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Republicans ‘Determined’ to Shut Down Government Warns Top Dem Amid GOP House Chaos

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In a strongly-worded warning House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is sounding the alarm eight days before the federal government is programmed to shut down unless Republican Speaker Mike Johnson can convince members of his caucus to agree on spending bills to keep the government operating. This week and in recent weeks, instead of focusing on passing bills that will keep the government open, House Republicans have been focused on bills attacking top Democrats.

The House is now in recess until Monday.

According to reporters and Democrats, if the goal is to avoid a shutdown, it’s not looking good. The federal government will shut down at 12:01 AM on Saturday, November 18, absent funding bills passed by the House and Senate and signed by President Joe Biden.

“The federal government is once again at risk of shutting down because extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are apparently determined to do just that, unless they manage to extract extreme ransom demands,” says Leader Jeffries, as Punchbowl News’ Max Cohen reports.

“THE HOUSE GOP LEADERSHIP,” Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports, with alarm emojis, “has abruptly pulled the financial services spending bill. They didn’t have the votes. Second spending bill this week that’s been pulled [because] of lack of GOP support.”

READ MORE: ‘Positively Stalinist’: Legal Expert Warns ‘If Trump Wins We Lose the Republic’

The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin observes: “Oddity here is that House Republicans are unified on cutting the IRS budget and the IRS funding from the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] but — for the moment and for reasons that may have nothing to do with the IRS — they can’t pass the spending bill that would cut the IRS budget.”

“So, to review [government] shuts down next week,” Sherman concludes. “You have a new speaker who hasn’t revealed a spending plan. And a house majority that’s yanked two spending bills this week.”

Despite being aware that it costs taxpayers billions of dollars when the federal government shuts down, House Republicans have spent their time recently not on working to gain consensus on spending bills to fund the government, but on legislation to attack Democrats.

Thursday morning, the only scheduled vote was on an amendment from New York Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, to cut White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s salary to $1.

READ MORE: Fox News Host After GOP Losses: ‘What’s Most Important? Republicans Taking Over’

Rep. Tenney is a 2020 election denier who falsely claimed Americans “don’t know if it was stolen or not.” On the floor of the House earlier Thursday, she said Jean-Pierre “has repeatedly lied to the American people, and acted in a condescending manner toward reporters, and also violated the Hatch Act.”

Tenney’s attack on a top Democrat comes on the same day U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a bill to impeach U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. As C-SPAN’s Craig Caplan notes, the House has two legislative days to take up the resolution, despite the looming shutdown.

Jean-Pierre and Mayorkas are far from the only Democrats House Republicans have spent time targeting in recent days and weeks.

House Republicans on Wednesday voted on defunding the Office of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Also on Wednesday, House Republicans tried but failed “to slash all funding to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Politico reported, and tried but failed to reduce to $1 “the salary of SEC Chair Gary Gensler.”

House Republicans on Tuesday successfully voted to reduce Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to $1.

House Republicans last week unsuccessfully voted on reducing salaries to $1 “for top-level officials including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning,” Politico’s E&E News reported. Republicans tried but failed to pass amendments to reduce to $1 the salaries of two other EPA officials.

House Republicans in late September successfully voted to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1.

READ MORE: ‘Positively Stalinist’: Legal Expert Warns ‘If Trump Wins We Lose the Republic’

Republicans this week also voted on defunding the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, reducing IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel’s salary to $1, and defunding two Offices of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility within the Biden administration, as NCRM reported earlier.

It’s been noted that much of this targeting is directed at minorities.

Vice President Harris is the first woman Vice President, the first African-American Vice President, and the first Asian-American Vice President.

Secretary Austin is the first Black Defense Secretary.

Jean-Pierre is the first Black LGBTQ Press Secretary.

Secretary Buttigieg is the first Senate-confirmed out gay Cabinet member.

Secretary Mayorkas is the first refugee and first Latin American Secretary of Homeland Security.

Just two days ago Speaker Johnson told reporters, “I think the American people are encouraged when they see the hard work that’s being done here.”

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White House Responds to ‘Stone-Cold Loser’ Carville After Devastating Prediction

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In a rare move, the White House is pushing back against James Carville, after the longtime political consultant and prolific pundit predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency would end within the next year.

“I’m saying this right now,” Carville declared on his Politicon podcast. “You’re not going to be president a year from now. You’re too soft a man. You’re too weak. Your support is draining out.”

“People are going to be on to you. And when the Democrats get back in office in January, they’re going right after the corruption,” Carville added.

“We’re going to find out all the money that has gone the wrong way, and we’re going to have a legal proceeding, and we’re going to have what you call a clawback,” he said.

The White House, in a statement to Fox News, slammed Carville.

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

“James Carville is a stone-cold loser who suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Carville had other strong words for the president.

“You’re so screwed,” he warned, before referring to a New York Times article.

“They’re leaking on you like crazy,” Carville said.  “You can’t trust anybody. Your staff is leaking on you. The Pentagon is leaking on you. The State Department is leaking out here. Everybody is dumping all over you, loser. And, you know, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

He also warned the president about Vice President JD Vance’s loyalty, and later said, “you’re done, dude. You’re really done. No one fears you anymore. Your own staff doesn’t fear you.”

“But, dude, you and I know something,” Carville continued. “We got a little secret between me and you. You’re done. People hate you. Trust no one. Be as paranoid as you possibly be, because you can’t be paranoid enough.”

READ MORE: Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

 

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Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

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As his tenuous ceasefire approaches the 48-hour mark, President Donald Trump remains a “foolhardy and unpredictable executive-in-training” who got “schooled” by Iran, writes Trump biographer and Bloomberg columnist Timothy L. O’Brien.

In addition to costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, Trump’s Iran war has cost the lives of American soldiers, and thousands of Iranians. The economic tab may soon approach $100 billion, says O’Brien. But there have also been enormous “reputational, civic and strategic costs” for America.

“In the run-up to a two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday evening, the president took to social media and the airwaves to warn Iran and the world that ‘a whole civilization will die’ and he intended to bomb the country ‘back to the stone ages.’ He brushed off questions about whether he was willing to commit war crimes by noting that Iranians are ‘animals.'”

Trump’s “dangerous and reckless flexes” may have just been him “bluffing, but sophisticated dealmakers know that undeliverable threats backfire when your bluff is called” — and Iran “called Trump’s bluff.”

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

Now, writes O’Brien, Trump is, “essentially, a downed power line. If he is left to his own devices, sputtering, further conflagrations could consume the Middle East.”

O’Brien reminds that once elected, presidents “should come to the job with tangible aptitudes for management, leadership, policy, rationality and decency,” and not need the White House to be their “finishing school.”

But “largely uneducable,” Trump faces an Iran ceasefire that “is a recess of sorts for the world’s most powerful and incendiary pupil, and he may return to class having failed to absorb his studies.”

Trump is a “blinkered, close-minded leader,” charges O’Brien, and “a serial bankruptcy artist” who, before entering the White House, “was never an adept dealmaker.”

A “serious student” would try to learn from the ceasefire. But a cornered Trump may become “even more dangerous and thuggish.”

Ultimately, Trump “will be measured by whether he defines his Iranian studies by weeks of failed exams — or commits himself to years of mindless and cataclysmic classwork.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

 

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Bill Kristol Diagnoses Trump’s ‘Conquistador’ Complex

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Conservative commentator Bill Kristol suggests President Donald Trump has a “conquistador” complex — which is a complete reversal from how he campaigned in 2024, on “no new wars.”

“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace,” Trump declared during his 2024 campaign.

“These war hawks, they want to draft your kids to die in wars, and they will never fight themselves,” Trump said, days before the 2024 election.

The night he won, Trump told supporters, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Kristol writes at The Bulwark, “We haven’t heard much talk recently from the president about wars we’re not getting into.”

“Will one consequence of his humiliating failure in Iran be a return to such a stance? Perhaps the difficulties of the last two weeks have diminished Trump’s interest in foreign excursions?” he asks. “Appears not. A taste for foreign adventures seems to have lodged itself in Trump’s brain.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

He points to Trump just weeks ago saying, “Cuba is ​next by the way.”

Just yesterday, Trump returned his focus to Greenland.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Thursday night, Trump appeared to threaten Iran again, declaring that all “U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

He concluded: “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”

Kristol notes that it is unusual for an American president to “proclaim ‘Conquest’ as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers ‘fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.'”

But for this president, “the dream of foreign conquest seems to have become a more central part of Trump’s personal sense of grandiosity, not to say megalomania, than it was earlier in his career.”

READ MORE: Trump Administration Wants Protected Health Records of Federal Workers

 

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