Kevin McCarthy Returns to His House Freedom Caucus Hell
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It's back to school for Congress, where leaders from both parties are dealing with their own political messes. For Speaker McCarthy, he'll have to face the music even sooner than minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. He has 18 days to pass a spending bill that hardliners in his caucus will likely not agree to. It's the only way to avert a government shutdown.

And I'm talking about people like Matt Gaetz and Bob Good, who are hungry for an impeachment inquiry into Biden and even more border security. And they will likely refuse, you know, the kind of things that the White House wants, like more funding for Ukraine or passing a farm bill. Now, Kevin McCarthy has been kicking this can down the road for a while since he was made president.

speaker in January, barely after 15 votes. And the only way he was able to get the speakership was by agreeing to give these hardliners the power to remove him as Speaker of the House by giving just one person the power to call a motion to vacate his speakership. Will that happen? Will that moment finally come? Will McCarthy make it till October?

I asked my colleague, Abby Livingston, who covers Congress all about it. We also talked through my latest reporting about an avalanche that's coming for Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. It's in his own backyard and he's got to solve it if he wants to become speaker of the House. The New York Democrat basically has to find a way to make sure that the migration crisis in New York doesn't become the crime wave that helped Republicans win six seats in the House in New York during the midterm elections.

The only way for him to win back the gavel is through New York. And you can already hear the Republicans chanting that the migrants are coming. More on that later. But first, Abby, we're going to talk about Kevin McCarthy and the fresh hell that he faces this week. Well,

Well, I don't know if I would call it fresh hell. I would call it delayed hell because I think you can look at there's a whole lot of legislation, which I will not bore your audience with coming down the pipe that has been put off, put off, put off. And it's been putting out small fires. But the big thing, the two things to watch for are a government shutdown.

And this is taken so seriously that in August, congressional offices were planning October travel around the assumption there will be a shutdown. And I think it's widespread belief that as of midnight, October 1st, the federal government will be shut down. The other thing going on concurrently that is of this magnitude is a potential impeachment, which...

It doesn't seem like McCarthy has the votes to move forward on an inquiry based on reporting today, but this feels like mission creep. This is moving in a direction where the rhetoric is just each week moving more and more toward that. But amid all this, you have other bills that Americans really don't think about or are even aware that exist that deal with the FAA, food stamps and things like that. So it is going to be nonstop chaos. It is going to escalate from

Tuesday on in intensity with all of Congress coming back. It's been sort of a proxy war in the press while people have been spread out. But this is really serious stuff. And I mean, Kevin McCarthy is going to be tested in a way I have never seen a speaker tested. So, Addie, what should we be looking out for? What are the huge issues that Kevin McCarthy has to tackle? I don't know if it'll be that, but I have, and this may be so...

over the top, but it has crossed my mind. We could be looking back in January and thinking that Kevin McCarthy is either one of the most brilliant tacticians who's come through the house. And there are people who say that, that interpersonally, he is very adept at working with members, or he could be an ex-speaker. And it's just absolutely extraordinary we were in that situation. Now, when I make the historical comparisons, you can look at some of the tests Nancy Pelosi faced and say, well, she had it pretty tough too.

There are arguments that she would never put herself in the sort of position that McCarthy's in at this point. This is sort of, you know, punning the ball and waiting for, you know, putting off each crisis to survive another day. So we shall see. But this thing feels very unstable, very unsteady, and momentum could pick up quickly. It's funny that you're saying that Kevin McCarthy will be tested in a way a speaker has never been tested before.

I mean, Abby, I can't imagine it getting any worse for Kevin McCarthy, who had to face a national public humiliation when it took 14 or 15 times for him to actually be sworn in as speaker over multiple days. When you had Matt Gaetz literally making him into a buffoon. I can't imagine more hell, but it's actually Matt Gaetz and the same crowd that are threatening to take the speakership away from him, threatening to use that power that he granted to them, the motion to vacate.

This is basically how John Boehner went down. And that's the best way I can explain it because I'm not super into procedure. But a blast from the past, Congressman Mark Meadows did this in the summer of 2015, which six weeks later led to John Boehner realizing he no longer had the votes to stay in power. It's sort of a mid-term.

term kind of recall is the best way I would say it, but I'm sure there's some parliamentarians who would object with that characterization. But that's basically what brought John Boehner down. The craziest part about all of it was that to become Speaker of the House, he had to agree to allow just one member, just one Matt Gaetz, just one Marjorie Taylor Greene to be able to call a motion to vacate, to call a vote to take him out as Speaker. And they haven't used it yet.

It's been less than a year, but now all the hot potato issues are on the table and they could absolutely do it right now. So are you saying that maybe Kevin McCarthy may not be Speaker of the House in, say, a few months? They're asking for very heavy cuts. Off the top of my head, I believe, well, this is a way to get a bunch of things that they have wanted. The border issue, which we're going to talk about

and a bit has come up. Marjorie Taylor Greene has made huge demands with keeping the government open and kind of married into that, layered into it either formally or informally is looking more and more like impeachment. So basically it's, there are a lot of Republicans putting on every demand that they can think of on this whole concept of keeping the government open. And there

There are more of the rebels that are making who are making these kinds of demands than in 2013 when we had the last government shut down with a Democratic president and Republican Congress. And so this is this is much more volatile. And that one was brought to kind of a slow end. I just don't know where this ends. I mean, could you see House Republicans and Democrats on the floor voting for a new speaker in like October?

because there's a government shutdown or because these House Freedom Caucus members don't get the impeachment that they want, or they wanted to fund the DOJ, or they refuse to fund aid to Ukraine or whatever other spending bill most Republicans want funded. Most moderate swing voting Republicans want funded, but they refuse.

Government funding runs out at midnight on September 30th. So, you know, they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but we are dealing with a very new dynamic in leadership. You've got, you know, on the other side, you've got Mitch McConnell, who appears to be weakened in at least physically. And so there's just a lot of variables that we aren't used to in covering Capitol Hill. Oh, and a new leader in Hakeem Jeffries. Michael?

My question is, if they do call a motion to vacate, Kevin McCarthy has to step down and they do have another round of votes for a speaker. Who would both the moderates in the party and the rebel House Freedom Caucus members agree on to be the new speaker of the House?

Well, and that's been the best job security. And there are House Republicans who are vehemently defensive of Kevin McCarthy. And the term apologist has been used to me in his management because they see no one being able to do this well. So the next in line is Steve Scalise, who was announced he has cancer and he's under treatment. But this question hangs over McCarthy, has hung over him for months and months. And there's really no one. This seems like an unmanageable situation.

situation. And the perception among many Republicans is he's doing as good as anyone could do. But John Boehner, who was a speaker of the House, he never actually faced a vote.

It was just a threat of a motion to vacate. I believe that could happen, but also in the Boehner situation, I couldn't have told you the minute I heard that he was resigning that Paul Ryan would be the next speaker. So, you know, these things move fast and, you know, I've just learned to just sit back and kind of watch these things because you never know where they'll land. I want to talk to you a little bit about what the congressional Republicans are doing by talking about Joe Biden and the term impeachment in the same sentence.

Do we even think that Kevin McCarthy could actually get the votes to impeach Joe Biden? So far, I haven't seen any evidence that Joe Biden is guilty of a crime that would merit impeachment. That may change. And, you know, congressional Democrats right now are trying to put it out there that that Republicans have not found that evidence yet.

But there's definitely a conversation that's happening out there. And it includes the word Joe Biden and impeachment. Whether they belong together, not so sure. But it's happening. And it's certainly a way to muddy the character of the man and the presidency. And...

I'm sort of wondering, you know, how can congressional Democrats fill this void? Do you think there is a void that has to be filled? I think the void that is being filled is a need for retribution for the impeachments of Donald Trump and the political tactic to equalize the two most likely nominees of each party to both have the unpleasant consequences

tagging of impeachment, as you mentioned in their biographies. I think a lot of this based on how members are acting is generated from Donald Trump. But I, again, I come back to 1998. I feel like the Trump impeachments were so strange because of the pandemic and so many other things. It's hard to find causal in correlation to impeachment in the

electoral outcome, but you look at 1998, I knew Gingrich lost his speakership over it because they did not pick up as many seats as was, or I guess, I think even Democrats made gains but couldn't recapture the House. This did not play well in America. I just think if the government is shut down and there's also an impeachment, I just do wonder if Americans are going to sit there and say this is what they're doing instead of getting the national parks open or getting NASA functional. So my gut is this doesn't play well.

But I've been made a fool of many times in American politics. But it just doesn't seem like on the front burner of Americans outside of the very most potent base of the Republican Party. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've done a lot of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.

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Is there even a reality in which House Republicans could impeach Joe Biden or would? At the end of the day, you need to take the vote to the House for an impeachment. And I don't think that Kevin McCarthy has the votes as it stands right now.

David Brock, he's a Democratic operative, a knife fighter and defender of Hunter Biden. He told me that the gloves are off and families are on. And the new tactic to defending Hunter Biden is to go after all congressional Republicans and point out how their families benefited from their position of power. He said that they have these research products or operatives.

opposition research that they've been handing out to the press. And they believe that stories will be published this week that point out how congressional Republicans have, you know, are being hypocritical when they go after Hunter because their kids, too, have benefited from the power. Do you think this is effective?

Do you think that this will work? Curious what your thoughts are on this, Abby. And just a little background on David Brock. He has been a Democratic knife fighter for a while. Before that, he was a Republican, but he did help Hillary Clinton. And right now he's got a super PAC called Facts First, which has been supporting Hunter Biden. And first they put out oppo ads on Republicans, and now they're putting out oppo research ads.

It's efficacy maybe in the individual member not wanting that kind of negative press. But that is something sort of along the lines of David Brock. It is just sort of feeling like we're getting into terrain like 1998 and David Brock was on the other side of it then. And so this is very personal. This is very intense. And I just think the escalation of this is just one more reason a lot of people

A lot of people don't want to run for office. And I'm not casting judgment on the tactic. It's just more and more people who I talk to who are thinking about running for Congress look at this and go, why would I get involved? But yeah, I mean, this is the personal nature of American politics now. I agree with you. It's definitely the House Freedom Caucus that's pushing for it.

but it's absolutely also Donald Trump. He has been pressuring Kevin McCarthy on this. He's in an election year. He's still bitter over the fact that he was impeached twice. He wants Kevin McCarthy to do something about the fact that Biden has not been impeached yet. And, you know,

Kevin McCarthy to this point has been very conciliatory to Donald Trump. I think he's feeling the pressure right now. He's yet to endorse Donald Trump as well. And all these House Freedom Caucus members are basically mini Donald Trump's running around Congress wreaking havoc and they are blood thirsty for impeachment. If there's one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he loves revenge and he

He wants revenge for the two impeachments that he faced, whether it's warranted or not. Yeah, I mean, I just think if you're a Republican and who won a seat in a district that Joe Biden carried in 2020, this does not feel like a good vote to make. And this is a very different dynamic than where we were four years ago in 2019 with the national security freshman Democrats like Alyssa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger who led the impeachment. They were the ones who were going to pay the political price

And in here, you're not seeing that same version of Republican calling for impeachment loudly. I think what's happening is members get so much negative feedback on their phones and in their Twitter feeds from the base that they're starting to view that this is, you know, if you're in a state district, this is what the rest of the world thinks. And it's obvious to move forward on impeachment. But I don't think the whole conference is there at this point.

Okay, Abby, I want to talk to you about my column that I wrote last week in the best and the brightest. It is called Hakeem's Hometown Migrant Crisis.

I talk about an issue that I think Democrats are overlooking right now, at least House Democrats. It's the migration crisis in New York City. It feels like it has all of the same components of the crime crisis in New York that helped Republicans take back the House in 2022. Basically, there are about six suburban, central, and a few upstate

in New York state that went to Republicans because they were scared of crime that was happening in New York City. They were hearing, you know, on their local news about defund the police, about this botched bail reform. And they were hearing it from the mayor of New York City saying there's crime. And they were really so upset by it that after voting for Biden in 2020, they voted for Republicans in 2022, believing that they could handle crime better than the Democrats.

This cost Hakeem Jeffries the speakership. It was New York. All of six seats went to Republicans in New York. And so...

There's a fight going on right now, an intra-party fight between a Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, who people have referred to as a madman to me, Democrats I'm talking about, and the president of the United States where he's demanding more assistance with the migration crisis. He's saying, we've got 100,000 people on our steps. We need federal money, land, work permits. We need executive orders. We need help. And you've got all these red state governors like

Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott in Texas, just busting up migrants up to New York, Chicago, Boston, just watching the chaos unfold and saying, you know what? Now it's your problem to deal with. And now it is the problem of the Democrats to deal with. And they don't really know how to touch it or deal with it. In rhetoric, they've always been pro migration, right? I think this isn't something they are used to. And

it could become another huge issue for them in 2024, especially in New York, where the leader of the Democratic Party, Hakeem Jeffries, he's the House minority leader, and it's his job to win back the House so that he can be speaker. He has to deal with it in his own backyard. And now the Cook Political Report shows that those seats that he has to win back, they really haven't budged. They're still like toss-up or lean Republican, except, of course, for George Santos' seat. And...

And there's been a lot of like quiet panic about that and also questions about what is Hakeem Jeffries going to do? I mean, how is he going to help us? He can't possibly continue to be leader of the Democratic Party and not be able to help Democrats be able to win back his own state. Right.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this because you are just brilliant when it comes to all things congressional. You know, want to pick your brain on what you think, Abby. Well, I'm going to give you the greatest compliment a reporter can give to another, which is when I read it, I thought I should have thought of this too or should have had, you know, it was one that was like, oh, this is so smart. And I think you're looking around a corner I had not

even thought to. New York is the center of the democratic world right now. You've got the minority leader from the House side, Hakeem Jeffries there. You've got the majority leader in Chuck Schumer, and it's New York. And there's just all these colliding personalities and these seats and donors, and the gavel comes through New York, no matter how you look at it. Democrats are completely obsessed with this state in a way they have not been in the past.

What I was surprised, and I think part of it was because I have not been talking to too many New Yorkers of late, was I had a completely different read on him, which is in the larger House caucus...

it is a honeymoon for Hakeem Jeffries. And he has not had to disappoint anyone so far. His leadership race was very calm. Typically, these things are like the scene in Jerry Maguire, where he's fighting with Bob Sugar on the phone for clients. And it was very smooth. That doesn't mean he was lucky or it was easy. And a lot of this may have been behind the scenes. But we don't really have a lot to see so far of how Hakeem Jeffries would govern as speaker. And I think this is a really good test case where you're having to deal with

different jurisdictions, different stakeholders, different personalities. This is something Democrats have to deal with because when New York is involved in the House electoral cycle this time, everything is existential. Hakeem Jeffries is taking over from Nancy Pelosi. He is stepping into some really big shoes. He can't be fighting the president. He cannot

Be fighting Joe Biden and saying, give these leaders what they're demanding, which is an executive order that provides federal aid, federal land work permits. He can behind the scenes try to grease the wheels and make, you know, Eric Adams and Joe Biden get along. They are currently on vacation.

not on speaking terms, I've been told, but there was a meeting that was set up in D.C. Hakeem Jeffries set this up between Eric Adams and DHS Secretary, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but it just did not seem to be very fruitful because Eric Adams is still on every single day about the crisis. And all he can do is kind of like

perhaps provide strategy and messaging for candidates who are trying to take these seats back and frontliners. And that's what people are looking for. And I'm being told that they haven't gotten it yet. I mean, can he do anything in terms of legislation, Abby? No, I mean, I just, I've seen that, that fall apart year after year after year. And it's an unavoidable thing from where I used to cover politics in Texas that I'm seeing seep over into this. So it is a,

an unresolvable difficult situation that our current politics can't really deal with. And so, and I think just also, so Nancy Pelosi built her majority in part on California, right?

when she took power, when she came to Congress in 1987, it was still a viably Republican state. And she systematically won House seats up and down California, destroyed the Republican infrastructure because there were no office holders. And that was a huge part of her base of power was the California delegation. So and then, you know, in a contrast, this isn't the same thing. But I remember when Martin O'Malley in 2014 was gearing up to run for president and

A Republican succeeded him in the governor's mansion in Maryland. And that was just a real tell that maybe his political skills aren't that strong. So I just think it's really... I think you're dead on that how you deal with things in your backyard are very determinative about your future. So Abby and I both have to jump because we've got a Puck News meeting. But it's always great to pick Abby's brain. She's been covering the Hill for decades and she really gets it and has such institutional knowledge and...

and historical knowledge, as you heard. And so thank you for joining. I'll definitely have you back on now that Congress is back in session. I can't wait to come back. And thank you for having me, Tara. Thank you for tuning in to Somebody's Gotta Win. I hope that you're enjoying it, the conversation, and you're feeling smarter. You feel like you know what's happening next week, this week. Please rate and subscribe and share with your friends. I'll be back on Thursday.