Weekly Recap: Feb 10th - 16th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
Alexi Navalny died in an arctic Russian prison known for torture. Navalny was a long time opponent of Vladimir Putin and a voice of resistance for the Russian people.
After previously being poisoned by Putin, Navalny had fled the country to seek medical attention. Once recovered, Navalny returned to Russia knowing he would be arrested and knowing his eventual fate. That never deterred Alexi who stayed committed to his resistance throughout all of his imprisonment and abuse.
President Biden gave a speech honoring Navalny and speaking on why America must continue to stand up against Russian tyranny and stand in defense of Ukraine.
The House of Representatives voted for a second time to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security. This time Republicans succeeded by a single vote. This impeachment has no basis as there have been no laws that weren’t being enforced and no high crimes committed. It was an impeachment to get Republicans a win and to downplay the much more serious impeachments of Donald Trump.
The next step in the impeachment process is for the Senate to hold a trial which is expected to be brief before dismissing the charges and going back to work.
This impeachment does not change the situation at the border, does not change the position or employment of Mayorkas, and does nothing to solve any of the issues facing America.
The House of Representatives is in recess once again after taking a long recess in December and another in October after they ousted Speaker McCarthy. The House is taking this recess despite having done nothing to address the border which Republicans referred to as a crisis, a catastrophe, a national security issue, and an invasion. Those descriptions cannot be true if working on solutions can wait until after taking a vacation.
The House also hasn’t solved foreign aid after refusing to hold a vote on the bipartisan aid bill that passed in the Senate. 400,000 Ukrainian service members have been killed or wounded, 10,000 civilians have been killed, and 18,000 civilians wounded. And yet Republicans continue to play games preventing more military aid for getting to Ukraine.
Another unresolved issue is the 2024 federal budget which was due last October and had been extended through continuing resolutions several times with the latest deadline being early March. It seems unlikely that the House will come back and solve the budget quickly enough to meet the deadline meaning the US is facing either another continuing resolution or the shutdown that far right Republicans have been pushing for throughout the entire budget process.
New York held the special election to fill George Santos’s congressional seat after he was voted out of office by Congress for a list of ethical violations.
Democrat Tom Suozzi was victorious and turned the red district back to blue in a troubling sign for Republicans with swing districts in the fall. Abortion was one topic driving voters. Since the overturning of Roe v Wade abortion has been cited by voters in numerous Republican defeats across the country.
Another topic was immigration. Instead of immigration working for Republicans as they had hoped, it worked against them. Suozzi faced immigration head on, admitting there were problems and agreeing with the bipartisan Senate border bill. Pilip, Suozzi’s Republican opponent, had attempted to nickname him Sanctuary Suozzi while saying she opposed the Senate border bill. Republicans are beginning to take the blame for the border now that they killed a strong, conservative border bill.
More troubling for Republicans was that some voters mentioned Republican dysfunction in Congress as a reason to vote against Republican candidates. The House of Representatives was the least productive House in 80 years last year and has been following the same trend so far in 2024.
In other bad news for Republicans, the leading “witness” in the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has been arrested for lying to the FBI about those very allegations. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has long touted those allegations as proof of Biden’s wrongdoing while being unable to produce any evidence to back up the claims.
Despite being told that FD-1023 forms are for unsubstantiated claims and that there was an ongoing investigation regarding those claims, House Republicans latched onto that form as proof that Joe Biden was involved in shady dealings, even going so far as to have the FD-1023 brought to a SCIF on Capitol Hill in order to all view it and make comments to the press.
It has been clear from the beginning that there was no factual basis for the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Time and again Republicans have claimed to have proof only to end up with none, whether through witness testimony, public hearings, or bank records that showed no illicit activity.
We have yet to see if Comer will end the impeachment hearing after this latest devastating blow, or if he will attempt to continue through to the election in hopes of creating sound bites and headlines to help Trump’s campaign.
In other Trump news, the penalties came down in his New York fraud trial at a total of $355 million. This is on top of the $83 million penalties from his defamation trial and $5 million from his sexual abuse trial.
Trump lost all three trials and is still facing 91 criminal charges in multiple upcoming trials, the first of which has been scheduled to begin in late March.
