cnn.com – Analysis by Stephen Collinson – Kevin McCarthy is the latest Republican leader to find out that it’s impossible to get ahead of his party’s inexorable march to its far-right extremes.
But on Friday’s two-year anniversary of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he’s finding out that even that supposedly career-enhancing bet is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump’s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.
Ultimately, 20 rogue Republicans stood in McCarthy’s way – and there’s no sign they would be swayed overnight to back his bid, while their pick, Rep. Jim Jordan, has continually said he doesn’t want the gig.
McCarthy backers are mad, with Rep. Don Bacon dubbing the group the ‘Taliban 20’ and the ‘chaos caucus.’
Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of those 20 Republicans, expressed his own anger that McCarthy had already moved into the speaker’s office – sharing a letter he had written to the Architect of the Capitol ‘demanding answers.’
‘How long will he remain there before he is considered a squatter?’ Gaetz asked Architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton.
The Democrats have no plans to budge, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries – the Democrats’ pick for House Speaker – indicating the party wouldn’t get behind a moderate ‘consensus candidate.’
cnn.com – By Chandelis Duster – Incoming Republican congressman George Santos may have misrepresented parts of his resume, a report in The New York Times finds. The Times, citing public documents and court records, reported that key parts of Santos’ biography were either contradicted or not supported by evidence, including his education and employment history.
The Times report says Santos did not respond to repeated requests to furnish documents that would help to substantiate the claims while campaigning.
The report raises ethical and legal questions for Santos as he prepares to officially take on his role as a lawmaker in January as part of the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in a statement that the Times was attempting to “smear” the congressman-elect with “defamatory allegations.”
“Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by – a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party,” Murray said.
According to the Times, Santos’ biography has at times listed education at New York University and earning degrees in finance and economics at Baruch College, but both universities told the Times they had no record of anyone with his name or birthday attending. Santos’ campaign biography also included mention of experience at financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but both firms told Times and subsequently CNN they had no record of his employment.
rollingstone.com – By Peter Wade – The congresswoman also claimed during a speech on Saturday that “teachers can pass around dildos, butt plugs and lube” in the classroom – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) reportedly believes that if she and Steve Bannon had organized the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, they would have executed a successful coup. And they would have “been armed.”
“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” Greene said of the events on Jan. 6, according to The New York Post‘s Zach Williams.
Greene issued a statement Monday after the White House condemned her remarks. She stated that her Jan. 6 comment was “sarcasm.”
“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works. My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th… I will never back down from my support of the Second Amendment. And I will never allow the White House, Democrats, or the media to continue to accuse me of something I had nothing to do with,” Greene said.
The Republican congresswoman made the claim at an annual New York Young Republican Club dinner Saturday night where Donald Trump Jr. and far-right figure Jack Posobiec were also featured as speakers. While Williams captured video of some of Greene’s speech that night, he did not share footage of her talking about Jan. 6.
texasmonthly.com – By Dan Solomon – Why is Guns N’ Roses in the news?
It’s so easy to avoid getting sued by Axl Rose: simply avoid naming your business something that implies it might be affiliated with his eighties heavy-metal band. That’s a lesson that the owners of a Houston-area online store called Texas Guns and Roses learned the hard way last week, after they were served with a trademark lawsuit by attorneys for the group. The suit alleges that the store’s name is “likely to cause confusion.”
Uh-oh. Sounds like the band’s approach to potential trademark infringement isn’t exactly “anything goes.”
The shop’s owners may have believed they were in paradise city when they launched the concept, which is a store that sells guns, gun accessories, and roses, but the band felt otherwise. Some trademark holders take a live-and-let-live approach when confronting possible infringement of a somewhat dubious nature—it’s unlikely anyone believes that Axl and the boys opened a shop in Texas and dropped their predilection for abbreviating “and” as “N’ ” (a bit to which Rose is particularly committed). In this case, though, it appears that GNR’s approach is more live and let die.
insider.com – I’m polyamorous, and I live with my two partners, Daniel and Ty, and our two kids, D and H. When it comes to the holidays, we try to take a fair and equitable position and see as many relatives as possible. It takes some finesse and a lot of scheduling, but we do it.
With two partners, you have two sets of in-laws, which means instead of juggling two places to go for holidays, we have to consider three places — or more, depending on how those relatives are dispersed. I rely heavily on Google Calendar and I luckily enjoy planning. We try to ensure that our holidays go as smoothly as possible, especially for our children. But we have limited space, limited time, and limited income. So how do we do it?
Our holiday schedule
Most of Ty’s family lives nearby where we live, Richmond, Virginia, so we see them more regularly than Daniel and I see our own family members, who all live in Tennessee. As we are all Christian — or Christian-adjacent — we celebrate Christian holidays, alongside the typical American holidays on which we have days off.
TMZ.com – Nick Fuentes found out the hard way he’s not welcome in Los Angeles … ‘cuz the white nationalist just got in a food fight with a couple at a famed In-N-Out Burger.
Check out the video, obtained by TMZ, showing Nick holding a large cup … without warning he pitches it across the Hollywood restaurant early Saturday morning. Liquid from the cup showers everyone in its path … and the doused diners look at Nick in utter shock.
Another video captured the moment Fuentes left the joint before the situation escalated … as he’s walking out, one patron mocks him for supposedly misidentifying himself, shouting, “F–k Nick Fuentes. You racist!!”
Trump’s legal team has continuously sought to keep his returns secret, and turned to the Supreme Court – composed of three of his nominees – after he lost at the lower court level. Chief Justice John Roberts, who supervises the lower court that issued the order in the Trump case, had placed a temporary hold on the subpoena on November 1, presumably to give the justices more time to consider the issue.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, first sought the tax returns from the IRS in 2019, and the agency, under the Trump administration, initially resisted turning them over. The case moved slowly until 2021, when, under the Biden administration, the Justice Department changed its legal posture and concluded the IRS was obligated to comply with the committee’s request.
A Trump-appointed judge ruled in the House’s favor late last year and the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reverse that ruling, most recently with the full appeals court declining to take up the case. The court held that the request for the documents served a legitimate legislative purpose to look at tax laws as they apply to a sitting president and rejected Trump’s argument that the stated purpose was mere pretext to hide a political calculation.
independent.co.uk – By Abe Asher – Donald Trump, declaring his candidacy for president on Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago, claimed that he went “decades without a war” despite the fact that he only served as president for four years.
“I’ve gone decades, decades without a war, the first president to do it for a long period,” Mr Trump, who lost his re-election to president Joe Biden two years ago, said in his announcement speech.
Mr Trump hit out at Mr Biden and also criticised Republicans not aligned with his far right, election-denying movement despite the party’s underperformance in the recent midterm elections in which Trump-aligned Republicans accounted for a number of high-profile losses. Mr Trump is attempting to become just the second-ever person to serve two non-consecutive terms as president and the first since the 1800s. He is apparently seeking a democratic return to power while still under investigation for his attempt to overturn the result of the election.
The New York Times reported that Mr Trump’s decision to launch his campaign so soon after the midterms and nearly two full years before the presidential election was in part influenced by his hope that his status as a candidate will shield him from legal trouble stemming from his conduct during his first term as president.
nbcnews.com – By Kriti Gandhi and Angie Ling – Some wore homemade hats made from egg boxes, others created headgear from cardboard and coat hangers, and some wore Halloween masks as they sat for their exams.
Their purpose? To prevent cheating.
Professor Mary Joy Mandane-Ortiz, an engineering instructor at the Bicol University College of Engineering in Legazpi City in the Philippines, stumbled across the idea as she was browsing Facebook, she said Tuesday.