Marjorie Taylor Greene: No, I Won’t Promise to Behave at SOTU!

There are still hours on the clock before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, but Republicans have already thrown off House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plea for civility.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made clear that she would have no qualms about slinging more mud at the president’s annual visit to Congress.

Greene told Fox News’s Chad Pergram Thursday that her “district was fine with me calling him a liar last year” and that she would “decide in the moment” if she felt the urge to do it again.

She reportedly made the comments while handing out pins with the name Laken Riley, the 22-year-old woman who was killed by an undocumented immigrant and who has since become the face of a bill that would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for theft.

During Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address, Greene, clad in a $495 fur-trimmed, white alpaca coat that was meant to echo the Chinese spy balloon, led a GOP chorus that loudly booed and jeered the president. The group regularly interrupted the address and caused a scene so humiliating for the party that it got former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to mouth to them to “shush.” At one point, while Biden explained the potential for cuts to Social Security and Medicare in talks on the debt limit, Greene shouted, “Liar.”

That show necessitated a similar warning from Republican leadership ahead of Biden’s return to Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson privately urged party members to keep decorum during Congress’s annual visit by the president.

“He just said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum,’” one GOP lawmaker told The Hill on Wednesday.

“We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations. Let them do the gaslighting, let them do the blaming,” the lawmaker added, referring to Democrats. “I think the American people know who is responsible for the many worldwide crises that we have.”

Donald Trump must have gotten tired of winning, because he just added a six-figure legal bill to his ever-growing pile of lawsuit fines.

A London judge has ordered Trump to pay £300,000 (or $382,000) in legal fees for Orbis Business Intelligence, court documents released Thursday showed. Orbis is a consulting firm founded by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele.

During his career in British intelligence, Steele ran the Russia desk. In 2016, he compiled a dossier that alleged Trump and members of his inner circle had been “compromised” by Russia’s security service. Documents in the dossier, which have not been verified, claimed Russia had been grooming Trump for collaboration for years. Two memos also said that Trump had participated in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg and received “golden showers” from sex workers in Moscow.

Trump sued Orbis, claiming he had “suffered personal and reputational damage and distress,” particularly from the sex-related claims. He has denied all the allegations in the dossier, which was leaked to and then published by Buzzfeed in 2017.

But presiding Judge Karen Steyn threw the case out last month, saying it was “bound to fail.” And now, she has ordered Trump to reimburse Orbis for the company’s legal fees incurred during the daylong hearing.

That $382,000 bill, however, is just a drop in the bucket of Trump’s growing legal fees. The former president owes more than $466 million for committing real estate–related fraud in New York. He was initially fined $354 million, but interest adds an additional $112,000 per day.

Trump also owes a total of $88.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll—$5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her and $83.3 million for defaming her a separate time. He owes $400,000 to The New York Times and has racked up thousands more in fines and gag order violations during his myriad lawsuits.

What’s more, Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani says he still hasn’t been paid for legal services. Giuliani estimated that Trump owes him about $2 million in total.

Proud Navy veteran and former White House doctor Representative Ronny Jackson appears to have smudged some of the details of his military record.

On his congressional website, the Texas Republican describes himself as a “retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service.” But that leaves out one big omission—that Jackson was demoted from the senior naval flag rank to captain in July 2022.

That move came after the Pentagon inspector general released a scathing report on Jackson’s behavior while serving in Donald Trump’s White House, including that the doctor—who had retired from the Navy in 2019—berated, drank with, and sexually harassed subordinates while serving as the director of the White House medical unit. Jackson was also accused of popping Ambien throughout the workday.

Those revelations came with a $15,000 cut in annual pension payouts for a 24-year veteran like Jackson, as well as social stigma within the ranks.

“The substantiated allegations in the [Department of Defense inspector general] investigation of Rear [Adm.] (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022,” Lt. Cmdr. Joe Keiley, a Navy spokesman, told The Washington Post.

Jackson casually dismissed the report in his July 2022 memoir, Holding the Line, conveniently skipping over the part where he was formally demoted.

“If I had retired and not gotten into politics, this investigation would have never gone anywhere,” Jackson wrote. “This was happening because I am a perceived threat to the Biden administration and because a few political appointees in the Department of Defense want to make a name for themselves.”

Jackson has played a key role in Trump’s 2024 campaign, helping the presumptive GOP presidential nominee shrug off concerns over his age by affirming that Trump is of sound mind and body, despite his increasingly routine mental glitches.

At least one Republican representative has finally taken a concrete step to demonstrate support for IVF, after widespread backlash for apparently only paying lip service to the issue.

California Representative Michelle Steel revealed Thursday that she has removed herself as a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which would have established that life begins at conception—and put medical workers at risk of lawsuits if anything happened to an embryo.

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, this is of personal importance so let me be clear,” Steel said in an op-ed in The Orange County Register. She slammed “Washington insiders” for misrepresenting her stance on life.

“I believe life begins at conception. I am pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health and life of the mother. Unlike my opponents, I do not support harmful late-term abortions,” she wrote, using a medically inaccurate term.

“Having experienced it firsthand in starting a family, I am an ardent supporter of IVF. I believe nothing is more pro-life than helping families have children and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF. Which is why when a recent court ruling in Alabama raised questions as to whether the Life at Conception Act, if passed, would ban IVF, I removed myself from that bill to not create confusion about my support of IVF.”

The Life at Conception Act was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors (all Republicans) and then again in 2023 with 124 (again all Republicans). Many opponents of the bill, which has not advanced since, have warned that, if it became law, the legislation would heavily restrict access to in vitro fertilization. The bill and its sponsors have come under increased scrutiny in light of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling establishing that embryos can be classified as human children.

Since the ruling, which severely restricted IVF in the state, Republicans have rushed to portray themselves as ardent defenders of the medical procedure, particularly those who represent districts that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Steel, who is up for reelection in November, is one of those vulnerable Republicans.

Steel was quick to post on social media about how much she supports IVF access after the Alabama ruling, and was immediately called out for declining to acknowledge that she was still listed as a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act at the time. She did not specify in her op-ed when she removed herself as a co-sponsor.

Still, Steel is one of the first Republicans in Congress to take real action to demonstrate her support for IVF. In contrast, Representative Nancy Mace introduced a nonbinding resolution last week expressing support for IVF and calling on elected officials to protect access to the treatment. The measure is nonbinding and does nothing to actually protect IVF. Five of the resolution’s six co-sponsors represent vulnerable districts.

House Republicans needed a wrist slap ahead of Thursday’s State of the Union address, with House Speaker Mike Johnson privately pleading with party members to keep decorum during Congress’s annual visit by the president.

“He just said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum,’” one GOP lawmaker told The Hill on Wednesday.

“We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations. Let them do the gaslighting, let them do the blaming,” the lawmaker added, referring to Democrats. “I think the American people know who is responsible for the many worldwide crises that we have.”

As sad and embarrassing as the classroom reminder is for the nation’s elected officials, it is, unfortunately, necessary.

Last year, Republicans launched a series of outbursts during Biden’s address, essentially becoming props in an unscripted call-and-response with the president. While Biden dissected the topic of immigration, lawmakers cried out “secure the border,” and when he explained the potential for cuts to Social Security and Medicare in talks on the debt limit, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, clad in a fur-trimmed white coat, shouted “liar.”

Still, it’s not completely clear if party members are willing to heed Johnson’s advice and resist the urge to interject.

“Will they do it? Somebody asked me that earlier and I said, ‘Does the Baptist Church got a bus?’ Of course they will because he’s gonna say some very offensive things, he’s gonna attack us,” Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett told The Hill.

“I think we just need to try to be a little classy,” he continued. “Consider where we’re at, let the other side do that. You know, they did it to Trump, and nobody said boo, but when we do it we’re gonna get made an example of it.”