Weekly Recap: January 6th-12th
Weekly Recap: January 6th-12th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
This past week was largely spent focusing on the border as the least productive House of Representatives in over 50 years returned back to work.
Republicans had a press conference at the border in hopes of having a backdrop of thousands of migrants, but that area of the border was empty. They proceeded with their press conference anyways, having each politician take their turn at the mic for sound bites.
While the conversation was mainly on the border this week, nothing was actually accomplished. The GOP switched from saying Biden and Mayorkas were refusing to uphold laws, to then saying it was actually the policies Biden enacted that were the problem, to even announcing they were going to begin impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas despite being unable to list a single law he was in violation of.
Speaker Johnson started out the week saying that the Border Patrol didn’t want $14 billion in funding that Republicans blocked and that now wasn’t the time to immigration reform as it was “too complicated”. A day later, Speaker Johnson said what the country needed was immigration reform and Republicans were going to do that with their H.R.2 bill which mainly forces the Trump wall to resume construction and attempts to make asylum harder.
Border crossings are going to be the main talking point for Republicans during the 2024 elections. At this point their message is muddied as they can’t figure out a clear approach that leaves them free of blame despite their unwillingness to legislate solutions to the issues.
Joe Biden kicked off the election season with an impassioned speech about how Democracy was at stake. He discussed Trump attempting to overturn the 2020 election, riling up an insurrectionist mob, and losing over 60 court cases including in front of Trump appointed judges because there was no evidence at all of a stolen election.
The House of Representatives had a hearing on holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for refusing to abide by a Congressional subpoena ordering him to testify behind closed doors. Hunter Biden has said he is willing to testify publicly because he does not trust Republicans not to skew and mislead on any testimony the way they have with other closed door testimony such as that of Devon Archer, Hunter’s business partner.
Hunter Biden showed up to the contempt of Congress hearing which rattled Republicans who refused to ask Hunter any questions despite him being willing to be sworn in right there. It was a hit to Republicans whose responses only highlighted the ridiculousness of this hearing and the chain of events that culminated in this moment. Democrats also spent their time in the hearing pointing out the numerous Republican members of Congress who all defied Congressional subpoenas, and pointing out that Hunter has repeatedly said he would testify publicly and that Comer had even originally offered a public hearing.
And after weeks of attacks on ships by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, a US led coalition of nations followed through on their warnings of retaliation and struck multiple rebel outposts within Yemen.
Since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began, Iranian backed Houthi rebels have been attempting to board and attack both commercial and military ships in international waters within the Red Sea. Shipping lanes have been adversely affected by the attacks and the US has been destroying Houthi ships which are in the midst of attacks. After Houthi rebels began using remote controlled drone boats packed with explosives the international coalition repeated warnings that continued attacks and escalation would result in retaliatory strikes against Houthi outposts. The Houthis launched a barrage of missile attacks on ships forcing the military counter-strike early on Friday morning.
Houthi generals have stated that they are only targeting ships headed to Israel in retaliation for the attacks on Gaza, but the majority of the ships they have targeted have not had any Israeli ties.
Finally Trump’s team gave closing arguments in his New York fraud trial and Trump was also ordered to pay almost $400,000 to the New York Times for a lawsuit he launched against the newspaper and its reporters which was deemed frivolous.