As everybody knows, on Sunday, July 21, President Joe  Biden announced that he was stepping aside and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the Democratic campaign for president.  Democrats promptly showered Biden with gratitude and embraced Harris.  She brought in a fresh wave of campaign contributions and is on the campaign trail now.

It’s still not going to be easy.  It needs to be remembered that even before Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate, he had a campaign whose prospects were bad and needed to be rescued.  The trouble with the debate wasn’t so much that it sank his prospects, as it failed to revive them.  Now that Harris has taken over, she has inherited a campaign with a disadvantage in the polls that needs to be turned around.  The big question is whether she will be able to turn it around.  As things stand now, it is still a race between two unpopular candidates, and in fact Harris’s approval rating is lower than Trump’s.  So, again, the big question is:  Can she turn it around?

This article in TheHill.com offers a concise list of what Harris has both for and against her prospects of beating Trump:  https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4787007-harris-democratic-presidential-nominee/.

I’m actually going to keep this post very brief and give you a couple of links, if you’re interested in learning more about J. D. Vance, the man Trump just picked as his vice-presidential running mate.  I will note in passing that he’s one of the ones blaming the Trump campaign for the assassination attempt on Trump this past weekend, and that his experience in government consists of a grand total of one year in the Senate.  The selection of Vance fits right in with the Trumpian neo-populist mentality, which says that outsiders to government are the perfect leaders because all it takes if the kind of common sense that the real ordinary Americans have and the educated elites lack.  We are living in bizarre times, if either Trump or Vance can be considered a serious candidate.

Article in Politico, July 15, 2024

Article in TheHill, July 15, 2024

A lot is happening; I just want to offer a few observations.

The Assassination Attempt on Trump

On Saturday afternoon, July 13, at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old man with an AR-style rifle gained access to a rooftop from which he was able to fire at Trump.  He managed to graze Trump’s ear, kill another man, and wound two others before the Secret Service shot him dead.

The fact that a gunman was able to get to a rooftop with a direct view of the rally stage was a serious breach of security by Secret Service, and Biden has ordered an investigation.  Meanwhile, as investigators try to learn more about the shooter, Thomas Michael Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories are flying fast and furious.  Many Democrats are  determined to believe that the whole thing was a staged inside job, while a handful of Trump supporters (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one, J. D. Vance for another) are blaming it on the Biden campaign.

But the big question is, how will this affect the election?  It may well help Trump.  This week is the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and there’s good reason to believe that Trump will deliver a well-behaved acceptance speech calling for national unity, which may cause many swing voters to conclude that maybe Trump isn’t so bad after all.  There’s a big difference between this year’s Trump campaign and the one back in 2016:  In 2016, Trump was not expecting to win, so he ran his campaign and ran his mouth entirely his own way.  This year, in contrast, Trump knows he can win, and he wholeheartedly wants to win, so it should be no surprise if he acts like a normal candidate so he can win.  And it’s the swing voters he needs to appeal to; he already has his loyal base in the palm of his hand.

Many talk about Trump as a threat to democracy, but if he gets back in, it will be because of democracy, as in, it will be because millions will have decided they want him in power and will have exercised their democratic right to vote for him.  Obviously, I’m not one of those people, but they are a huge number.  In any event, though, you can expect to see Trump go up in the polls after this week’s convention; the question is what will happen after that.

Article on NPR’s website, July 15, 2024

Article in Politico, July 14, 2024

Will Biden Stay in the Race?

Many Democrats are calling on Biden to step aside and let somebody else be the Democratic nominee.  Many other Democrats are supporting Biden’s decision to remain on the ticket.  Based on some remarks and inferences that I’ve picked up on, I think these next two weeks are going to be crucial.  If Biden is still the candidate the week after next, the week of July 29, then it can be assumed that he’s going to remain the candidate in November unless something cataclysmic happens after that point.  He is adamant in his public statements, but he has to be privately considering alternatives.  So, I say, be watching for what happens the week of July 29.

Trump’s Running Mate

Trump is set to announce his choice for vice-presidential running mate for the Republican ticket this afternoon.  It now looks as if his choice will be Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio.  Vance is hardly qualified for the job, and back in 2016 he was a never-Trumper.  Back then he was best known for his book Hillbilly Elegy, about the world of the working-class and rural whites he grew up with in the Midwest, people who formed a big part of Trump’s base.  I’ll have more to say about Vance if and when it becomes official.  One thing I can now:  if Trump picks Vance as his VP, it will clearly not be on the basis of picking somebody who would be qualified to be president.

Article in TheHill, July 15, 2024

The Dismissal (for now) of the Documents Case

The district court trial judge in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents case, Aileen Cannon, has granted Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that the Justice Department’s appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.  It needs to be noted that Cannon was a Trump appointee, and at the time he appointed her to the federal bench, some questions were raised about her fitness for the job.  Some of her earlier rulings in this case were overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and there’s every possibility that this ruling will be overturned as well.  There is certainly some case law on the books allowing for the appointment of special counsels, so there is precedent for her decision to be reversed.  However, at this point (as was already the case) there is no chance of a trial starting before the election.

Meanwhile, the judge in the New York hush money case has postponed sentencing in order to consider motions for dismissal of the case on the basis of the new immunity ruling from the Supreme Court.  Trump’s lawyers are arguing that some of the evidence that the jury considered has been made inadmissible by that new ruling.

Article in Politico, July 15, 2024

Full text of Judge Cannon’s ruling

On Thursday night, June 27, President Biden gave an embarrassingly bad performance in the debate against Trump.  If you just read the transcript, you might not see anything wrong, but seeing his face and hearing his voice, the problem was unmistakable.  He may have just been under the weather that night, and there may be nothing missing from his cognitive ability, but it’s voters’ perceptions that count, and voters can easily wonder, not just what shape he’s in for the job right now, but what shape he’ll be in four years from now, since that’s how much longer he’s asking to remain in the job.

The New York Times promptly ran an editorial calling on Trump to bow out of the race for the good of the country.  It needs to be clear: it’s not that the Times wants Trump to win, but rather, they’re afraid that’s what will happen if Biden remains on the ticket.  In the days that have followed since, the Democrats, both on Capitol Hill and on social media, have been divided between those who want Biden to step aside and those who support Biden’s choice to stay in the game.  Biden himself has made it clear that he has no intention of stepping aside.  He stressed that point in an interview on ABC with George Stephanopoulos a week after the debate.

If Biden bows out before the convention, the convention delegates will vote for the new nominee.  If Biden names a successor, then presumably at least many of the delegates pledged to him will honor his wishes.  Whether he would give his endorsement to his vice president, Kamala Harris, remains to be seen.  One advantage with her is that she would have the Biden-Harris campaign money with much less complication than someone else brought in.  Apparently Trump has a nickname ready for her; I haven’t bothered to look to see what it is.  If he pulls out after the convention is over, like in the fall, the Democratic National Committee will consult with the party leadership in Congress, and with Democratic state governors, and then make a selection.

Speaking of the fall, there’s another Biden-Trump debate planned.  The pressure will be on Biden to perform, but the trouble with that is that the pressure was on him at the first debate, and it didn’t do much good.  A second bad debate performance could really be deadly.  There are apparently a lot of swing voters who, even if they don’t like Trump, think he’d be more competent than Biden.

Again, as things stand now, Biden is adamantly refusing to step aside.  But that could change.  I hope you’re all following these developments.  By the way, as I post links that include New York Times articles below, please remember that you can get a free student online subscription to the Times through the City Tech library web page (actually, that link isn’t working right now, but with any luck it will be back).  When it’s working, once you’ve signed up, you can log into the Times with your CUNY credentials.

Video of the full debate

New York Times editorial calling on Biden to step aside, June 28, 2024

George Stephanopoulos interview, July 5, 2024

New York TImes article about VP Harris’s position, July 9, 2024 

Article in TheHill.com about Senate Democrats’ doubts, July 9, 2024

The Supreme Court has finally issued its decision on the immunity question.  It involves the set of indictments against Donald Trump for his actions between the November 2020 election and his departure from the White House in January 2021.  Quick reminder: The indictments do not include anything blaming him for the January 6 attack on the Capitol; they do involve multiple counts of trying to interfere with the results of an election.  And, as many had anticipated, the Court is sending the case back to the lower court with some points to consider.

The Court ruled, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that there are three categories of actions by a president:   (1) actions that are within the core of formal presidential duties, where the president enjoys absolute immunity; (2) actions that are connected with presidential duties but not part of that core, where there is some immunity and the lower courts can have some latitude in determining its limits; and (3) private actions, where the president is not immune from prosecution.

By that reasoning, the Court further declared that certain counts of the indictments, those involving his interactions with the Justice Department trying to get them to treat the election results as fraudulent, are covered by the absolute immunity defined in that first category.  For the rest, the Court is sending the case back down to the trial court (not the circuit of appeals, as some might have expected) to determine what categories the remaining indictment counts fall under.

With this decision, there’s really no way that there will be a trial before the election.  When the trial court rules on the questions sent down by the Supreme Court, Trump is certain to appeal anything that isn’t in his favor, and the case could end up back in the Supreme Court’s bailiwick in the following season.  Meanwhile, Trump could win the election and have his Justice Department throw the whole thing out.

The decision was 6-3, with all Republican appointees on one side and all Democratic appointees on the other.  Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion expressing dismay that the majority didn’t handle the ruling in a way that would allow the trial to get going promptly.  Clarence Thomas also wrote a concurring opinion endorsing Trump’s claim that the Justice Department had no constitutional authority to appoint special counsel Jack Smith at all.

In any event, for different reasons, all three of Trump’s remaining criminal trials are stalled, and there’s a least a 50-50 chance that Trump will win this year’s election and be back in the White House for four more years.

Article in Politico, July 1, 2024

SCOTUSblog article, July 1, 2024

And this report by Nina Totenberg on NPR (same date) explains how this ruling is going to make it much harder to prosecute future presidents for anything they do in office, even taking bribes.

Full text of the ruling, with the dissents and concurrences

The jury in Trump’s so-called hush money case took just two days deliberating, and unanimously found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a crime.  Trump is claiming the trial was rigged (much as the 2020 election was, according to him).  More to the point, Republicans in Congress are rallying around him, even as Democrats are celebrating the verdict.  Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has called the trial “a purely political exercise, not a legal one” and called the verdict “a shameful day in American history.”  Republican Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a pro-Trump attack dog, has announced that he wants Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to appear before his committee for questions.  (Last year, Jordan brought his committee to New York to hold hearings about violent crime, to make the point that Bragg was concentrating his attention on the wrong things.)

The verdict may or may not have any impact on the election.  Most Democrats will vote for Biden and most Republicans will vote for Trump, and in those camps there are two different narratives about what’s going on, with Republicans viewing all of the criminal cases against Trump as nothing but a politically motivated “witch hunt.”  Between those camps are the swing voters, many of whom base their votes simply on how they feel about the direction the country is going in with the current president.  Biden’s approval rating has been stuck in the low 40s since the end of summer of his first year, and his response to the Mideast war seems to be losing him votes in swing states where the results are guaranteed to be very close and could go either way.

I’ve been saying right along that I consider the New York case to be the weakest case against Trump, and now that he’s been convicted, I would say that it’s the easiest conviction for Trump to claim was politically motivated and unfair.  I regard the strongest case as being the one involving his keeping of government documents, including classified documents, at his resort/home in Mar-a-lago, Florida, followed closely by the two election interference cases, one federal and one in Georgia.  None of those cases are likely to proceed this year, and the scheduling of the New York trial may have played some part in their delay, especially where the Mar-a-lago case is concerned.  Of all the cases against Trump, I consider the New York case to be the one least likely to change anybody’s mind about Trump in this election.  Again, it needs to be remembered that his actual base will stay loyal to him no matter what he’s convicted of.  He was absolutely right when he boasted that he could shoot somebody in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and they would still love him.

Trump will, of course, appeal this ruling.  One significant point that they will undoubtedly use is in Judge Merchan’s instructions to the jury.  The case pivoted on the charge that he falsified business records to conceal a crime, and jurors were given three possible crimes to consider that he might have been trying to conceal:

–violation of federal election campaign finance law, with Michael Cohen’s fronting of the hush money being an illegal campaign contribution;

–falsification of other business records to defraud, in violation of a New York State law against using fraud to interfere with the results of an election; and/or

–violation of New York State and City tax law, which prohibits giving false information on a tax return.

Moreover, the judge told the jury that they didn’t have to specify, or agree on, which of those three possible crimes he was concealing.  Trump will undoubtedly claim, in his appeal, that this violates his right to know exactly what it is that he’s being punished for.

Because it’s a state-level conviction, the appeal will be in a state-level court.  So far, I haven’t heard talk of grounds for any kind of federal appeal.

Although this conviction can’t stop Trump from being the Republican candidate for president, it may prevent him from voting for himself in Florida.  After all, he’s going to get at least probation in the July 11 sentencing.  Florida law prohibits a person on probation from casting a ballot.  Of course, the sentence may be deferred pending the appeal.

Between now and the sentencing, he has to submit to a pre-sentencing interview with a city probation officer.  One can certainly wonder how that’s going to go.

Article in Politico, May 30, 2024

Article in TheHill.com, June 1, 2024

Full text of the judge’s instructions to the jury

On Thursday, April 25, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether or not Trump is entitled to presidential immunity for his actions in the weeks following the 2020 election.  Trump is charged with having tried to interfere with the election results to illegitimately keep himself in office as president, and the trial would have started back in March were it not for this immunity appeal.

It was clear from the questions that the justices asked the lawyers that there is not just one question involved, but rather, there are two.  One is whether this particular president is entitled to immunity for this particular set of actions.  The other is the broader question of what degree of immunity to criminal prosecution does a president have for actions committed while in office.  The first question should have been fairly easy to answer, but the conservative justices with the possible exception of Amy Coney Barrett seem intent on dealing with the second, broader question, in a way that may lead to the Court sending the case back to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to sort a few things out.

Back when the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling, I wondered whether something might be missing.  The main thrust of their opinion was a simple one: that the president is not above the law.  So far so good, and perhaps it makes sense since Trump was calling for complete “blanket immunity,” which was what the circuit court said he’s not entitled to, but there was another point that I was looking for in their ruling, a point that had been made in some other rulings in civil suits against Trump for his actions surrounding the January 6th attack on the Capitol.  That point was this:  Even if the president is entitled to immunity for official actions taken  as part of performing official duties as president, Trump’s actions in response to the election don’t count as official actions, because trying to keep oneself in power has nothing to do with any official duties of the president.  Trying to stay in power is an action performed as a candidate, not as the president.  Other court rulings have spelled out this point; the DC Circuit decision did not.

Now, the Supreme Court is perfectly capable of making that distinction in the ruling it hands down now, and maybe the Court will do that.  But the conservative justices on the Court have shown through their actions so far that they don’t at all mind acting in a way that will delay the start of the trial until after the election, even if that means Trump gets back into power and calls off the trial completely–which he can do if he wins.  So the justices may well send the case back to the DC Circuit with a homework assignment, to make a distinction between official action and private action, and make a determination as to which category Trump’s behavior fits into.  In other words, the Supreme Court may instruct the Circuit Court to do what I, personally, was wondering why they didn’t do, or at least didn’t do clearly enough, the first time they got the case.

NPR report, April 25, 2024

Full text of circuit court opinion, February 6, 2024

For quite some time now, many have been expressing the opinion that Donald Trump should be disqualified from running for president by virtue of a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. In recent weeks, a court in Colorado and the secretary of state of Maine have acted accordingly in their respective states.  Now the case is being heard by the Supreme Court, with arguments having been heard on Thursday, February 8.  The majority of justices–and not just the conservatives–showed some skepticism about these states’ right to do that and about the Fourteenth Amendment argument.  I, personally, am not surprised, as I never thought the Fourteenth Amendment argument was very strong.

The Fourteenth Amendment, it should be remembered, was one of the Reconstruction amendments in the aftermath of the Civil War.  In addition to the better-known due process and equal protection clauses, it included the following words in Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The argument is that Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, put him in this category.

Let’s consider what Trump did on that day.  He held a “Stop the Steal” rally where he and others made speeches stating that the election was fraudulent, that Trump was the rightful winner, and that Congress should not certify the electoral vote for Joe Biden.  Moreover, he directly asked his supporters at the rally to march to the Capitol and make their feelings to this effect known.  His audience, as he surely knew, included delegations from several white nationalist extremist groups.  He told this crowd, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

Shortly after the insurrection began, Trump sent out a tweet asking his supporters to keep it peaceful.  However, he also spent several hours watching the whole thing unfold without showing any distress about the attack on the Capitol.  When he finally spoke, his words were, “This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you; you’re very special.”  (The next day, he put out a video where he changed his tune, assuring everybody that the attackers of the Capitol would be brought to justice–the only time I’ve ever perceived Trump as acting under outside pressure.  It was also in that January 7 video that he assured listeners that there would be a peaceful transition of power.)

I’d like to suggest that the legal question is not one of whether Trump is morally responsible for the attack on the Capitol.  To me, it’s obvious that yes he is.  Everything involving his claim that the election was fraudulent and that his supporters should try to deter Congress from certifying the election results makes him, in my view, grossly unfit to be trusted with the responsibilities of the presidency, and it appalls me that millions of people are still willing to have him in that position.  (Feel free to criticize me for saying this to my students.  When I was in college I was always giving my professors a hard time, “You’re got to be objective, you’re not supposed to be biased,” and I lived by that rule myself until Trump came on the scene.  But I have my limits.  I would feel intellectually dishonest if I kept this to myself, and I think I owe my students honesty.)  But that’s not the legal question that the Supreme Court has to consider.

It seems to me that in order to disqualify Trump from the presidency, it would have to be an open-and-shut fact that Trump himself took part in an insurrection.  And that’s where I think the argument falters.  I consider it significant that special counsel Jack Smith did not include a charge of inciting the insurrection in the indictment he got against Trump for trying to overturn the election results.  I just think there are a few dots that aren’t entirely connected, to be able to say that Trump was so directly involved in the insurrection that the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies him from being on the ballot.

Again, though, while I don’t think Trump’s actions on January 6 necessarily disqualify him on Fourteenth Amendment grounds from running, I’ll say again that I think it’s sad and scary that those actions aren’t disqualifying him from getting the votes of any significant number of Americans.

Article in TheHill.com, February 8, 2024

NPR report, February 8, 2024

UPDATE:  The Supreme Court overruled the states of Colorado and Maine, but not on the basis of what I wrote about in this post.  Rather, the decision was that state government’s can’t pass judgment on eligibility for any federal office.  That much was unanimous, but the Court also ruled 5-4 that it would take an act of Congress to invoke that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In a recent speech, Donald Trump said, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

In case anybody misses the point, the people Trump is calling “radical left thugs” include the entire Democratic Party.  He undoubtedly agrees completely with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who in her Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s state-of-the-union address earlier this year declared that Biden had surrendered the country to “the woke mob.”  So when Trump uses the term “vermin,” he is openly encouraging his supporters to think of the people who don’t share their political vision as being less than human.  It should also be remembered that Trump has regularly called journalists “enemies of the people.”

This kind of rhetoric, this dynamic between a demagogue and his base, can be termed authoritarian populism, and if you carry it to its uttermost conclusions, it amounts to grassroots fascism.  That’s right, you heard me.  I normally avoid using such extreme terms about American political figures, but we’re not living in normal times, and I totally regard the terminology I’m using as being applicable.  Moreover, I would consider myself to be intellectually dishonest if, in the name of being “objective,” I failed to let students know that this is how I view the situation.

Let me quickly outline the elements of authoritarian populism that I see going on, and again, I’m talking about a mindset that is shared by Trump and the people who want him back in the White House.  Those elements are:

–the perception that the country is under siege by sinister, conspiratorial forces, including both foreign enemies and portions of the country’s own population;

–the feeling that the very identity of the nation depends on having a strong leader who will fight those forces and protect the true Americans from being victimized by them;

–belief in wild conspiracy theories about political opponents, including, in the present instance, those which link the Democratic Party with child-trafficking rackets and with the desire to bring in as many unauthorized migrants as possible to “replace” the true patriotic Americans;

–a willingness, even a sense of necessity, to undercut the normal checks and balances and civil liberties protections in order to allow the strong leader to fight that fight unhindered; and

–the opinion that sometimes it’s necessary to resort to violence and to relaxing the rule of law in the face of the perceived threats to the nation’s existence (i.e., existential threats) that must be fought against.

In the NPR report that I link below, Trump is heard defending himself against comparisons to Nazis by insisting on what a friend he is to the Jewish people.  I’d like to suggest that this misses the point completely.  It’s beside the point whether Trump is anti-Semitic, or even how racist he is.  I actually think that the main kind of bigotry he panders to is not so much racial as cultural and political.  That is, the people he calls “vermin” are those people, whether Black or white, Jewish or gentile, who do not share his conservative nationalistic vision of the nation, but rather, believe in so-called “woke” ideologies.  He’s encouraging his followers to regard themselves as the true Americans, the ones who truly love their country, and to think of liberals as their enemies, as “vermin.”  (And I would add that, while Trump’s base includes many who do not espouse racist/anti-Semitic views, they don’t seem to mind being part of the same coalition as groups like the Proud Boys that are all about that.  I would also add that, where immigration and the border are concerned, racism is exactly what his rhetoric is about.)

In a democracy, you can expect the pendulum to swing back and forth between liberal and conservative outcomes in the elections.  In a democracy, all people have to be willing to share the space and the national identity with people whose political opinions and policy preferences are very different from their own.  In a democracy, no party wins or loses all the time.  Political extremism is commonly defined as a rejection of those principles; an insistence that one party, one ideology, must be in power.  And that is the mindset that Trump panders to.

This post was inspired by this NPR report which ran Friday morning, November 17, 2023.  I urge you to give a listen, even though the voices you’ll be hearing are clearly those of people whom Trump calls “enemies of the people.”

On Tuesday, November 14, 2023, the House of Representatives passed Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded into the New Year.  The Senate passed it the next day, and President Biden signed it.  Part of the government is funded through January 19, and the rest until February 2.  The one part of government expense that’s taken care of for the entire fiscal year is the farm bill; everything else requires further action in early 2024.

The CR was very much a bipartisan action.  In the House, it passed 336-95, with 90 Republicans and 2 Democrats voting against it; in the Senate, it was 87-11, with 10 Republicans and 1 Democrat voting no.

In making this happen, newly installed House Speaker Mike Johnson did pretty much the same thing that his predecessor Kevin McCarthy had done a few weeks earlier–which led to McCarthy’s swift ouster.  And while the hardline conservatives in his party don’t seem to be itching to remove Johnson as Speaker at the moment, they are also letting him know that he can’t keep on doing this if he wants to keep their support.

Realize, it’s just a tiny handful of Republicans in the House who would rather shut down the government than compromise with the Democrats, or even the less hardline Republicans, on the budget.  But with the narrow majority that the Republicans hold in that chamber, there are enough of them to block any bill that doesn’t have any Democratic support.  And they are insistent that the bill the House passes must be a bill that the Republicans all agree on, not a bill that Republicans and Democrats together form a majority on.  And this is in spite of the fact that any bill that passes the House is going to have to be reconciled with a bill passed by the Senate, where the Democrats are in the majority, before it can be sent to the president for his signature.

What the hardliners in the House apparently want is for their party, rather than compromise with the Democrats, to stand its ground for an ultraconservative budget that would include some policy-related measures that the Democrats call “poison pills,” including provisions unfriendly to immigration, abortion rights, and LGBTQ+ interests.  They apparently want to shut down the government until the Democrats cave in completely to their demands.  And because no such cave-in is likely, what we can expect to see in January is either of two things: either another bipartisan budget renewal, which could be followed by a vote to remove Mike Johnson from the Speakership, or a government shutdown.

Yahoo News story, November 19, 2023