Winners and Losers from the House Battle

Congress has voted to keep the National Christmas Tree illuminated, along with the rest of the government—for the time being. But that doesn't mean the problem is solved for good and we are back to where we were a month ago. No, the incident has definitely created winners and losers. Here is one list.

WINNERS

• Elon Musk: Co-president-elect Elon Musk demonstrated his political muscle, and it didn't cost him even one of his 430 billion dollars. After Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) carefully negotiated a bipartisan and bicameral deal to kick the can down the road, Musk trashed it and it was gone. Not bad for a private citizen who has never held any public office. After the bill crashed and burned, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) demonstrated that she is fickle and is no longer swooning over the 78-year-old Donald Trump, but instead over the 53-year-old Musk. She tweeted: "I'd be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House." She wasn't the only one. Musk won this round, but there will be more to come.
  
  
• Federal Employees: The thought of not getting paid this week probably dampened the spirits of many a federal worker, especially those who need this week's paycheck to pay next month's rent and buy food for the holidays. They are now spared.
  
  
• Farmers: Being a farmer is always tough. Either it doesn't rain enough or it rains too much. And rainmakers in Congress don't always produce rain when it is needed. Still, there was $10 billion in aid to farmers in the final bill.
  
  
• Victims of Disasters: There have been major hurricanes this year, especially that power couple Helene and Milton. Many people lost their houses and everything else. FEMA can help some of them, at least a little, but it was running out of money. The final bill appropriates $100 billion for disaster relief (but nothing for trying to mitigate climate change to prevent the next disaster).
  
  
• City of D.C.: The city of Washington, D.C. threw a Hail Mary pass and it was caught. The District got control of the RFK stadium. This paves the way for the Maryland Commanders to move from Landover, MD, to the District and become the Washington Commanders.
  

IN BETWEEN

• Hakeem Jeffries: During the negotiations about the bill, House minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) made it clear that he did not want the bill to include an increase to the debt ceiling. He got what he wanted. This means when the debt ceiling is reached the potential breach, which would cause the stock market to collapse, will be on Donald Trump's watch, not Joe Biden's. On the other hand, 500 pages of Democratic Christmas tree ornaments that were in the original bill are now dead. Even things that should not be controversial, like banning revenge porn, got axed.
  
  
• Chip Roy: Rep. Charles ("Chip") Roy (R-TX) got tons of free PR, something he loves. He also outshone all the other members of the Freedom Caucus. He is now the star of Christmas. However, his stunts alienated Donald Trump, who will now try to find a primary opponent for Roy in his R+13 district. And Elon Musk will make sure that opponent has more money than Scrooge McDuck. It is hard to dislodge a sitting congressman, but now Roy has to at least worry about it a bit.
  

LOSERS

• Mike Johnson: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) looked weak, and in Trumpworld, the weak are eaten for lunch. Johnson especially angered members of the Freedom Caucus. When the new House convenes, the partisan mix will probably be 215D, 219R, unless Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) changes his mind and is sworn in. When Johnson runs for speaker, he needs 218 votes, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is a hard "no." That means all it will take is one more Republican to sink Johnson. In the end, he might win simply because the Freedom Caucus doesn't have anyone who can get 100 votes, let alone 218, but Johnson will be embarrassed if it takes 15 ballots, like last time.
  
  
• PBM Reform Advocates: The role of Pharmacy Benefit Managers is very contentious. They are middlemen who help negotiate drug prices for health insurance companies—and take a nice piece of the pie for themselves. The original bill had reforms in it. Now they are gone and the PBMs are safe.
  
  
• Joe Biden: According to the one-president-at-a-time rule, Joe Biden is still president. Where was he during this crisis? Why didn't he invite the four congressional leaders to his office for marathon negotiating sessions? Why didn't he go on television saying that the parties need to work with each other to avoid Congress stealing Christmas? He looked very weak. He is still the president but hardly acted like it.
  
  
• Donald Trump: Thirty-eight Republicans voted against his wishes, in public, with the whole country watching. They openly defied him. Apparently they are not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf anymore. Presidents don't actually have any real power. All they can do is tell subordinates to do things and hope they obey. If they don't, he can replace them with new subordinates and hope they obey. But once members of Congress see that they can defy Trump and nothing happens (except the threat of a primary in 2 years), they are going to get bolder and try defying him more often now.
  

Is there more fallout? Keep reading. (V)

What Are the Implications of the House Battle?

Donald Trump wants to hit the ground running and get all kinds of stuff going on Day 1. Of course he can sign XOs, but they have limited impact. To actually change things, he needs to get Congress to act. The sh**show last week showed that it won't be easy. The Freedom Caucusers have their own goals and agenda and it may not align all that well with Trump's on everything. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said the quiet part out loud: "It's going to be really hard in the House because they just simply don't have a working majority." Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) agrees: "If they can't manage the CR, how is he going to manage reconciliation? It's bad. It bodes badly." Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) observed that putting together complex budget reconciliation packages to secure the border, expand domestic energy production, cut taxes, cut federal spending and possibly increase the debt limit will be much tougher than passing a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.

One Republican senator who preferred to remain anonymous said: "Tax packages are always hard; all you have to do is say 'SALT.'" What he meant is that the provision to limit the deduction for state and local taxes will split the Republican conference badly. Many Republicans see the SALT deduction as a sop to rich people in blue states and oppose the deduction. The trouble is that some of those people are represented in Congress by Republicans who know their job security depends of keeping and expanding those deductions. And with the Republicans' tiny majority, those votes are essential.

Trump seems to have forgotten that although using the budget reconciliation process avoids the need for 60 votes in the Senate, it still needs a majority. He tried to repeal the ACA during Trump v1.0 but that failed because three Republican senators—Susan Collins (ME), John McCain (AZ) and Lisa Murkowski (AK)—voted against repeal. With such a small margin in the House, losing even a few votes could be fatal, especially if some faction wants to hijack every bill for its own purposes. Once members of Congress see that they can defy Trump and all they get is threats, a group of 35 or 40 of them is not going to be so scared of him anymore.

Trump has repeatedly said that he has a mandate, because he won all seven swing states. But he won them by very small margins. He did win the popular vote, but more people voted against him than for him. Having less than half the country for you is not a mandate. And although Republicans gained four Senate seats, only one was in a swing state and they lost a House seat. Trump had no coattails. With a mandate, the president has huge coattails.

Just since the election, the following things have happened:

• Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was defeated for Senate majority leader despite Trump pushing for him hard.
• Matt Gaetz was forced to withdraw from the nomination for AG because the votes weren't there.
• 38 Republicans openly defied Trump by voting against a CR he strongly wanted.
• The House refused to pass an increase in the debt limit that Trump wanted.

None of these things suggest that Trump is omnipotent and can work his will merely by sending out a tweet. Furthermore, while Republicans are fairly good at getting together to say "NO," they are much less good at agreeing on things they want and getting them done, with complete unity. (V)

Lara Trump Drops Out

On Saturday, Lara Yunaska Trump, the wife of Donald Trump's second son, Eric, announced that she didn't want to be a senator from Florida. There is no shame in that. Millions of Americans don't want to be a senator from Florida, including most of the 11 million people who live in North Carolina, where she is from and went to school and college.

In her "abdication statement," Trump tweeted: "After an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many, I have decided to remove my name from consideration for the United States Senate." English translation: "I didn't have the vote." Note use of the singular here, because only one person, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), gets to vote on whether she gets to be a senator. Why she was a "candidate" for the Senate in a state she has never lived in is not hard to fathom. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is confirmed to be secretary of state, there will be a Senate vacancy that DeSantis gets to fill for 2 years. Some Republicans, especially Donald Trump, would have loved to replace Rubio with a very compliant senator. And family members are the most compliant of all.

Now that Lara's "bid" is over. What happened? Here are some possible explanations.

1. She is telling the truth.
2. She likes the work, but the pay of $174,000 is insulting, so no.
3. Someone gave her a map and she suddenly realized that Florida is not part of North Carolina.
4. Trump didn't give DeSantis what he wanted in return for the favor.
5. DeSantis felt she would lose the special election in 2026.
6. DeSantis is planning to name himself to the seat.
7. DeSantis is planning to name a placeholder to the seat to keep it warm until he needs it.
8. DeSantis is tired of groveling at Trump's feet and decided stiffing him is worth whatever the cost may be.
9. DeSantis suddenly remembered what happened to Rod Blagojevich when he tried to sell a Senate seat.

If you believe one word of Lara Trump's explanation of why she is "dropping out," we have a large, but used, bridge in Brooklyn for you for the low, low price of only $100. She knew she wasn't going to get the nod, so by dropping out, she saves herself some embarrassment. Besides, Florida grows oranges, not grapes, which would be sour in that climate. We are most inclined to go with #4 or maybe #5. Trump is transactional. DeSantis is transactional. Both no doubt asked what they would get out of the deal. For Trump, getting a family member in the Senate would be huge, so DeSantis no doubt demanded a big payoff. One possible demand would be for Trump to tell Pete Hegseth that his Pentagon days were over, even before they began, and then nominate DeSantis. This would give DeSantis some foreign policy experience for his 2028 presidential run. On its face, his appointment would be plausible and he would be confirmed easily. He is very smart (Yale, Harvard Law School) and has military experience in the Navy, ending as a lieutenant commander (major in the Army). He also has experience running a large bureaucracy as governor of the third most populous state. We suspect the deal didn't happen because the Co-President-elect got cold feet and didn't want a loose cannon he couldn't control running the military. But maybe it was one of the other reasons. We'll probably never know.

So who will DeSantis appoint? Some people think it will be Florida AG Ashley Moody (R), so DeSantis can replace her with his chief of staff, James Uthmeier, who has AG ambitions. Moody has won statewide already, so she could probably hold the seat in 2026. (V)

Arizona AG Has Obtained E-mails and Texts from Trump Insiders

Now that a Georgia Appeals Court has ordered Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis off the Georgia case against Donald Trump and 17 others (although she will appeal), the main ongoing case against Trump insiders is the fake electors case in Arizona. Trump is not a defendant in that case, but Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Boris Epshteyn and John Eastman are. Since Trump is not a defendant and Arizona AG Kris Mayes is not dating any members of the prosecutorial team, there is nothing to prevent that case from going forward.

Well, almost nothing. The judge on the case, Bruce Cohen, recused himself last month after it was discovered that he called on colleagues to defend Kamala Harris from personal attacks by Republicans. You would think that DAs and judges involved in extremely high profile cases would be super careful about doing anything fishy, even if it is technically legal. Anyway, Cohen did the right thing and dropped off the case and was promptly replaced by Judge Sam Myers. To avoid the appearance of taking sides, Myers accepted a motion from Meadows to give him an opportunity to challenge the grand jury proceedings. This may move the case into 2026. That may be a good thing for Meadows, but it may not be for Trump. Having a trial of half a dozen of his top aides during the heat of the 2026 midterms might remind people of why they don't like Trump.

Months ago, Mayes requested and received a search warrant to collect data from the defendants' Apple, Google, and eX-Twitter accounts. She now has the data, but has been ordered by the judge not to examine them yet so the defendants can review the material and object to her seeing old love letters and other messages not relevant to the case. (V)

Biden Has Now Appointed More Judges Than Trump

When the founders wrote the Constitution, they envisioned judges carefully selected by the president for their competence and knowledge of the law, with the Senate as a check in case a turkey or two came down the chute. Needless to say, that is not how it works anymore. Judges are chosen largely for their ideological background, with the expectation that they will rule the way the president wants them to rule, most of the time.

Judges know this and frequently time their retirements so that they can be replaced by a president of their preferred party. We have already seen several judges who jumped the gun, and expected Kamala Harris to win, rescind their planned retirements. For this reason, the Senate is trying to ram through as many of Joe Biden's judicial nominees as it can before control passes to the Republicans on Jan. 3. The Republicans are squealing, but they do exactly the same thing when the shoe is on the other foot.

On Friday, Biden hit a milestone. His 235th judicial pick was confirmed by the Senate, beating the 234 judges confirmed during Trump v1.0. Each of these presidents has replaced about one-quarter of the entire federal judiciary. In his next term, Trump will probably be able to appoint another quarter, meaning by 2029, half of all federal judges will be Trump appointees. Congress has a bill to expand the overworked judiciary, but Democrats won't vote for it when a Republican is president and Republicans won't vote for it when a Democrat is president. One possible way out is to have the new vacancies be created starting in Feb. 2029, when neither party knows who will be president and which party will control the Senate.

During the past 4 years, the Democrats did something that was against their own interests, in hope that the Republicans would reciprocate when the time came. The Senate has a tradition—and it is only a tradition, not a rule—that when the president nominates a federal judge, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee gives each of the senators from the state where the judge will serve a blue slip on which they give their opinion of the nominee and their view of whether the Senate should confirm that person. The senators can also put the blue slips in the mixed-color paper shredder and not return them, which is a de facto "No" vote. Thus, informally, the senators from the state where the judge will serve are given a soft veto on the nomination. The full Senate can override the soft veto, but that doesn't happen much.

Anyway, during Biden's four years, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) kept the blue-slip rule, allowing Republicans to veto Biden nominees in their states. This cost Biden some appointments. Reporters have now asked incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) if he will keep the blue-slip practice, and he said: "Yes." This may put Grassley at odds with Donald Trump more than a few times when one or two Democratic senators kill a nomination. Grassley is 91 and is not up again until 2028, when he will be 95. There is a decent chance he will retire then, after serving in public office for 66 years, but even if he doesn't, he has won election to the Senate eight times in Iowa and is not afraid of any primary threats from Trump. Those Democrats who urged Durbin to toss the blue-slip practice in the waste bin, and were angry at him for not doing so, are now thanking their lucky stars he was so stubborn. Who knows, maybe in January Democrats will be thanking Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) for refusing to kill the filibuster. (V)

Trump Picks a Man Who Dislikes the Pope to Be Ambassador to the Vatican

On Friday, Donald Trump said he would pick Brian Burch to be ambassador to the Vatican. Burch runs the right-wing group "Catholic Vote" and is a persistent critic of Pope Francis. Burch and Francis should get along just dandy.

What Burch did to get this job was attempt to round up Catholics to vote for Trump. For Trump, this was just as valuable as a big donor. After all, a big donor helps only indirectly, providing money for ads, GOTV, etc., whereas Burch went after the voters directly. He did a good job; Trump won the Catholic vote nationally 56% to 41%. In 2020, Trump beat Joe Biden among Catholics, but only 52% to 47%. It is conceivable that the emergence of abortion in 2024 was part of Trump's improved standing with Catholics, but Burch was one of the people who kept reminding Catholics about Kamala Harris' views on the subject. That said, the exit polls showed Catholics' views on abortion aren't all that different from those of the country at large. Trump may not know that, though, and Burch may not have told him. Of course, the fact that Biden is a Catholic himself may also have helped in 2020.

Another factor that may have helped Trump with Catholics is that J.D. Vance is currently Catholic, although his wife is a Hindu. In the end, Burch might just have told Trump that he [Burch] did a great job of mobilizing Catholics for Trump and Trump simply believed him.

One potential downside of this appointment, which will sail through the Senate easily, is that if Francis and Burch get into a squabble, it will get a lot of attention. Burch thinks he has a direct pipeline to American Catholics, but so does the other guy. We tend to think that one of them is right, and it's the one with the little hat with the antenna and the fancy slippers. (V)

Corey Lewandowski Is Helping Out Kristi Noem

Former dog owner Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) has been nominated to be secretary of Homeland Security, a position for which she is totally unqualified and about which she knows nothing (except that it will get her out of South Dakota). You take what you can get. Fortunately, when former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sees a damsel in distress, gentleman that he is, he runs to the rescue. This may not have been a difficult call, given the large number of media reports that she is having an affair with him, despite being married to Bryan Noem for 32 years. If you want more on the scandal, look here, here, here, here, and here. The affair is apparently well known in South Dakota Republican circles.

One might wonder how Noem got a cabinet position for which she is completely unqualified. Yes, she pretends to be very Trumpy, but many Republicans pretend to be very Trumpy. Some reports say that Noem had a(n unnamed) dear "friend" close to Trump put in a good word for her. Another factor could be that Trump sees her total lack of law enforcement experience as a plus. This will allow Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to handle immigration and (forced) emigration without having her even involved. Then she can devote her time to learning about FEMA, the Secret Service, and other agencies. DHS is big. It has more employees than any department except DoD. She will have enough to do learning about what DHS does, even if immigration is on someone else's plate.

Lewandowski has been sitting in on meetings and "helping" her pick high-level personnel for her department. This will ensure that all her deputies and assistants will be sufficiently Trumpy and some of them may actually be capable of doing (part of) her work. When a reporter asked Lewandowski about his involvement with DHS, even though he has no formal role there, he said: "It's all fake news and no one cares." (V)

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