Timeline
MAGA Mike XXL
With Trump's blessing, every Republican member of the House voted to elect an election denying, White Christian Nationalist culture warrior as Speaker of the House.
Mike Johnson's election as Speaker of the House is a victory for Trump and his MAGA warriors who threw the House in chaos and dysfunction for 3 weeks by blocking any nominee who voted to certify the 2020 election. When candidate Johnson first ran for the House in 2016 he bragged, "I was called to the legal ministry and I’ve been out on the front lines of the culture war.” As an elected member of the House, Johnson led House efforts to overturn the 2020 election, criminalize abortion, deny climate change, demonize immigrants, and attack the LGBTQ+ community.
The Republican House of Lies
Kevin McCarthy appoints MAGA extremists, liars and seditionists to key House committees as part of a backroom deal to become speaker.
McCarthy bribed 21 Republican holdouts with key committee appointments to secure the votes needed to become speaker. This includes putting four election deniers on the House Oversight Committee. A White House spokesperson said in response that McCarthy has handed, "the keys of oversight to the most extreme MAGA members of the Republican caucus who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories.”
History Will Remember Your Names
On the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Biden honors the heroes who defended democracy while House Republicans capitulate to the insurrectionists' caucus and hold Congress hostage again.
The contrast could not be more stark. On January 6, President Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 14 heroes who defended the Capitol and American democracy. At the very same time, the GOP leadership was negotiating the "terms of surrender" to House extremists who support violence, lies, and insurrection. The President said of the January 6 heroes that, “History will remember your names." The same can also be said of 147 congressional Republicans who voted to overturn American democracy.
Three Strikes and You're Out!
Kevin McCarthy is publicly humiliated by the rightwing Freedom Caucus by being the first House majority leader to lose the floor vote for speaker in 100 years.
For years McCarthy abased himself before Donald Trump in the hope of becoming House Speaker. And then on his big day, the Republican caucus dissolved into chaos when the Freedom Caucus blocked McCarthy on three consecutive speaker floor votes. Ultra rightwing Congressman Matt Gaetz said on the House floor, "Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn't someone who has sold shares of themself for more than a decade to get it."