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The House is expected to meet at noon on Thursday to resume its search for a Speaker after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday in a sixth ballot failed in his bid to lead the chamber. 

He nevertheless said closed-door talks among GOP lawmakers were headed in a more positive direction. The California leader sweetened his offer of concessions to holdouts blocking his path, news outlets reported (Axios, CNN and Politico). 

Leaving a meeting, McCarthy told reporters there was no deal but Republicans had “made a lot of progress” (The Hill). Thursday could be make or break.

Key lawmakers in the McCarthy resistance indicated that marathon talks aimed at reaching some agreement were bearing fruit. While they emphasized they were not ready to support McCarthy on Wednesday, they said they saw a shift from an earlier stalemate (The Hill and Roll Call).

“We’re having ongoing conversations; they’ve actually been more productive in the last two hours than they’ve been in a long time,” Rep.-elect Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of McCarthy’s detractors, told reporters at the Capitol between the fifth and sixth ballots. 

“There’s genuine, good faith, ‘Hey let’s get this done’ conversations,” Roy added without specifics.

The Washington Post reports that the reason for possible movement stems from a final offer McCarthy made Wednesday to the holdouts. In a stunning reversal, McCarthy offered lowering the threshold to oust the Speaker from five members to one, a rule he had repeatedly said he would not accept. McCarthy would also tap more members of the conservative Freedom Caucus to the House Rules Committee, which debates legislation before it’s moved to the floor, according to the Post. He also relented on allowing floor votes to institute term limits on members and specific border policy legislation.

It remained unclear late Wednesday if the concessions could move the GOP rebels. But moderates have grown irate at the offer, after pledging last month they would never support a rules package that gives one member the power to vacate the Speaker, the Post reported.

With Republicans clinging to a slight House majority — 222 seats to the Democrats’ 212 — McCarthy can afford to lose only four Republicans. In the first six ballots, he’s been far off that mark, losing 19 conservatives in the first two votes, and 20 in the remaining four.

“You have 20 people demanding that 201 surrender to them unconditionally,” Rep.-elect Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) said Wednesday. “Well, I will not surrender unconditionally.” 

The House cannot do business until a Speaker is chosen for a role under the Constitution that is third in the line of succession to the president. No members can be sworn in. That means no committee assignments, no legislation, no help to constituents and no security clearances for classified briefings, which are crucial for members who sit on intelligence, national security and foreign affairs committees (The New York Times). 

If McCarthy cannot cobble together enough votes, the question remains who a successful fallback candidate could be? The defectors have nominated sympathetic House colleagues, but none has garnered more than 20 votes and while there have been whispers about a bipartisan compromise candidate, Democrats so far seem content to let Republicans sort out their candidates on their own (Politico).

▪ The Hill: Three scenarios for how the McCarthy speakership battle could end.

▪ Vox: Here’s how the McCarthy Speaker debacle could end.

McCarthy’s backers made a major concession late Wednesday as the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a PAC that helps finance GOP House candidates, announced it will cease spending in open-seat primaries in safe congressional districts. The move opens the door for conservative group Club for Growth to back McCarthy, seen as potentially helpful to his ambitions (The Hill).

Former President Trump, meanwhile, urged members-elect to give McCarthy a shot and end the drama. Trump’s stated support for McCarthy’s candidacy Wednesday triggered little reaction from the right-wing Republicans who are blocking his attempted rise. 

Even after Trump on Wednesday reiterated his backing with a statement on Truth Social, some hardline McCarthy opponents, such as Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). remained unmoved: “Sad!” Gaetz told Fox News Digital, adding, “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote,” (The Washington Post).

▪ NBC News: These are the four Republicans who voted against the Wednesday night motion that adjourned the House.

▪ The Hill: Who is Rep.-elect Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), Wednesday’s Republican nominee for Speaker?

▪ Roll Call: House staff members are stuck in limbo.

▪ Fox News: Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted late on Wednesday that Republicans’ “cavalier attitude” toward the election of a Speaker is “frivolous, disrespectful and unworthy of this institution.” 

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Related Articles

▪ The Washington Post: Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) wrongly announced he was sworn in. He wasn’t the only one.

▪ The New Republic: Santos caught lying about voting on something he wasn’t in Congress for?

▪ The Washington Post: Does the House even exist right now?

▪ Politico: McCarthy’s political operation spent millions on lawmakers now opposing his speakership dreams.

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LEADING THE DAY

➤ MORE IN CONGRESS

The messy and drawn-out battle among House Republicans over electing the next Speaker is flashing warnings of a debt limit crisis later this year, writes The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. The debt limit is due to expire at the end of July, and conservatives in the lower chamber are demanding that debt limit legislation be paired with spending caps — something Senate Democrats say is a non-starter. McCarthy previously said he wanted to avoid a debt limit fight, but with his bid to become Speaker teetering, a debt-limit crisis seems unavoidable this year.

As Vox reports, the same problem has plagued Republican majorities since the last time they took over the House from Democrats — most recently during the Tea Party wave in the 2010 midterms — a recalcitrant right flank that makes it difficult for them to achieve basic government tasks. That conservative group, now organized mainly out of the House Freedom Caucus, came close to threatening a debt ceiling deal in 2011, and in 2013, right-wing refusal to fund the government unless the Affordable Care Act was repealed led to a two-week government shutdown. 

To avoid this problem in 2023 with the GOP’s slim majority in the House, lawmakers will have to either build across-the-aisle consensus or find a way to de-escalate the far-right wing of the Republican Party.

▪ The Intercept: McCarthy must commit to government shutdown over raising debt ceiling, says Freedom Caucus holdout.

▪ CNN: Chaos in Congress sends an ominous signal to Wall Street.

▪ The Hill: CNN hired former Republican member of the Jan. 6 committee Adam Kinzinger, 44, a strident Trump critic who did not seek reelection to his Illinois House seat, to become a senior political commentator.

➤ POLITICS

Former President Trump’s criticism of hardline abortion opponents is laying bare the tension over the issue within the GOP as the party looks to regroup after a bruising midterm election, The Hill’s Julia Manchester reports. On Monday, Trump accused Republicans, particularly those against abortion with no exceptions, of underperforming in the election.

The attack drew a response from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, amplified by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, underscoring the divide within the party over how to message abortion. At the root of the back-and-forth? The fact that Democrats have successfully used the issue as a galvanizing force in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer. 

​​“The problem is either when candidates stick their head in the sand and don’t know how to deal with it or don’t want to talk about it,” one Republican strategist told The Hill. 

Last year marked history-making moments for several Black candidates, and multiple pieces of landmark legislation passed Congress. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), made lynching a federal hate crime and was signed into law by President Biden in March. The Respect for Marriage Act also passed, extending federal protections for interracial marriages at a time when it appeared to be in trouble. 

Still, some of the most important legislation focused on Black voters’ top concerns never made it to the president’s desk in 2022. The Hill’s Cheyanne Daniels details five key issues Black voters want to see addressed in 2023. 

19th News: Democratic women who made history in 2018 are stepping into leadership in 2022.

Lobbyists are celebrating after the Capitol reopened this week, ending nearly three years of restrictions that were first implemented at the start of the pandemic. As The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom writes, the decision by Capitol officials to end strict rules for visitors — which followed pleas from House GOP leaders and lobbyists themselves — will boost K Street’s access to lawmakers. 

➤ ADMINISTRATION

A spirit of bipartisanship that Biden saluted at a crumbling Kentucky bridge on Wednesday alongside current and former Republican lawmakers is about to evaporate.

That’s because he plans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border next week — a trip his GOP detractors urged the president to make for two years accompanied by warnings that conditions at the southern border are in “crisis” because of his policies.

Biden will speak today about border security ahead of what the White House anticipates will be a harsh new round of Capitol Hill finger-pointing about whether Congress, the executive branch or both are failing to tackle illegal immigration and surges of migrants and asylum-seekers at border locations critics argue are insecure.

There is little optimism in Washington that a divided government ahead of the 2024 presidential election will work to remedy decades of complex immigration issues. A band of conservative House Republicans, in limbo over selecting a Speaker, argued on Tuesday on the House floor that they had been elected to serve in the majority, in part, to end Biden’s immigration and border policies and investigate the top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The secretary on Wednesday told The Washington Post during a live event that the number of migrants that Customs and Border Protection is encountering is “straining” the U.S. immigration system and he called on Congress to act. 

People apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border set new annual records ahead of last year’s midterms. Three-quarters of Americans, according to a Pew Research survey last summer, said increasing security along the U.S.-Mexico border to reduce illegal crossings should be a very or somewhat important goal of U.S. immigration policy. Nearly all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said border security should be an important goal, while a smaller majority of Democrats and people who said they lean Democrat said the same, according to Pew.

The Supreme Court recently said it will keep in place a COVID-19 era policy for expulsions of undocumented migrants to Mexico until it fully considers Republican arguments against its repeal, which the administration says could extend the curbs until at least June.

Reuters reports that thousands of migrants have flocked to government offices in southern Mexico seeking asylum since the high court’s decision in the United States to keep Trump-era restrictions in place that quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

Asked by reporters what he wants to see at the border, Biden quipped, “Peace and security. No, I’m going to see what is going on.” The president will make his first trip to Mexico on Monday and Tuesday while participating in a North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City (The New York Post and The Hill).

Vice President Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border in the summer of 2021 and hosted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Washington in July.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s posture with Venezuela is in flux, guided by global energy market concerns and political infighting within the Venezuelan opposition (The Hill). In December, Juan Guaidó, the country’s opposition leader, was ousted by his coalition, unsettling the U.S. and European calculations with the oil-rich country.

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IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

The war in Ukraine, now nearing its 11th month, involves enormous U.S. and European investments in increasingly sophisticated and lethal weaponry to help Ukraine battle Russia day by day. The question remains whether Ukraine can triumph over its powerful neighbor, especially by the end of a harsh winter that will expose the dire costs.

Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago has resulted in Europe’s largest land conflict since 1945. Cities have been obliterated, millions of people have been displaced and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, including children, have been killed.

Reuters reports that Western allies have moved to supply Ukraine with armored battle vehicles but not heavier tanks it requested, while U.S. officials predicted continued intense combat for months on the eastern frontline.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky his government would send light AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles to aid its war effort. Biden said Wednesday the U.S. was considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine.

The United States is preparing another weapons aid package for Ukraine, which could be announced soon to add to about $21.3 billion in U.S. security assistance to date. Some Republican lawmakers, particularly in the House, have vowed extensive oversight and debate this year over additional proposed U.S. military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine.

The White House on Wednesday defended an uncredited Jan. 1 rocket attack in the occupied city of Makiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which Russia blamed on Ukrainian forces and that Kyiv claimed killed at least 400 Russian soldiers (The Washington Post). Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday said the death toll was 89, an acknowledgement of a significant loss. It blamed unauthorized cell phone use by Russian soldiers in the building for Ukraine’s ability to pinpoint its targets.

Russia is reported to be running low on its most advanced missiles, Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy intelligence chief, said in an interview Wednesday with news outlet RBC-Ukraine. He predicted that Russia would turn to new tactics, including increased use of drones, to fill its gap.

▪ Reuters: China’s COVID-19 data shows no new variant but underreports the country’s deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

▪ Reuters analysis: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s loss of broad protections from prosecution when he stepped down on Sunday leaves him more exposed to criminal and electoral probes.

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OPINION

■ House Republicans’ dysfunction points to more chaos ahead, by Dan Balz, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3jW6OS8

■ Kevin McCarthy is a victim of the GOP rebellion about nothing, by Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg Opinion editor. https://bloom.bg/3jMsYGd

■ How did politics get so awful? I blame MTV circa 1992, by Jim Geraghty, contributor, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3WNO1qq

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WHERE AND WHEN

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will meet at noon for legislative business on the third day of the 118th Congress.

The Senate will hold a pro forma session on Friday at 1:05 p.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will speak about border security and enforcement at 11:15 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room, accompanied by the vice president. He and Harris will meet with Cabinet members at 3 p.m.

Economic indicators: The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report claims for jobless benefits filed in the week ending Dec. 31. The Bureau of Economic Analysis at 8:30 a.m. will report on U.S. trade in November.

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ELSEWHERE

➤ ENVIRONMENT

Water: Arizona’s newly inaugurated Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) faces one of the most daunting challenges of any incoming governor: addressing the state’s use of water from the overallocated Colorado River. As The Hill’s Zack Budryk reports, Arizona is one of three states in the river’s lower basin, along with California and Nevada, and last year, the river’s waters dropped to a level that triggers automatic allocation cuts from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Arizona was issued the largest cut of any state, at 21 percent, which took effect on Sunday, the day before Hobbs took office, forcing her to hit the ground running on the issue. One of the “first and most important” things directly under Hobbs’ control is something she’s already done, according to Dave White, director of Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. 

The Denver Post: Can the West save the Colorado River before it’s too late? Here are eight possible solutions.

Weather: In California this morning, the topic is Mother Nature (The Hill). A powerful winter storm moved across the state to batter its coastline, inundate city streets, topple trees and bury the mountains in snowfall following heavy rain this week (The New York Times). Hundreds of thousands were without power just as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) imposed a state of emergency. 

➤ BUSINESS & ECONOMY

The company Salesforce is laying off 10 percent of its workforce and reducing its office space in certain markets, the company disclosed Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, becoming the latest tech company cutting back after pandemic-fueled growth. The company said it will incur about $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion in charges from the plan, with up to $1 billion in its current quarter. Salesforce had 73,541 employees at the end of January last year.

“As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” co-CEO Marc Benioff said in a letter to employees (The Wall Street Journal and CNBC).

▪ Yahoo Finance: Big tech will “have a better year” in 2023, analyst says.

▪ The Hill: Steady job openings, low layoffs raise doubts about recession fears.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Amazon layoffs to hit over 18,000 workers, the most in recent tech wave.

American society may soon be in a position to go cashless, writes The Hill’s Daniel de Visé, but whether the nation should want to ditch the dollar bill is a hotly debated question. Two-fifths of Americans didn’t use cash at all in 2022, according to a Pew survey, compared to one-quarter in 2015. Federal Reserve numbers show people used cash for only 20 percent of purchases in 2021. 

But there are disadvantages to both paper money — currency and coins are inconvenient, unsanitary and easy to steal — and cashless transactions — which increase the amount of personal data big corporations have access to.

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

The Food and Drug Administration took steps Tuesday to increase access to medication abortion in states where it is legal, allowing retail pharmacies to dispense the pills, which were previously only available at clinics. Under the new rules, patients will still need a prescription from a certified health care provider, but any pharmacy that agrees to accept those prescriptions and abide by other criteria can issue the pills in its stores and by mail (The Washington Post). 

The Justice Department on Tuesday confirmed that the Postal Service can continue to deliver prescription abortion pills despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. The Postal Service said it takes no position on abortion policy at either the federal or state level and noted the opinion “specifies that the mailing of those drugs to a particular jurisdiction that may significantly restrict access to an abortion is not a sufficient basis” for it to refuse to deliver the medication (Reuters).

Experts say XBB.1.5, the latest COVID-19 variant to sweep across the country, doesn’t appear to cause more serious disease than its predecessors, but it appears to be about five times more contagious than an earlier omicron variant. That variant, in turn, was five times more contagious than the original virus, Mehul Suthar, who studies emerging viral infections at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, told USA Today. 

“The numbers start adding up,” he said, especially when as of Dec. 31, XBB.1.5 accounted for more than 40 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States, up from about 1 percent less than a month earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

▪ The Hill: White House cautions against panic as XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant spreads.

▪ CNN: Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive a new COVID-19 surge in the U.S.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,095,235. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,530 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

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THE CLOSER

Try Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Republicans in Congress are embroiled in a messy Speaker sweepstakes, leaving plenty of House and the Senate trivia to explore in the meantime. Were you paying attention?

Please email your responses to [email protected] and [email protected] — and add “Quiz” to the subject line. Winners with correct answers will earn some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), whose parents were born in Brazil, attracted recent attention in that country because ______.

1. Brazilian law enforcement officials said they will reinstate fraud charges against Santos related to stolen checks in 2008.
2. Brazilian officials heralded Santos for possessing dual citizenship.
3. Santos was invited to be a costumed guest next month atop a float during Rio de Janeiro’s annual Carnival.
4. Santos’s Christmas album in Portuguese went to the top of the charts in Rio.

Something outside the House floor familiar under the Democratic majority last year disappeared under the new Republican majority, journalists reported this week (days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks). What was removed?

1. American flags on metal poles
2. Windows
3. Metal detectors
4. Cloakrooms

Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), 25, the youngest House member, this week told ABC News he was struggling to rent an apartment in Washington, D.C., before starting his new job. What reason(s) did he describe?

1. Rental housing is expensive in the nation’s capital
2. He has bad credit
3. He was turned down after applying
4. All of the above

The Congressional Black Caucus in the 118th Congress is the largest in history, a trend its members celebrated this week, along with the ascent of 52-year-old Rep.-elect Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as a nominee to be Speaker. How many members are in the CBC in 2023?

1. 27
2. 34
3. 58
4. 62

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