Morning Report — Johnson takes his shot at the gavel

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 10/25/23 6:39 AM ET

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House GOP Vice Conference Chair Mike Johnson (La.) will seek the Speaker’s gavel in a floor vote at noon today, becoming the latest in a string of Republican hopefuls for the position since it was made vacant three weeks ago.

Johnson, a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, was chosen during a closed-door nomination process Tuesday, followed by a roll call vote to confirm his support within the conference.

“The intention is to go to the House floor tomorrow and make this official,” Johnson said late Tuesday, alluding to a House floor vote on the speakership scheduled for noon. Asked about Republicans who were not there to vote Tuesday night, Johnson acknowledged there were absences and said he would be “working with them tonight.” It was not immediately clear how many votes he received in the conference’s roll call (The Hill).

“I like Mike, I want to be clear, all the guys and gals running, awesome folks, that is a tough road ahead for anyone,” Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) said after Tuesday evening’s candidate forum. He listed off former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the three previous GOP Speaker nominees, adding “how many guys in leadership do we have to kneecap?”

“We’re in bad shape,” Miller said.

The House GOP is becoming increasingly desperate in its quest to find a Republican who can win the Speaker’s gavel on the House floor, after passing the three-week mark since eight Republicans joined with Democrats to oust McCarthy. Earlier in the day, Johnson, serving his fourth term, came in second to Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) in a nominating vote that spanned five ballots. Emmer’s own nomination followed failed bids in the past three weeks by Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). 

But the Minnesota Republican’s time as the nominee was short; he dropped out approximately four hours after his nomination was announced.

Just minutes after Emmer won the internal vote, a contingent of Republicans made clear they would not back him on the House floor, making it virtually impossible for him to secure enough votes to win the gavel. Making matters worse for Emmer, former President Trump released a scathing statement calling the majority whip a “Globalist RINO” and saying voting for him “would be a tragic mistake” (The Hill and Politico).

Johnson, unlike Emmer, is known to be a Trump ally and was a staunch defender of the former president during the impeachment hearings. He led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in four swing states (Axios). 

Takeaway: The former president may not have a record of pushing GOP candidates to victory, but he has proven his power to bury more than a few — and it remains to be seen whether he’ll try to exert influence over the party’s fourth Speaker pick.

(Of note: If Johnson wins the gavel, he and fellow Louisianan Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, would form a leadership team from the Bayou State.)

The Washington Post: 10 hours, two nominees: Chaos on Capitol Hill and still no House speaker.

THE MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION: Who can govern a chamber where the slim majority seems determined not to let itself be led?

Throughout the three rounds of votes on Tuesday night, growing numbers of members voted for a candidate who was not on the ballot: McCarthy. If their holdouts will extend to the floor vote today remains to be seen as Johnson seeks the magic 217 votes. 

McCarthy is not averse to a suggested shared Speakership with Jordan. Asked why this idea — which lacks key details, precedent and proof of mathematical odds — was being floated now, one GOP lawmaker told NBC News on Tuesday: “We’re desperate.”

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:

▪ The Senate struck a deal on three bipartisan government funding bills Tuesday, allowing lawmakers to move forward on legislation the chamber has been working to advance on the floor since last month. 

▪ A deadly hospital blast Oct. 17 in Gaza was caused by a Palestinian rocket that broke apart after engine failure, not an Israeli airstrike, U.S. intelligence agencies said Tuesday. The New York Times’s advanced video forensics team ruled out one public theory but did not pinpoint who and what caused the blast. 

▪ The United Auto Workers expanded its strike Tuesday as General Motors announced a bonanza earnings quarter.

LEADING THE DAY

MIDDLE EAST

The Israeli military said Wednesday it killed a Hamas general in Gaza as it continued aerial bombardment and asserted during a news conference that Iran was directly linked to aiding Hamas before the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Biden administration on Tuesday defended its resistance to global calls for a negotiated cease-fire in Gaza, arguing through national security spokesman John Kirby that such a move would benefit Hamas, even if it helped increasingly desperate Palestinian civilians dodging Israeli airstrikes aimed at Hamas.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken — responding to global pressure about horrific conditions in Gaza and fears of a widening war — called on nations during a speech to the U.N. Security Council to contribute humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza amid reports that too few trucks carrying provisions, medicine and food are getting into Gaza through Egypt. He said “humanitarian pauses must be considered,” seen as the strongest U.S. suggestion to date that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza should be balanced against humanitarian considerations for civilians.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN: The tallies of children and young people killed and injured in the region since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 is heartrending. UNICEF said in a statement that 2,360 children in the territory and more than 30 children in Israel have been killed, more than 5,360 children in Gaza sustained injuries and dozens of other children were being held hostage in Gaza.

“The killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access constitute grave violations of children’s rights,” said Adele Khodr, the agency’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

▪ The Hill: The U.S. shifts its tone on Israel-Hamas war as a potential ground invasion looms.

▪ The Hill: The war in Gaza scrambles Biden’s foreign policy agenda.

▪ The Washington Post: U.S. readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded on Tuesday for civilians to be protected in the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants, speaking of “clear violations of international humanitarian law” in the Gaza Strip. That did not sit well with the Israelis. In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called on Guterres to immediately resign, while Israel’s visiting Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a planned Tuesday meeting with Guterres. “After Oct. 7, there is no room for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased from the world!” Cohen wrote.

© The Associated Press / Seth Wenig | Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the United Nations Tuesday encouraged nations to contribute humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. 

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at noon.

The Senate convenes at 10 a.m. to resume consideration of the nomination of Jessica Looman to be administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.

President Biden will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 8:30 a.m. Biden will hold a state visit (the fourth of his presidency) with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, beginning with a welcome on the South Lawn at 10 a.m. The president will meet with Albanese at 11 a.m. and they will hold a joint news conference at 12:30 p.m. in the Rose Garden. Biden and first lady Jill Biden will host a State Dinner at 8:45 p.m. for Albanese and his partner, Jodie Haydon. The first lady and Haydon also will tour the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., at 11:40 a.m. to highlight U.S.- and Australia-based researchers.

Vice President Harris will join the Bidens to greet Albanese and Haydon at the South Lawn at 10 a.m. Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will attend the State Dinner honoring Australia at 8:45 p.m.  

The secretary of state will join Biden’s meeting with Albanese at the White House at 11 a.m. and attend the State Dinner.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at 8:30 a.m. will host a roundtable conversation with corporate and philanthropic partners to discuss how the public, private and philanthropic sectors are reaching communities that have been left behind. Yellen will deliver keynote remarks at 2:30 p.m. to close the department’s Freedman’s Bank Forum. The secretary will attend the White House State Dinner for the Australian prime minister.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Jacquelyn Martin | President Biden awarded national science and technology medals during a White House event Tuesday.

POLITICS & CAMPAIGNS

Biden’s reelection campaign is under pressure following a series of polls showing the incumbent trailing GOP primary frontrunner Trump. The Hill’s Jared Gans reports on how the president’s advisers and Democratic strategists talk about his prospects in 2024. 

The Hill: Biden will not file for the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

COMPLICATING 2024 is No Labels, the opaque centrist organization that has been planning an independent presidential candidacy designed to break the major party duopoly in American politics (New York magazine). The Democratic group Third Way on Tuesday released a new broadside against the No Labels effort to field a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, citing a recent polling presentation that shows a hypothetical ticket scrambling a race between Biden and Trump.

The Third Way memo comes as Biden allies have aggressively moved to quash third-party bids while warning Democrats that encouraging outsider candidacies might throw the election to Trump (The New York Times). Among New York voters, Biden saw his lowest survey numbers since taking office, the latest Siena College poll shows. Biden’s favorability rating dropped to 45 percent, down 5 points from his 50 percent favorability rating in September, which had jumped from 46 percent in August.

Meanwhile, war between Israel and Hamas splits Americans, The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes in The Memo. Politics, academia, Hollywood and the media are splintering as the Palestinian death toll mounts from Israeli reprisals for the killing of about 1,400 Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7. Pro-Israeli voices accuse their opponents of equivocating about, or even excusing, the horrific attack by Hamas — an approach they allege is often driven by antisemitism. Those who are more sympathetic to the Palestinians say their suffering is underreported and undervalued — and that there is a difference between sympathizing with Hamas and acknowledging the historical context of a complicated conflict. 

2024 ROUNDUP:

▪ Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, when asked Tuesday on NewsNation’s “The Hill” about a potential presidential race, said, “The only decision I’ve made is to focus on Virginia and to make sure that we hold our House and flip our Senate.” Asked whether he will complete his term through January 2026, the governor added, “I fully expect to be doing the job as governor of Virginia.”  

▪ Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, the front-runner in a crowded Democratic primary race to succeed outgoing Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), would make history if elected as the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress. “My hope is that we get to a world where it’s no longer newsworthy that people like me are in politics or get elected to public office,” McBride told The Hill.

▪ Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has lurched rightward after announcing his independence from both political parties this month.  

▪ Republicans furious over colleges’ response to Hamas’s recent attacks on Israel are threatening universities’ funding and the visas of foreign students. While First Amendment experts balk at the idea, there are split opinions on how the issue would fall legally in the courts.

▪ Florida state Rep. Randy Fine (R) was once Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) Jewish outreach chair. Now he’s endorsing Trump.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Stefan Jeremiah | Former President Trump spoke to the media during a break of his fraud trial at New York Supreme Court on Tuesday.

TRUMP WORLD

Candidate Trump is busy this week as a defendant battling accusations in at least three jurisdictions. As cases wind their way through courthouses, one theme emerges: Lawyers, advisers and former aides who once considered themselves loyalists now assert that Trump and others in his orbit lied and misled others.

In New York on Tuesday, the former president sat with his arms folded as former Trump Organization lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified as part of a fraud case against Trump that he adjusted Trump’s assets on paper at the request of his former employer. Cohen testified that he and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg were directed by Trump to increase the former president’s total assets based on a number he “arbitrarily elected.” His testimony, which the former president asserts are lies, is scheduled to continue today.

“My responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, predominantly, was to reverse engineer the various different asset classes — increase those assets — in order to achieve the number that Trump had tasked us with,” Cohen said. Trump shook his head and appeared to mouth “no” to one of his lawyers. 

Georgia election: Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis tearfully pleaded guilty Tuesday, becoming the fourth defendant to cut a deal in a racketeering case in which Trump is accused of leading an illegal scheme to try to overturn the 2020 election results to try to stay in power. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She expressed regrets for what she described as her failure to do “due diligence” in checking the veracity of other Trump lawyers’ claims. Others who have pleaded guilty in the Georgia case: lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman.

Separately, in the Justice Department’s case against Trump tied to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, Trump’s legal team filed four late-night motions Monday seeking to get federal Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington to dismiss the government’s criminal prosecution or limit its scope before it reaches a jury.

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith‘s prosecutorial team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury. Meadows was granted immunity to testify under oath. He told prosecutors that Trump was “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in. Meadows told investigators he advised Trump at the time that accounts alleging voting fraud were baseless.

STATE & CITY WATCH

FROM THE GOLDEN STATE TO ASIA: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) met with Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday as part of his weeklong visit to China, where he reinforced his state’s commitment to collaborating with China on climate issues. “The long-standing partnership — and competition — between California and China has led to measurable progress,” Newsom said in a statement Monday.

Newsom’s six-day, multi city trip to China — delayed slightly by an impromptu Friday visit to Israel — is focused on climate partnerships, promoting economic development and tourism and fostering cultural exchanges. The trip should pave the way for a meeting between Biden and Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco next month in Newsom’s hometown (The Hill, Politico and SFGate).

▪ Reuters: Xi said in a Wednesday letter that China is willing to cooperate with the U.S. as both sides manage their differences and work together to respond to global challenges.

▪ Politico: “Delusional”: Capitol Hill hawks skewer Newsom’s China trip.

POST-ROE AMERICA: The Georgia State Supreme Court upheld the state’s six-week abortion ban Tuesday. It’s a move that leaves abortion largely inaccessible in the South. It reverses a lower court’s decision to void certain sections of the LIFE Act because it was enacted prior to the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade one year ago. Georgia’s LIFE Act bans, with some exceptions, abortion when early cardiac activity is detected — which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, when many women don’t yet know they are pregnant (CNN).

In Texas, the Amarillo City Council, in a marathon Tuesday meeting, weighed a proposed law to ban the use of roadways for the purpose of traveling to seek abortions beyond Texas in states where the procedure is legal. Six cities and counties in Texas have passed such bans, out of nine that have considered them. While no violations have been reported in the five jurisdictions that previously adopted the bans, their reliance on citizen enforcement makes them difficult to challenge in court (Reuters).

The Guardian: U.S. abortion rates rose post-Roe amid a deep divide in state-by-state access. States that still allow the procedure performed 116,790 more abortions than expected, newly released data showed.

AN INFLUX OF MIGRANTS: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) extended an executive order Monday that provides the state with greater flexibility to support asylum-seekers and provide them with humanitarian aid. The executive order comes as Hochul continues working to address an influx of migrants to the state (NBC 5). The number of migrants coming to New York City continues to climb, and so too the daily, per-person cost to house and care for them — now $394, up from $363 earlier this year. Between early May and mid-October, the number of migrants staying in shelters nearly doubled, officials said, to more than 65,000. Since an influx that began in spring 2022, more than 110,000 migrants have come to the city (Gothamist).

The Hill: The majority of New York voters say the migrant influx “will destroy” New York City, a new survey shows.

CHILDREN & SOCIAL MEDIA: Meta, parent of Instagram and Facebook, knowingly abuses the rights and harms the mental health of children, according to a lawsuit filed by 41 states and the District of Columbia. The legal actions represent the most significant effort by state enforcers to tackle the impact of social media on children’s mental health. A 233-page federal complaint filed on Tuesday alleges that the company engaged in a “scheme to exploit young users for profit” by misleading them about safety features and the prevalence of harmful content, harvesting their data and violating federal laws on children’s privacy. State officials claim that the company knowingly deployed changes to keep kids on the site to the detriment of their well-being, violating consumer protection laws. The barrage of lawsuits is the culmination of a sprawling 2021 investigation into claims that Meta contributes to mental health issues.

OPINION

■ Democrats should help elect a Republican speaker, by The Washington Post editorial board.

■ Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan are bulwarks of democracy against authoritarianism, by Joseph Bosco, opinion contributor, The Hill.  

THE CLOSER

And finally … 💸 Some crimes are a dime a dozen; others make less cents. Federal authorities on Friday released more details and unsealed charges in the theft of more than 2 million dimes earlier this year from a tractor-trailer that picked up the coins from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia and was headed to Miami.

The truck driver hauling the mint’s payload pulled into a parking lot to sleep on April 13. During the night, thieves made off with a portion of the total cargo of $750,000 in dimes, a shipment weighing about six tons. In the process, thousands of coins were left scattered in a lot in northeast Philadelphia. Prosecutors say the theft — which they now say totaled $234,500 in purloined dimes — was part of a spree of robberies from tractor trailers passing through the region. Other stolen goods: frozen crab legs, shrimp, meat, beer and liquor (The Associated Press).

While the dime theft confused authorities, one question lingered: How does one spend millions of stolen dimes — the smallest widely used coin in the U.S. — without drawing attention? Some of the thieves in the aftermath of their caper allegedly converted the booty into cash using Coinstar machines in Maryland and by depositing the loot in at least four banks in suburban Philadelphia (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

“If for some reason you have a lot of dimes at home,” Philadelphia police spokesperson Miguel Torres told the New York Times in April, “this is probably not the time to cash them in.”

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