Fasten your seatbelts

The next two years are going to be nasty.

source: Politico

Really pathetic.  But not a true reading of the American population due to extreme gerrymandering and vote suppression by the Republican party.

[T]he GOP eked out enough wins in contested seats to gain control of the House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press. With some races still not called a week after Election Day, Republicans picked up at least 218 seats, and will take over the chamber next year.

[...]

A Republican House will likely clash on most issues with a Democratic Senate in 2023, with bitter fights over basic functions like funding the government threatening to paralyze Washington.

  NPR

Republicans like nothing better than to paralyze the government.

A new House Republican majority will mean President Biden's legislative agenda is essentially dead, unless he can find bipartisan support for some narrowly crafted proposals. Biden's focus during the next two years of his presidency will likely be spent defending his signature accomplishments, like a bill lowering prescription drug prices and investing hundreds of billions of dollars to tackle climate change. GOP lawmakers have already said they want to roll back some of Biden's programs, or defund many of them.

The Biden White House will also face an onslaught of investigations on a wide range of issues. Top GOP members on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees have already said they plan to probe the business dealings of Biden's son, Hunter Biden, the president's border policies, the origins of the coronavirus, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

[...]

Rep Jim. Jordan, who is expected to take the gavel as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray the week before the election outlining lengthy lists of materials the panel was seeking and directing the agency heads to preserve materials ahead of continuing probes in 2023.

[...]

But because the margin is so slim there may be pressure from more moderate Republicans to pull back on some of the probes and instead focus on issues that show a GOP chamber can govern.

Don't hold your breath.

[E]ven though [Kevin] McCarthy is on track to win an internal vote for [Speaker of the House] this week he doesn't have the 218 votes now that he will need in the public vote on January 3, when the new Congress elects a speaker.

[...]

McCarthy is regarded as skilled at developing personal relationships across his conference after years of criss-crossing the country campaigning and raising money for GOP candidates. But he has not developed much of a record as a legislator.

Which of them has?

Democrats' strong performance in the midterms has frozen any movement to replace Pelosi. She says some of her colleagues are urging her to run again for the top leadership post.

[...]

The current caucus chair, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is expected to run for the post as minority leader if Pelosi decides to retire.

And that will be a thankless and difficult job.

Leaders [in the lame duck session] hope to finalize a bipartisan budget deal to fund government agencies through the rest of the fiscal year and avoid a possible government shutdown. Pelosi also indicated that she would like Congress to raise the debt limit to avoid any contentious debate and threat of default early next year.

Democratic leaders also plan to pass legislation that would clarify how Congress certifies the results of presidential elections with a revamp of the Electoral Count Act, a law first enacted in 1887.

Good luck.

The newly relaunched Congressional Integrity Project initiative, details of which were shared first with POLITICO, will include rapid response teams, investigative researchers, pollsters and eventually a paid media campaign to put congressional Republicans “squarely on the defense,” founder Kyle Herrig said in an interview.

It’s designed to serve as the party’s “leading war room” to push back on House Republican investigations, Herrig said in an interview. He added that the project would “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work, and hold them accountable for ignoring the urgent priorities of all Americans in order to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump and MAGA Republicans.”

[...]

Brad Woodhouse, a longtime Democratic strategist who is part of the project’s new leadership team, called the House GOP’s looming investigations a “vendetta” after two impeachments of and investigations into former President Donald Trump while Democrats controlled Congress, including the bipartisan select committee probing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The project “will exploit every tactic available,” Woodhouse said, adding: “It’s not enough to wait and see what they’re going to do and how far they’re going to go.”

  Politico

Because we already know that will be just as far as the fucking can.

[Presumptive Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan] is preparing to use the gavel he’s poised to take for conduct a sweeping investigation into the Justice Department and FBI, two frequent targets of Trump’s ire. That probe is likely to touch on everything from the search at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents to tracking threats against local school officials, which the GOP slams as an effort to target parents despite denials from the bureau.

Other GOP areas of interest include the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ukraine aid and a coronavirus probe that is likely to sweep up longtime public health adviser Anthony Fauci.