Under the U.S.
Constitution, the Speaker of the House doesn’t have to be a Representative to
Congress, meaning that President Trump can indeed be elected Speaker by GOP
House members.
President Trump is preparing to
make a major announcement on Tuesday, as House Republicans meet for early
deliberations surrounding their plans for leadership positions, including
Speaker of the House.
“The
potential for Trump as Speaker of the House has the swamp sweating,” says
Christian Patriot News in the Speaker Trump analysis video.
“Think, panic in DC. Panic is
an acronym for Patriots Are Now In Control.”
In
the wake of the bombshell memo circulating DC and being published exclusively
by National File, uni-party members on the J6 Committee are melting down, with
Jamie Raskin and Liz Cheney both sounding the alarm on the prospects of Speaker
Trump leading Congress in 2023.
Included
in the memo, as the video points out, is the prospect of creating a military
tribunal, compared to a modern-day Nuremberg Trial, to hold the globalist
uni-party responsible for multiple millions of COVID sickness, jab, and
lockdown deaths, as well as the inhumane, unconstitutional treatment of January
6th demonstrators and prisoners.
In a last-ditch effort to save
the political fortunes of establishment leader Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Marjorie
Taylor Greene, who previously claimed she’d support President Trump, has
announced that she’s endorsing McCarthy for
Speaker of the House. McCarthy has already promised not to impeach Joe Biden.
According to the staff of Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs,
a Freedom Caucus member, McCarthy doesn’t have the needed votes to become
Speaker.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
claimed during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room broadcast that it’s a
“bad strategy” for conservative members of the GOP to oppose Kevin McCarthy’s
latest attempt at becoming Speaker of the House; a 180-degree turn for the
Georgia Congresswoman who made a name for herself claiming to be a champion of
the anti-establishment America First movement.
McCarthy has
reportedly agreed to restore Greene’s committee assignments should he become
Speaker, after they were stripped away from her by Democrats.
“I actually think that’s a bad strategy,” Greene told Steve Bannon when
asked for her opinion on the positions of fellow Freedom Caucus members like
Andy Biggs, who’s announced that he won’t vote for McCarthy under any
circumstances and may run for Speaker himself.
Using NRCC-style talking
points, Greene told Bannon and War Room viewers that if conservatives don’t get
behind Kevin McCarthy, Liz Cheney will be the next Speaker of the House.
“Let
me tell you something Steve, here’s the harsh reality,” Greene said.
“It’s
very, very risky right now to produce a leadership challenge, especially for
Speaker of the House, when they are going to open the door, and allow Liz
Cheney, possibly, to become Speaker,” she said seconds later.
Bizarrely,
Greene then compared opponents to McCarthy’s potential speakership to the GOP
establishment’s Never Trump movement, a movement with which McCarthy and his
closest allies have been intimately affiliated.
“Do
we want to watch a challenge for Speaker of the House simply because it’s a “Never
Kevin” movement, just like we’ve seen a Never Trump movement?” Greene said.
“I
will not do it. There is no way in hell I will stand there and allow that to
happen,” Greene said, calling on the GOP to unite behind Kevin McCarthy for
Speaker.
In
addition to her massive flip-flop on McCarthy’s Speaker candidacy, Greene’s
support for the establishment leader reneges on her vow to impeach Joe Biden, a
promise she’s made as recently as just a few days ago and has consistently used
as a fundraising pitch.
Kevin
McCarthy has been adamant that he won’t impeach Biden should he become the next
Speaker of the House.
Conservatives “in the know,”
have spoken of a “power-sharing” agreement between McCarthy and Pelosi, meant
to blunt conservative legislative prowess and preserve Nancy Pelosi’s
influence, which she recently insisted she
still has in Congress, following the midterms.
News (12)
Democrat is expected to win Arizona governorship, flip Republican three-peat governorship
Reporters : Lin Yan, Li Xin / https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/11/14/n13865883.htm, https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/11/14/n13865764.htm / Image : (Left) On November 8, 2022, Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs addressed supporters in Phoenix; (Right) On November 7, 2022, Arizona Republicans Governor candidate Kari Lake greets supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix. (John Moore/Getty Images)
The results of the Arizona governor election have not yet been released. The gap between the two candidates is still very small, and the counting of votes is nearing completion.
According to an unofficial election result update released Sunday (13 November 2022) at 6.18 pm local time in Maricopa County, the county added an additional 1,472,786 counted votes, with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs received 44,111 votes, while Republican candidate Kari Lake received 53,022 votes, which means that Lake gained a net increase of 8,911 votes.
Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and much of the surrounding area, is the largest county in the state and accounts for nearly 62 percent of Arizona's population.
Votes are also still being counted in Pima County, the state's second-most populous county, just south of Maricopa County and home to about 14 percent of Arizona's population.
The votes between the two gubernatorial candidates remained very close, with Hobbs leading by 26,011 votes as of 7.12 pm local time on Sunday.
There are still 160,021 ballots to be counted statewide, including 94,285 in Maricopa County, which has roughly 94% of the ballots counted.
Pima County counted an additional 11,986 ballots on Sunday, with an estimated 41,404 remaining and about 90 percent of the counts completed. The county is expected to release its latest tally around 4 pm Monday.
Lake is trailing in Maricopa County but as election officials begin counting early ballots cast by voters on Election Day, it is estimated her gains in the county will start to increase, as they are widely expected to favour the Republican Party.
However, Hobbs had the upper hand in Pima County over the weekend, which helped offset Lake's gains in Maricopa County. Pima County has historically leaned Democratic. Biden won the county by 19 points in 2020, and Hillary Clinton also won it by 13 points in 2016.
"Katie has been in the lead since the first ballot was counted, and with tonight's results, it's clear that won't change," Hobbs' campaign said in a statement Sunday night.
Lake has yet to respond, but in an interview with Fox News Sunday morning, she took issue with her Democratic opponent not recusing herself as the state's chief elections officer during the vote count.
"We called her recusement in July of last year, 2021, just after we entered the campaign, recognizing that there was a major ethical issue," Lake told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, adding that The current Secretary of State Hobbs did not do this, "this created a problem."
Twenty percent of polling places in Maricopa County experienced tabulating machine failure on Election Day, leaving many voters wondering how to cast their ballots. Many people who did not want to leave their ballots at the ballot box to be counted left those polling centers and tried to vote elsewhere.
Maricopa officials hope to count most of the remaining ballots by Wednesday. The process has been slow, they said because early voting ballots cast on Election Day require verification of signatures and manual removal from envelopes by teams of two. There were 70% more such votes in this election than in 2020.
See also: https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/midterm-election-updates-11-14-22/index.html, https://www.westernjournal.com/kari-lake-gains-significant-ground-arizona-posts-major-vote-update/
News (13)
Biden admits for the first time that Democrats cannot keep control of the House of Representatives
Reporter : Li Xin / Editor: Ye Ziwei / https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/11/14/n13865819.htm / Image : U.S. President Joe Biden holds a news conference during the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Bali, 14 November 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. President Biden said on Monday (14 November) that he believes that the Democrats will eventually lose the majority in the House of Representatives, and admitted that this result means that said, the next Congress is unlikely to enact abortion rights into law.
"I don't think they can count on anything more than that we're going to keep our position," Biden said at a news conference in Indonesia on Monday. Something unusual is happening. I think we're going to be very close in the House, but ... I don't think we're going to make it."
Biden's comments marked the first time he appeared to acknowledge after last Tuesday's midterm elections that Democrats would not be able to maintain a majority in the House of Representatives. Before departing for Asia on Friday, he had said that possibility "remains open".
Biden has promised supporters in the final weeks before the midterm elections that the first bill he will introduce to the new Congress will be the first bill he introduces to the new Congress if Democrats can retain control of the House of Representatives and increase the party's majority in the Senate. The abortion protections provided by Roe v. Wade are codified in the United States Code.
The Democrats have now retained their majority in the Senate, and even if the Republicans pick up another seat in next month's Georgia runoff, they can rely on Vice President Kamala Harris' presidency to break 50 in the crucial vote: 50 balance.
However, Democrats' hopes of retaining control of the House of Representatives now appear to be fading. As of Monday afternoon, only 19 House seats were undetermined winners, compared with 212 for Republicans and 204 for Democrats. Democrats must win 15 of the final 19 seats to secure the 218 seats the majority needs to retain control of the House, and that prospect looks increasingly impossible.
Still, with the exception of Biden, no other top Democratic figure is predicting the party will lose its House majority after the midterm elections.
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reluctant to offer a firm forecast, saying only, "We'll see."
Things are getting worse for Democrats in some of the pending elections. For example, two House races in Arizona appear to be slipping from the party's grasp: In the state's 1st congressional district, Republican incumbent Representative David Schweikert has a slight lead over his Democratic opponent Jay Schweikert. Jevin Hodge; Republican Juan Ciscomani holds a narrow lead over Democrat Kirsten Engel in the open Sixth Congressional District.
Many of the unresolved races are in California, which has historically taken longer than most other states to count votes. Democrats currently hold the lead in three of the eight California seats that Politico forecast to be highly contested ahead of the election, including incumbent Democrats Katie Porter, Mike Levin and Josh Harder while Republicans lead in the remaining five seats, although there are still many votes to be counted.
News (14)
GOP senators say old party is dead, call for big changes
Reporter : Jack Phillips/Compiled by Chen Ting / Editor : Ye Ziwei / https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/11/14/n13865301.htm / Image : Senator Josh Hawley. (Li Chen/The Epoch Times)
A Republican senator said that after failing to regain the Senate majority in the 2022 midterm elections, the Republican Party needs to "build new things".
After the Democrats won the Arizona and Nevada senators in succession, the bipartisan Senate is 50 to 49, and the Democrats have secured a narrow advantage in the Senate. Even if the Republicans win the Georgia runoff in December, the Democrats will still be the majority party because the vice president is a Democrat and has a veto.
"The old party is dead. Time to bury it and build something new," Senator Josh Hawley wrote on social media (link). The day before, Hawley said the Republican Senate leadership had no support for an initiative that voters would agree with.
Hawley wrote over the weekend: "Washington republicanism crashes Tuesday night. When your 'agenda' is kowtowing to Big Pharma on insulin and kowtowing to (Senator) Schumer on gun control and the Green New Deal , and laugh at changes to Social Security and Medicare, you lose."
Hawley, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rick Scott reportedly released a letter calling on Republicans to delay a vote on Senate leadership. There has been speculation that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will seek to regain his Senate leadership, though he did not respond to the letter from the three Republicans.
"I don't know why the Senate Republicans are holding a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is over. We have a runoff election (in Georgia)...Are they saying it doesn't matter? Don't disenfranchise. ’ Hawley wrote over the weekend in response to Rubio’s call to delay the vote.
Some, including former President Trump, have called for McConnell to no longer serve as Senate Republican leader. Earlier this year, McConnell said he would win a leadership reelection.
"He's the worst!" Trump said of McConnell on Truth Social.
Weird poll results
Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, multiple polls show Republican Senator Adam Laxalt of Nevada leading Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto by as much as 5 percentage points. Some forecasters see a "red wave" in Congress, driven by discontent over the U.S. economy, inflation, gasoline prices and low approval ratings for President Joe Biden.
However, Republicans ultimately failed to gain that many seats in both houses, with attempts to blame the party's performance on its leaders, including McConnell, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and the RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Some also blamed the loss on President Trump, as some Senate candidates he supported did not win. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won re-election last week by about 20 percentage points, is rallying.
In the House of Representatives race, Republicans have a combined roughly 6 million votes ahead of Democratic candidates, but have lost many races. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Epoch Times contributor Newt Gingrich (Newt Gingrich) said that the final result made him feel very strange [see News(8)].
"I've never been as terribly wrong as I have been this year," Gingrich said last week. They fit together."
News (15)
Interview with Gingrich: Why the Republicans lost 6 million votes
Reporter : Eva Fu / Compiled by Chen Ting / Editor : Ye Ziwei / https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/11/12/n13864496.htm / Image : On 24 October 2019, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (Newt Gingrich) has been in politics for decades, but he has never had an election. Confuse him like the 2022 midterms.
On Thursday (10 November), Epoch Times contributor Gingrich said: "I've never (encountered) gone as wrong as this year."
"It made me challenge every model I knew and realize that I really had to stop and spend a lot of time thinking and trying to put it all together," he said.
Both parties are predicting big losses for Democrats as dissatisfaction with inflation, the economy and crime continues to rise. But the expected "red wave" did not happen.
The Senate is still at a loss. With 211 Republicans and 200 Democrats in the House of Representatives, Republicans are expected to take control of the House when Congress convenes in the new year, but with less influence than initially expected.
Gingrich had previously believed his party would take full control of both houses, but he, like many others, did not know how to explain the blunders.
He pointed to the Cook Political Report's vote tally (link) showing that Republicans had a total of about 50.7 million votes in the House as of Thursday, nearly 6 million ahead of Democrats.
Gingrich noted that the gap could shrink to 5 million when the Deep Blue California ballots are fully processed. "But that's still 5 million votes," he said.
"And not getting very many seats, which makes you wonder what's going on," he added. "I wonder, where did these votes come from?"
This is the conundrum the former speaker has been unable to resolve.
Problems and inconsistencies
Part of the difference in this election is the performance of incumbent lawmakers. No Republican incumbent lost to a Democratic challenger in the 2020 and 1994 House elections, flipping 13 and 34 Democratic seats, respectively. If it were the same, Gingrich said "we would have six or seven more seats than we have now".
So far, in this round of elections, the Republicans have flipped 16 seats, while the Democrats have flipped 6 seats, including Michigan's 3rd District, New Mexico's 2nd District, Ohio's 1st District, and North Carolina's 3rd District. The 13th District, Texas' 34th District and Illinois' 13th District, in which three Republican incumbents lost their seats.
About three-quarters of voters in the National Election Pool exit poll said the economy was weak, and about the same number were dissatisfied with the way the country was developing.
Just on Election Day, Facebook's parent company Meta said it would cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its workforce by 13%, which Gingrich noted was also a sign of economic anxiety.
"But their votes didn't reflect that," Gingrich said.
The former speaker said he has been trying to reconcile the many inconsistencies he has observed in this election, particularly the two races for governor of New York and the Senate of Philadelphia, which were contested by Democrat Kathy Hochul and John Fetterman to win.
"How can you get 70 percent of the people in Philly who say crime is their number one problem and they vote for Feltman even though he voted to free the killers and put them back on the streets?" he said.
Gingrich added: "In New York City, 70 percent of voters who voted for the governor believe she is doing nothing to stop crime in New York."
As of 11 November with 96 percent of the votes counted, Huo Chu defeated Rep. Lee Zeldin by 5.8 percent.
"It makes me wonder, what's going on? What are people thinking?" he said, questioning why people's attitudes didn't align with voting patterns.
"I don't fully understand how the American people rationalize these different contradictions in their minds, and I think that does require us to think more about what to do next."
Pending Senate Control
Control of the Senate rests on three key swing states, including Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, which will hold a runoff on 6 December. Republicans need to win at least two of those races to gain a majority. Both Arizona and Nevada have significant numbers of votes yet to be counted.
In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has about 5.7 more votes than Republican opponent Blake Masters in Arizona, with 83 percent of the vote counted as of Nov. 11.
In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt has a narrow 0.1 percent lead over incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto with 94 percent of the votes counted.
Gingrich is confident that Laxalter can beat his opponent, but certain questions about the counting of votes make him nervous.
"I'm worried about how the Nevada count will turn out because they have a tendency to steal votes if they can, so that gives me a certain amount of concern," he said.
"The places where Laxalter does very well tend to be out of votes, and the places where she (Masters) does quite well tend to have a lot of unvoted votes. It makes you have to wonder what's going on. "
As of 10 November, the two most populous counties in Nevada, Clark and Washoe counties, had more than 50,000 and 41,000 mail-in ballots, respectively, to be counted.
Under Nevada rules, all ballots postmarked by Nov. 8 and delivered to election officials by Nov. 12 can still be counted. If the signatures on mail-in ballots do not match those on file, election officials have until Nov. 14 to "cure" those ballots using a voter-verification process.
The majority is still the majority
Another statistic that Gingrich sees as unreasonable is that voters decided to punish Trump in the 2018 midterms, but this time it appears to have decided to let Biden off the hook.
Of those who "somewhat disapprove" of Biden's presidential administration, 49% still vote Democrat, while only 45% vote Republican, according to exit polls. By contrast, voters who "somewhat disapprove" of Trump in 2018 overwhelmingly voted Democrats, 63 percent, in stark contrast.
"I don't know to what extent it's because Biden looks so old and so weak that people don't hold him personally accountable," he said. "He's almost like your uncle. He's such a good guy. He doesn't seem to be Remember things, the fact that it didn't seem to make a difference, you can't be totally mad at him and blame him."
It wasn't the election result Gingrich was expecting, but he noted that expected Republican control of the House of Representatives remained a bright spot.
"The Democrats should be very happy that they managed to get away with everything," he said.
"The biggest change in Washington will be Pelosi handing the gavel to McCarthy," he said, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
"Because the Speaker is going from a very liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican."
"It's a black-and-white issue," he added, "as my wife, who was the chief clerk of the House Agriculture Committee, said to me 'no matter how small, the majority is the majority,' changing who holds the The gavel is a very big change because it will change every committee."
News (16)
“It’s confirmed at least 60 junta troops were killed by the Mi-35. We saw it through our scopes. The dead bodies were piled up in a paddy field. Resistance troops had left the area 30 minutes earlier,” said Ko Nway Oo, the organization’s spokesman.
He said the bodies were later loaded onto boats.
Junta troops in plainclothes burned villages on the border between Myaung and Yesagyo townships on Sunday morning before being shot by the Northwest Command helicopter, according to Ko Nway Oo
Seven villages in Myaung have been burned down, including four in the last week, he said.
The Russian-made Mi-35 fired in at least 25 bursts, causing numerous deaths, the organization reported.
The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports.
“We hear a regime ship is coming down the Ayeyarwady River with more weapons and troops. It shot at villages on the riverbank. We heard more attacks are planned,” said Ko Nway Oo.
He said no civilian casualties had been reported but thousands of villagers have fled their homes.
The Burmese Guerrilla Force in Myingyan, Thway Thauk Revolution, MGN Ranger and Justice Revolution Force are fighting with Ko Nway Oo’s organization to repulse junta attacks.
Junta troops from Yesagyo Township were also ambushed by resistance forces in Myaung on Sunday. The organization said 30 minutes’ fighting left five junta troops dead and many injured.
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