Weekly Recap: Feb 3rd - 9th
Weekly Recap: Feb 3rd - 9th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
This was a busy week for American politics. We begin with Presidential primaries.
The first official Democratic primary was South Carolina where Joe Biden easily soared to victory with 96% of the vote. Dean Phillips, who has been running a long shot campaign challenging Biden on age alone, came in third behind Marianne Williamson with only 1.7% of the vote.
This comes after Phillips had hoped to make a name by winning in New Hampshire after the state refused to follow the new Democratic primary schedule and therefore President Biden was not on the ballot. However, Biden’s campaign and local supporters mounted a write-in campaign that handily beat Phillips by a wide margin.
Phillips was not on the Nevada primary ballot where Biden skated through to another easy victory. The next, and likely last stop, for Phillips is Michigan on February 27th.
Republicans did not have their South Carolina primary yet as the Republican schedule did not change to match the new schedule used by the Democrats. The Republican South Carolina primary is on the 24th of February and is where Trump’s remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, served as governor. While Haley has said she is staying in at least through Super Tuesday, South Carolina needs to shift the momentum, otherwise her only chance will be if Trump gets convicted in some of his upcoming trials.
Nevada was especially embarrassing for Haley. The state had an odd situation this year where it had a primary, which Haley competed in, and a caucus which Trump competed in. Despite Trump not being in the primary, Haley lost 2 to 1 to “None of These Candidates”. Whereas Trump easily won the caucuses and the delegates.
In the legal world, Biden was cleared in regards to his classified documents. A special counsel found that Biden did mishandle classified documents but there wasn’t enough evidence to make a case of willful retention of documents.
President Biden had reported the documents and cooperated fully with the FBI and special counsel. The special counsel, who is a Republican, used the report as a chance to demean the President, attacking his memory and age.
This has been pounced on by Republicans to say Biden is not fit to serve as President and has caused outrage by Democrats as the DOJ isn’t supposed to include those types of opinions in reports in order to not prejudice the public, which is exactly what is happening. This has also increased scrutiny of Merrick Garland who is not seen favorably by many Americans on both sides of the aisle.
This report also made a clear distinction on the differences between Biden’s classified documents case, where he fully cooperated, and Trump’s case where Trump attempted to lie about having the documents, attempted to hide them, and then finally refused to return them.
On the Republican legal side, Trump lost his appeal that claimed he had presidential immunity against the charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. But in favorable Trump news, the Supreme Court seems poised to overrule Colorado and allow Trump to remain on the ballot. The final Supreme Court decision has not yet been released.
Congress saw a series of defeats this week. In the Senate, the bipartisan national security bill that included aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, immigration reform, and measures to curb the fentanyl flowing into the US was defeated in the Senate after House Republicans also declared it would be dead on arrival in the House.
This comes despite Republicans previous insistence that any future aid to Ukraine had to be tied with US border security. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has now brought forward a standalone aid bill that has aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The Senate is currently debating this new bill.
In the Republican controlled House, Republicans attempted a vote to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for what they deem was a lack of enforcing federal laws regarding immigration. Republicans never cited a single law not being enforced during their hearings and members on both sides of the aisle said this impeachment was about policy not law and certainly didn’t involve high crimes.
Despite this, it looked like Republicans might be able to use their majority to force the impeachment to succeed in the House, but they miscounted their votes. Republicans expected a Democrat to be in the hospital which would have given them the slim edge they needed. But that Democrat, Al Green, rushed from the hospital, still in a wheelchair and hospital gown, to cast his vote. The vote would have ended in a tie so a Republican switched to a no vote in order to be able to bring the vote back around next week to try again.
In the same day as their impeachment defeat, Speaker Mike Johnson attempted to vote on a standalone Israel aid bill to undermine the Senate’s bipartisan bill. This vote also failed.
This lack of success has plagued House Republicans since they gained the majority. After ousting the original Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, Republicans had a series of failed votes to find a new Speaker of the House. This has led to having a far less seasoned and experienced leader attempting to lead a House that is very much divided between hardline “Ultra” MAGA members and more tempered conservatives.
The first session of the 118th House of Representatives has been the least productive since the Great Depression.
