Republicans Adopt New, Absurd Defense of Gaetz: The Past Isn’t Real!

Republican senators are once again falling in line to support a man they’ve publicly and privately disavowed. But instead of Donald Trump, this time it’s Matt Gaetz. 

Gaetz was on Capitol Hill with Senator JD Vance today trying to corral congressional support for his jeopardized attorney general nomination. The former Florida representative and MAGA Republican is surrounded by ongoing investigations from the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department regarding allegations that he trafficked and had sex with a minor at a sex party in 2017. Gaetz attempted to end the probe by resigning from Congress right before the House Ethics Committee was set to release its finding. The House Ethics Committee voted on Wednesday to complete the investigation but has not decided whether to release it. 

It has also been reported that the House Ethics Committee has proof of Gaetz paying over $10,000 to two women between July 2017 and January 2019—women who later served as witnesses in the House and Justice Department probes against Gaetz.

Now Republicans are bending over backward to get ahead of the release, making incredibly flimsy excuses to defend the embattled representative. 

“I just don’t think you can deal with allegations in the past as though they’re fact,” Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico in a striking quote. Cramer has also called similar past allegations against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh “absurd.” He also noted that Donald Trump was  a “victim of lawfare” and was tried “unjustly” like Gaetz is being now.

“I support all of Trump’s Cabinet picks. That’s a whole part of the process—there’ll be a Senate confirmation, public hearings,” said Representative Nancy Mace, who is currently leading hateful efforts to stop the single transgender congressional representative from using the bathroom. “The DOJ decided not to pursue charges against our colleague. And so, there’s the media—you guys want to make him guilty, hook, line, and sinker, or be judged during an execution of a guy who’s never been charged with a crime.”

Gaetz is one of three Trump nominees to be accused directly of or accused of enabling sexual assault. And the president-elect himself has been accused of it countless times over decades, with a jury in a civil suit finding that he did in fact sexually assault E. Jean Carroll. It’s abundantly clear that this is no longer a morally disqualifying act for Republicans.

Donald Trump has nominated a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget. CBS News reported Wednesday that Trump has chosen Russ Vought to lead the office for a second time. During Trump’s first term, Vought also served as OMB director. Since then, Vought was part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, writing a chapter about the “Executive Office of the President.”

It’s yet another reminder that Trump is extensively involved with the conservative manifesto, despite his repeated denials during the 2024 campaign. Vought bragged on camera to two undercover climate journalists over the summer about his ties to Trump and his love of “Christian nation-ism.”

Vought told the journalists that his organization, the Center for Renewing America, was already drafting executive orders and policy memos for Trump to use immediately after taking office, making the wild claim that the group planned to to create “shadow” agencies to solidify the “Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”

If Vought is confirmed, he’ll be tasked with putting together the president’s proposed government budget, giving him extensive influence to carry out his far-right agenda. Vought was rumored to be considered for a Cabinet position, having already gone through the Trump team’s (very flawed) vetting system. His appointment follows fellow Project 2025 alumnus Brandon Carr’s nomination as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

The Project 2025 manifesto was frequently attacked by Democrats and other Trump opponents during the 2024 campaign, leading to Trump saying he had nothing to do with it. But Carr’s and Vought’s appointments, plus Trump’s plans to copy many of Project 2025’s proposals, suggest these denials were just for show.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are making it abundantly clear they will stop at nothing to slash the federal budget, even if it means weaponizing the Supreme Court in order to do so.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday, the nominated co-chairs of the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) outlined how they intend to downsize the government, as well as the resources it provides. They want to go after the Impoundment Control Act, a law passed in 1974 that served to limit the executive branch’s control over expenditures authorized by Congress.

“Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question,” Ramaswamy and Musk wrote.

Per the pair’s vision, their intended sweeping budget reform will largely come by way of executive action, working “closely” with the White House Office of Management and Budget. They believe the large-scale reforms are possible thanks to two recent Supreme Court decisions: West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022) and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024).

The first case ruled that federal agencies couldn’t impose regulations that would have severe economic effects without the permission of Congress, while Loper Bright overturned a landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, ceasing a mandate that federal courts defer to executive branch agencies’ interpretation of the laws they administer.

If you’re looking for specifics, the billionaires have a couple of immediate targets: They intend to slash more than $500 million a year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which funds NPR and PBS), nearly $300 million from Planned Parenthood, and “$1.5 billion for grants to international organizations.” They also suggest, in vague terms, that “entitlement programs” such as Medicare and Medicaid are on the line, though they refuse to acknowledge how much they intend to burn from the critical health care programs.

The changes will come fast and hard, according to Ramaswamy and Musk, who believe that they will be able to accomplish their goals of shrinking the federal deficit and slashing $2 trillion in spending by July 4, 2026—the nation’s 250th birthday.

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” the duo wrote. “We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail.”

The House Ethics Committee did not agree Wednesday whether to release its report on former Representative Matt Gaetz.

Committee Chairman Representative Michael Guest said that they had not decided to release the report, according to NOTUS’s Reese Gorman.

“Guest would not say whether or not the committee took a vote on releasing the report just that there was not an agreement by the committee on whether or not to release it,” Gorman posted on X.

The committee was set to vote on whether it would release a report on its yearslong investigation into Gaetz over alleged sexual misconduct, including alleged sexual misconduct with a minor, among a slew of other potential violations. After the meeting adjourned Wednesday afternoon, Punchbowl News’s John Bresnahan and Melanie Zanona reported that there had been several votes on releasing the report, but committee members had been deadlocked along partisan lines. As the report is not yet complete, the committee voted that it be finished and scheduled another vote in December on whether to release it.

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten pledged earlier Wednesday that if the House Ethics Committee failed to vote for the release of the report, he would force a vote on the House floor, according to Politico.

“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House Ethics Committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Casten said in a statement. “This information must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent.”

Over the course of the last week, a slew of new information about the committee investigation had already come out. Two women testified before the committee alleging that Gaetz had paid them for sex, and one testified that he’d also had sex with her underage friend. ABC reported Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee reportedly holds records of Gaetz paying those two women more than $10,000 between July 2017 and January 2019.

There is some hope that the contents of the report, even those details that have already been publicly reported, might tank Gaetz’s nomination to be attorney general. However, it seems that allegations of sexual misconduct, even statutory rape, are no longer disqualifying for the potential head of the Justice Department.

“I just don’t think you can deal with allegations in the past as though they’re fact,” North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico. He added that Gaetz, and Trump’s other Senate nominees facing allegations of sexual misconduct, haven’t been convicted of anything.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s lame obsession with Elon Musk is actually helping Senate Democrats get stuff done.

As the current Senate majority races to approve all of President Joe Biden’s pending judicial nominations during what remains of the lame-duck session, five GOP senators missed confirmation votes on Tuesday—including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty who had been invited to watch a SpaceX starship launch with Trump in Texas.

Even though he’d so obviously gotten in his own way, Trump jumped on Truth Social Tuesday to demand that more senators show up to “hold the line” against Biden’s judicial nominees.

Tensions among Senate Republicans have been at an all-time high as they find themselves momentarily helpless against the Democrats’ lame-duck blitz. Without a majority, playing a numbers game on who shows up is their only hope. Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator JD Vance were among the several Republicans who missed Senate votes that stretched late into Monday evening.

“I’m a bit frustrated,” West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito told reporters Tuesday. “After last night’s voting extravaganza, I wonder what we are doing.”

“If we don’t show up, we lose,” said North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis at a GOP policy luncheon Tuesday. “I don’t care what the reasons were. We have fewer than 15 scheduled legislative days. You have to show up. Period. End of story. There’s nothing more important.”

After the luncheon, North Dakota Senator John Hoeven stressed that it was important that as many Republicans as possible were present for these votes. “Because, you know, we could win possibly some of those votes if we have all our folks here. Particularly in the circuit court,” he said.

Not everyone is open to that kind of criticism. When a right-wing pundit tried to call out Vance for missing the votes Tuesday, he had a complete meltdown, claiming he was way too busy to bother showing up and that it wouldn’t make a difference if he did. Within an hour, he had deleted the temper tantrum, as it was explicitly at odds with what Trump had demanded.

Vance has since returned to Capitol Hill to drum up support for Trump’s unfavorable Cabinet nominees Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, who are both facing allegations of sexual misconduct. Cruz, however, has remained MIA. He and Indiana Senator Mike Braun were the only two Republican senators absent Wednesday, while their Democratic colleagues confirmed two more judges on Wednesday by 50–48. So it’s plausible that if Cruz and Braun had actually been in attendance, they might’ve been able to block those confirmations, seeing as Vice President Kamala Harris is on vacation and not available to break a tie.

There are currently 45 judicial vacancies and 17 pending nominees.