Radical Freedom Caucus Torches McConnell After Retirement Announcement

The far-right House Freedom Caucus couldn’t hide its glee after Mitch McConnell announced that he’ll step down as Senate minority leader by the end of the year.

The 82-year-old Kentucky Republican said Wednesday he’ll resign from his leadership position by November, and the Freedom Caucus responded by calling him a RINO.

“Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine),” the caucus wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, clearly labeling McConnell a Democrat.

“No need to wait till November,” the statement continued. “Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.”

Perhaps this statement shouldn’t be a huge surprise from the far-right caucus, which has bullied House Republicans into adopting more extreme stances at every turn. Most of the members who blocked former Representative Kevin McCarthy’s first bid for the speakership in January 2023 were members of the Freedom Caucus. And seven of the so-called “Gaetz Eight” representatives who successfully kicked out McCarthy just nine months later were also members of the caucus.

More recently, the group has pressured House Speaker Mike Johnson to resist voting on the border deal and on Ukraine aid, in line with the wishes of former President Donald Trump. McConnell, meanwhile, had tried to rally Senate Republicans in support of the legislation.

All this to say: It makes sense that the Freedom Caucus is excited by McConnell’s departure. But calling McConnell—the man who blocked campaign finance reform and helped Donald Trump appoint conservative judges and reshape the courts for decades to come—a RINO is truly next level.

McConnell’s decision to step down, and the Freedom Caucus’s immediate response, is a sign of where the Republican Party is headed. And it’s not looking good.

“Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time,” McConnell said during his resignation speech Wednesday. “I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”

Donald Trump could be about to get kicked off another state’s 2024 ballot.

An Illinois judge ruled Wednesday that Trump’s name should be removed from the ballot because he engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021. Illinois is now the third state to try to punish Trump for trying to overthrow the 2020 election, following similar decisions in Colorado and Maine.

“Based on engaging in insurrection on January 6, 2021 ... his name should be removed from the ballot,” Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter wrote in her ruling.

For now, Trump hasn’t actually been removed from Illinois’s ballot. Porter put her ruling on hold until Friday, knowing that Trump’s legal team would likely try to appeal the decision to the Illinois appellate or the Supreme Court. That means Trump will appear on the ballot at least until then.

Porter also said her ruling would remain on hold if the Supreme Court hands down a ruling “inconsistent” with hers in the Colorado case it is currently hearing.

Another important note: Early voting in Illinois’s March 19 primary has already started. And Trump is still on that primary ballot. So for now, no real changes have occurred at the ballot box, and voters can cast their vote for Trump.

Trump, of course, has promised to appeal this decision as soon as possible.

“Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s Board of Elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement Wednesday.

With the decision in Illinois, that makes three states that have ruled that Trump violated the Fourteenth Amendment when he tried to overthrow our democracy. We’ll see if other states choose to follow that path and whether the rest of America agrees in November.

The Supreme Court—with its three Trump-appointed justices—agreed Wednesday to weigh in on whether former President Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity to get out of his federal election interference trial.

The court announced in a brief order that it would hear arguments and issue a ruling on Trump’s presidential immunity claim. Until the Supreme Court does so, the January 6 trial is completely on hold, according to the order.

The high court agreed to expedite the case and hear arguments the week of April 22, more than a month after the Super Tuesday primaries. It’s not clear why the case is beginning in April. It could take months before we get an actual ruling—potentially by June at the earliest.

If the Supreme Court decides quickly to reject Trump’s bold immunity claim, it may permit a final trial on the 2020 election interference to occur later this summer or fall. But there’s no guarantee a final decision will actually come before November.

Former appeals court Judge Michael Luttig predicted that it is now probably “unimaginable” that Trump will be tried in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference trial before the 2024 election.

Trump views the Supreme Court’s order on Wednesday as a win “for now,” one source told CNN.

Many legal experts do expect the Supreme Court to rule against Trump’s immunity claim, but Trump’s entire strategy in his legal cases thus far has been to delay, delay, delay. And the Supreme Court’s order Wednesday helps him do just that. The Supreme Court could have decided to weigh in on this case sooner, but by the time the federal election interference trial returns to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s court, Trump’s legal team could try a new excuse to get out of the whole thing: that it’s too close to an election to hear this case now.

The federal election interference trial was originally scheduled to begin on March 4, a date that certainly won’t happen now.

Trump has repeatedly tried to claim presidential immunity to get out of his federal election interference case. At one point, his legal team even tried to argue that a president would be immune from criminal prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, as long as Congress did not vote to impeach him first.

That argument didn’t hold up in a Washington, D.C., appeals court, which ruled earlier this month that Trump did not have “presidential immunity” when he tried to overthrow the 2020 election.

Trump’s first criminal trial, the New York hush-money case, is set to begin on March 25.

Hunter Biden brilliantly exposed Republican hypocrisy during his closed-door deposition on Wednesday with one simple question.

“How come they’re not curious about the $2 billion Jared Kushner got from the Saudis?” the younger Biden reportedly asked House lawmakers.

Democratic Representative Dan Goldman explained during a break in testimony that Biden was highlighting the difference “between what he has done in a business world with independent businessmen, versus foreign governments, which he did not do any business with—unlike Jared Kushner.”

Representative Jamie Raskin also said the questioning was largely cordial Wednesday morning, but Hunter Biden became more “assertive” when discussing the Kushner double standard.

“He may be a little bit frustrated by some of the double standards relating to Jared Kushner and money that’s just been openly pocketed by Donald Trump in office,” Raskin said. “And Jared Kushner of course brought back $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. And all of that has been a part of the conversation, and he was assertive about that.”

It’s a smart point to bring up, and one that begs repeating as we get closer to November. Shortly after he left the White House, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Trump, accepted at least $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That money went directly to Kushner’s new private equity firm, Affinity Partners. According to the original documents, The New York Times reported, in return for their hefty investment, the Saudis would receive at least a 28 percent stake in Kushner’s firm and be recognized as a “cornerstone” investor.

If that wasn’t concerning enough, a later report from The Intercept revealed that the pitch from Affinity Partners focused almost entirely on Kushner’s official roles in the Trump administration and the potential political connections he could offer the Saudi investors in return for their investment. Perhaps none of this is a huge surprise, given that during the Trump years, MBS reportedly bragged about having Kushner “in his pocket.”

The whole thing reeks so badly of corruption that even House Oversight Chair James Comer warned last year that Kushner “crossed the line of ethics,” before he suddenly renewed his focus on supposed Biden corruption and the GOP impeachment crusade that’s going nowhere.

On Wednesday, that fruitless impeachment quest hit another dead end with Hunter Biden’s deposition, as Republicans seemed to come up with virtually no new evidence.

“Hunter Biden is being defiant and also dishonest,” Republican Representative Nancy Mace told reporters in the middle of Biden’s deposition. “I would tell you that his testimony is in direct conflict with other witnesses that so far the House Oversight has interviewed.”

After a reporter asked which witnesses Mace exactly was referring to, she quickly ended her impromptu press conference.

“You’ll read the transcript. I’m not going to go into details,” Mace replied before walking away. She declined to specify whether Hunter’s testimony conflicted with statements from the indicted Chinese foreign agent or the man who reportedly confessed to spreading Russian disinformation.

Lawmakers had until Friday to do their primary job and coordinate a spending package to continue funding the government and avoid a partial shutdown. But now, that’s next week’s problem.

House leadership have indicated that they plan to vote Thursday on a one-week continuing resolution, and will use next week to vote on a combined five to seven appropriation bills, according to Fox News’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.

But have no fear: Despite wasting the better part of nearly six months on in-party bickering, holding foreign aid measures hostage in exchange for a more aggressive border deal, and subsequently nixing that too, at the behest of Donald Trump, Republicans seem incredibly confident that they can get it done on time.

“We are not going to shut the government down,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News reporter Chad Pergram on Wednesday.

“We’re going to keep it moving forward with all the good work of all the committees and everyone who has been engaged with this for weeks will come together in due course,” he continued.

“Is there enough time to get this done?” asked Pergram.

“Yeah. There’s enough time,” Johnson said briskly.

A stopgap bill “would be part of a larger agreement to finish a number of appropriations bills, ensuring adequate time for drafting text and for members to review prior to casting votes,” a spokeswoman for Johnson told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats appeared optimistic at the relative progress, claiming the parties were on the verge of a deal for a budget that was supposed to close in October.

“We continue to make very good progress on an agreement, and we are very close to getting it done,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday morning, following an “intense” three-on-one meeting at the White House in which Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries ganged up on the freshman speaker. Schumer, McConnell, and Jeffries urged Johnson to find some sort of solution to avoid a shutdown.

“I’m hopeful that the four leaders can reach this agreement very soon so we can not only avoid a shutdown on Friday, but get closer to finishing the appropriations process altogether,” he added later.