Speaker Mike Johnson is about to drop to a one-vote majority, as retiring Rep. Mike Gallagher has decided he will exit the House as soon as next month, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Gallagher's resignation will produce a 217-213 Republican majority, which means two defections on a vote would produce a 215-215 tie. So one defection is indeed all Johnson can afford.
On the bright side, a special election will be held in May to replace Kevin McCarthy, which will produce another Republican vote. On the downside, a special election to replace Brian Higgins in April might well produce another Democratic vote. Stay tuned.
I love how the MAGA faction has caused Republicans to call it quits. The further right they move, the better Americans can see with their own eyes, the dysfunction and danger this group of autocratic-supporting assholes are.
I think it's a combination of MAGA faction and the prospect of having to support another Trump presidency. Both of those are going to be disruptive to the normal business community that backs Republicans, especially anyone who's got international exposure since he's likely to piss off a whole bunch of existing partners.
Of course, the problem is as “sane” republicans bail from government it leaves only“ insane” republicans running the circus…
But let’s move on to cat blogging🙂
Let no one forget. If Democrats had repealed California's (2010) Prop 20* which took redistricting away from the legislature, the Democrats would have been able to counter-Gerrymander districts - to balance against present-day red-state Gerrymandering - and control the House today.
They never tried.
Good-government types (supported P20) are often blinkered, like in this instance. Get real.
*Supported by Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Wow, been a while since I've seen that particular hobby horse trotting around.
Out of all the bad events, decisions and ideas of the past couple of decades, fixating on not wanting to destroy the value of citizens' votes is a choice one can make. If you want to become what you seek to depose.
I see no utility in disarming while red states continue with their mischief. With red state Gerrymandering while blue do not, citizens' votes are already improperly 'valued' in the House. And it's GOP (for now). It's crude, but counter-Gerrymandering gets the House closer to representing the peoples' will. Until a nationwide solution to Gerrymandering is implemented, that's how to play the game.
Even without gerrymandering the Democrats in California are able to obtain a fraction of seats non-trivially larger than their share of votes cast.
That's the way math works. The larger your percentage advantage, the more likelihood that you'll exceed that in proportioning seats.
You can do a simple experiment to see for yourself. If you take a hundred pennies and dot half of them with red paint, then toss them on a 9-panel or 16-panel grid, the pennies in each panel will divide about evenly, and roughly half the panels will have a majority of each (marked or unmarked). If your mix is 55-45, and you have 10,000 pennies for a hundred panel grid, you'll get more than 55 of the panels with a majority of the majority. If it's 60-40, or 65-35, or 70-30, the odds of exceeding that breakdown rise.
Now, of course, people don't distribute evenly, so you get more liberal people moving to more liberal urban areas, and more conservative people moving to more conservative areas, but it's entirely plausible that California could have more than 40 of its 52 seats won by Democrats with absolutely no shenanigans. Hawaii is about 65-35 Democratic in presidential elections, but in 2018 they won all 25 seats in the state senate and 41 out of 51 in the state house (that's 100% and 81%, for those keeping score at home).
California would only look suspicious if GOP seats dropped from 11 to 6 or something like that. Meanwhile, Wisconsin has a slight advantage for Deocrats and North Carolina has a slight advantage for Republicans, but Wisconsin's House delegation is 75% Republican, and NC went from 10-3 GOP to 7-7 when they had to redistrict with fair maps.
We had a similar thing happen in Virginia they pushed badly flawed constitutional amendment to neutralize gerrymandering with GOP support because the GOP new the trends were for the Democrats to take control. If we had more agressively gerrymandered we'd have 1 or 2 more Democrats in our congressional house representation.
Just one traffic accident away! Come on road rage!
Meanwhile, the alleged terrorist attack in Moscow is hilarious. My lefty friends have explained that it’s ok to cheer on terrorist attacks since 10/7 so… yippee! Here’s hoping Putin takes terrible revenge on the domestic terrorists who pulled this off. It’s not like he can do any worse to Ukraine.
ISIS. Still hilarious.
It's pretty damned close to a metaphysical certainty that you lefty friends did not, in fact, explain that it's "okay to cheer on terrorist attacks since 10/7." One might almost suspect there's some projection going on in your post.
"On the downside, a special election to replace Brian Higgins in April might well produce another Democratic vote."
Downside?
Talk about rats fleeing the sinking ship! As noted, these are just the sane rats. The rabid ones are still on board,. and have seized the wheel, at least in the House.
However, these many resignations ought to cheer on Democrats and lefties to make sure to vote BLUE in the November election. (And vote smart in the primaries.) The House may be within our grasp! And do not disregard the Senate!
Not to mention any governorships, state legislatures, state courts, county and city offices, ballot issues....
If you need help figuring it all out, check with your local League of Women Voters.
What is the House rule on tie votes? Is the bill or whatever deemed defeated, or does the Speaker get a casting vote?
The bill is dead.
The Speaker has always been a member of the House, and remains the representative of her or his district. The Speaker’s vote officially counts the same as any other Representative’s.
There is no Constitutional requirement that the Speaker be a member. If a nonmember were to be elected Speaker, s/he would have no constituency and no vote.
Shedding crocodile tears over the breakup of that (negative) power couple, Gaetz & Greene. Such a fun duo.
Republican Senators are out to show they can be idiots, too: they are offering amendments to the funding legislation. If it were amended, the bill would have to return to the House for a vote — but the House has adjourned for two weeks, so a shutdown would be locked in. The object of this fvckery is to force vulnerable Democrats to vote down amendments on sensitive issues like immigration; never mind it was the Republicans who killed the bipartisan immigration deal (which gave them much more than it gave Democrats). A side effect is delaying Sen Susan Collins’ travel to her mother’s funeral. Surprise! Republican Senators who don’t give a shit about having a functioning government don’t give a shit about a colleague’s personal loss, either.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/22/government-shutdown-house-vote-live/#link-YDD5SZML6FC5BNQEIGYK6POUVM
Gallagher timed his resignation so it wouldn't trigger a special election. Those fine Wisconsinites will be without representation until the winner of the November election is sworn in next January.