House Republicans Are Changing the Speaker Election Rules as They Go

House Republicans are on the verge of electing a new speaker, but so far, it’s not looking good.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday to replace Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the first ever House leader to be removed from the position after eight rebel members of his own party led a campaign to boot him. However, a closed-door meeting on Tuesday night proved that deep divisions in the party still remain.

Kentucky’s Republican Representative Thomas Massie put the odds of finding a speaker Wednesday at “two percent,” reported The New York Times’ Luke Broadwater, noting that some party members are “dug in” for their candidates, including former McCarthy backers.

So far, party members have put forward two leading candidates: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Trump ally and Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Jim Jordan.

But the rules of the game are changing while the ball is still in the air, according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, who reported that the party is still contesting the rules of the election even as the election itself arrives. The House vote has also become increasingly private, with politicians stripped of their cell phones ahead of the closed-door meetings.

“Not [a] fan of snitches,” tweeted Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, referring to the policy change.

Meanwhile, the House remains paralyzed without a leader, unable to move forward on things like the spending bill or responding to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine.

While Republicans squander more time on their civil war, another government shutdown looms large on the horizon, with just a month and change until the House’s stopgap spending bill expires.

Fox News has turned on Robert Kennedy Jr. now that he is running for president as an independent, a move that could steal votes away from Donald Trump.

Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that he is switching his candidacy to run as an independent. Previously, he had been embraced by the far right for things like his opposition to vaccines and belief in conspiracy theories. But his popularity among Republicans means he could also pull just enough voters to turn the election against GOP front-runner Trump.

Fox host Sean Hannity adopted a noticeably more aggressive approach to Kennedy Jr. during a Tuesday night interview. “By the way, I’m giving you comments that you’ve made in 2016, ’17, ’19. Endorsements, we know the years: Gore, Kerry, Obama, Hillary, Bernie Sanders.… The NRA quote you made about calling them a terror group was 2018,” Hannity said, recounting Kennedy Jr.’s more liberal past.

“These are recent positions you’ve had. I’m not sure why the Democratic Party wouldn’t allow you to compete.”

Kennedy looked visibly stunned while Hannity spoke, and when he finally responded, he struggled to find the words.

“Do you want to talk about my positions, Sean, or do you want to read talking points from the Trump campaign?” he eventually asked.

“Excuse me, these are not talking points. These are called Hannity Points. I do my own research,” Hannity shot back.

Independent candidates historically perform poorly in the general election. They are more often viewed as spoilers who strip just enough votes away from one major candidate to tip the election toward the other. In the case of RFK Jr., his embrace of far-right talking points is expected to woo voters away from Trump.

Current polling indicates Kennedy Jr.’s favorability ratings are far higher among Republicans. It’s unlikely he’ll pull a lot of voters away from Trump, but he could pull just enough to turn the election decisively for Joe Biden. Fox News does not necessarily like Trump, but the network knows it benefits from him being in the headlines.

Georgia prosecutors on Tuesday requested that Infowars host and major conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel testify in an upcoming trial for two of Donald Trump’s ex-lawyers.

Attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro were charged alongside Trump and 16 other co-defendants with felony racketeering for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. All of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who led the investigation into Trump and his allies, requested that Jones and McDaniel testify specifically about Chesebro’s involvement.

Chesebro was charged with racketeering and conspiracy. He was the original mastermind behind the plan to use slates of fake electors to swing the election for Trump. He also attended the rally on January 6, 2021, that eventually turned into the insurrection. It is unclear if he entered the Capitol, but video footage shows Chesebro following Jones into sections of the restricted area around the building.

The filing for McDaniel asks her to testify about Chesebro’s involvement in the effort to find fake electors, including in other conversations between Trump and John Eastman. Eastman, who is another co-defendant in Georgia, ultimately took over the fake elector scheme from Chesebro.

The filing for Jones says he will testify about Chesebro’s participation in the January 6 rally and riot.

Chesebro and Powell requested in September that their cases be severed from Trump’s in Georgia. Powell’s lawyers tried to argue that she is not connected to the other defendants because she never officially represented Trump in Georgia.

Chesebro argued that he didn’t commit any unlawful actions because he was only sharing legal advice, not actively participating on Trump’s team. Both his and Powell’s lawyers insisted that they could only get fair trials if they were tried alone, instead of alongside the other co-defendants, as Willis plans.

But Judge Scott McAfee found their arguments unconvincing and rejected their request. “Based on what’s been presented today, I am not finding the severance from Mr. Chesebro or Ms. Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case,” he said at the hearing.

House Republicans are furious that Rashida Tlaib has a Palestinian flag outside her office.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has had the flag by her door since January. But the flag, and her decision to leave it in place, has sparked backlash in recent days due to the war between Israel and Palestine.

Fighting broke out on Saturday when Hamas launched a surprise airstrike attack on Israel. Israel has since responded in kind, imposing a total siege on the Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water, and electricity. At least 1,800 people have been killed on both sides—and the death toll is expected to keep rising.

It would be one thing if Tlaib were flying the Hamas flag outside her office. But she instead has a flag that represents her ethnicity and the millions of innocent Palestinians caught in the middle of the war.

Apparently, her flag is so offensive that one Republican representative has moved to ban flying foreign flags outside lawmakers’ offices.

“The halls of Congress belong to America. They should be reserved for flags that embody our great nation,” Max Miller tweeted Monday night. “The Palestinian flag should not have a place here.”

“That’s why I sponsored an appropriations amendment to end this silliness.”

Apparently Miller does not care that there are up to 220,000 Americans of Palestinian descent, according to the Arab American Institute, meaning Palestine is part of “our great nation.”

Miller’s amendment would ban any flags or pennants other than the U.S. flag, the flag of a U.S. state or territory, or the flag for prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action. His measure could therefore also affect some of the more outrageous protest signs hung around Congress by members of his own party.

For instance, it would prevent Marjorie Taylor Greene from hanging a sign denying the existence of transgender people. In 2021, Greene hung a massive sign outside her office that said, “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. ‘Trust The Science.’”

The sign was intended as a dig toward Democratic Representative Marie Newman, who had the office across the hall. Newman had hung a trans pride flag to honor her daughter, who is trans, and to commemorate the Equality Act, which Greene tried to block.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley is offering the world’s most harebrained pitch on how to help Israel: simply redirect funds from Ukraine to Israel.

Hawley posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday saying, “Israel is facing an existential threat,” using the tragedy there to further his own political agenda of defunding U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Fighting broke out on Saturday when Hamas launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel, killing over 900 Israelis. The Israeli government has responded by declaring a total siege of Gaza, home to two million Palestinians and what has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. About 770 Palestinians have already been killed in retribution, and the death toll is expected to keep rising.

On Monday, Senator Mitch McConnell was among several bipartisan lawmakers who pushed for a spending package that would link aid for Israel with support for Ukraine and Taiwan. The hope is to convince Ukraine aid skeptics, like Hawley, to continue supporting the country as support diminishes in the GOP-controlled House. On both sides of the aisle, the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis have already become a political tool.

Meanwhile, some are saying that it’s not clear that Israel requires immediate U.S. funding. Congressional aides have said that Israel already has the resources to wage a weeks-long campaign of violence in Gaza and use its Iron Dome system to defend itself, and can then tap into more than $5 billion made available by Pentagon drawdown authority.