Today's Takedown

The most important item on the GOP's Candidate Recruitment Questionnaire is:

How well can you fake authenticity?

Something's Cooking

1. Greg Pence IN-06
2. Mike Gallagher WI-08
3. David Valadao CA -22
4. Chip Roy TX-21
5. Thomas Massie KY-04
6. Larry Bucshon IN-08

All of those Republicans are at least mildly rumored to be contemplating resignation before the end of the session.

I don't know the rules for those states - ie: special election vs governor appointments, or what - but we do know that Ken Buck's resignation, due a week from tomorrow (Mar 22), carves the GOP majority down to 218-213.

It's too much to hope for, but if all 6 on that list quit early, it's bye-bye Mike, and hello Hakeem (prob'ly - for a short while anyway).

So there may be something afoot that fucks MAGA, but allows the wingnut Freedom Caucus to survive more or less intact, while saving a little face, and ducking some of the Trump rage, because he'll miss the point and blame Taylor Swift or some-fuckin'-thing (?)

And, of course, I don't know. As usual, my crystal ball is busted and there's all kinds of weird shit that goes on that we don't get to see.

Five Other House Republicans Could Resign After Ken Buck

Five more Republican representatives may join Ken Buck in resigning from the House of Representatives if they continue to be dissatisfied with the party's nominee for the presidential election, Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Buck, a Colorado congressman, suddenly resigned, leaving his seat vacant from next week and shrinking the Republican's slim majority in the House to 218 to 213. Previously, he had announced his intention to retire from Congress at the end of his current term.

When asked by Axios whether he was coming under pressure from colleagues over his decision, Buck then hinted that more colleagues might resign, saying: "I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about."

Buck did not elaborate on who might be next to depart Congress, but there are a few Republicans who have publicly voiced negative opinions about Trump and could potentially be next out of the door.

One is David Valadao, but a spokesperson for the Congressman confirmed to Newsweek that he has no plans to resign and is actively running for reelection in the 22nd district.

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie backed former presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his failed bid to become the Republican nominee.

In a January interview with Fox News he accused Trump of "bullying tactics" in securing endorsements from Republicans who are scared of opposing him.

Chip Roy, of Texas, has criticized Trump for issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. In November, he told CNN that Trump "failed to actually fully secure the border" amid concerns about a rising number of migrant encounters.

There appears to be no love lost between the pair as Trump too has spoken out against Roy, calling him a "RINO" (Republican in name only) on social media.

But on Thursday, a Roy office spokesman told Newsweek: "This speculation is unfounded. Congressman Roy has no plans to resign."

Larry Bucshon has also pilloried the former president. In August 2023, the Indiana Republican predicted Trump would not be the GOP nominee because of controversies around him. In October 2023 he said Trump should apologize for comments he made about migrants "poisoning the blood" of the country during a campaign rally. He also called Trump out for the Capitol riots in 2021, claiming he incited them.

California Republican David Valadao was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 and has said he is not endorsing the former president in his reelection bid.

Meanwhile, Indiana Republican Greg Pence and Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher have both announced they will retire from Congress at the end of their terms. Gallagher did not join in efforts to disrupt the result of the 2020 election, however he twice voted against impeaching Trump. Like Buck, Pence and Gallagher may opt to resign sooner, leaving the House Republicans with a 216-213 majority

Newsweek contacted representatives for Bucshon, Gallagher, Massie and Pence by email to comment on this story.

Face-Eating Leopards

... will always eat our face.

Here's Rick Wilson with a few predictions. Let's make a note and see if any of this actually happens.

That Sound You Hear

... is Vladimir Putin, David Koch, Bob Mercer, and every fucking plutocrat and wannabe dictator laughing out loud.

So where's the reporting, Press Poodles? Matt Gaetz doesn't pull this shit on his own. Matt Gaetz is a half-assed legacy frat puke who couldn't put his own finger up his own ass if you gave him GPS and a guide book.

Are you trying to tell me Matt Gaetz is about to bring down the whole of American democracy all by his little ol' lonesome?

Matt fucking Gaetz?

Like fuck he is.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced a resolution Monday evening to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his seat, triggering an expected intraparty clash and setting up a showdown for the House to decide whether to depose McCarthy likely within 48 hours.

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Gaetz and a handful of hard-right Republicans have repeatedly threatened to go after McCarthy’s speakership if he relied on Democratic votes to pass any spending legislation, which happened Saturday after McCarthy could not get a majority of Republicans to support various proposals to fund the government with only GOP votes. Using a motion to vacate, a single person can force the House to consider removing the speaker. McCarthy agreed to lowering the threshold for bringing the motion to win over enough support to become speaker in January.

“It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money,” Gaetz said. "Members of the Republican Party might vote differently on a motion to vacate if they heard what the speaker had to share with us about his secret side deal with Joe Biden on Ukraine. I’ll be listening. Stay tuned.”

But it’s not clear Gaetz has 218 votes needed to remove McCarthy without himself relying on Democratic votes. If successful, the motion would not remove McCarthy from the House, but from his leadership position alone. If McCarthy is successfully removed, both Democrats and Republicans worry they will be in a speakership election fight that could drag on for days, blunting progress on passing full year appropriation bills before government funding runs out in mid-November.

The pursuit to depose McCarthy as speaker has alarmed many House Republicans, possibly setting up an internal civil war between staunch allies of McCarthy and those who have pressured him repeatedly with a variety of, at times unrealistic, demands. The effort also likely would force McCarthy and his allies to strategize with Democrats, further irritating the hard-right, because the minority party will play a determinative role in whether McCarthy can hold onto his leadership seat.

House Democrats have begun to discuss how they would handle a potential challenge to McCarthy’s speakership. House Minority Whip Rep. Katherine M. Clark (Mass.), in a note to Democrats Sunday told them to be ready for a motion to oust McCarthy as speaker “at any time, including Monday.” She did not indicate any preference in how to vote, adding that “we will have a Caucus wide discussion on how to address the motion to best meet the needs of the American people.”

The point of the exercise here (for Republicans) is to create chaos in order to demonstrate the shortcomings of democracy, which in turn shows a need for a "strong hand to stabilize the government".

"A nation of 300 million is ungovernable under the old way of doing things. We must be strong enough to forge ahead and establish a new order..."

That's a quote I made up. But it's not something we haven't heard before in one iteration or another.

The Dirtiest Lakes

Today's Unfettered Free Market Paradise. Be business will regulate itself - the market will fix any problem that comes along because the owners always put the health of people and their living space first. Right?

Florida lakes are not clean - they're too polluted for swimming or healthy aquatic life. Because of course.

The study by the Environmental Integrity Project analyzed biennial pollution reports sent by states to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Florida has climbed to the top of another ignominious list, thanks to its hundreds of thousands of acres of dirty lakes.

The state's waters have long been fouled by dirty stormwater and algae blooms fed by fertilizer run off from farms. Now a new study examining water quality across the U.S. shows Florida ranking first for the highest total acres of lakes too polluted for swimming or healthy aquatic life. That means water can have high levels of fecal matter and other bacteria that can sicken people , or have low levels of oxygen or other pollution that can harm fish and other aquatic life. The state ranked second for polluted estuaries.

The Environmental Integrity Project launched the project to track the progress of the Clean Water Act as it nears its 50th anniversary.

“Fifty years ago, we had the imagination and political will to face big problems and try to do something about them,” said Eric Schaeffer, the project's executive director and former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory office . “We're hoping at this half-century mark that we can find the courage to recommit.”

The group based the findings on Florida’s 2020 water quality report filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The same reporting from other states was used to compile the rankings. Ohio and the Great Lakes were excluded because they compile data on lakes differently.

The 1972 law made it a federal crime to directly discharge pollution into waters, but remained vague about runoff that drains into waters. That’s created decades of problems for states like Florida, where farms and dense urban areas line waterways.

Across the U.S., it’s also allowed industrialized agricultural operations to largely bypass pollution limits, Schaeffer said.

“A failure to confront agriculture is probably the biggest program failure in the Clean Water Act,” said Schaeffer, who resigned from his EPA post in 2002 after criticizing the Bush administration for gutting the Clean Air Act. “We have to confront the fact that agricultural runoff is really the leading cause of water pollution in the U.S. today. I don't think that was true so much 50 years ago.”

In Florida, nearly 900,000 acres of lakes are classified as impaired for swimming or healthy aquatic life. About 2,500 acres of estuaries are polluted, accounting for 99% of the total assessed.

A big driver of that is Lake Okeechobee, which covers about 450,000 square acres and has been polluted by decades of agricultural and stormwater runoff. The $23 billion Everglades restoration plan is intended to undo much of the damage caused by polluted water flowing out of the lake. But Florida has not yet been able to slow the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake, which can feed algae blooms.

The amount remains about three to five times higher than the 140 metric ton limit set by the state. And even more legacy phosphorus sits in about four inches of muck at the bottom of the lake.

The state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are now in the midst of revising restoration work planned for Lake Okeechobee . Plans originally included about 46,000 acres of storage but will now include about 50 deep aquifer storage and recovery wells at 10 locations around the lake.

The Clean Water Act was created in 1972 after decades of industrialization had left the nation’s waters a foul, stinky, poisonous mess. Ohio’s Cuyahoga River set the stage after routinely catching fire , finally drawing national attention and a renewed concern over polluted rivers across the U.S. The law set goals for reaching healthy targets for recreation and aquatic life by 1983 and stopping the discharge of pollution into navigable waters by 1985.

"Things have changed for the better since then, there's no doubt," Schaeffer said. "The Potomac River is now a major bass fishery. You can actually canoe down the Cuyahoga River. But we don't have the fishable, swimmable waters we were promised, and we have more work to do before we get them. "

The law made it a federal crime to discharge any pollution from “a pipe” or point source into waters and required states to regularly monitor water for impairments. That meant industrial facilities or sewer plants, like those in South Florida, could no longer dump waste directly into canals or the ocean. The EPA used the law to force Florida Power & Light to create cooling canals for Turkey Point rather than dump water used to cool the plant directly into Biscayne Bay.

But what it failed to address, the study notes, was the runoff that drains from cities and neighborhoods , and especially the tons of fertilizer used in agriculture that flow off of fields and in to water ways every year. While there are pollution limits , enforcing the limits is largely voluntary. Florida uses Best Management Practices, or BMPs, for its farms.

The Florida Department of Agriculture has been chronically understaffed and the Department of Environmental Protection has slashed its staff over the years.

A 2020 review of DEP enforcement by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility found that despite promises of reform, enforcement under Gov. Ron DeSantis continued to drop. While the number of inspections increased, finding more cases of noncompliance, the rate of enforcement fell.

DeSantis also formed a task force aimed at tackling the toxic algae increasingly spreading in state waters. But so far, state lawmakers have failed to adopt the task force's recommendations.

In order to achieve the goals set out in the Clean Water Act , the report recommends Congress:

• Require pollution standards be updated more frequently to keep pace with changing industry
• Close the loophole for urban and agricultural runoff
• End the patchwork of guidelines across states and set universal standards
• Make it easier to enforce clean-ups