Congress problem. 
 

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kate Riga

The Trump Loyalty Group Chat

Tucked in at the end of Thursday’s superseding indictment of Trump was a solitary paragraph which contained multitudes. After the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago last year, Trump aide Walt Nauta allegedly called another Mar-a-Lago employee and, referencing the newly indicted Mar-a-Lago maintenance man Carlos De Oliveira, said, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.”

That same unnamed employee then purportedly did two things: told Nauta that Carlos was loyal, and then, at Nauta’s request, wrote the same in a group chat which included the leader of a Trump PAC, reported to be Susie Wiles. The chat was on encrypted messaging app Signal, and allegedly includes Wiles and Nauta.

The same day that De Oliveira’s loyalty was confirmed, prosecutors said, Trump gave him a call: he would get a lawyer, expenses paid by Trump.

— Josh Kovensky

McCarthy Widens His Vocabulary

This week has been dominated by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s word games.

On Monday, during a Fox interview, McCarthy said the ongoing bogus probes into President Biden and his family are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry.” But in his usual fashion, the Speaker walked his remarks back the next day and dulled his comments further on Thursday, announcing that he would only launch an inquiry if the White House does not hand over the information House Republicans are demanding.

His carefully calculated word game got mixed reactions from his caucus. While McCarthy loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) parroted leadership’s talking points, saying that an inquiry is actually “different that an actual impeachment vote,” other far-right members like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) criticized McCarthy, calling his political maneuvering “impeachment theater.”

But the usual in-fighting within the House GOP actually gives a clear insight into party politics. The charade around a Biden impeachment points to the daily dance McCarthy has to participate in to keep the hardcore far-right members of his caucus, who routinely threaten to jam up all forms of legislative business, in line and moderates and those from swing districts, whom he tries to keep onboard with the party agenda by downplaying hardliner’s shenanigans, happy.

In this case, just raising the word “impeachment” in public gives McCarthy a carrot to dangle in front of his far-right flank. And it’s a carrot that serves several purposes for MAGA Republicans who are obsessed with taking revenge for former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments as well as the legal heat he’s gotten from the Department of Justice. And on top of revenge, McCarthy can rely on the word games to appease his far-right flank into playing along with the rest of the caucus as the fight over 2024 spending bill and appropriations bills picks up.

— Emine Yücel

“When I saw the picture, I immediately wished that it had been taken from the opposite angle and gotten Glen Grotham in the background instead of me.”

That’s what House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said when asked about being in the photos of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) showing posters of Hunter Biden’s nudes during a congressional hearing last week.

I never imagined Comer and I would fundamentally agree on anything but I am 100% with him on this. No one wants to be in that photo. Which brings us to the inevitable question: Why did your favorite conspiracy theorist congresswoman think those posters were a good idea? It will likely remain a mystery just like most of the stuff she does.

— Emine Yücel