Shitty Is As Shitty Does

Republicans always seem to be competing with each other, trying to see who can be the shittiest shit-heel in that whole shitty gang of shit-eatin' shit-flingers.

And I don't think it's only about pandering to "the base".

It's like the Dark Money Leaders Of The Yacht Buyers Club demand this shitty behavior, so Republicans are running around looking for opportunities to demonstrate just how shitty they can be.

The more you can use government to shit on average people, the better your chances are for collecting nice fat "donations", which will give you more opportunities to impress the bosses by proposing even shittier policies, which will get you nicer and fatter "donations".

And make no mistake - while sometimes they're being shitty just for the sake of being shitty, usually (like in this case) it's aimed at privatization, the pathway to which (again, in this case) runs through "religious" companies.

(I say 'companies' because that's what a church is - it's a fucking company)

Anyway, they get to fuck over poor people, and fuck over everybody who knows church and state have to be kept separate, and they hand "the libs" a dilemma.

• "How can you be against helping churches help homeless people?"
• "If the program is working, why wouldn't you want the private sector to help out and make it even better?"
• "Would you like to take responsibility for cutting the funding altogether? We can do that, y'know - and we'll spend whatever it takes to run a campaign that gets people to blame you guys for it."

And it all fits neatly into everybody's favorite GOP game

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait a while
3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up - better put us in charge so we can fix it."

Tell me I'm wrong.

Federal Policy on Homelessness Becomes New Target of the Right

The approach known as Housing First has long enjoyed bipartisan support. But conservatives are pushing efforts to replace it with programs that put more emphasis on sobriety and employment.

The bipartisan approach that has dominated federal homelessness policy for more than two decades is under growing conservative attack.

The policy directs billions of dollars to programs that provide homeless people with permanent housing and offer — but do not require them to accept — services like treatment for mental illness or drug abuse. The approach, called Housing First, has been the subject of extensive study and expanded under presidents as different as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. President Biden’s homelessness plan makes Housing First its cornerstone and cites it a dozen times.

But Housing First has become a conservative epithet.

Republican lawmakers, backed by conservative think tanks and programs denied funding by Housing First rules, want to loosen the policy’s grip on federal dollars. While supporters say that housing people without preconditions saves lives by getting them off the streets, critics say it ignores clients’ underlying problems and want to shift funding to groups like rescue missions that demand sobriety or employment. Some even blame Housing First for the growth in homelessness.

“No more Housing First!” said Representative Andy Barr, Republican of Kentucky, after introducing a bill last month that would offer more money for programs with treatment mandates.

Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, used two recent hearings to argue that Housing First ignores the root causes of homelessness. The Cicero Institute, a Texas policy group, is promoting model state legislation that bars Housing First programs from receiving state funds. A documentary it produced with PragerU, a conservative advocacy group, cuts between critiques of Housing First and footage of people living in tents on the street and shots of drug use.

The escalating war over an obscure social service doctrine is partly an earnest policy dispute and partly an old-fashioned rivalry between groups seeking federal funds. But it is also a new ideological and political flashpoint, with former President Donald J. Trump and others on the right using it to to promote their argument that homelessness in liberal cities is an indictment of Democratic governance more broadly.

Joe Lonsdale, the tech mogul behind the Cicero Institute, has called Housing First part of a “Marxist” attempt to blame homelessness on capitalism, and Mr. Trump, in seeking a return to office, has pledged to place homeless people in “tent cities.”

“The attack on Housing First is the most worrisome thing I’ve seen in my 30 years in this field,” said Ann Oliva, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group with bipartisan roots. “When people have a safe and stable place to live, they can address other things in their lives. If critics succeed in defunding these successful programs, we’re going to see a lot more deaths on the street.”

Until Housing First emerged a generation ago, services for homeless people were built on a staircase model: Clients were meant to progress from shelters to transitional programs, where training or treatment would ready them for permanent apartments. In practice, services were weak and failure rates high, with large numbers of noncompliant people returning to the streets.

Though skeptics feared that troubled people would leave or get evicted, early results were impressive.

After five years, 88 percent of the clients in a New York City program called Pathways to Housing remained housed, compared to 47 percent in the usual system of care. Despite the lack of treatment mandates, Pathways clients were no more likely than those in the regular system to report mental illness or substance abuse. A large experiment covering five Canadian cities achieved similar results.

Citing such studies, supporters praise Housing First as unusually “evidence based.”

Contemporaneous research also offered hopes of cost savings. While most people entering shelters were quickly rehoused, work by Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania showed that a small minority became chronically homeless and consumed tens of thousands of dollars of services in jails and emergency rooms — roughly what it cost to house them. Supporters hoped Housing First would prove “not only more humane but for some people potentially cheaper,” Mr. Culhane said.

Housing First exploded from a model to a movement under a Republican administration. Philip F. Mangano, the Bush administration’s top homelessness official, proved relentless in promoting Housing First programs, and the approach, which initially targeted the chronically homeless, broadened to a wider range of people experiencing homelessness.

The Obama administration placed a preference for Housing First into the main federal grant programs, which now provide about $3 billion a year to local groups. From 2007 to 2016, chronic homelessness fell by more than a third.

For social workers used to seeing people languish on the streets, a breakthrough seemed at hand.

“I can still feel the emotion — ‘Wow, we can house everyone!’” said Adam Rocap, deputy director of Miriam’s Kitchen, a social services agency in Washington. Optimism about ending homelessness ran so high, he said, some of the agency’s staff members asked if they should seek other jobs.

Since 2007, the stock of permanent supportive housing has more than doubled to 387,000 beds, while the Department of Housing and Urban Development found 582,000 people were homeless on a single night last year, and researchers estimate the number experiencing homelessness in a year could be three times as high.

Some recent studies have noted limits on what the programs achieve. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018 found “no substantial evidence” that supportive housing improved clients’ health. Likewise, the medical journal The Lancet found “no measurable effect” on the severity of psychiatric problems, addiction, or employment.

And despite hopes, the programs did not save money. Supportive housing is expensive to build (average costs in high-priced Los Angeles, which has an ambitious Housing First initiative, are nearly $600,000 per unit), and the share of unhoused people who consume costly services is low.

Still, proponents say Housing First has succeeded where it matters most — getting people off the streets.

“Getting people out of homelessness quickly is more important than anything, because life on the streets is so dangerous,” said Professor Culhane, of the University of Pennsylvania. “The evidence shows that Housing First is a very successful policy. Undoing it would be a disaster.”

The growth in homelessness and the visibility of encampments in some locations have intensified debate. Since 2015, the unsheltered population has grown by about 35 percent, with California the center of the crisis. Most analysts say soaring rents play a major role. But critics fault Housing First for financing costly permanent housing instead of shelters that could serve more people, and for preventing treatment mandates they say would promote recovery and employment.

“I thought it would help the few and leave thousands out on the streets, and my fears have been solidified,” said the Reverend Andy Bales, chief executive of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, which enforces sobriety rules and does not get federal funds.

Housing First defenders scoff at the charge that it promotes homelessness.

“Blaming Housing First for the rise in homelessness is like blaming aspirin for headaches,” said Jeff Olivet, head of the Biden administration’s Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Mr. Olivet noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs has used Housing First policies — with more generous funding — and cut veterans’ homelessness since 2010 by more than half.

“That’s a proof point for showing we can end homelessness and end it with a Housing First approach,” he said. “What we need to do is scale it up.”

Like its predecessors, the Trump administration initially embraced Housing First, with the housing secretary, Ben Carson, praising a “mountain of data showing that a Housing First approach works.”

That changed in 2019 as California’s homelessness crisis worsened and Mr. Trump began highlighting the issue to criticize the state’s “liberal establishment.”

The Council of Economic Advisers issued a report skeptical of Housing First, and the Trump administration fired its homelessness coordinator, a holdover from the Obama years. His replacement, Robert Marbut, backed strict work and sobriety rules and said he favored “Housing Fourth.”

In a recent interview, Mr. Marbut said he was brought in to “do everything we could to reverse Housing First.”

But when the Trump administration tried to delete the Housing First preference in federal grants, congressional Democrats blocked the effort. With the coronavirus pandemic consuming the rest of Mr. Trump’s term, policy remained unchanged.

Still a revolt had been seeded. Conservative literature on the topic emerged, with critiques from the Manhattan Institute, the Cicero Institute, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and a Heritage Foundation paper by Christopher F. Rufo, the activist who turned “critical race theory” into a war cry on the right.

Tonally, the criticisms occupy two registers. Mr. Trump has described people experiencing homelessness as “violent and dangerously deranged,” and a Cicero Institute podcast asked whether phrases like “vagrants, bums, tramps” are preferable to “homeless.” But Cicero’s film offers sympathetic portraits of recovering addicts, and a former shelter director cries onscreen as she calls Housing First “one of the most oppressive things we’ve done” to the needy.

Cicero’s work has drawn particular attention, given Mr. Lonsdale’s wealth as a co-founder of Palantir, the data-mining firm, and his support of conservative causes. The group’s model legislation restricts encampments to designated sites and blocks Housing First programs from state funds.

“As an all-encompassing model for addressing homelessness, Housing First has failed,” said Judge Glock, who until recently led the group’s work.

Texas and Georgia have adopted measures that enforce camping bans, and Missouri passed a broader Cicero-inspired bill last year, blocking Housing First programs from state funds. Its State Senate sponsor, Holly Thompson Rehder, a Republican, said concerns about the status quo had grown after an encampment fire under a Kansas City bridge killed one person and closed Interstate 70. Even in her rural district, campgrounds complained of losing business because customers feared encampments nearby.

Ms. Rehder, who experienced homelessness as a child, said Cicero recruited her in part because of that history. Having watched relatives struggle with mental illness and addiction, she considered treatment mandates “a no-brainer.” The institute organized a study tour in Texas for her, and Mr. Glock testified for the bill.

“They were incredibly helpful,” she said.

In Congress, Mr. Barr, the Kentucky Republican, got involved after shelters in his Lexington-area district complained they could not get federal funding because of sobriety rules. He said residents told him they would have relapsed in less strict environments.

But Mr. Olivet, the Biden administration official, said critics have forgotten how often services failed the homeless before Housing First came along.

“Housing First saves lives every day,” he said. “It’s a proven intervention. We need more of it.”

The Week's GOP

All hail Trump The Glorious

Papa Got A Brand New Crush

TX-30

Jasmine Crockett is fire.

Today's Biden-ing

Some dogs are just straight up assholes. They bark all day and all night, and they go charging and snapping and snarling at anyone who even looks like he might step foot in their yard.

They're not just a major nuisance - they're a legit threat to the whole neighborhood.

Pointing out the fact that the dogs are a problem is important, but the people who own those dogs are the real problem.

So you make the owners of the dogs the issue - the subject of the debate. Most people will be able to see that while the dogs are bad, the owners of those dogs are either allowing the problem to persist, or they're encouraging the asshole behavior for very possibly nefarious purposes.

"Get your fuckin' dogs under control, Kevin." --Joe Biden

Opinion

Biden has a theory of MAGA that just might be working

Now that Congress has passed the debt limit deal, explanations for President Biden’s success in negotiating the outcome are abounding. Among them: Biden drew on his long experience in Washington to achieve bipartisan compromise; he avoided claiming a win so Republicans could support it; he didn’t get distracted by the media’s second-guessing.

Here’s another way to understand this unexpected outcome: Biden is operating from a largely unappreciated theory of MAGA, and in some ways, it’s working.

Passage of the deal, which averts default and economic calamity, was decisively bipartisan. The Senate approved it Thursday night with 17 Republicans backing it, after it passed the House with support from more than two-thirds of House Republicans.

This happened even though the deal’s spending cuts are not close to what Republicans sought. Yes, the outcome legitimizes the debt limit as a tool of extortion and imposes cruel new work requirements on many food stamp recipients. But Republicans didn’t use this showdown to crash or cripple the economy, as some observers (including me) worried they might.

Biden’s theory of MAGA helps explain this outcome. Biden ran in 2020 on the idea that the country faced an existential threat from the far right, highlighting white supremacy, political violence and President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks on democracy. This year’s reelection launch highlighted the assault on the Capitol and cast “MAGA extremists” as a threat to American “freedom.”

However, in promising to restore “the soul of the nation” in the face of this threat, Biden has continually distinguished between MAGA Republicans and more conventional ones. This approach has been criticized by those of us who see much of the GOP as extreme and dangerous — after all, many elected Republicans helped whitewash Trump’s insurrection — and think Biden’s characterization of non-MAGA Republicans plays down that broader threat.

But Biden’s reading served him well in the debt limit standoff. Contrary to much criticism, Bidenworld believes that refusing to negotiate at the outset was key: It forced Republicans to offer their own budget, which created an opening to attack the savage spending cuts in it.

Notably, Biden and other Democrats relentlessly characterized those cuts as destructive and dangerous in the MAGA vein. Bidenworld did believe that some MAGA Republicans were willing to default and force global economic cataclysm to harm the president’s reelection, a senior Biden adviser tells me, but also that many non-MAGA Republicans ultimately could be induced not to go that far.

That seems to be what happened. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein points out, the outcome falsified the prediction that the GOP as a party would use that leverage to inflict maximum chaos. Meanwhile, the cuts themselves won’t be nearly as damaging to the economy as the ones in the 2011 standoff, as the New York Times’s Paul Krugman explains.

This illuminates Bidenworld’s broader theory of the MAGA GOP: The way to defeat the MAGA threat to the country is to marginalize it within the GOP coalition — that is, to contain it.

“He has never hesitated to call out the extreme MAGA wing of the Republican Party,” Kate Bedingfield, a senior adviser to the 2020 Biden campaign and to the White House through February, told me. “But he gives Republican voters and legislators who reject that wing of the party a place to go.”

Something similar happened in the 2022 elections. Biden and Democrats in tough races tried to strike a balance between reaching out to Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents while casting MAGA extremism as a clear and present danger to the country. It worked: Many prominent MAGA senatorial and gubernatorial candidates lost, partly because many Republican voters decided to vote Democratic.

The debt limit outcome was far from a uniform victory: Most of the GOP did engage in hostage-taking and debt limit extortion throughout much of the process, legitimizing extreme tactics before balking at going all the way.

Despite all this, the fact that so many non-MAGA Republicans voted for the deal — and that Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating this as a bipartisan success — could mean the party as a whole isn’t broadly perceived as extreme and hostage to MAGA heading into 2024.

“The downside of the deal is that it gives vulnerable House Republicans separation from their MAGA counterparts,” Dan Sena, a senior Democratic operative during the 2018 Democratic House takeover, told me. “That could be a challenge.”

There is a tension in Biden’s approach to the GOP. His initial rationale for running was that the GOP is largely hostage to an extremism that foundationally threatens the American experiment. His reelection case is that he has begun to defuse that threat and another term will complete that task.

Yet Biden also plainly believes that conducting the nation’s business on a bipartisan basis is inherently stabilizing. That sometimes requires treating the opposition — or a large swath of it — as a mostly conventional political party, which risks mitigating perceptions of the threat it poses.

In the debt limit outcome, that tension proved far more navigable than many, including me, expected. How this tension will play out in 2024 is hard to predict, but for now, the Biden theory of MAGA has mostly been vindicated.

Stop underestimating Joe Biden.

An Upset

When the big horse gets his ass handed to him, we call it an upset - cuz once upon a time there was a dinky little racehorse named Upset who is the only horse ever to beat the big-n-bad Man O' War.

While the winner in the campaign for Mayor is a registered Independent, there's plenty to say about voters not wanting to go with some generic Democrat, but way more definitely wanting to vote against another fuckwit Republican.

Mr Mobolade beat the Republican by 15 points.

Political newcomer Yemi Mobolade wins Colorado Springs mayor’s race

In what can only be described as a stunning turn of events, political veteran and former Secretary of State Wayne Williams conceded the Colorado Springs mayoral runoff to political newcomer and businessman Yemi Mobolade not long after the polls closed Tuesday night.

The concession came shortly after the first results were posted. That stood in stark contrast to the spring general election, where it took days to discern the top two vote-getters.

“Wow,” said Mobolade as he took the stage with his family at the COS City Hub community center where his watch party was held. “This is our win. We are Colorado Springs. It’s a new day in our beloved city.”

As of 9:40 p.m., when the final vote count of the evening was released, unofficial results showed Mobolade leading in the race for Colorado Springs mayor with 57.5 percent of the vote to Williams' 42.5 percent. Counting is expected to resume Wednesday morning.

"I think folks were, as indicated by their vote, were looking for something new as opposed to the tried and proven track record and that's certainly their right to make that decision," Williams told KRCC at The Pinery event venue where his watch party was held. "Being the top two out of 12 sounds better than being second."

The Williams campaign noted that while 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl won El Paso County, she lost Colorado Springs.

"It's clear Colorado Springs is less conservative than it used to be. When I was chairman here (of the El Paso County GOP) we had no Democratic state reps. Now we have three," Williams said. "So there are significant changes that have taken place and I congratulate Yemi on an excellent campaign."

When asked if Tuesday night's results signal a larger change in the political alignment in Colorado Springs, Mobolade said, “I don't know, I can't speak to that. But what I can speak to is the hunger in our city at this moment in time. The hunger is not one that is partisan, as clearly evident in this room. We have Democrats, Republicans and Independents all gathered. The hunger is for vision that transcends political party lines and the tiredness and the frustration in our city and in our nation is around (the) partisan divide and the fighting that happens and people are just ready for a new type of leadership that puts our quality of life ahead of party politics.”

He also noted the city charter calls for the mayor to be non-partisan, “I'm glad that I could restore the spirit of the law that we should be abiding by.”

Mobolade, who is a naturalized citizen and identifies as a political independent, is the co-founder of two local coffee shops and has also founded a church.

In the public sector, Mobolade has been an advocate for small businesses with the city. He has worked with the Colorado Springs Chamber and Economic Development Corp. Mobolade said he sees his new role as an opportunity to "restore public trust in local government."

Mobolade called his preparation for the runoff his “longest job interview” to prove to the community that he is the leader for the job.

In a survey sent out by KRCC, Mobolade said he would prioritize safety, growth, and the economy.

While Williams gained the endorsement of John Suthers, the outgoing mayor, as well as more than half the current council, Mobolade was able to secure the endorsement of third-place finisher Sallie Clark.

In the general election last month, Mobolade garnered the most votes among the dozen candidates, separating himself from Williams by more than 11,000 votes.

Williams' campaign said he started the runoff down 25 points.

Williams said all of the GOP attacks and infighting also didn't help.

"So you had a number of Republican candidates beating up on each other in the initial round," Williams noted. "I think that carried through."

Though some Republicans disagreed with Williams in the past, the GOP did coalesce around him during the runoff. State Party Chair Dave Williams showed his support as well as El Paso County GOP Chair Vickie Tonkins.

Williams is a familiar name in El Paso County’s Republican circles and Colorado politics. He was elected Secretary of State in 2014, after serving as a county commissioner and then the county clerk. He’s currently an at-large city councilman for Colorado Springs.

Republican and former state Rep. Lois Landgraf, a Williams ally, was not thrilled with the result.

"I just hope people don't fall for the running the city on love," Landgraf said. "Because it takes a lot more than that to be able to negotiate with two sides, both sides of issues."

Don Kidd, a businessman and long-time resident who spent 27 years in the Air Force, is worried to see the less conservative candidate win.

"I see nice commercials, but I don't see a whole lot more," Kidd said. "I'm concerned about progressive policies if (Mobolade) brings those to the city. I'm concerned what they might do to Colorado Springs. We've got a large, large military presence. And I think we are right now very favored and have been for many, many years in the defense department. I'm afraid that that might turn just like the rest of Colorado."

At his Tuesday night watch party, Williams said his early concession was not what he'd hoped for, but that it was necessary for the city to move forward.

"I believe that the future of Colorado Springs is still strong, and I've been honored to serve this city and state for the last 28 years," Williams told the crowd. "I appreciate all the opportunities I've had to make this city and state and county a better place."

Colorado Springs 2023 election results for the mayoral runoff
Voters dropping off their ballots earlier in the day said population growth and higher property taxes were issues of concern for them.

Gary Turner, who voted for Williams, said he hopes the new mayor will address growth in the city.

“It’s ridiculous,” Turner said. “It’s gone way too far out of sight. My property taxes went up 60 percent. Yeah and I’m a senior citizen living on social security. How in the hell do they expect me to… what am I supposed to do without? Heat or food?”

Mike Clouse didn’t participate in the April municipal election but cast his ballot for Mobolade on Tuesday.

“It’s just kinda making up for not voting last time,” Clouse said. “I would’ve voted for Yemi before and I want to do it now to do my part too. Hopefully he’ll get in.”

Back at his watch party Tuesday night, Mobolade had a message for the skeptics: “To anyone who doubts that politics can be disrupted… tonight is for you.”

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 1

House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden

After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

So sad

After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption.

At a much-publicized news conference on Capitol Hill to show the preliminary findings of their premier investigation into Mr. Biden and his family, leading Republicans released financial documents detailing how some of the president’s relatives were paid more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017.

Republicans described the transactions as proof of “influence peddling” by Mr. Biden’s family, including his son Hunter Biden, and referenced some previously known, if unflattering, details of the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings. Those included an episode in which he accepted a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese businessman. G.O.P. lawmakers also produced material suggesting that President Biden and his allies had at times made misleading statements in their efforts to push back aggressively against accusations of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

But on Wednesday, the Republicans conceded that they had yet to find evidence of a specific corrupt action Mr. Biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into. Instead, their presentation underscored how little headway top G.O.P. lawmakers have made in finding clear evidence of questionable transactions they can tie to Mr. Biden, their chief political rival.

It has not stopped them from accusing the president of serious misconduct.

“I want to be clear: This committee is investigating President Biden and his family’s shady business dealings to capitalize on Joe Biden’s public office that risks our country’s national security,” said Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight Committee. He emphasized that the president — not just his son — would be the target of his investigation, which he said would now “enter a new phase,” in which he would subpoena specific financial information based on material learned through bank records.

Federal prosecutors have examined Hunter Biden’s international business activities as part of a criminal investigation. But the only charges they are considering, according to people familiar with the case, are unrelated to his work abroad. They include tax charges related to his failure to file his tax returns over several years, and a charge of lying about his drug use on a federal form he filled out to purchase a handgun.

To date, Mr. Comer’s committee has issued four bank subpoenas, obtained thousands of financial records and spoken with several people he describes as whistle-blowers. Mr. Comer has also hired James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor who has experience investigating foreign corruption, to oversee the inquiry.

Here’s what we know so far.

Businesses connected to Hunter Biden received more than $10 million from foreign companies, some with criminal ties.

The House Oversight Committee report focused on payments made to companies connected to Hunter Biden from businesses and individuals in Romania and China. Bank records obtained by the committee show the receipt of money from a foreign company connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, who was the subject of a criminal investigation and prosecution for corruption in Romania.

In 2015, Mr. Popoviciu retained Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, while his father was vice president, to help try to fend off charges. That effort was unsuccessful and, in 2016, Mr. Popoviciu was convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Bucharest, the Romanian capital.

A Shanghai-based company, State Energy HK Limited, that was affiliated with CEFC China Energy sent millions to Robinson Walker LLC, a company associated with Mr. Walker, who then made payments to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members.

Hunter Biden had cultivated a business relationship with Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC, who has been investigated by the Chinese authorities on suspicion of economic crimes. In 2017, Mr. Ye gave Hunter Biden a 2.8-carat diamond as a thank-you for a meeting.

“What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn’t in office,” Hunter Biden told The New Yorker in 2019, adding that he gave the diamond to his associates. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird.”

CEFC had hoped to invest in a liquefied natural gas venture in Louisiana, but that deal ultimately flopped.

Representatives of Hunter Biden characterize his business offerings at the time as providing legal and consulting services.

The payments came at a time when Hunter Biden’s life and finances were spiraling amid his drug addiction, and after the death of his brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer. Hunter Biden had begun a romantic relationship with his brother’s widow. His business partner, Mr. Walker, and his uncle James Biden were pursuing international business work.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that House Republicans had revealed nothing new in their report.

“Today’s so-called ‘revelations' are retread, repackaged misstatements of perfectly proper meetings and business by private citizens.” Mr. Lowell said.

President Biden has falsely denied his son had ties to Chinese businesses.

None of the payments detailed in the report went to President Biden himself, nor has Mr. Comer’s investigation produced any evidence that Mr. Biden ever took a corrupt action in connection with his son’s business dealings.

But Mr. Biden has made several false or misleading statements about the matter.

During the 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Biden claimed that no one in his family had received money from China.

“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about, China,” Mr. Biden said, turning the charge on his opponent, President Donald J. Trump. “The only guy who made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”

This year, Mr. Biden also claimed that it was “not true” that family members received more than $1 million from a Chinese firm.

Aides to Mr. Biden said he was speaking colloquially and was pushing back generally on claims that his administration had been corrupted by Chinese money.

Presidents’ families have long made money off the family name.

During his news conference, Mr. Comer acknowledged that Hunter Biden would have been far from the first relative of a president or vice president to try to make money off the family name.

He invoked Billy Carter, the brother of former President Jimmy Carter, who visited Libya and received a $220,000 loan; and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law whose firm has received hundreds of millions from Persian Gulf nations.

“This has been a pattern for a long time,” Mr. Comer said. “Republicans and Democrats have both complained about presidents’ families receiving money.”

However, Mr. Comer has conceded that he has no interest in investigating Mr. Kushner’s conduct.

Officials allied with Mr. Biden played a role in wrongly discrediting Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The report from Mr. Comer came as a second Republican-led House committee is investigating a related issue. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released a report about a letter from 51 former intelligence and security officials in 2020 that questioned materials — substantial portions of which were later verified as authentic — from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop and suggested they might be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The Republicans argue that the letter influenced the public to discount the materials on the laptop, which contained evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use and sex life, which they believed would harm his father’s electoral chances against Mr. Trump.

The Judiciary Committee report detailed the role played by Antony J. Blinken, now the secretary of state and then a Biden campaign official, in spearheading the letter, and said a C.I.A. employee had been involved in soliciting at least one signature for it.

The intelligence officials maintain their letter stated they had no evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign, and that they were merely stating an opinion.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents seven signatories to the letter, said on Twitter that the report merely proved that “private citizens lawfully exercised 1st Amendment rights” and added that there was not “even one falsehood” in the letter.

“I know of no signatory who retracts a single word,” Mr. Zaid wrote.

It's classic. Spend months on DumFux News spouting off about the Biden Crime Family, then spend lots of time and money and effort finding nothing to support your suspicions, and then issue your findings, claiming to have found all kinds of shady shenanigans on the part of every relative of every American politician since the dawn of the republic - and so "we've proven what a scum that Biden guy is - and his demon spawn too!"

Some things:

• "Everybody does it" is a way to tear down government in general, which is what the basic plan has been for a long time. So when their latest Blockbuster Investigation du Jour fizzles - as they always do - the fallback position is "Both Sides", and they know they can count on the Press Poodles to run with it (as the NYT just did) 
• They need to gaslight the shit outa the rubes. ie: "The fact that there's no evidence of wrongdoing is itself evidence of wrongdoing, because it just goes to show you how diabolically clever those guys are"
• GOP accusations are confessions (Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 1) - because they can't believe it's possible for anyone to live his life while not breaking the law

This stoopid shit ends only when we smarten up enough to vote these fuckers out. So let's do that.

Be Woke

Takeaways:

• The US military is once again more progressive than the meathead Republicans who want us to believe that somehow they're the ones who love the military best - which is why they're going out of their way to shit on the Pentagon (?) 
• Whenever the military has recognized the need to move forward - desegregation, women, LGBTQ, whatever it was - every time, the GOP has dragged its feet to prevent the military from becoming more representative of, and responsive to, the American population, which has made it a far more effective force.
• "Performative Fascism"
• There is no normal here
• "What's up with the baby formula? Hunter Biden!!"

Today's Non-Accountable Accountability

House Republicans Quietly Halt Inquiry Into Trump’s Finances

G.O.P. leaders are declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement for Mazars, Donald J. Trump’s former accounting firm, to turn over records in an investigation into whether he profited from the presidency.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans have quietly halted a congressional investigation into whether Donald J. Trump profited improperly from the presidency, declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement agreement that demanded that Mazars USA, his former accounting firm, produce his financial records to Congress.

Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, made clear he had abandoned any investigation into the former president’s financial dealings — professing ignorance about the inquiry Democrats opened when they controlled the House — and was instead focusing on whether President Biden and members of his family were involved in an influence-peddling scheme.

“I honestly didn’t even know who or what Mazars was,” said Mr. Comer, who was the senior Republican on the oversight panel during the last Congress, while Democrats waged a lengthy legal fight over obtaining documents from the firm.

“What exactly are they looking for?” Mr. Comer added in a brief statement to The New York Times on Monday. “They’ve been ‘investigating’ Trump for six years. I know exactly what I’m investigating: money the Bidens received from China.”

He confirmed the end to the inquiry into Mr. Trump after Democrats wrote to Mr. Comer raising concerns about the fact that Mazars, the former president’s longtime accounting firm that cut ties with him last year, had stopped turning over documents related to his financial dealings. The top Democrat on the panel suggested that Mr. Comer had worked with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to effectively kill the investigation, an accusation the chairman denied.

“It has come to my attention that you may have acted in league with attorneys for former President Donald Trump to block the committee from receiving documents subpoenaed in its investigation of unauthorized, unreported and unlawful payments by foreign governments and others to then-President Trump,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the panel, wrote on Sunday evening to Mr. Comer.

Mr. Comer on Monday denied knowledge of any attempt to coordinate with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to block the investigation, but he made it clear he did not plan to keep it going. His committee has issued no subpoenas concerning Mr. Trump’s finances.

Democrats fought in court for years to get financial documents from Mr. Trump’s former accounting firm, and only last year — after entering into a court-ordered settlement — began receiving the documents and gaining new insights into how foreign governments sought influence using the Trump International Hotel. The company has been delivering the documents to the committee in batches.

A Divided Congress

• The 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding the Senate.
• I.R.S. Commissioner: The Senate voted to confirm Daniel Werfel to be the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, filling a critical position at the agency as it starts an $80 billion overhaul.
• F.B.I. Surveillance: The revelation by Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, that he was the target of surveillance material searches conducted by the F.B.I. put a twist on a murky incident that has loomed over a debate on reauthorizing an expiring surveillance law.
• D.C. Crime Law: The Senate voted overwhelmingly to block a new criminal code for the District of Columbia, with Democrats bowing to Republican pressure to take a hard line on crime.
• A Freshman Republican on the Road: As Representative Josh Brecheen travels his district in eastern Oklahoma, his pitch to constituents reflects how the party has intertwined its spending fight with cultural battles.
• In the letter, Mr. Raskin wrote that he had reviewed communications between Patrick Strawbridge, Mr. Trump’s counsel, and a lawyer for Mazars in which the Trump lawyer indicated he had been told that House Republicans would no longer insist on additional document production. On Jan. 19, Mr. Strawbridge wrote, “I do not know the status of Mazars production, but my understanding is that the committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete it and is willing to release it from further obligations under the settlement agreement.”

Mr. Raskin wrote that Mr. Strawbridge had confirmed that assertion had been made to him twice by the acting general counsel of the House of Representatives, who at the time was Todd Tatelman.

Mr. Tatelman did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Mr. Strawbridge or lawyers for Mazars.

Democratic staff aides on the committee said they had repeatedly sought written confirmation from Mazars that House Republicans had agreed to release the firm from its obligations under the subpoena and court-supervised settlement agreement. But Mazars said it had not received such a release nor was any filed with the court, which has retained jurisdiction over the matter.

Even so, Mazars informed Democratic staff members that, as a result of Mr. Strawbridge’s assertions, it would cease production after the delivery of a small tranche of documents that it had already identified as responsive to the subpoena, the letter states.

Enforcement of a court-supervised settlement agreement made with one Congress during a subsequent Congress under new leadership remains a legally murky gray area. Subpoenas in cases involving the House expire at the end of each Congress, but Mazars had continued to produce documents even after the House changed hands into Republican control. Still, a judge would be unlikely to enforce the settlement if the parties involved were no longer interested in enforcement, according to lawyers in both parties.

The documents from Mazars have thus far provided new evidence about how foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration. In November, for instance, documents the committee received from Mazars detailed how officials from six nations spent more than $750,000 at Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington when they were seeking to influence his administration, renting rooms for more than $10,000 per night.

“In the face of mounting evidence that foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration by playing to President Trump’s financial interests, you and President Trump’s representatives appear to have acted in coordination to bury evidence of such misconduct,” Mr. Raskin wrote to Mr. Comer.

At the same time that Mazars has stopped producing documents about Mr. Trump’s finances, Mr. Comer has ramped up his investigation into Mr. Biden and his relatives.

Mr. Comer has issued a broad subpoena to obtain bank records of associates of the Biden family, requiring Bank of America to produce “all financial records” for three private individuals from Jan. 20, 2009, to the present — a 14-year period, Mr. Raskin wrote.

He has focused in particular on John R. Walker, an associate of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business dealings are under investigation by the Justice Department. Mr. Walker was involved in a joint venture with CEFC China executives, a now-bankrupt Chinese energy conglomerate.

Mr. Raskin accused Mr. Comer of using a “wildly overbroad subpoena” to conduct “a dragnet of political opposition research on behalf of former President Trump.”

Mr. Comer responded that Mr. Raskin was trying to distract “from the real issue here, and that is the Biden family money trail from China.”

“I now possess documents to prove it; Raskin knows it, and Raskin has had a meltdown,” Mr. Comer added.

When Congress was in Democratic hands, the House Oversight Committee waged a yearslong battle to obtain Mr. Trump’s financial records from Mazars in one of the major legal sagas of the Trump presidency.

Mazars cut ties with the Trump Organization in 2022, saying it could no longer stand by a decade of financial statements it had prepared.

Today's Crooked Politician

It's not always a Republican, because it can't always be a Republican.

But it seems like it's always a Republican, because something like 95% of the time, it's a Republican.

So yeah - for all practical purposes, it's always a fucking Republican.

Former Ohio House speaker convicted in $60 million bribery scheme

Former state House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges were convicted Thursday in a $60 million bribery scheme that federal prosecutors have called the largest corruption case in state history.

A jury in Cincinnati found the two guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering, after about 9.5 half hours of deliberations over two days.

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said the government's prosecution team showed that "Householder sold the Statehouse, and thus he ultimately betrayed the people of the great state of Ohio he was elected to serve." He called Borges "a willing co-conspirator."

"Through its verdict today, the jury reaffirmed that the illegal acts committed by both men will not be tolerated and that they should be held accountable," Parker said.

Attorneys for Householder and Borges did not immediately respond to messages left by The Associated Press on Thursday.

Prosecutors alleged that Householder orchestrated a scheme secretly funded by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. to secure his power in the Legislature, elect his allies — and then to pass and defend a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout benefiting the electric utility. They alleged that Borges, then a lobbyist, sought to bribe an operative for inside information on the referendum to overturn the bailout.

Householder, 63, had been one of Ohio's most powerful politicians — and twice elected speaker — until the Republican-controlled House ousted him after his indictment from his leadership post, and then in a bipartisan vote, and with Householder vigorously objecting, from the chamber. It was the first such expulsion in 150 years.

He took the stand in his own defense, contradicting FBI testimony and denying that he attended swanky Washington dinners where prosecutors allege he and executives of FirstEnergy hatched the elaborate scheme in 2017.

Borges, 50, did not testify at trial but has insisted that he's innocent. Both men face up to 20 years in prison.

The verdict comes two-and-a-half years after Householder, Borges and three others were arrested. Over the past seven weeks, jurors at the trial were presented with firsthand accounts of the alleged scheme, as well as reams of financial documents, emails, texts and wiretap audio.

"... alleged ..." ? - it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of 12 regular everyday people who returned a unanimous verdict. It's not fucking "alleged" anymore.

The prosecution called two of the people arrested — Juan Cespedes and Jeff Longstreth, who pleaded guilty — to testify about political contributions that they said are not ordinary, but bribes intended to secure passage of the bailout bill, known as House Bill 6.

Householder's attorneys described his activities as nothing more than hardball politics.

Jurors also heard taped phone calls in which Householder and another co-defendant, the late Statehouse superlobbyist Neil Clark, plotted a nasty attack ad — and, in expletive-laced fashion, contemplated revenge against lawmakers who had crossed Householder.

Householder testified that he never retaliated against those who voted counter to his wishes or who donated to his rivals.

Under a deal to avoid prosecution, FirstEnergy admitted using a network of dark money groups to fund the scheme and even bribing the state's top utility regulator, Sam Randazzo.

Randazzo resigned as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after an FBI search of his home, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.

Democrats Bring It

I've backed off my criticism of the Dems in recent years, and I think Jamie Raskin (D-MD08) puts my reasoning into words in pretty good shape (at about 5:50, 8:01, and especially 20:53).

"We are the democracy". We're the party in favor of getting everybody out to vote. We're the party of freedom - the freedoms of self-determination - choice and opportunity - as well as FDR's four freedoms. We're the party that wants everybody to have a real shot at making their lives what they they need their lives to be.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen

Here's the Jonathan Weisman piece:

In Fog of East Palestine’s Crisis, Politicians Write Their Own Stories

The train derailment in Eastern Ohio has spawned conspiracy theories and contradictory narratives, with politicians from both parties parading through town to further their agendas.

To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.

All of which is actually true, but notice how the phrasing invites the inference that it's really just a political opinion on the part of the Dems.

And that's an important preface, cuz here comes the Both-Sides Razor-Blade-In-The-Apple:

To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.

Carrying those irreconcilable narratives, politicians have begun parading through East Palestine with their own agendas to pursue. On Wednesday, it was the former president and current presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, handing out branded water and campaign hats, while assuring the supportive crowd, “You are not forgotten.”

On Thursday, three weeks after 38 Norfolk Southern rail cars carrying toxic chemicals skipped the tracks in East Palestine and, days later, a plume of vinyl chloride was intentionally released over the town, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arrived, having spent days jousting with Republicans over safety regulations.

“What I’m really proud of is the community that I saw here,” he told a retinue of right-wing reporters shouting questions at him. “You’ve got federal agencies, you’ve got local first responders, you’ve got states, but most of all you’ve got a community that’s been through a lot, that I think is pretty frustrated with people trying to take political advantage of this situation.”

In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter.

In 2015, after the deadly derailment of an Amtrak train traveling too fast outside Philadelphia, President Barack Obama moved to mandate the installation of lifesaving automatic braking technology by 2023 over the protests of the largest rail companies. In 2018, as part of a broad regulatory rollback, Mr. Trump repealed the rule.

But, according to the website PolitiFact, the rule would have had no impact on the East Palestine derailment. The Norfolk Southern train would not have been covered because it would not have been categorized as a high-hazard cargo train. Besides, the National Transportation Safety Board initially pointed to the failure of a wheel bearing, not the train’s speed, as the cause of the derailment.

Such details did not stop the White House from issuing a formal statement on Wednesday with the headline, “Republicans, stop dismantling rail safety and selling out communities like East Palestine to the rail lobby.” Nor did it dissuade the anti-Trump Lincoln Project from releasing a video on Wednesday squarely blaming the former president.

Still, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, called the accident “100 percent preventable” at a news conference on Thursday in Washington.

“I don’t understand why this has gotten so political — this is a community that is suffering,” she added.

Republicans have simply ignored that debate, instead pressing the seemingly contradictory cases that the Biden administration cares more about Ukraine than East Palestine and that the White House concocted the downing of three unidentified flying objects to distract attention from the derailment — which would imply that, in fact, officials care a lot.

The derailment’s aftermath coincided with Mr. Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine — by rail — and his speech in Poland, in which he pledged billions of dollars more in military support for Ukraine. That fed the Republican narrative that, for all his talk of caring for blue-collar workers, the president would rather deal with geopolitics than a domestic problem.

Neglect and the late arrival of assistance became the dominant talking points about Eastern Ohio on Fox News and in an array of other conservative news outlets, even as the Biden administration said repeatedly that federal officials had arrived on the scene of the accident within hours.

And in Columbiana County, where East Palestine sits, Republicans have been playing on their home field. Mr. Trump won the county with 72 percent of the vote in 2020, against Mr. Biden’s 27 percent.

“On Presidents’ Day in our country, he is over in Ukraine,” Mayor Trent Conaway of East Palestine fumed this week. “That tells you what kind of guy he is.”

Conspiracy theories have only deepened the trauma, bouncing around far-right podcasts and conservative celebrities’ social media accounts before reaching Congress via Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the once-fringe Republican from Georgia whose alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy has brought her to the center of congressional power.

“East Palestine, Ohio, is undergoing an ecological disaster because authorities blew up the train derailment cars carrying hazardous chemicals and press are being arrested for trying to tell the story,” she wrote on Twitter over dramatic footage of the fiery plume and its aftermath. “Oh but UFO’s!”

The Trump campaign on Thursday abetted the narrative with a day-by-day timeline of “Neglect and Betrayal,” including “Feb 5: Shoots the spy balloon down” and “Feb 13: Dodges questions about unidentified objects downed on Sunday,” followed by, “Feb 16: Delivered a response to unidentified objects in the sky and screened the movie ‘Till.’”

Batting down another conspiratorial rumor, the East Palestine fire chief, Keith Drabick, had to spend time this week assuring people that medical identification bracelets being passed out to residents in case they showed signs of debilitation were not tracking devices for the government.

The fever pitch of distrust was understandable for a community that saw what appeared to be an apocalyptic plume of chemicals rise from the wreckage on the rail line, then filmed dead fish and frogs in East Palestine’s streams and complained of headaches, sore throats, coughing and skin rashes — all as government officials assured them the air and water were safe.

But if East Palestine felt ignored in the immediate aftermath of the derailment, its travails are now playing out on a vast national tableau of partisan politics.

The environmental activist Erin Brockovich is planning a town hall event on Friday at the town high school. Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned-conservative-gadfly, took a spin through the town earlier in the week, then rushed to the television cameras to describe it.

The Fox News anchor Bret Baier did concede that visits to train derailments by transportation secretaries, including Mr. Trump’s, Elaine Chao, were rare, especially when the accidents did not cause fatalities.

But more broadly, the derailment has been a chance for Republicans and their supporters in the conservative news media to showcase the white, working-class voters who flocked to Mr. Trump, and whom Mr. Biden has struggled to win back — and the power that Mr. Trump and other celebrities who remain in his orbit still hold in places like East Palestine.

After Mr. Trump on Wednesday praised John Rourke, the owner of the Florida-based company Blue Line Moving, for his relief efforts in Ohio, Tucker Carlson invited Mr. Rourke onto his top-rated cable news show to let him rip into the current president.

“The fact that President Biden has refused to come to this small town when he’s supposed to be Scranton Joe, a small-town hero of the working man, and he can’t even show his face in a town of American citizens that need his leadership, that need the government’s help terribly, he proved what everybody, I think, already knew in this country, is that he’s not the leader for this country,” Mr. Rourke said Wednesday night. “Donald J. Trump is the leader that we all know he is, and he is the leader of this country.”

On Thursday, Mr. Buttigieg showed up after weeks of Republican taunts demanding to know why he had not bothered. But it was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump confidant, who garnered much of the attention from residents and local politicians as he toured the accident site and signed memorabilia.

“Politicians come in and they make a big show and then they don’t come back,” he said, promising, “This is a come-back situation.”

SOTU 2023

Biden laid it down, and certain Republicans couldn't help but show their ass, as the rancor was on full display last night.

"It was one of a number of moments in which he was heckled in the chamber, and he seemed to relish the open exchanges that broke out in the House chamber and played on national television. McCarthy, sitting directly behind Biden and in view of the cameras, several times appeared to shush his colleagues."

"McCarthy ... several times appeared to shush his colleagues."

Kevin McCarthy will be remembered as a pretty bad Speaker - like Ryan and Boehner before him.

I can't condemn the antics completely. There has to be room for protest no matter what the venue. That said, protest can be lodged in a way that's less egregiously demagogic - less like some asshole teenager who covets attention so badly, he has to stand up at assembly and call his ex-girlfriend a scumbag slut for dumping him or some such.

Greene is indulging in bullshit theatrics because that's her brand. It's who she is. She's being egged on by her fellow assholes, but what gets ever more disgusting is the fact that the "normal" Republicans sit by and do nothing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene yells ‘liar’ during combative State of the Union

After guidance to behave themselves from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans had plenty to say in the chamber

Midway through the State of the Union address, the room turned feisty as some Republican lawmakers began booing President Biden. Some pointed fingers toward his position at the center of the House chamber. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stood and yelled at him: “Liar!”

It was a remarkable display of partisan animosity, one that illustrates the challenges gripping a deeply divided Washington. And it put on vivid display the power of Greene as leader of the Outburst Caucus — and the struggles that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has in controlling the behavior, let alone the votes, of his conference.

Hours before the speech, McCarthy (Calif.) and other Republican leaders had told lawmakers during their weekly conference meeting that all eyes would be on them as Biden delivered his remarks, according to people in the room for the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it freely.

That guidance echoed a similar message sent out by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.): “Cameras are always on and microphones are always hot.” Ahead of the speech, Republicans did not anticipate any outbursts, and McCarthy had said Monday that he would not shred the president’s speech as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did with President Donald Trump’s.

But about 40 minutes into his speech, Biden turned to one of the most contentious current topics facing Congress. Halfway through a speech that was by turns folksy and feisty — and contained more than a hint of swagger — he looked to the Republicans sitting in the chamber to his left, chiding them for a lack of specificity in their approach to cutting the budget.

Their decisions under Trump, he said, added more to the national debt than any president, triggering boos from Republicans.

“They’re the facts!” Biden responded. “Check it out. Check it out!”

It was one of a number of moments in which he was heckled in the chamber, and he seemed to relish the open exchanges that broke out in the House chamber and played on national television. McCarthy, sitting directly behind Biden and in view of the cameras, several times appeared to shush his colleagues.

As Biden mentioned potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare — and how some Republican-backed proposals could lead to cuts in the entitlement programs — it triggered one of the most disruptive moments of the night, and loud protests that had been kept at bay for much of the speech were unleashed.

Greene stood up, jabbed her finger, and yelled toward Biden: “Liar!” Others followed. It was one of several outbursts from Greene who interrupted Biden’s speech by yelling, “China’s spying on us!” and later, “Secure the border!”

Biden, seeming both perplexed and energized by the sudden shift in the room, responded by saying, “Anyone who doubts me, contact my office ... I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.” He emphasized that it was “not a majority” of Republicans who support such a plan and that it probably was not “even a significant” portion of them.

At least one Republican lawmaker yelled, “Then don’t say it!”

“I enjoy conversion,” Biden quipped, suggesting that minds in the room had changed on the topic.

After some of the commotion had died down, Biden said that everyone in the room apparently agreed that “Social Security and Medicare is off the books! We got unanimity!”

“So tonight, let’s all agree — and apparently we are — and stand up for seniors,” Biden added, after which most in the chamber stood up. “Stand up and show them! We will not cut Social Security! We will not cut Medicare! Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it. ... If anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it ... But apparently it’s not going to be a problem.”

To get scoops, sharp political analysis and accountability journalism in your inbox each morning, sign up for The Early 202.

White House staffers watching on televisions in the West Wing cheered and high-fived at that moment, according to an administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Biden’s focus on Social Security and Medicare was one of his chief arguments during the midterm elections. He often pointed to a plan from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that was aimed at cutting the federal deficit with a proposal to “sunset” all federal programs after five years, meaning they would expire unless renewed.

Scott’s plan does not specifically say Social Security or Medicare will expire, but it recommends that “all federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.”

Some top Republicans had suggested that Scott’s approach was unwise — “That will not be part of the Republican Senate majority agenda,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said when Scott’s plan was released — but that didn’t stop Biden from trying to make Scott the face of the GOP.

More recently, Biden has said that Republicans need to offer more specifics about which programs they want to cut. He has accused them of being vague even as they threaten not to raise the debt limit without budget cuts.

“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage,” he said during the speech.

After the speech, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Biden was wrong to keep associating his party with wanting to cut those programs. “He tries to keep spreading this false narrative about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare,” he said. “And I think by the end he finally acknowledged it’s not true, but he was trying to imply something about Republicans. That’s just not true.”

Sorry not sorry, Steve, but until you stand up and forcefully condemn the ongoing efforts of your party to kill Social Security outright, or to privatize it so you can boost the GOP's Wall Street Welfare program, you're squarely in opposition of what practically all of us want. Live with it.

The back-and-forth in the chamber was a discordant note and had the feel of the rambunctious, free-flowing nature of the British Parliament at question time with the prime minister, rather than the traditionally more stately setting of the presidential address.

Much of Biden’s earlier portions of the speech was focused on seemingly bipartisan basics — blue-collar job growth, boosting American manufacturing, promoting infrastructure projects — that dared Republicans not to stand. And through much of it, McCarthy remained seated.

McCarthy and Greene have come a long way since the Georgia congresswoman was elected to the House in 2020. McCarthy’s defense of her when Democrats stripped Greene of her committee assignments ultimately led to the two forging a closer relationship. She was a vocal supporter of his bid for speaker, but it wasn’t enough to ensure an easy path to the gavel for the California Republican.

While McCarthy ultimately won by hashing out deals, he remains beholden to the splintered factions of the conference. Greene’s display against Biden underscored that tenuous grip — that McCarthy couldn’t contain an ally, even after he and other GOP leaders warned lawmakers not to hastily react to Biden during his speech.

“He did, frankly, lie, talking about Republicans and Social Security and Medicare,” Greene said in a video she released after the speech.

“We have not talked about cutting Social Security and Medicare ... We’re not,” she said. “So we called him out on the House floor. I called him a liar because that’s what Joe Biden is.”

She went on: “Joe Biden doesn’t know anything he’s talking about. That’s the state of our union.”