<The election math isn’t as bad as we thought. But the coming Trump administration is shaping up to be worse.

As blue Western states and cities finish counting votes, it looks like the popular vote “landslide” projected for Donald Trump last week turned out to be a trickle. When all the votes are counted, he will end up with a margin of roughly two points over Vice President Kamala Harris. Presidents Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1972 won more than 60 percent of the popular vote; Ronald Reagan in 1984 won 58 percent. Those were landslides.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a bad outcome for Democrats. Trump won all seven swing states, netting himself 312 Electoral College votes (to Biden’s 306 in 2020). Democrats lost control of the Senate; the GOP now has 52 seats, and will likely wind up with 53 when the race between incumbent Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey and Connecticut corporate titan David McCormick is finally called (provisional ballots are still being counted). It will probably hold the House, by a slim margin.

So yes, none of this is good news. But it’s not the top-to-bottom repudiation of Democrats as it first looked like, and the way to respond is not to launch a civil war within the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, that has already begun. Centrists blame the doctrine of “woke,” with particular ire for trans Americans (we see you, New York Rep. Tom Suozzi); leftists say Democrats abandoned the working class (we hear you, once again, Senator Bernie Sanders). Both positions are wrong. Others point fingers at the Harris campaign. Meanwhile, much of the media hypes Trump’s win as a landslide, which would seem to validate his racist, anti-worker agenda.

I’d argue that the single biggest problem with the Harris campaign was that it inherited a dysfunctional Biden campaign, with only 107 days to go. And even given that, there was much her campaign did right: Her ground game actually made a difference; Trump won by an average of 3 points in the seven battlegrounds, and 7 points in states where there really was no active campaign. (Good job, Democratic Parties of New York, California and New Jersey.) It wasn’t enough of a difference, but it was a difference. I don’t know why she apparently underperformed Biden in Detroit and Philadelphia, but it’s not for lack of effort: she visited both cities many times, spending the Sunday before the election in a Black Philadelphia church, a Black barbershop and a Puerto Rican restaurant. Unlike Hillary Clinton, she did not ignore Wisconsin; she and Walz campaigned there regularly, which might be why she came closest to winning Wisconsin than any of the swing states.

Harris also turned out to be a strong campaigner, unlike in her unsuccessful 2020 presidential run. And the excitement generated by the switch from Biden to his vice-president was real. But Biden’s creaky Wilmington-based campaign couldn’t channel it – and for reasons good and bad, Harris was reluctant to shake it up. Although the big media has thoroughly examined the internal campaign trouble, I thought this piece by Jasmine Wright of NOTUS was most revealing. The campaign she inherited wasn’t equipped to make use of either the volunteers or the money Harris-Walz brought in at the start of their campaign.

Of course, Harris made her own mistakes: She brought in former Barack Obama staffers and layered them into the existing dysfunctional leadership structure. Some of her own vice presidential staff got sidelined, as Wright reports. Perhaps relatedly, she eased up on some of her populist rhetoric, relying on brother-in-law Tony West of Uber to vet policy, and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban as a major surrogate. She didn’t promise to keep anti-trust crusader Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan in place, and we all know that Cuban and other corporate supporters were gunning for her. She made headlines when she said she would reduce Biden’s promised capital gains tax hike from 35 percent to 28 percent. But how many “working class” people even noticed those moves? >

<....Also, Sanders’s insistence that Harris’s campaign was “disastrous” and that “a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them” ignores how much she centered workers in her campaign (let alone how much Biden did for them during his administration!). She regularly campaigned at union halls and alongside union leaders, and there’s no denying the difference her proposed $6,000 infant tax credit, her $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, and her plan to extend Medicare to cover in-home care would have made for working people. But do I know about those proposals only because I covered her campaign? Maybe. Maybe her campaign didn’t lean into that messaging enough. Maybe instead of making a closing argument at the Ellipse, focused on Jan. 6 and Trump’s existential threat to democracy, she should have packed an SEIU union hall and hammered home her opportunity agenda.

Still, I can’t help feeling like some of the complaints about Harris “abandoning” the working class, as ever, focus on the concerns and votes of white male working class (while exit polls are not to be entirely relied upon, the finding that in the 10 states NBC polled this year, Trump won Latino men 55-43 must be noted). Advocates for the female working class, especially women of color, saw what President Harris would do for those workers.

As domestic workers advocate Ai-jen Poo, a strong Harris surrogate, wrote in Time magazine the week before the election: “The Harris agenda invests in caregivers, unpaid and paid, by aiming to cap the cost of child care at 7 percent of income, establish paid family and medical leave, expand access to care at home, and raise wages for care workers. These are the kinds of investments that would help families participate and stay in the workforce and realize the promise of opportunity in America.”

Finally, that class critique ignores Harris’s promising to carry on Biden’s pro-labor policies – many of which were influenced by, or borrowed from, from Sanders himself. As writer Michael Cohen notes, under the Biden-Harris administration, “the working class saw a higher increase in their pay than any other group of Americans, so much so that it undid one-third of the growth in wage inequality since 1980.” Why didn’t working-class voters respond to this? That’s the deeper issue we have to resolve.

Anyway, it’s time to stop the finger-pointing, me included. Let’s wait for more data before trying to understand the demographic shifts; even the best exit polls are notoriously wrong. Stop capitulating to a media narrative that Trump won a landslide – he didn’t – which translates into his having a “mandate” for his policies – he doesn’t. Start strategizing over ways to block his agenda, particularly his promise of mass deportations. With his rapid-fire selection of the creepy Tom Homan, architect of family separation in Trump’s first term, as “border czar,” white nationalist Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, and incompetent dog murderer Kristi Noem as Homeland Security director, Trump’s earliest personnel moves indicate that wasn’t just rhetoric. The blame game doesn’t protect the vulnerable. Let’s move on to what will.>

<Republican Eric Hovde refused Tuesday to concede defeat in the Wisconsin Senate race, casting doubt on the results despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing in last week's election.

In a four-and-a-half minute video posted to X, Hovde said he was considering whether to seek a recount in the battleground state contest, which NBC News and other outlets called for Sen. Tammy Baldwin last week. She currently leads by less than 30,000 votes, 49.4% to 48.5%, with 99% of the vote counted.

Wisconsin allows candidates to request a recount, but they are required to cover the expenses if the margin of victory is larger than 0.25 percentage points.

But Hovde also suggested that a recount would not fully address the "voting inconsistencies" he claimed occurred.

“While I’m deeply concerned, asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration," Hovde said. "Further there are meaningful limits on a recount because they don’t look at the integrity of the ballot."

Hovde pointed to the absentee ballots Milwaukee reported early Wednesday morning, which went heavily for Baldwin, as an "improbable" outcome, arguing it didn't match the in-person voting pattern in the city.

But Democrats have traditionally been more likely to vote absentee than Republicans, and Milwaukee is one of the main Democratic bastions in Wisconsin. In addition, election workers are not allowed to begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day, which often leads to those votes getting reported later.

Hovde also claimed that certain precincts in Milwaukee had voter turnout that was higher than the number of registered voters on file. But that does not account for voters who registered on Election Day, which is allowed in Wisconsin.

In a statement, the Milwaukee County Election Commission said it "unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process."

"Every aspect of the MEC’s operations was conducted with transparency and in strict adherence to established laws and procedures," the statement read.

Shortly after Hovde posted his video, Baldwin took to X to criticize him.

"Eric Hovde is spreading lies from the darkest corners of the internet to undercut our free and fair elections," Baldwin said. "Wisconsin voters made their voices heard. It’s time for Hovde to stop this disgusting attack on our democracy and concede."

Asked by NBC News if he would accept the results of his race the day before Election Day, Hovde responded, “Of course.”

Despite Hovde's loss to Baldwin, President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin.>

<Donald Trump promised over the course of his campaign to abolish the Department of Education. It’s been a pet policy goal of the right ever since the agency was created in 1980 under former President Jimmy Carter and is spelled out in Project 2025, the conservative playbook that Trump will probably use once he is back in the White House.

But Trump doesn’t need to shut down the department in order to launch an all-out war on public schools.

He outlined his plan for education in a video last year, saying that not only will he close down the agency, he will bring back prayer in schools, end the supposed indoctrination of students and take politics out of schools.

“We will ensure our classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination but on teaching the knowledge and skills needed to succeed,” Trump said, adding, “We will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now.”

It’s the same agenda that right-wing culture warriors have been pushing in red states for the last four years — and Trump wants to spread it across the country.

“This renewed push to go after the Department of Education isn’t so much a sincere push for smaller government or even reducing the federal role,” Jon Valant, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told HuffPost. “It’s more about this continued attack on public education as a concept and eroding support for public schools in general.”

The Department of Education’s primary functions are providing funding for programs that serve low-income public schools and children with disabilities and protecting students from discrimination. If Trump were able to abolish it, it would spell disaster for the entire country. But public education has increasingly become politicized, and support for public schools, especially among Republicans, is now at an all-time low.

The upcoming Trump administration will likely seize on that sentiment to further attack public schools through rolling back Biden-era rules designed to make them safe and equitable for all students, supporting the expansion of programs that take away funding from public schools and promoting laws that restrict books and censor teachers.

“One of their first moves would be pulling back Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students,” Valant said. Title IX is the federal regulation that protects students from sex-based discrimination. The Biden administration expanded it to include protections for students in the LGBTQ+ community. Republicans have fought against the change from the beginning, and several GOP-led states sued to block the rule.

An overwhelming majority of transgender students have reported feeling unsafe or unwelcome at school.

Then there’s the Office for Civil Rights. This arm of the Department of Education allows students, parents and families to sue their school districts over civil rights violations. Often, the department works with both sides to seek a resolution because it’s a low-risk way of settling civil rights violations. But Project 2025 proposes gutting the office and only allowing lawsuits to go through the courts, thus eliminating an avenue for addressing discrimination in our nation’s schools.

Parental rights have been at the forefront of the conservative agenda for years, and the approaching Trump administration has already signaled that it will follow suit. The term is broad, but Republicans have been using it to pass laws and measures that restrict books and censor teachers.

“There is broad support among the Republican Party for some form of parental rights bill and there’s some shared understanding of what that should mean,” Valant said....>

<....Multiple states have already passed their own versions of parental rights bills, like in Iowa and Tennessee. These laws often ban books that conservatives believe are sexually explicit but usually target books with LGBTQ+ themes. Teachers are typically restricted in what they can say about gender identity and sexual orientation and are required to inform parents if their child wants to go by another name or pronouns at school — even against the student’s wishes.

Abolishing the Department of Education would also mean getting rid of Title I funding, the program that supports low-income schools across the country. But since red states disproportionately rely on these funds, the Trump administration would face fierce opposition from both parties to any rollbacks of Title I. Instead, Republicans will likely focus on school voucher programs.

These programs, which are often expensive and operate with little oversight, give parents the opportunity to send their children to alternative schools like religious ones with public funding.

“I think they will try a federal school choice program,” Valant said. And if there’s a new tax bill, he noted that “Republicans might build in some tax credits that would essentially function almost as a school voucher program as a way of getting public funds to private schools.”

But diverting funds from public schools can wreak havoc on the students who are left behind and on the state’s resources. In Arizona, the state is facing a $1.4 billion shortfall. And after North Carolina expanded its voucher program, the number of students who were already enrolled in private schools getting taxpayer funding to subsidize tuition exploded.

“These big universal voucher programs are dramatically restructuring how schools are run in some states and creating threats for public education systems that we haven’t had at any time in the recent past,” Valant said.

The Department of Education doesn’t need to be abolished in order for Trump to damage public education. It’s unlikely that he’ll succeed in abolishing it, but there’s a reason he made it a priority on the campaign trail. As his base grows increasingly against public schools, chipping away at them has become a way to shore up support.

“It’s just a way of going after public schools, and it’s not just a symbolic battle that just scores political points, but it has real consequences,” Valant said.>

<The US House of Representatives is considering a bill that critics say would allow president-elect Donald Trump to go after his political enemies and tax-exempt organizations, including news outlets, universities and civil society groups.

If enacted, HR 9495 would give the incoming president and his secretary of the Treasury the ability to investigate tax-exempt organizations based on an accusation of wrongdoing. The bill was introduced in September by three Republican members and one Democrat.

The legislators allege a large portion of support for terrorist organizations in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel has been funded by tax-exempt organizations, citing reports of material support going to designated terrorist groups.

Current law does not allow the Internal Revenue Service to suspend the tax-exempt status of organizations that have provided material support to such organizations, but it is a federal crime for non-profits to provide material support to terrorist organizations.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and more than 100 other organizations are concerned the bill’s passage could create a law that is “politicized” and “discriminatory” in its enforcement. In an open letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson in September, the organizations warned that the law would authorize “broad and easily abused new powers for the executive branch.”

According to the bill text, the secretary of the Treasury could notify an organization of the department’s intention to classify it as a “terrorist-supporting organization” without reason. The non-profit would have 90 days to appeal the decision before its tax-exempt status is revoked.

Civil rights leaders fear that organizations that support Palestine, where more than 40,000 people have reportedly been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, could become targets.

The House could hold a vote on the legislation this week. The ACLU renewed its calls for politicians to oppose the legislation following Trump’s re-election.

“Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents and punish disfavored groups,” Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the ACLU wrote in a written statement on Tuesday.

“The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy.” The organization called the 90-day appeal timeline a “mere illusion of due process.” Because the government does not need to inform the organizations of the evidence against them, they could potentially not mount an adequate defense.

Some 130 groups – including Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Women’s March and organizations advocating for Arab and immigrant Americans – warned congressional leaders in September about the bill’s sweeping implications.

In their letter to Johnson in September, the organizations wrote: “The potential for abuse under H.R. 6408 is immense as the executive branch would be handed a tool it could use to curb free speech, censor nonprofit media outlets, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups across the political spectrum.”

On Tuesday Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted: “No excuses. Every single one of my Democratic colleagues should be voting against this bill that gives Trump and his incoming administration dictatorial powers to target nonprofit organizations as political enemies without due process.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the government to punish his political opponents.

The law would also provide relief to hostages held abroad who are subject to penalties for late tax payments that were due while they were held in captivity.

The ACLU is not advocating against that provision and claims a bill on that issue alone could wind up on President Joe Biden’s desk independently. It’s unclear if the bill would have enough support to pass through lawmakers.>

<For better or worse, post-election analysis is now the country’s favorite sport. Wherever two or three Americans are gathered, there are at least a dozen reasons given for why Donald Trump won and Democrats got shellacked.

Among many, the most common is that Democrats need a good soul-searching over how they lost touch with the working class. I agree. Although the real questions is: How did Democrats do so much for working-class Americans — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, child care, family medical leave act, collective bargaining, minimum wage, middle-class tax cuts, the Affordable Care Act and millions of new jobs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (all of which Republicans opposed) — yet allow Republicans to brand them as the party of the elites?

But that’s not the real issue. It’s not enough for Democrats to do some soul-searching about what’s wrong with their party. The problem is much bigger than that. It’s important for the American people to do some soul-searching about what’s wrong with us.

It’s especially important to ask: What happened to our sense of values? Like me, you were probably instilled by your parents with a basic sense of what’s right and wrong, a set of values that was far more important than what political party we might someday belong to.

That set of values isn’t hard to understand. It’s not low-brow or high-brow. It’s not based on any religion. It’s just good, every day, universal common sense. The way everybody should live. It includes basic principles like telling the truth; treating people decently; obeying the law; adhering to an accepted moral code; and loving your country.

These are the basic, common values all of us grew up with and, in turn, taught our kids — all of which have been shattered and destroyed by Donald Trump. He told so many lies at every rally it was impossible to count them all. He insulted his opponents, both Democrat and Republican, with vile, racist and sexist names. He was tried and convicted for breaking the law by committing financial fraud, defamation and engaging in election fraud by covering up hush payments to a porn actress; he’s been accused of sexual assault by over two dozen women; and he sent an armed mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.

But here’s what should really trouble us all. It’s not that Donald Trump trampled on the values we’ve lived by our entire lives. We don’t expect any better from him. What’s shocking is that over half the American people said they don’t care.

They don’t care if Trump is a lying, lawless, crude, obscene, serial adulterer and convicted felon who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. They’re willing to forget all about that because…Why? They think he’ll lower the cost of a dozen eggs?

To me, it was summed up best on TikTok by @sweeper698: “The reason I’m so heart-broken….is that it invalidates everything I have ever been taught about how I should live my life, and everything I tried to teach my kids. It’s an absolute betrayal to realize… that…over half of this country really doesn’t really value the notion of being kind, being generous, loving your neighbor, being accepting, having empathy, showing understanding, being truthful, being ethical in business, being sensible and level-headed.”

That, my friends, is the real issue about what happened on Nov. 5, and one that should shake us all, Republican and Democrat. This was about more than losing an election. This was about losing our soul.>

<President-elect Donald Trump is set to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House this morning at 11 as part of the orderly transfer of power that Biden has promised — and that Trump denied Biden four years ago.

But one aspect of the transition of power is not playing out smoothly.

Trump’s transition team has not signed agreements with the Biden administration that would allow Trump’s team to receive classified briefings from administration officials and visit the agencies that they will start running in 68 days.

Trump’s team was supposed to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration by Oct. 1, but it has not done so more than a week after Election Day, raising fears that they won’t be fully prepared to assume control of government.

“This is uncharted territory,” said Max Stier, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, which helps incoming administrations navigate transitions. “No prior transition effort has really just stepped past the entire architecture of support that has grown up to help make sure that an incoming administration is prepared on Day One to run our government.”

The Trump transition has not said why they have not negotiated the agreements.

Brian Hughes, a Trump transition spokesman, said in a statement that “transition lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients has reached out to Trump transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week. A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak on the record, confirmed the two sides are still trying to reach an agreement.

Still, there are reasons that Trump’s team might be reluctant to sign the agreements.

During special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, “there were subpoenas and document requests that went back to the transition, and there were a lot of concerns by the Trump team about having to turn that information over,” said Ann O’Leary, the co-director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 transition team. “I think there [are] real concerns by that team of wanting to keep private their deliberations during this time.”

Signing an agreement with the GSA would provide funding and office space for Trump’s team — but it would also require Trump’s transition to disclose its donors and limit contributions to $5,000.

Trump’s decision not to sign — at least for now — has also allowed him to dodge a new requirement to submit an ethics plan that would govern him and other members of his transition team.

The transition is legally required to submit the ethics plan by a law that Trump signed in 2020, which was so uncontroversial that it passed Congress by voice vote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), who helped write the new law, accused Trump’s team of violating it. “The principal reason why an incoming administration would stall on issuing this mandatory ethics plan is if it plans to break it,” Warren told us in a statement.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware), who also co-wrote the law, also urged Trump to follow it.

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), the 2020 law’s lead sponsor, said he wasn’t concerned that Trump’s transition team had not filed an ethics plan or signed the agreements.

Johnson cited a 2020 report from Republicans on the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees that found that the FBI and Mueller’s investigation got access to the Trump transition’s records even though the agreement Trump’s team signed with the Obama administration stipulated that GSA would not hold on to those records.

“Given how GSA mishandled the 2016 transition, I can understand why the 2024 Trump transition team is proceeding cautiously,” Johnson told us in a statement. “I am not concerned that they are legitimately wary and taking time to negotiate a memorandum of understanding.”

The situation in some ways echoes the one faced by Biden’s transition team four years ago, when Emily Murphy, the GSA administrator, declined to certify that Biden had won the election for more than two weeks after the race was called. Murphy’s decision delayed Biden’s team from getting access to transition resources. But there’s a crucial difference.

“The Biden team didn’t want the delay, and they tried to do everything possible to avoid it,” Stier said. “The Trump team has chosen a path that is keeping them away from critical resources.”....>

<....Stier pointed to another delayed transition as evidence of the impact the Trump team’s holdup could have: George W. Bush’s transition in 2000, which was delayed by the Florida recount. The commission charged with investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found the delay hampered the Bush administration’s ability to get its national security team in place and recommended changes to allow transitions to “obtain security clearances immediately after the election is over.”

It’s unclear whether that has happened this year.

The Justice Department would only say that it stands “ready to process requests for security clearances for those who will need access to national security information.”

Senate Republicans will hold their closed-door, secret-ballot leadership elections this morning after a bitter race between longtime Senate insiders Sen. John Thune (South Dakota), currently the second-ranking Republican, and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), a former member of Republican leadership. Challenging them is insurgent candidate Sen. Rick Scott (Florida), who is not necessarily winning popularity contests in the Senate but has effectively rallied the MAGA online movement behind him, which we wrote about extensively earlier this week.

Trump hasn’t weighed in directly on the race but he is testing their loyalty. Trump will be in Washington this morning meeting with House Republicans ahead of their separate leadership elections (more on that below).

A Trump social media post with an endorsement is not out of the question but not expected. Trump likes to pick winners. It’s impossible to tell at this point who is likely to come out on top.

Scott has seven public endorsements, more than the other two candidates, including two new ones last night from Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), both staunch Trump supporters.

But some senators are dismissing the impact of the online pressure campaign, insisting that they know their institution best and the power of secrecy allows them to vote their conscience with no repercussions.

Each candidate will have two supporters give a nominating speech. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) will nominate Scott. Trump is expected to nominate Rubio to be secretary of state. Hagerty was also in the running.

The balloting could take multiple rounds. The person who receives the least votes drops off after the first round, and senators vote until someone gets a majority of Republican senators present and voting, which is expected to be 27 votes. It’s still unclear if Sen. JD Vance, the vice president-elect, who is eligible to vote, will attend and cast a ballot.

The only other contested position is Senate Republican conference chair, the third-ranking position. Sens. Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Tom Cotton (Arkansas) are running against each other.

Trump’s meeting with House Republicans will take place at 9 a.m.

We’re also watching the House Republican leadership elections, including whether Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) faces a last-minute challenge. (The vote today is just to nominate a speaker candidate. The full House will vote on the speaker on Jan. 3.)

There is also a competitive race to replace Rep. Elise Stefanik (New York) as conference chair. Stefanik has been tapped to be Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.

House Republicans are two seats away from securing the majority. The party leads in six of the 12 races that are still uncalled....>

<....Which ones could put Republicans over the top?

Nick Begich leads Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola by four points in Alaska, although the state’s ranked-choice voting system makes things a little more complicated.

Reps. Ken Calvert (California), John Duarte (California), Juan Ciscomani (Arizona), Michelle Steel (California) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa) each lead their Democratic challengers, although Steel’s lead over Democrat Derek Tran has narrowed to less than a point with about 13 percent of the vote left to count.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its latest inflation data at 8:30 a.m.

Economists expect the report to show that the consumer price index rose at a 2.6 percent annual rate in October, a little higher than it was in September, our colleague Andrew Ackerman reports.

Democratic Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado are starting a new initiative “to uphold and fortify American democracy” in the states, as Pritzker put it.

The initiative, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, is modeled on the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, a coalition of 23 Democratic governors launched last year to coordinate efforts to protect abortion rights. The idea is to help governors come up with strategies for protecting the rule of law and democratic institutions in their state if they come under threat.

The initiative is nonpartisan and counts Bill Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, among its advisory board member. Pritzker told reporters he had reached out to Republican governors about joining. We’ll be watching whether any sign on.

With just over two months until Biden leaves office, Democrats are hoping to confirm as many of Biden’s remaining judicial nominees as possible.

“Senators voted 51-44 to confirm April M. Perry as a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois on Tuesday night when they returned to Capitol Hill for the start of the lame-duck session. She is the 214th Biden appointee to win a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. Another nominee is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday,” report our colleagues Tobi Raji and Clara Ence Morse. “An additional 26 judicial nominations are pending in the Senate — 15 are waiting for a floor vote, while 11 are still being processed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were the only two Republicans in the Senate to vote for Perry’s confirmation following Trump accusing Democrats of trying “to ram through their Judges” and saying “no Judges should be approved during this period of time” in a social media post. Republicans similarly confirmed 14 judges in the final weeks of Trump’s first term after he lost to Biden in 2020.

Over the course of his first term, Trump had 237 judicial nominees approved, including three Supreme Court justices. It’s a number Democrats are hoping to beat.

“The clock is ticking and we’re going to be hell-bent on getting as many judges confirmed as we can,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont), a member of the Judiciary Committee.>

<While claiming victory on Election Night (this time, credibly), Donald Trump was unrestrained in his interpretation of what it all meant: “We had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”

As Lee Corso likes to say on College Game Day when one of his colleagues makes a confident prediction about how a football game will turn out: “Not so fast.”

The more you look at the election returns — which are still evolving as millions of votes are counted in California — Trump’s accomplishment remains impressive, considering his chronic unpopularity and the long comeback he pursued after his 2020 defeat. But “historic realignment” isn’t the right word for a victory that could have been undone had Kamala Harris won a relatively small number of additional votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump’s steadily declining national popular vote margin will wind up, according to Nate Silver’s estimate, at around 1.4 percent (lower than Hillary Clinton’s 2.1 percent in 2016), with his total votes at less than a majority and 3 percent more than he won in 2020. Again, that’s good for someone with Trump’s spotty record, but pretty clearly attributable to being the “change” candidate when the electorate was in an especially sour mood and angry about short-term trends in the economy and immigration.

As I observed in an earlier piece, Trump’s much-ballyhooed gains among Democratic “base” groups were significant, but no better than those posted by George W. Bush 20 years ago before his party lost control of Congress and four years before Democrats reclaimed the White House in a near-landslide. So perhaps the best way to characterize the situation is that Trump will have the opportunity to build a durable GOP advantage in a country that has been closely divided between the two parties for much of this century. But there are serious questions as to whether he has a plan for pulling it off, or the self-restraint to avoid blowing up his coalition altogether.

As John Judis and Ruy Teixeira (who know a lot about premature realignment claims having made their own in a famous 2002 book called The Emerging Democratic Majority) point out in a New York Times op-ed, Trump’s announced agenda isn’t particularly well-designed to keep his 2024 coalition together, much less to expand it:

[T]here are plenty of issues that could fracture this coalition. Even immigration cuts both ways. He might try to carry out his promise of deporting millions of illegal immigrants, a project that could not just wreak havoc among families and in communities but also cause economic chaos.

Or take tariffs. Mr. Trump’s working-class voters who lament the loss of jobs to China have supported his trade initiatives, including his plan to slap as high as a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods. But Mr. Trump’s first-term tariffs provoked retaliation from China, and angered Republican farmers and Senate Republicans. Much higher tariffs could meet with opposition from Mr. Trump’s high-tech backers, who depend on the Chinese market, and from his financial donors, who still have investments in China. Unlike most Republican initiatives, tariffs, if successful, work by imposing short-term costs in prices in order to achieve long-term gains in jobs from otherwise endangered industries. It’s the short-term costs — another round of inflation, this time imposed by Mr. Trump — that might endanger the Republican coalition....>

<....There are other obvious pitfalls Trump faces, such as his “concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare with some health care system that will likely shrink coverage and impose vast new costs on vulnerable people. As Judis and Teixeira note, Trump’s allies want to do a host of unpopular things, from RFK Jr.’s desire to ban vaccines to the anti-abortion movement’s hopes for banning abortion pills. Trump’s own promises to demolish federal aid to education and gut civil service protections for millions of federal employees may please his MAGA “base,” but not so much the new voters he temporarily attracted this year. And above all, there’s the question of whether the 45th and 47th president, who has run his last campaign, really cares enough about the long-term strength of the Republican Party to rein in his and his closest supporters’ more politically reckless tendencies. Judis and Teixeira discuss that factor as well:

The final obstacle to a strong realignment is Mr. Trump himself, who is consumed with the quest for power and self-aggrandizement, and appears eager to seek revenge against his detractors. Many of his difficulties during his first term stemmed from his own misbehavior, and he continues to revel in division and divisiveness.

It’s worth recalling what happened in Britain to Boris Johnson and the Tories. After nearly a decade in power, they won an overwhelming victory in 2019 by detonating Labour’s “red wall” of working-class support. It looked as if the Tories were on the verge of realigning British politics. Five years later, it’s Labour that enjoyed an overwhelming victory, and Mr. Johnson himself, primarily because of his own misbehavior, is out of politics.

The challenge is hardly unique to Donald Trump. Any electoral winner has to decide whether to expend the political capital victory brings on achieving goals regardless of the potential backlash, or instead moving cautiously to consolidate power. Nothing about Trump and his early steps (a Fox News gabber to run the Pentagon? Elon Musk acting as de facto vice president?) suggests caution or a willingness to delay gratification; they in fact look strongly like overreach or to use the classical term, hubris. Twenty years ago a triumphantly reelected Bush announced he would use some of his evident political capital to launch legislation to partially privatize Social Security. It backfired spectacularly, and began the process whereby Bush squandered his election victory and blew up the many predictions of a permanent political realignment in his party’s favor. Trump and the GOP could avoid the same fate, but not if they think the incredibly hard work of breaking America’s partisan gridlock has already been done in a single election.>

<1. You get infuriated over the tiniest inconveniences.

2. Your anger lasts wayyyy longer than it should.

3. You have a lot of outbursts.

4. People walk on eggshells around you.

5. You feel mad more often than not.

6. You don’t know how to communicate without getting angry.

7. You’re often filled with regret after an outburst

8. Your physical health is… not great.

9. You use your rage to intimidate people.

10. You can’t even let yourself admit you’re angry sometimes.

11. You’re always cynical and negative.

12. You feel like other people are always trying to provoke you.

13. Your relationships are becoming increasingly strained.>

Cool off, boys.

<Donald Trump mused on Wednesday about the prospect of serving a constitutionally barred third term as president, though his Republican colleagues insist he was just joking.

“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something,” Trump reportedly told his GOP colleagues in the House, as they met ahead of congressional leadership elections. “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’”

Those in the room later said the president-elect was only kidding. The 22nd Amendment of the Constitution specifies that presidents can only serve up to two full terms.

“That was a joke. It was clearly a joke,” Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told The Hill. “I leaned over to somebody beside me, [Arizona Rep.] Andy Biggs, and I said, that’ll be the headlines tomorrow, ‘Trump trying to thwart the Constitution,’ which — there’s nothing further from the truth.”

Not everyone seemed to feel that way.

Representative Dan Goldman of New York, a Democrat, plans to introduce a resolution on Thursday affirming the 22nd Amendment would bar Trump from a third term, The New York Times reports.

He called on legislators from both parties to “stand by the oath we all took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and confirm the Congress’ commitment to this principle.”

The resolution would make clear that the 22nd Amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate,” even if they are non-consecutive, like Trump’s. Only one previous president, Grover Cleveland, has served two non-consecutive terms beginning in 1884 and 1892.

However, it is thought unlikely that Goldman’s resolution will make it to a vote in the Republican-dominated House.

During a May speech at the National Rifle Association convention, Trump mentioned himself in the same breath as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the four-term Democratic president who helped inspire the 22nd Amendment in the first place.

The amendment, ratified in 1951, came after Roosevelt had been elected four consecutive times, from 1932 to 1944. He died in office in April 1945, shortly into his fourth term.

The amendment states that presidents can serve a maximum of two full terms, and that if a vice president becomes president during the term of their predecessor, which has occured [sic] nine times in US history due to death or resignation, they can still serve two full terms as long as they serve less than half of their predecessor’s remaining term.

Before Roosevelt, whose time in office coincided with the twin international crises of the Depression and the Second World War, presidents had observed an unofficial tradition of not serving more than two terms.

Trump has raised the prospect of serving a third term and violating other democratic terms before.

“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” he asked the crowd.

Elsewhere on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump suggested he would be a “dictator” and abuse power only on “day one” of his new administration, and told an audience of Christians if he got elected “you’re not going to have to vote” in the future.

During the 2020 campaign, Trump made similar comments, suggesting he could be “entitled” to “another four” years after winning a second term, and in 2018 praised Chinese president Xi Jinping’s potential lifetime term in office as “great,” saying “maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”

When pressed on whether he actually believes he can serve a third term, Trump has said he doesn’t want one.

“I wouldn’t be in favor of it. I wouldn’t be in favor of a challenge [to the 22nd Amendment]. Not for me,” Trump toldTIME in April. “I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job.

Trump and his supporters often insist the Republican is joking or not being literal after he faces scrutiny for his statements, including after the Access Hollywood scandal, Trump’s call for Russia to release hacked emails from the Clinton campaign, and the president’s suggestion in his first term that disinfectant could be used as a treatment against Covid.

22nd Amendment debate aside, observers are alarmed that Trump adopted quasi-fascist rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail, including claiming immigrants are ”destroying the blood of our countryr” and suggesting using the military to go after internal domestic critics, whom he dubbed the “enemy within.”>

<A majority has spoken. A disappointed minority may not admire the judgment rendered, but it must respect the right of a majority to express it. Else, to paraphrase the poet, what’s a democratic republic for?

The election was clearly one in which voters’ perceived interests outweighed their professed values. Surely, not all of those supporting Donald Trump were applauding his character and the amoral values he represents. Given the complex factors that shape voting behavior, it is reasonable to conclude that the Trump majority was seeking an escape from the pain and disappointment and fears prompted by recent economic turmoil.

Close analysis of the promised Trump program suggests that his voters may soon have second thoughts. Any new administration’s plans are subject to change, but if the next president is supported by the Republican-controlled Congress in executing the proposals set forth in the campaign, the hoped-for escape will lead to greater distress on several fronts.

To begin with, the multiple pledges of tax relief — on overtime, on tips, on Social Security income — plus proffers of further tax cuts for wealthy investors carry predictable consequences for national debt.

Other than historically unachievable rates of increased productivity and economic growth, no one has identified a way to reconcile those pledges with stable fiscal progress. Massive slashes in the federal work force ($2 trillion worth), touted by Trump’s bro-pal billionaire Elon Musk, would entail drastic curtailments in public services. Politics breeds countless temptations, not all of them prudent.

The tax cuts-for-prosperity theme is compounded by the incoming president’s pronounced affection for tariffs. To treat increased tariffs as direct sales taxes on all American consumers may be an oversimplification, but levying those import fees across-the-board is bound to have numerous adverse results.

Americans’ fondness for inexpensive goods is in tension with the evident anger that so many of those goods are produced in China and elsewhere. Blocking those imports in the hope that comparable goods will be produced cost-effectively in the U.S. is a risky proposition. The likelihood is that similar products made in America, even if superior in quality, will be more expensive, feeding the inflationary pressures that have generated anxiety and resentment throughout America.

The daunting proposal to deport millions of immigrants carries similar implications. The impact of such deportations on a labor force already struggling to bear the increasing burdens of an aging population appears to be straightforward. The resulting paucity of workers for jobs often disdained by American citizens may well shrink supplies of farm products and other goods. Such supply shortages will add to the other inflationary strains against which the Federal Reserve has warned so diligently for years now.

In conjunction with the tariffs contemplated in the campaign, worker shortages leading to supply shortfalls will increase demand for costly imports, perhaps generating feedback loops of unintended consequences.

Those probable trends suggest that elements of the Trump majority will soon have cause for second thoughts. If the Trump administration pursues and achieves all the policies outlined in the campaign, it is difficult to see how the benefits will outweigh the costs. The resulting pain is likely to be felt throughout American society. The fiscal overload and distortions will point toward stringent monetary policy — perhaps even higher interest rates than the ones that put housing and other capital expenditures beyond the reach of so many....>

<....Will that pain have political repercussions for the 2026 election cycle? In contrast with this year’s election, Republicans will have more Senate seats to defend (20 of 33), but some Democratic incumbents won by narrow margins and will face close, higher-risk contests. Any calculus of the probable outcome in House races must await the electorate’s reaction to the ways and degrees to which House members serve as allies to the president.

Second thoughts are the norm in politics. Campaigns breed unrealistic promises and expectations. Incumbents often spend more time explaining why they failed to achieve lofty goals then in proclaiming their success in doing so. Since Trump is ineligible to run again, it will fall to his associates to defend the record that will unfold on his watch.

The dynamics of the 2024 election, needless to say, invite diverse interpretations. One notable irony concerns the measurable movement of Hispanic voters toward support for Trump, despite his sometimes harsh stance toward immigrants.

Some Hispanic commentators have viewed that movement as an importation of the frequent Latino gravitation toward a leader in chief, a “caudillo” on the model of Juan Peron or Fidel Castro or Anastasio Somoza. Never mind that such caudillos have brought great grief to their peoples. Donald Trump has come to embody what one may call American machismo. The durability of that quality’s appeal will now be tested.>

<If he is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz will replace Merrick Garland, a onetime Supreme Court nominee who served two prior stints in the Justice Department, worked as a corporate litigator, and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for more than two decades, including seven years as chief judge. Garland's predecessor, William Barr, likewise had previously worked for the Justice Department, including as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, in addition to earlier legal work at the CIA and in private practice.

Going down the list of attorneys general before Barr, you will see people with extensive legal experience, including former prosecutors, Justice Department officials, judges, and state attorneys general. Gaetz, by contrast, is a 42-year-old graduate of William & Mary Law School who briefly worked for a law firm in Fort Walton Beach before entering state politics in 2010, two years after he was admitted to the Florida bar. He served in Florida's legislature for six years before he was elected to represent the state's 1st Congressional District in 2016.

Gaetz's skimpy legal background is not the only reason many people, including Republican colleagues as well as Democrats, were dismayed by Trump's choice. As Reason's C.J. Ciaramella noted, Rep. Mike Simpson (R–Idaho) "summed up the general reaction" on Capitol Hill with this response to news of the nomination: "Are you @#$%tin' me?" When asked what he thought about Gaetz as attorney general, Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas) was a bit more diplomatic, saying, "I'm trying to absorb all of this." Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) said Gaetz is "not a serious candidate." The New York Times describes him as "one of the most reviled members of his conference."

To be sure, politicians can be "reviled" for good or bad reasons. A legislator who shakes things up by standing on principle and resisting business as usual in Congress, which is how Gaetz is apt to portray himself, is bound to antagonize the establishment. But in Gaetz's case, the main source of intraparty hostility is the perception that he is a lightweight showboat who is desperate for attention, fond of political stunts, inclined toward intemperate rhetoric, vindictive, and eager to start fires just to see stuff burn.

In these respects, Gaetz resembles Trump, whom he has vociferously defended for years. As Trump sees it, Gaetz's loyalty is his main qualification to run the Justice Department. But it raises obvious concerns for anyone who worries that Trump will act on his often expressed desire to punish his political opponents once he is back in power. Intalling [sic] a sycophant at the top of the Justice Department would go a long way toward helping him deliver on those threats.

Gaetz's allegiance to Trump, of course, hardly counts as a strike against him in the current Republican Party. In any case, his tendency to irritate his fellow Republicans predates his connection to the former and future president, and it seems to reflect obnoxious personality traits rather than controversial policy positions.

As a state representative in 2015, Gaetz opposed a "revenge porn" bill that made it a first-degree misdemeanor to post sexually explicit photos on a website without the subject's consent. Understandably, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Tom Goodson (R–Titusville), was not happy about that. But there was an additional element to their dispute.

"There is personal animosity between Goodson, a 64-year-old road contractor with a drawl who sometimes becomes tongue-tied during debates, and Gaetz, a 33-year-old lawyer with a sharp wit but an often-condescending manner," Florida Trend reported. "During a session on the House floor last year, Gaetz peppered Goodson with questions about an arcane piece of legislation dealing with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. The interrogation appeared to be an attempt to make Goodson appear unprepared or foolish." During that exchange, a microphone caught Goodson calling Gaetz an "a**hole."

That assessment would later be echoed by Republicans who worked alongside Gaetz in Congress. His style was exemplified by his decision to wear a gas mask during a House debate about COVID-19 spending in early March 2020. There were sound reasons to question the government's response to the pandemic, including state and local restrictions as well as the eventual approval of $6.2 trillion in federal spending that was rife with fraud and waste. But according to Gaetz himself, he was not mocking the government's response....>

<....When Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker said Gaetz had "made light of [the] coronavirus by wearing a gas mask," the congressman implausibly insisted that his stunt had been misunderstood. "Made light?!?!" he wrote on Twitter. "I was quite serious. The threat to Congress is real, as I explained, based on travel and habits like selfies and handshakes." Gaetz, in short, got the attention he wanted without making any substantive point, let alone accomplishing anything meaningful.

That is how Gaetz's critics characterized his ultimately successful battle to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) as House speaker. While Gaetz said he was taking a stand for fiscal restraint, McCarthy said Gaetz was taking revenge for an ethics investigation he blamed on the speaker.

Although only Gaetz knows his true motivation, it seems clear that government shutdowns of the sort he faulted McCarthy for avoiding through a deal with Democrats "don't meaningfully reduce the size or cost of government," as Reason's Eric Boem noted last year. Nor has McCarthy's replacement by Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) yielded any improvement in the gap between revenue and spending, which increased from $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023 to more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024 as outlays rose from $6.1 trillion to $6.8 trillion.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), a fiscal conservative who did not support McCarthy's removal, thought Johnson should be fired. "We are steering everything toward what [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer wants," Massie said in April. "If the country likes Chuck Schumer, then the country should like what Speaker Johnson has accomplished in the House."

Whatever you make of McCarthy's ouster, Gaetz's recklessness was on full display in his defenses of Trump. On the night before former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee in February 2019, Gaetz directed a tweet at him: "Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot…"

When Democrats accused Gaetz of trying to intimidate Cohen, Gaetz defended the tweet. "This isn't witness tampering," he said. "This is witness testing. I don't threaten anybody." He later reconsidered that response, deleting the tweet and apologizing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.). "While it is important 2 create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was NOT my intent to threaten, as some believe I did," he wrote. "I'm deleting the tweet & I should have chosen words that better showed my intent. I'm sorry."

After the 2020 election, Gaetz joined 138 other House Republicans in objecting to electoral votes for Joe Biden. When Trump supporters enraged at Biden's supposedly phony victory invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Gaetz sought to blame leftist provocateurs for the riot. "Some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters," he said on the House floor the next day. "They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa."

Soon afterward, Gaetz went on TV to criticize Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.) and other Republicans who had condemned Trump's behavior before and during the riot. Gaetz is "putting people in jeopardy," McCarthy complained in a phone call with other Republican leaders. "And he doesn't need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else."

A week after the riot, Gaetz was still embracing Trump's stolen-election fantasy, saying, "President Trump is fighting to EXPOSE election fraud and ensure there's integrity in every US election moving forward." Months later, he traveled the country with another Trump loyalist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), arguing that "audits" would validate the former president's baseless claims of systematic election fraud.

Gaetz has described himself as a "libertarian populist," and his policy positions are the mixed bag you might expect based on that confusing label. "I believe you can fundamentally agree that the government is bad at doing stuff but also understand that we cannot bend big government to the will of big business so easily through legal bribes we call campaign donations," he told Vanity Fair in 2020. "I'm a different kind of Republican, and I think we are in a time of political realignment made possible by the Trump presidency."....>

<....Gaetz identified himself with "the pro-science wing of the Republican Party," meaning he acknowledges that "nobody chooses to be gay" and that "the earth is warming," although he expressed a preference for a "pro-innovation" response to climate change rather than an approach that "has the government controlling everything." His deference to science, he said, also led him to the conclusion that "the federal government has lied to our country for a generation about marijuana."

As a state legislator in 2015, Gaetz supported the repeal of Florida's ban on adoptions by same-sex couples. But he criticized Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, saying the issue should be left to the states. Consistent with that position, Gaetz opposed repealing the Defense of Marriage Act as a member of Congress in 2022.

In 2018, Gaetz was one of 182 House Republicans who supported the Trump-backed FIRST STEP Act, a package of sentencing and prison reforms. He had much less GOP company in 2020, when he cosponsored a bill that would have repealed the federal ban on marijuana, which passed the House with support from just five Republicans.

Gaetz has long been a staunch advocate of the right to armed self-defense. As a state legislator, he supported open carry and fought attempts to revise or repeal Florida's "stand your ground" law. Marion Hammer, former president of the National Rifle Association, described him as "one of the most pro-gun members to have ever served in the Florida Legislature."

Gaetz has expressed his opposition to abortion in characteristically inflammatory and insulting terms. "Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?" he wondered in a 2022 speech. "Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb."

While some of Gaetz's positions will appeal to libertarians, his reputation in the House and his lack of relevant experience are apt to give senators pause. And that's without considering the allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, and financial irregularities.

In 2022, federal prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against Gaetz after looking into claims involving sex with a 17-year-old and transportation of women allegedly paid for sex. The main reason, The Washington Post reported, was that prosecutors had doubts about the credibility of the witnesses on which they would have to rely.

Gaetz has always denied the sexual allegations. But an investigation by the House Ethics Committee covered some of the same ground, along with allegations that Gaetz used illegal drugs, "misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor," The New York Times reports.

According to the Times, the committee was about to release "a highly critical report" about Gaetz when he gave up his seat in anticipation of his new job. Although the committee no longer has any authority over Gaetz, the Times says, "it was not immediately clear whether it would still release its findings."

One of Gaetz's Republican detractors, Rep. Max Miller (R–Ohio), said he was happy to see him go. Most House Republicans "are giddy about it," Miller told the Times. "Get him out of here." He added that he is looking forward to Gaetz's confirmation hearing. "I'm surprised that Matt would do this to himself," he said. "I want to go get a big bag of popcorn and pull up a front-row seat to that show.">

<A California woman won't be allowed to sue the police officer who allegedly leaked a confidential abuse report to her violent boyfriend after the Supreme Court declined to review her case, ending her nearly decade-long legal battle to hold police officers responsible for abetting her abuse.

The Supreme Court declined this week to take up a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August by Desiree Martinez. Martinez filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2015 against several police officers in Clovis, California, who she accused of ignoring multiple attempts to report her abusive boyfriend. She says that's because her boyfriend, Kyle Pennington, was also a Clovis police officer.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that those officers, including one who tipped off her boyfriend, are immune from Martinez's lawsuit under qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that shields state and local government officials from federal civil suits if their alleged misconduct was not "clearly established" by existing case law.

Qualified immunity allows government officials to avoid liability even in cases where courts find that they violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. Defenders of qualified immunity say it protects police from frivolous lawsuits, but in practice it also short-circuits credible allegations of civil rights violations before they ever reach a jury.

Martinez was represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm.

"This is obviously hugely disappointing," Anya Bidwell, an Institute for Justice senior attorney, said in a press release. "Qualified immunity should not be a one-size-fits-all doctrine that protects on-the-beat cops and desk-bound bureaucrats alike. My heart breaks for Desiree. But one day, when we defeat qualified immunity, it will be because she and other heroes like her had the courage to stand up."

According to Martinez's Supreme Court petition, in one instance she filed a confidential abuse report against Pennington to the Clovis police. Later, during a late-night argument, Pennington called another Clovis officer, Channon High. Pennington put her on speakerphone and asked Martinez, "So you're telling the cops what I did to you?"

Martinez denied it, but High interjected, "Yes, she did. I see a report right here."

Martinez claims Pennington hung up the phone and sexually and physically abused her. Pennington was later convicted of violating a restraining order, and prosecutors dropped more serious charges against him in exchange for a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor domestic abuse charge.

Martinez's 2015 lawsuit alleged High violated her substantive due process rights under the 14th Amendment by disclosing her confidential report to Pennington.

The long legal saga that followed shows how qualified immunity shuts the courthouse door on alleged victims of government abuse before their claims can ever be judged on the merits.

A U.S. district court initially ruled that High wasn't entitled to qualified immunity from Martinez's suit, writing that "it was clearly established that an officer sharing a domestic violence victim's confidential information to the alleged abuser would be a violation of the victim's substantive due process rights."

High appealed to the 9th Circuit, which likewise concluded that "Officer High violated Ms. Martinez's due process rights by knowingly placing her in greater danger of Mr. Pennington's assaults." (When considering a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit, courts are obligated to assume the plaintiff's factual allegations are true.)

From that sentence, a reader might assume that the 9th Circuit likewise found that High wasn't entitled to qualified immunity—but not so!

Although the 9th Circuit previously ruled in 2006 that police officers violated due process by disclosing complaints to their subjects, it decided that the facts of that case were not sufficiently similar to Martinez's. Therefore Martinez's right to file a domestic abuse complaint without having it disclosed to her abuser was not clearly established, and High couldn't have had fair notice that her conduct violated Martinez's rights.

Whether or not an alleged victim of government abuse can sue the officials responsible often depends on whether they can find a case with a nearly identical background. The practical effect of this is that qualified immunity drags out lawsuits by years and permits constitutional violations as long as they are novel.

While the Supreme Court has overturned some individual qualified immunity cases that were particularly outrageous—like one where correctional officers locked a psychiatric inmate in a cell filled with feces and raw sewage—it has continually declined to reconsider the doctrine as a whole.

<House Republicans are cautiously moving forward with a deal to change how the lower chamber operates, with centrist lawmakers privately crossing their fingers that their rabble-rouser colleagues hold up their end of the deal in January 2025.

GOP lawmakers crafted a deal this week to drop rule changes to discourage members from disrupting legislative business after members of the conservative Freedom Caucus criticized the proposals as seeking to punish certain members who speak out against leadership. Instead, leaders of the centrist Main Street Caucus agreed to withdraw their proposed amendments in exchange for a new threshold to the motion to vacate, a procedure that allows members to vote on removing the House speaker.

The first part of that deal was fulfilled Thursday evening when Republicans finalized their conference rules package, which no longer includes proposals to punish members who buck leadership. However, the second part of the agreement will not come into play until January 2025 when the entire House must vote on raising the motion-to-vacate threshold — leaving some members on edge about whether those on the right flank will keep their word.

“Admittedly, you never want to be the second part of a two-part deal in this town,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), chairman of the Main Street Caucus who led negotiations, told the Washington Examiner. “But this is a trust-building exercise.”

Most lawmakers believe the deal will go through as planned. Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) said members of the Freedom Caucus will “more than likely” agree to raise the threshold while Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said he believes it will “probably carry out.”

“The spirit of the agreement was that,” Roy said, adding that “there were people in the room who agreed to that, there were people who did not. You got to talk to them.”

But if members do walk back their part of the deal, that could set a bad tone for the 119th Congress before it even begins in earnest, Johnson said.

“If we can’t get people to hold up their end of the bargain in January, then that’s actually a really important data point for the next 24 months,” the South Dakota representative told the Washington Examiner. “If we can’t trust people with their word, it’s going to be hard to deliver any conservative victories for America.”

“Any people who renege on their deal would only set back the cause of this Republican movement,” he added.>

<In these dark times, it's more important than ever to nurse tendrils of joy. So it is a great pleasure to watch all the Republican leaders who repeatedly intervened to protect Donald Trump from himself now reap their reward: a big ol' contempt loogie in their eyes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and his allies turned their nose up at the chance to bar Trump from ever running for office again after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In turn, Trump has worked to humiliate them by nominating the worst possible people for high-level federal appointments.

Trump's loyalty tests of congressional Republicans have escalated quickly from "walk naked through the streets" levels to "eat puke" levels. First, it was the nomination of Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, even though he admitted the Army "spit me out" after "members of my own unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo." (He's referring to multiple tattoos that are understood this way by Christian and white nationalists themselves.) Then Trump escalated to nominating substitute Fox News host Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, despite her affection for dictators like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. deemed "traitorous." Then the topper: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be the attorney general.

Typically, someone in Gaetz's situation would keep his current role in Congress until he was confirmed in the new job, but despite the GOP's razor-thin margins in the House, he resigned immediately. Politico then reported that the resignation prevents the otherwise imminent release of "an Ethics Committee report investigating several allegations including that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor." The Justice Department that Gaetz wishes to lead never charged him after a lengthy investigation, but Gaetz's good friend pleaded guilty, getting 11 years in prison for his role. Greenberg wrote a letter accusing Gaetz of "sexual activities" with an underage girl. In a text message to Trump associate Roger Stone, Greenberg wrote that "MG" and "I both had sex with the girl who was underage."

Late Thursday, a leak to ABC News confirmed that a woman testified to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz "had sex with her when she was 17 years old." The age of consent in Florida is 18.

The good news is that much of the political media understands that these trollish picks are a loyalty test for Republicans in Congress. It's their first big reminder that, as much as Trump brags about his non-existent powers at "deal-making," his only true theory of power is to rule through fear. After admitting he thinks Gaetz is not fit for the role, one Republican House member complained to a reporter, "But hell, you’ll print that and now I’m going to be investigated." No doubt that reaction would tickle Trump, who shuns coalition-building out of the belief that arm-twisting is a superior way to control his caucus.

But — not to wallow in too much hopium — Trump is wrong in this view. It's the Achilles heel of authoritarians throughout time. They relish conflict, but conflict drives away potential allies, sows chaos and can often grind the gears of their agenda. We've seen this play out in the GOP-controlled House, which has been reduced to dysfunction and inaction, felled by in-fighting. Much of that was driven by Gaetz's multi-year vendetta over the House ethics probe, which appears to be his motive for kick-starting the eventually successful effort to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In an episode of "Pod Save America" released before the Gaetz announcement, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein predicted a second Trump term will feature "much more factional in-fighting than people are prepared for." The Gaetz pick immediately proved him right. As Politico Playbook reported, the "Gaetz-for-AG plan came together yesterday, just hours before it was announced," hatched by some of the more erratic hangers-on — likely including Gaetz — "while incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was in a different, adjacent room on the plane, apparently unaware."

This half-baked scheme to force congressional Republicans to eat Trump's poop while praising its taste and texture looks like it may not be working how Trump and Gaetz hoped. Investigative journalist Julie K. Brown posted, "Sources for Miami Herald/McClatchy confirm that the Ethics Report is 'highly damaging' — the report could be leaked today." Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., invited the House Ethics Committee to release the report as relevant information to a Gaetz confirmation hearing. If Gaetz's goal was burying the findings, he may have just ensured they get much wider hearing than if he had just kept quiet....>

<....In the wake of Trump's disastrous win, it's welcome news that he's focusing his love of chaos and division directly on his own caucus. It was only Tuesday night that the architects of Project 2025 were having their coming-out party, free now that Trump won to admit that Democrats were right: They were always the villainous puppeteers planning to pull Trump's strings in the White House. But their extensive schemes will require organization and buy-in from GOP leaders. That's a lot harder to pull off when Dear Leader is putting his energies toward encouraging everyone in the party to claw each others' eyes out.

To be certain, things are still very bleak in America. Trump will still be able to inflict a lot of harm, even while getting in his own way. Although incompetence is better than competence, there are downsides. We saw in his last administration how the federal COVID-19 pandemic response was hamstrung by Trump's inability to lead anything other than a criminal conspiracy. Still, we should note silver linings where we see them. It's good if Trump's energies are focused far more on settling scores with other Republicans than working through the Project 2025 checklist.

As Klein posted on Twitter, "Demanding Senate Republicans back Gaetz as attorney general and Hegseth as Defense Secretary is the 2024 version of forcing Sean Spicer to say it was the largest inauguration crowd ever."

It's worth remembering what happened to Spicer, Trump's first press secretary. He burned out and was pushed out. He now spends his time writing op-eds no one cares about and desperately begging for relevance. The reward for playing along and the reward for resistance are the same. Trump throws allies out as swiftly as his enemies. Republicans who think they're safe because they play along are fooling themselves.

Trump's contempt for congressional Republicans was already manifesting in his vampiric posture toward their slim majority. He's already pulled Gaetz and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York out of Congress and into his employ, shrinking the razor-thing margin further. Speaker Mike Johnson even went on Fox News to ask his boss to "give me some relief" to "maintain this majority." But Trump always cared more about having his ego regularly fluffed than boring matters of governance. This tendency appears to have worsened with age. If members of Congress please him with sufficient flattery, that will likely matter more than a future where Republicans get to focus on their legislative priorities.

Trump talked a big game but, thankfully, got very little done in his first term. His refusal to persuade anyone meant he couldn't even get the Affordable Care Act repealed, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered the decisive vote against Trump. Trump learned the wrong lesson from that, which is that he's not focused enough on purging the party. He has spent the years since chewing over his vendetta against McCain, long after the senator passed away, putting him well beyond any effort to return to the fold. Trump did sign a massive tax cut in his first year in office, but after that, he barely even bothered to pretend he had a legislative agenda. If it weren't for appointing three confirmed Supreme Court justices, the damage he did would be relatively small compared to his destructive yearnings. He also had extremely high staff turnover, due to the eternal principle that the more a person gets to know Trump, the more they hate him.

It's possible Gaetz gets confirmed by quisling Republicans who want to avoid the wrath of Trump. It's also possible that, as McCarthy told Bloomberg Television Wednesday, "Gaetz won’t get confirmed" and "everybody" knows it. Either way, Trump will have sown resentment throughout the GOP before he even gets inaugurated. The ideal situation is that Gaetz loses and spends the next four years encouraging Trump to drive out more members of the party, depleting their already thinned-out ranks. But even if he becomes attorney general, Gaetz will probably use the DOJ powers to harass fellow Republicans for the perceived sin of not being cool with that alleged stuff about an underage girl. That will not win over hearts and minds.

Hey, maybe I'm wrong and Trump is some kind of savant who knows that the best way to retain power is to reduce your numbers, alienate potential allies and make the rest wish their leader would disappear from their lives entirely. But if his first term is any indication, Trump's sociopathic tactics — while alarmingly charming to a lot of voters — tend to backfire in the art of the deal on Capitol Hill. Since all he wants to do is bad, it's good if his biggest obstacle to his agenda is his own terrible instincts.>

<After one of the most chaotic and least productive sessions in modern history, voters made a surprising choice in elections for the U.S. House -- they overwhelmingly stuck with the status quo.

House Republicans will hold onto a thin majority, and while the chamber's exact partisan divide is still to be determined as votes are tallied in a handful of states, the results of 435 House races nationwide have produced hardly any change to the makeup of the chamber.

In fact, it's more like a stalemate: Republicans and Democrats have each flipped seven seats, while just eight incumbents nationwide have lost their races.

The results show just how entrenched the political dynamics have become in a legislative chamber that is meant to closely reflect the will of the people. Neither Donald Trump's sweep of swing states nor a record of two years marked by infighting among GOP House members seemed to weigh much on House election results. Instead, the contest for control of the chamber boiled down to just a couple dozen politically divided districts and fewer truly close races even as House candidates nationwide spent a combined $1.5 billion, according to Open Secrets, which tracks political spending.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it “bitterly disappointing” to see his party's bid to retake the House fall short by just a few seats. But he also made sure to note, “Notwithstanding the adverse political environment that happened with a Trump wave sweeping every single battleground state in America, Democrats will actually have increased the number of seats in the new Congress.”

Still, that hasn't stopped Republican leaders from taking a victory lap and talking of a mandate to implement a conservative agenda.

“On Election Day, Americans sent a clear message to reject the consequences of Democratic control,” said Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the GOP's House campaign committee, adding, “That's why voters delivered House Republicans a majority and sent Donald Trump to the White House in a landslide.”

Trump is on track to win the popular vote for the first time, but it will likely be a narrow victory once all ballots are counted, reflecting how politically deadlocked the country has become. In the House, the margins will also be close, particularly after Trump chose several House Republicans for roles in his administration.

“Every single vote will count,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson. “Because if someone gets ill, or has a car accident or a late flight on their plane, then it affects the votes on the floor.”

Johnson's party held onto the majority largely thanks to two seats the party flipped in Pennsylvania, as well as three more that were redistricted by the GOP-controlled North Carolina General Assembly to favor their party.

Democrats, meanwhile, did best in New York — Jeffries' home state — where they flipped three seats. They also picked up two redistricted seats, in Louisiana and Alabama, that were ordered by courts to ensure fair representation for Black voters.

But as the congressional map becomes clear after the latest redistricting cycle following the 2020 census, some democracy advocates are concerned about the small number of House districts that are in play.

While Republicans for years won more congressional seats than expected through gerrymandered districts, Democrats have battled back by shaping districts to their advantage and essentially evened out the playing field.

“The consequences are that the people’s House barely reflects the will of the people. Voters have very little possibility to shift the balance of power in the House even when their moods change,” said David Peters, who has written about gerrymandering and is a senior fellow at FairVote, an organization that advocates for voting reforms....>

<....FairVote estimates that 85% of House seats are now safe for one party — the highest percentage it has tracked in two decades. Political polarization also plays a role in that trend, and Peters said it has resulted in a dynamic where House members are less likely to work across the aisle and are more worried about facing a primary opponent who criticizes them for not being partisan enough.

Several of the incumbents who lost reelection, such as Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo of Colorado or Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro of New York, were some of the most willing to work on bipartisan legislation.

But now that Republicans hold the House, Senate and White House, there is little talk of working with Democrats. Instead, they hope to use a special budget process to implement partisan legislation aimed at extending tax breaks, bolstering immigration enforcement at the southern border and dismantling federal regulations.

To do that, they will also have to overcome the infighting that has hampered them the last two years — and cracks are already showing in their unity.

In an internal vote this week, Johnson received his party's nomination to remain speaker when the new Congress starts Jan. 3. But lawmakers are still haggling over whether to keep in place rules that allowed a small group of conservatives to trigger the ouster of Johnson's predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

With a razor-thin majority, almost any Republican can block legislation from moving forward, as the conservative bloc has done periodically.

“As usual, it’s going to be very difficult for Congress to get anything done,” said Rob Speel, a political science professor at Penn State Behrend.>