Mitt Romney, and His Roughly One-Third of a Backbone, Will Not Seek Reelection

Mitt Romney announced Wednesday that he will not seek a second term in the Senate and will leave office in January 2025.

The Utah senator cited his age as a primary factor in his decision to resign. If he served a second term, he would be in his eighties by the time it ended.

“Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. “They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, was the only member of his party to vote twice to convict Donald Trump during the former president’s impeachment trials.

But his legacy will be marked by a history of remarkable flip-flopping. He was a vehement Trump critic, speaking out against Trump in 2016. Romney swore he would never accept a Trump endorsement—only to accept one during his Senate campaign in 2018.

He also gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor about the importance of the truth in the wake of the January 6 attack. But Romney also gladly backed the ultraconservative policies that Trump pushed while in office.

Romney had promised in 2012 to repeal Obamacare, only to take credit for it three years later. He tried to get rid of Obamacare again in 2019, despite Senate leadership saying they were uninterested in reopening that can of worms.

Romney supported the Republican-controlled Senate’s decision to block Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, saying it was “consistent with history” to wait until after a presidential election. But after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, Romney helped the Senate rush through the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett.

It’s commendable that Romney is stepping down and making room for younger generations, especially as questions swirl about whether Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein are still fit for office. But it’s a shame that he wasn’t consistent with his morals.

This story has been updated.

Kevin McCarthy was called out Wednesday for not having the votes to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and he did not respond well.

The House speaker launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Tuesday, after months of the GOP insisting that the president is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas. Republicans have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims.

McCarthy ordered House Republicans to proceed with the inquiry, despite promising less than two weeks ago that he would not open the probe without a vote. When CNN’s Manu Raju asked him about that, McCarthy lashed out.

“You told Breitbart 12 days ago that you had the votes, so what changed?” Raju asked.

“You know what’s interesting to me?” McCarthy snapped back. “I just laid out to you a lot of allegations … so you don’t care about any of the answers.”

McCarthy accused Raju of not caring about whether Biden or his son, Hunter, had committed crimes. Typically, an impeachment inquiry would occur because there was already proof of crimes committed, not as a way to try and find that evidence.

The California Republican also attacked Nancy Pelosi for impeaching Donald Trump the first time without first holding a vote. McCarthy had similarly criticized Pelosi for doing so in 2019, so you would think that he would want to avoid copying her.

Another major difference is that a month after Pelosi opened the impeachment inquiry into Trump, the House voted to formalize the impeachment. It was unlikely the House would have backed McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry, though, as multiple Republicans said they were not on board with his plan.

Donald Trump privately met with Marjorie Taylor Greene to discuss what a “painful” impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would look like.

These talks happened just ahead of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement Tuesday of a formal impeachment inquiry of the president.

Trump and Greene caught up on their plan for getting Biden impeached over dinner at his private Bedminster, New Jersey, club on Sunday.

“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Greene told The New York Times. Greene added that she told Trump she wants the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

Greene is one of several Republican lawmakers that Trump has been privately meeting with to discuss Biden’s impeachment.

Trump has also spoken with Representative Elise Stefanik on a weekly basis as well as conservative House Freedom Caucus members pushing for impeachment.

House Republicans argue that as vice president, Biden made decisions to benefit and profit from his son’s business dealings. But despite months-long investigations, they have yet to provide any actual evidence of Biden’s supposed crimes.

“Biden is a Stone Cold Crook—You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven.” Trump wrote on Truth Social in August. “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!”

Trump himself was impeached twice during his presidency and has been criminally charged four times this year.

Republicans could have avoided opening an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden simply by subpoenaing his son. But they have no good answer for why they didn’t take that option instead.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Tuesday, after months of the GOP insisting that the president and his son Hunter Biden are guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas. Republicans have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims.

And throughout all of the hearings and interviews, Republicans have not once subpoenaed Hunter Biden for testimony. When asked Wednesday why that was the case, House Oversight Chair James Comer, who has led the charge against the Bidens, couldn’t answer.

During an interview with Newsmax, Comer said that Hunter Biden is “more than welcome” to testify on Capitol Hill. “He’s invited today. We will drop everything,” the Kentucky Republican said.

When host Rob Finnerty pointed out that Hunter Biden was unlikely to voluntarily appear before Congress, Comer haltingly replied, “Well, he can fight the subpoena in court. It’s very difficult … if it were easy to get a president or their son in front of a House committee, then the January 6 committee probably would have done that with Donald Trump.”

Comer’s right that the House investigative committee on January 6 struggled to get Trump to appear. But that may be due to the fact that Trump swore in 2019 that he would fight “all the subpoenas” for investigations into his actions. His administration refused to provide information for more than 100 congressional investigations, and Trump even sued his own accounting firm to try to block it from giving his tax records to Congress.

In comparison, nearly 70 Biden administration officials have provided testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews. Oversight Committee members have been briefed by high-level FBI and Secret Service officials, and they have received thousands of documents from the Treasury and the FBI.

But rather than subpoena Hunter Biden, Republicans moved right to an impeachment inquiry. Despite Comer’s hedging, the GOP has already admitted why. Republicans know they don’t have enough evidence to actually impeach and convict Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election.

Representative Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a theater in Denver on Sunday for “causing a disturbance” during the performance—and now we have the video footage.

Employees at the Buell Theatre asked two patrons to leave the evening performance of Beetlejuice after their behavior sparked three complaints from other attendees. An incident report says the pair were vaping, singing along, recording the show, and generally disrupting the performance, The Denver Post reported Tuesday.

While the venue’s report did not name Boebert or identify the person she was with, her campaign office confirmed she was escorted from the show. Security footage from inside the Buell shows venue security officials asking Boebert and a man to leave the show and then escorting them out of the theater.

It is not clear who the man with Boebert is. She filed for divorce from her husband earlier this year.

In the video, Boebert is seen initially refusing to leave her seat. One of the ushers had to threaten to call city police before the pair agreed to leave, according to the venue’s incident report.

Police were called and stayed in the theater lobby until Boebert and her companion had left. While they were being escorted out, the pair told employees “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ [and] ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” the report said. The video also shows Boebert giving the finger to security as she is being escorted out.

Boebert’s campaign manager confirmed that the representative had been asked to leave the show, but he denied that she had been vaping. He also confirmed that Boebert had used her phone to take a photo of the performance but said she didn’t know that wasn’t allowed. Typically, theaters announce before shows begin that photos and video of any kind are prohibited.