Breaking news…
THIS JUST IN — House Republicans just got wiped out in the midterms. They lost the majority. They lost the Senate. And their answer, moments ago…was to make Jim Jordan their leader for the 120th Congress.
The vote inside the House Republican Conference was 106 to 73, and Jordan beat Steve Scalise. That means Jordan will be House Minority Leader when Democrats take the gavel in January.
After the biggest rebuke of MAGA we’ve seen, Republicans looked at the wreckage and said… give us more of that!
Remember who Jim Jordan is. Before Congress, he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State, where former wrestlers have said he knew about the abuse committed by team doctor Richard Strauss and did nothing. Jordan denies it. He then spent years running the House Judiciary Committee despite never becoming a licensed attorney, using it as Donald Trump’s personal defense firm. He is one of the least liked politicians in America, and Republicans just handed him the keys.
The MAGA cheerleaders are thrilled. Rep. Brandon Gill posted that he “couldn’t be more thrilled” and called Jordan a fighter and a “convicted conservative.” I think he meant “conservative with conviction”? Talk about a Freudian slip.
Meanwhile, Democrats are getting ready to work
While Republicans were picking Jordan, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee they’re about to control, put out a very different message. Save your screenshots. If a Trump administration official shook your company down over Signal, or your bosses asked you to purge records of deals with the administration, preserve the evidence and come to the committee.
And people are coming. We’re hearing from congressional staffers that their phones are ringing off the hook with general counsels from companies that did business with this administration, saying, in effect, we may have screwed up, how can we help? Big Washington law firms are telling anyone who might be implicated to cooperate now, while there’s still a deal to be had.
Rep. Robert Garcia, who will chair the House Oversight Committee in the new Congress, made clear that leaving the administration doesn’t end the accountability. He’s already looking at Susie Wiles, pointing to reporting about her being in the Situation Room with JD Vance discussing Ghislaine Maxwell and the Epstein files, and to any conversations about donors and money in exchange for policy. Former officials, he said, are being investigated, and there will be accountability.
The rest of the GOP is falling apart in real time
A few more scenes from a party in free fall:
The NRCC chair was a no-show. At the conference meeting, Rep. Richard Hudson, the outgoing chair of the House Republican campaign arm, was called up to introduce the handful of new Republicans who actually won. He wasn’t there. He lost his own race.
Mike Johnson is blaming the Senate. The outgoing Speaker says the House was among the most productive in history and the Senate “blocked it all.” Johnson also said the voters made the wrong choice. McGovern’s response on the House floor was perfect… you might disagree with their choice, but it’s not wrong. You just ain’t listening, bud!
Thom Tillis is leaning toward convicting Hegseth. Tillis, the North Carolina Republican Trump pushed out (Trump’s handpicked replacement, Michael Whatley, then lost to Roy Cooper), told CNN’s Manu Raju he is likely to vote for the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if it reaches the Senate. His reasoning: it’s a no-confidence vote, and the best thing to do is move him along. He said he lays the struggle over defense funding at Hegseth’s feet.
Ron Johnson says he won’t do business as usual. An election defeat of this magnitude, he says, demands change. Interesting.
Trump’s judges won’t say the Capitol was attacked
Trump is trying to jam district court nominees through the lame duck. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked a panel of them a simple question: was the Capitol attacked on January 6, 2021? One after another, they answered “ditto” to a scripted non-answer about “acts of violence, lawlessness, trespass and destruction of property.”
Then nominee Todd Butler wouldn’t say who won the popular vote in 2020, repeating only that Joe Biden was “certified.” When Blumenthal read him Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s own words, that “a mob of rioters breached the Capitol,” and a Trump-appointed judge, Timothy Kelly, describing the attack on police officers, Butler still wouldn’t say the word attack.
These are people asking for lifetime appointments to decide facts. They can’t state one.
Hegseth’s impeachment, and the case against him
Rep. Sara Jacobs represents San Diego, the largest military community in the country. Her floor speech on the Hegseth impeachment was personal: constituents shipped off to fight what she called a reckless war in Iran, sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln spending ten months at sea at times without enough food, hot water or health care, a girls’ elementary school bombed in Minab, and hundreds killed in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. “This isn’t strength, it’s recklessness,” she said. Her vote to impeach, she said, is for the service members she represents.
And the news keeps adding to the case:
A second UK base. The US has moved at least ten KC-135 refueling tankers out of RAF Mildenhall to Germany over a reported Iranian threat. This comes weeks after US bombers were pulled out of RAF Fairford over a suspected Iran-linked security incident.
Cyber Command. Bloomberg reports that at least 11 NSA and US Cyber Command workers have died by suicide over roughly the past year, more than previously known. This is the same command whose four-star leader, Gen. Timothy Haugh, was pushed out by this regime. If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988.
JD Vance’s response to all of it? He posted that the question of whether Hegseth committed impeachable offenses is “absurd.” Tell that to the families in Jacobs’ district.
My interview with Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs
If you want to see the opposite of what Republicans did today, look at Arizona.
Governor Katie Hobbs won reelection, and Democrats now control the governor’s office, the state Senate and the state House for the first time since 1966. They won a supermajority in the Senate, nearly won one in the House, and swept most of the statewide offices. I’ve had the Governor on many times over the years, and she always told us Arizona had the most flippable legislature in the country. She was right.
A 12-year project, not a one-night wave
What struck me most is that this didn’t happen in one cycle. When Hobbs arrived in the legislature in 2011, Republicans held supermajorities in both chambers. Democrats in the Senate were so few, she told me, they joked they were “the one pizza caucus.”
So she ran for leadership and, with then-House Minority Leader Eric Meyer, founded the legislative program that produced these wins. Twelve years of recruiting good candidates, staying disciplined, and showing up in places people said Democrats couldn’t win. Democrats even won the state Senate seat in Gilbert, in her Republican opponent’s own district!!
This is what I keep telling you. Elections are existential, and you have to vote. But the authoritarian right spent decades building through state legislatures and school boards. We have to think generationally too, and Arizona just showed what that looks like.
What the trifecta will do
Hobbs said the first priority is costs, which Arizonans tell her are rising because of Washington. Some things she already did on her own as governor, but the Republican legislature refused to keep funding utility assistance and a first-time homebuyer program. Now those get done.
The other big one is the state’s universal school voucher program, which she called out of control. With no income caps, she said, wealthy families are getting subsidies for private school, and with no checks on spending, money has gone to things like jewelry and lingerie. Now Democrats can rein it in and make sure taxpayer dollars are actually spent on education.
And she was clear that none of this changes how she governs. She’ll keep working across the aisle on the problems Arizonans ran on.
Immigration: you can get the bad guys without making everyone afraid
I asked her about Trump’s use of ICE and Border Patrol, and whether it backfired with Latino voters. Her answer was that it backfired with everyone, across every demographic.
She contrasted it with Arizona’s approach. When she took office, she said the border in Arizona was out of control, and she pushed the Biden administration on it repeatedly. Then she acted. She used state border funds to support local law enforcement, sent the National Guard to help with drug interdiction, and launched a statewide operation with local, state and federal police going after cartels. It’s working, she said, because it stayed focused on public safety rather than tactics that spread fear and mistrust.
Her message to the White House: you can get the bad guys without making everyone afraid.
Growing despite Washington
With inflation climbing, a war in Iran, a trade war and Canada boycotting American tourism, I asked how a governor swims against that tide. Hobbs said Arizona has kept positive job growth, has inflation below the national rate, and has actually seen housing costs decline, crediting Maricopa County leading the nation in homebuilding two years ago. She was quick to add there’s a lot more to do.
Labor at the table
The AFL-CIO poster behind her wasn’t decoration. Trump tried to tell working people he’d fix things he was breaking, and labor rejected it. Hobbs said the across-the-board tariffs were simply taxes on Americans that helped no one. Her approach has been to bring labor and business to the same table, which produced agreed-upon heat safety guidelines for outdoor workers, something plenty of people said would never happen. She did the same with her Arizona Promise energy task force, getting environmental groups, utilities and experts to agree on recommendations.
This can’t be a fluke
Pundits are already saying this was just a wave and Democrats will overreach. Hobbs agrees the burden is now on Democrats to deliver. If they stay out of partisan games and focus on what Arizonans of both parties are facing, she said, this becomes the start of something, not a one-off.
I told her what I keep hearing from people who don’t even consider themselves political. They say the other side was just so mean, so cruel and mocking, and they’re relieved to hear leaders talk about empathy and respect. She said the political environment is ugly and divisive, and she’s tried to stay above it. Arizona elected a lieutenant governor on a joint ticket for the first time ever, and she chose an independent, a lifelong Republican and longtime mayor of Mesa, because he shares her view that leadership is about solving problems.
The contrast could not be clearer
On one side, a Republican Party that lost everything and responded by electing Jim Jordan, promoting Stephen Miller, and telling voters they got it wrong. On the other, a governor who spent twelve years building, won, and is talking about delivering.
The American people sent a message. Republicans aren’t listening. Democrats had better be, and in Arizona, it looks like they are.
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And WTF America?! is officially out now and is a NYT Best Seller. My brothers and I wrote it, but it’s really about you: the millions who refused to back down when it mattered most. Order it wherever books are sold!
Shoutout to the Meidas Mighty!
