WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – The White House on Tuesday expressed outrage on Tuesday at Exxon Mobil Corp’s record net profit in 2022 of $56 billion, a historical high not just for the company but for the entire Western oil industry.
Oil majors are expected to break their own annual records due to high prices and soaring demand, pushing their combined take to near $200 billion. The scale has brought renewed criticism of the oil industry and sparked calls for more countries to levy windfall profit taxes on the companies.
A White House statement said Exxon’s (XOM.N) profit margin was particularly galling as Americans paid record high prices at the pump. It criticized attempts by Republicans in the House of Representatives to push policies aimed at supporting the oil industry.
A logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 24, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
“The latest earnings reports make clear that oil companies have everything they need, including record profits and thousands of unused but approved permits, to increase production, but they’re instead choosing to plow those profits into padding the pockets of executives and shareholders while House Republicans manufacture excuse after excuse to shield them from any accountability,” the White House said.
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President Joe Biden has blasted oil companies and refiners for much of the last year for enjoying surging profits as gasoline prices soared. In June, he Biden wrote to executives of major oil refiners and complained they had cut back on production to pad profits, according to a copy of a letter seen by Reuters.
Exxon’s CFO Kathryn Mikells responded to growing criticism over the industry’s windfall profits and suggested the answer is not increased taxes.
“We look at the EU tax on the energy sector, and you know, it’s just unlawful and bad policy trying to tax something, when what you actually need is for it to increase,” Mikells said. “It has the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve.”
Reporting By Trevor Hunnicut and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Sabrina Valle; Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – A top Republican in the U.S. Congress on Sunday said the odds of conflict with China over Taiwan “are very high,” after a U.S. general caused consternation with a memo that warned that the United States would fight China in the next two years.
In a memo dated Feb. 1 but released on Friday, General Mike Minihan, who heads the Air Mobility Command, wrote to the leadership of its roughly 110,000 members, saying, “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.”
“I hope he is wrong. … I think he is right though,” Mike McCaul, the new chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, told Fox News Sunday.
The general’s views do not represent the Pentagon but show concern at the highest levels of the U.S. military over a possible attempt by China to exert control over Taiwan, which China claims as a wayward province.
Both the United States and Taiwan will hold presidential elections in 2024, potentially creating an opportunity for China to take military action, Minihan wrote.
McCaul said that if China failed to take control of Taiwan bloodlessly then “they are going to look at a military invasion in my judgment. We have to be prepared for this.”
He accused the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden of projecting weakness after the bungled pullout from Afghanistan that could make war with China more likely.
“The odds are very high that we could see a conflict with China and Taiwan and the Indo Pacific,” McCaul said.
The White House declined to comment on McCaul’s remarks.
DEMOCRAT DISAGREES
Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he disagreed with Minihan’s assessment.
Smith told Fox News Sunday that war with China is “not only not inevitable, it is highly unlikely. We have a very dangerous situation in China. But I think generals need to be very cautious about saying we’re going to war, it’s inevitable.”
Smith said the United States needs to be in a position to deter China from military action against Taiwan, “but I’m fully confident we can avoid that conflict if we take the right approach.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month said he seriously doubted that ramped-up Chinese military activities near the Taiwan Strait were a sign of an imminent invasion of the island by Beijing.
A Pentagon official on Saturday said the general’s comments were “not representative of the department’s view on China.”
Reporting By Ross Colvin; Additional reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Mark Porter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Donald Trump could learn soon whether he or any associates will be charged or cleared of wrongdoing in a Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, one of a series of legal threats looming over the Republican former U.S. president:
GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBE
On Tuesday, the prosecutor in the state of Georgia spoke to a judge on behalf of a special grand jury empanelled in May to investigate Trump’s alleged efforts to influence that state’s 2020 election results.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney and a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges against Trump or anyone else, said the grand jury had completed its task and decisions were “imminent.”
The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.
Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.
Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionally protected free speech.
U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK
The U.S. Justice Department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election and his retention of highly classified documents after departing the White House in 2021.
Both investigations involving Trump are being overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent. Trump has accused the FBI, without evidence, of launching the probes as political retribution.
A special House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol urged the Justice Department to charge Trump with corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or aiding an insurrection.
The request is non-binding. Only the Justice Department can decide whether to charge Trump, who has called the Democratic-led panel’s investigation a politically motivated sham.
MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDS
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to investigate whether Trump improperly retained classified records at his Florida estate after he left office in 2021 and then tried to obstruct a federal investigation.
Garland also appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur for Maryland to investigate the removal of classified records in President Joe Biden’s possession dating to his time as vice president.
It is unlawful to willfully remove or retain classified material.
In Trump’s case, the FBI seized 11,000 documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate in a court-approved Aug. 8 search. About 100 documents were marked classified; some were designated top secret, the highest level of classification.
Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.
NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL LAWSUIT
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a civil lawsuit filed in September that her office uncovered more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and the Trump Organization business between 2011 and 2021.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Commerce, Georgia, U.S. March 26, 2022. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/File Photo
A Democrat, James accused Trump of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain lower interest rates on loans and get better insurance coverage.
A New York judge ordered that an independent monitor be appointed to oversee the Trump Organization before the case goes to trial in October 2023.
James seeks to permanently bar Trump and his children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump from running companies in New York state, and to prevent them and his company from buying new properties and taking out new loans in the state for five years.
James also wants the defendants to hand over about $250 million that she says was obtained through fraud.
Trump has called the attorney general’s lawsuit a witch hunt. A lawyer for Trump has called James’ claims meritless.
James said her probe also uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing, which she referred to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service for investigation.
DEFAMATION CASE
E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, has filed two lawsuits accusing Trump of having defamed her when he denied her allegation that he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.
Trump accuses her of lying to drum up sales for a book.
Carroll first sued Trump after he denied the accusation in June 2019 and told a reporter at the White House that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she concocted the claim to sell her new memoir.
The second lawsuit arose from an October 2022 social media post where Trump called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam,” and said “this can only happen to ‘Trump’!”
That lawsuit includes a battery claim under the Adult Survivors Act, which starting last Nov. 24 gave adults a one-year window to sue their alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have expired.
A U.S. judge on Jan. 13 rejected as “absurd” Trump’s effort to dismiss the second lawsuit.
Trump and Carroll are awaiting a decision from a Washington, D.C., appeals court on whether, under local law, Trump should be immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit over his June 2019 comments.
That lawsuit would likely be dismissed if the court decided that Trump spoke within his role as president, and continue if Trump spoke in his personal capacity as Carroll argues.
Any decision would have no effect on Carroll’s second defamation and battery lawsuit. A trial in the first lawsuit is scheduled for April 10.
NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBE
Although Trump was not charged with wrongdoing, his real estate company was found guilty on Dec. 6 of tax fraud in New York state. A judge this month sentenced Trump’s namesake real estate company to pay a $1.6 million criminal penalty, the maximum the judge could impose.
Jurors convicted the Trump Organization, which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, of paying personal expenses for top executives including former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and issuing bonus checks to them as if they were independent contractors.
Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty and was required to testify against the Trump Organization as part of his plea agreement. He is also a defendant in James’ civil lawsuit.
Reporting by Joseph Ax, Luc Cohen, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Jonathan Stempel and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 19 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday ordered former U.S. President Donald Trump and his attorneys to pay more than $937,000 in sanctions for suing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over claims the 2016 presidential election was rigged.
U.S. District Judge John Middlebrooks, who threw out Trump’s lawsuit in September, said the sanctions were warranted because the former president had exhibited a pattern of misusing the courts to further his political agenda.
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none
of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim,” Middlebrooks wrote in the 45-page written ruling.
Representatives for Trump and his lead attorney in the case, Alina Habba, could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Thursday evening.
Trump sued Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, claiming that she and other Democrats sought to rig that election by falsely accusing his campaign of links to Russia. read more
Middlebrooks, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, dismissed the case in September, calling the lawsuit “a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.”
Trump, a Republican, sought re-election in 2020 but was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden, after which he repeatedly made false claims blaming widespead voting fraud for his loss.
He has launched a run for the 2024 presidential election, setting up a potential rematch against Biden.
Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday he believes Democrats would agree to cap government spending to avoid a U.S. debt default and he wants to discuss the idea with President Joe Biden.
Republicans now in control of the House have threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to demand spending cuts from Biden’s Democrats, who control the U.S. Senate.
This has raised concerns in Washington and on Wall Street about a bruising fight that could be at least as disruptive as the protracted battle of 2011, which prompted a brief downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and years of forced domestic and military spending cuts.
“I want to sit down with him now so there is no problem,” McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News, referring to Biden. “I’m sure he knows there’s places that we can change that put America on a trajectory that we save these entitlements instead of putting it into bankruptcy the way they have been spending.”
McCarthy pointed to the Trump-era agreement by U.S. lawmakers’ in 2019 to suspend the statutory debt limit on Treasury Department borrowing until a later date as evidence that such compromise is possible.
“I believe we can sit down with anybody who wants to work together. I believe this president could be that person,” he said.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said on Sunday he hoped debt default could be avoided but put the onus on Democrats to agree to spending cuts.
“Republicans were elected with a mandate from the American people in the midterm elections. We campaigned on the fact that we were going to be serious about spending cuts,” Comer said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“So the Senate is going to have to recognize the fact that we’re not going to budge until we see meaningful reform with respect to spending.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday the United States will likely hit the $31.4 trillion statutory debt limit on Jan. 19, forcing the Treasury to start extraordinary cash management measures that can likely prevent default until early June.
Congress created the debt ceiling in 1917 to give the government greater borrowing flexibility, and must approve each increase to ensure that the United States meets its debt obligations and avoids a catastrophic default.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Sunday demanded visitor logs for President Joe Biden’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, after classified documents were found in his office and garage.
“Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents,” Representative James Comer said in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain dated Sunday.
Republicans have sought to compare the Biden documents case, which involves material from his time as vice president, with that of former President Donald Trump, who faces a federal criminal probe of how he handled classified documents after he left the White House in 2021. But legal experts say there are stark contrasts between the two cases.
Comer said he would not seek visitor logs for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, where more than 100 classified documents – some of them labeled top secret – were found in an FBI search.
“I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time because the Democrats have done that for the past six years,” he said in an interview Sunday with CNN.
Trump has announced he would seek the presidency again in 2024, with Biden as his expected Democratic rival.
The Biden disclosures emerged last week after his legal team said it had found classified documents relating to his time as vice president in the Obama administration at his Delaware home. His lawyers on Saturday reported finding five additional pages at his home.
Top secret material was included in some of the 10 or so documents found at the Penn Biden Center think tank, CBS reported on Sunday, citing an unidentified law enforcement source. The White House had no comment on the report. A representative for Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, did not return a request for comment.
There is no legal requirement that U.S. presidents disclose visitors at their home or at the White House. The Biden administration reinstated disclosures of official guests to the White House and released its first batch of records in May 2021. Former President Donald Trump had suspended the practice shortly after he took office in 2017.
TRUMP VS. BIDEN DOCUMENT ISSUES
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation on Friday into the Justice Department’s handling of improperly stored classified documents possessed by Biden. Comer’s committee is also reviewing the case.
The investigation comes as Trump is under federal criminal investigation for mishandling classified documents after his presidency.
In the Biden case, the president’s lawyers informed the National Archives and Justice Department about finding a small number of documents at a think tank in Washington and later at Biden’s Wilmington home.
In Trump’s case, the National Archives tried for more than a year after Trump left office to retrieve all of the records he retained, without success. When Trump finally returned 15 boxes of documents in January 2022, Archives officials discovered they contained classified materials.
After the matter was referred to the Justice Department, Trump’s lawyers handed over more material from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and said there were no more documents on the premises.
That turned out to be false. In the end, the FBI recovered an additional 13,000 documents, about 100 of which were marked classified, from the estate.
House Democrats introduced the “Mar-a-Lago Act” in 2017 that would require Trump to regularly disclose visitors to his Florida home, but it was never voted on in the chamber or full Congress.
Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, the outgoing House Intelligence Committee chairman, said Congress should seek an assessment from the U.S. intelligence community on whether any documents, from either Trump or Biden, jeopardized national security.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Heather Timmons and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Embattled U.S. Representative George Santos said he had no plans to heed fellow New York Republicans’ calls to step down, a plea they made on Wednesday due to what they called “lie after lie after lie” about his career and history.
Top House of Representatives Republican Kevin McCarthy said he had no intention of pressuring Santos, part of his narrow 222-212 majority, despite the public plea by more than a dozen top Republicans, many of them from Santos’ suburban New York City district.
The New York Republicans made their plea at a news conference two days after a nonpartisan watchdog accused Santos of breaking campaign finance laws in a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
“It’s just lie after lie after lie. It became a pattern,” said Joseph Cairo Jr., the party chairman in Nassau County.
Republican Representative Nick Langworthy from western New York and Representative Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a district next to that of Santos, were also among those calling on the first-term congressman to step down.
“I join with my colleagues in saying that George Santos does not have the ability to serve here in the House of Representatives and should resign,” he said.
Santos rejected those calls in remarks to reporters at the Capitol and elaborated on his plans on Twitter.
“I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office,” he wrote, referring to the congressional district he represents.
McCarthy on Wednesday told reporters that voters, not lawmakers, should choose who represents them.
“In America today, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” he said.
‘SIMPLY TRAGIC AND OUTRAGEOUS’
[1/5] Newly elected U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) sits alone on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives during voting for a new House Speaker on the fourth day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Santos, who represents much of Nassau County, as well as a small slice of New York City, has admitted to fabricating much of his resume.
He won his November race over Democrat Robert Zimmerman by a margin of 7.5 percentage points.
But his victory was quickly overshadowed by media reports indicating that the persona he presented to voters was largely a work of fiction.
Among other claims, Santos said he had degrees from New York University and Baruch College, despite neither institution having any record of him attending. He claimed to have worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which was also untrue.
He also falsely said that he was Jewish and that his grandparents escaped the Nazis during World War Two.
“For him to make up this story that his parents were Holocaust survivors is beyond the pale. It is simply tragic and outrageous and disgusting,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said. “He is a stain on the House of Representatives.”
During the news conference, officials said they would direct Santos’ constituents to Representative D’Esposito in some cases, who had agreed to help residents of Santos’ district.
Two House Democrats on Tuesday referred the matter to the House ethics committee this week. The local district attorney has said her office is investigating Santos.
If Santos were to resign, his district could make for a competitive special election.
He won his 2022 election with 52% of the vote to Democrat Zimmerman’s 45%, handing Republicans a seat formerly held by Democrat Thomas Suozzi.
The 2022 election took place with newly-drawn district boundaries. Had those lines been in place in the 2020 presidential election, Democratic President Joe Biden would won the district by eight percentage points.
Under New York and federal law, the seat would be vacant until a special election is held, which would take roughly three months.
Reporting by Gram Slattery and Moira Warburton, additional reporting by Jason Lange and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Scott Malone, Mark Porter and Aurora Ellis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Gram Slattery
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.
TAIPEI/BEIJING, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Taiwan condemned China on Monday for holding its second military combat drills around the island in less than a month, with the defence ministry saying it had detected 57 Chinese aircraft.
China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has been ramping up military, political and economic pressure to assert those claims.
The Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army said its forces held “joint combat readiness patrols and actual combat drills” in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, focused on land strikes and sea assaults.
The aim was to test joint combat capabilities and “resolutely counter the provocative actions of external forces and Taiwan independence separatist forces”, it added in a brief statement late on Sunday.
Taiwan’s presidential office said China was making “groundless accusations” and strongly condemned the drills, saying the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait and the region were the common responsibility of both Taiwan and China.
Taiwan’s position is very clear, in that it will neither escalate conflicts nor provoke disputes, but will firmly defend its sovereignty and security, the office said in a statement.
“The nation’s military has a close grasp of the situation in the Taiwan Strait and the surrounding area and responds calmly. Our people can rest assured,” it added.
On Monday, Taiwan’s defence ministry said that over the previous 24 hours it had detected 57 Chinese aircraft and four naval vessels operating around the island, including 28 aircraft that flew into Taiwan’s air defence zone.
Some of those 28 crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial buffer between the two sides, among them Su-30 and J-16 fighters, while two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers flew to the south of Taiwan, a ministry map showed.
In China’s similar exercises late last month, Taiwan said 43 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line.
China, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, has made regular military incursions into the waters and airspace near Taiwan over the past three years.
It held war games around Taiwan last August, following a visit to Taipei by Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Taiwan strongly rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s 23 million people can decide their future.
Beijing has been particularly angered by U.S. support for Taiwan, including weapons sales.
Like most nations, the United States has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but it is the island’s most important arms supplier and international backer.
Reporting by Sarah Wu and Beijing newsroom; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Clarence Fernandez
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WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives early on Saturday, after making extensive concessions to right-wing hardliners that raised questions about the party’s ability to govern.
The 57-year-old Californian suffered one final humiliation when Representative Matt Gaetz withheld his vote on the 14th ballot as midnight approached, prompting a scuffle in which fellow Republican Mike Rogers had to be physically pulled away.
McCarthy’s victory in the 15th ballot ended the deepest congressional dysfunction in over 160 years. But it sharply illustrated the difficulties he will face in leading a narrow and deeply polarized majority.
He won at last on a margin of 216-212. He was able to be elected with the votes of fewer than half the House members only because six in his own party withheld their votes – not backing McCarthy as leader, but also not voting for another contender.
As he took the gavel for the first time, McCarthy represented the end of President Joe Biden’s Democrats’ hold on both chambers of Congress.
“Our system is built on checks and balances. It’s time for us to be a check and provide some balance to the president’s policies,” McCarthy said in his inaugural speech, which laid out a wide range of priorities from cutting spending to immigration, to fighting culture war battles.
McCarthy was elected only after agreeing to a demand by hardliners that any lawmaker be able call for his removal at any time. That will sharply cut the power he will hold when trying to pass legislation on critical issues including funding the government, addressing the nation’s looming debt ceiling and other crises that may arise.
Republicans’ weaker-than-expected performance in November’s midterm elections left them with a narrow 222-212 majority, which has given outsized power to the right-wingers who opposed McCarthy’s leadership.
Those concessions, including sharp spending cuts and other curbs on McCarthy’s powers, could point to further turbulence in the months ahead, especially when Congress will need to sign off on a further increase of the United States’ $31.4 trillion borrowing authority.
Over the past decade, Republicans have repeatedly shut down much of the government and pushed the world’s largest borrower to the brink of default in efforts to extract steep spending cuts, usually without success.
Several of the hardliners have questioned McCarthy’s willingness to engage in such brinkmanship when negotiating with Biden, whose Democrats control the Senate. They have raged in the past when Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell agreed to compromise deals.
The hardliners, also including Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas, said concessions they extracted from McCarthy will make it easier to pursue such tactics – or force another vote on McCarthy’s leadership if he does not live up to their expectations.
“You have changes in how we’re going to spend and allocate money that are going to be historic,” said Perry.
“We don’t want clean debt ceilings to just go through and just keep paying the bill without some counteracting effort to control spending when the Democrats control the White House and control the Senate.”
One of those Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, warned that the concessions McCarthy made to “the extremists” in his party may come back to haunt him, and made it more likely that the Republican-controlled House will cause a government shutdown or default with “devastating consequences.”
In a sharp contrast to the battles among House Republicans, Biden and McConnell appeared together in Kentucky on Wednesday to highlight investments in infrastructure.
McCarthy’s belated victory came the day after the two-year anniversary of a Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a violent mob stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s election loss.
This week’s 14 failed votes marked the highest number of ballots for the speakership since 1859, in the turbulent years before the Civil war.
McCarthy’s last bid for speaker, in 2015, crumbled in the face of right-wing opposition. The two previous Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, left the job after conflict with right-wing colleagues.
McCarthy now holds the authority to block Biden’s legislative agenda, force votes for Republican priorities on the economy, energy and immigration and move forward with investigations of Biden, his administration and his family.
CONCESSIONS
But the concessions he agreed to mean McCarthy will hold considerably less power than his predecessor, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. That will make it hard for him to agree to deals with Democrats in a divided Washington.
Allowing a single member to call for a vote to remove the speaker will give hardliners extraordinary leverage.
The agreement would cap spending for the next fiscal year at last year’s levels – amounting to a significant cut when inflation and population growth are taken into account.
That could meet resistance from more centrist Republicans or those who have pushed for greater military funding, particularly as the United States is spending billions of dollars to help Ukraine fend off a Russian assault.
Moderate Republican Brian Fitzpatrick said he was not worried that the House would effectively be run by hardliners.
“It’s aspirational,” he told reporters. “We still have our voting cards.”
Reporting by David Morgan, Moira Warburton and Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Gram Slattery, Jason Lange and Makini Brice, writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Cynthia Osterman, William Mallard and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Hardline Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives rejected Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid for an 11th time on Thursday, while his supporters worked behind closed doors in hopes of cementing a deal that could bring success.
The voting propelled the House to a level of dysfunction not seen since the turbulent era just before the Civil War, even after McCarthy offered to curb his own clout, raising questions about the party’s ability to wield power.
After the 11th ballot, the House adjourned for the third time this week without electing a speaker. Lawmakers will reconvene at noon (1700 GMT) on Friday.
McCarthy’s opponents say they do not trust him to fight for the deep spending cuts and other restrictions they want to impose on President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
But some Republicans held out hope of an agreement between the California Republican and at least some of the 20 hardline conservatives who have opposed his candidacy in ballot after ballot.
“Things are coming together in a very healthy way,” said Representative Patrick McHenry, a McCarthy supporter who is poised to lead a top congressional committee.
“We don’t know the timeframe. But the engagement is there and that’s why I’m optimistic,” he said.
Among other things, a possible agreement would allow for a vote on term limits for members of Congress, according to Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick.
But McCarthy’s supporters stopped short of predicting a resolution to the stalemate anytime soon.
Because of its inability to choose a leader, the 435-seat House has been rendered impotent – unable even to formally swear in newly elected members let alone hold hearings, consider legislation or scrutinize Biden and his administration.
Republicans won a slim 222-212 House majority in the November midterm elections, meaning McCarthy cannot afford to lose the support of more than four Republicans as Democrats united around their own candidate.
McCarthy, who was backed by former President Donald Trump for the post, offered the holdouts a range of concessions that would weaken the speaker’s role, which political allies warned would make the job even harder if he got it.
At least 200 Republicans have backed McCarthy in each of the votes this week. Fewer than 10% of Republican lawmakers have voted against him but they are enough to deny him the 218 votes needed to succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi as speaker.
“What you’re seeing on this floor does not mean we are dysfunctional,” said Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna as she nominated a McCarthy rival, Byron Donalds, for the 10th vote.
‘CONSTRUCT A STRAITJACKET’
“I can tell you there’s some good things happening,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a McCarthy supporter who is among the most outspoken conservatives in the House. “I think we’re going to see some movement.”
But some of McCarthy’s opponents showed no sign of yielding.
“This ends in one of two ways: either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race or we construct a straitjacket that he is unwilling to evade,” said Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, who voted for Trump for speaker.
As speaker, McCarthy would hold a post that normally shapes the chamber’s agenda and is second in the line of succession to the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris. He would be empowered to frustrate Biden’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into the president’s family and administration in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
In a late-night bargaining session, McCarthy offered the holdouts greater influence over what legislation comes up for a vote, according to a source familiar with the talks.
He also offered the ability for any single member to call a vote that could potentially remove him from the post – a step that helped drive at least one prior Republican speaker, John Boehner, into retirement.
Those concessions could potentially help McCarthy win over some of the holdouts but would leave him more vulnerable to the hardliners through the rest of the next two years if he ultimately wins the speakership.
That has even alarmed some Democrats, who have largely served as bystanders in the drama of the past three days.
“With every concession, he has to wake up every day wondering if he’s still going to have his job,” Democratic Representative Richard Neal told reporters.
The inability to agree on a leader also raises questions about whether Republicans will force a government shutdown or risk default later this year in a bid to extract steep spending cuts. Some of the holdouts say they expect McCarthy or any other Republican leader to take that approach.
If McCarthy ultimately fails to unite Republicans, they would have to search for an alternative. Possibilities include No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise and Representative Jim Jordan, who have both backed McCarthy. Jordan received 20 votes when nominated by the holdouts on Tuesday.
Reporting by Moira Warburton, Doina Chiacu, David Morgan, Kanishka Singh and Gram Slattery; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Will Dunham, Howard Goller and Christian Schmollinger
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Gram Slattery
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.