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The House passed a four-bill $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend that includes $60 billion in additional aid for Ukraine. The bill could cost House Speaker Mike Johnson his job.
The aid package passed in a 311-112 vote with the unanimous support of Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favor of the bill.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., threatened to introduce a motion to remove Johnson, R-La., from his position as speaker if he brought the funding for Ukraine to the House floor for a vote.
“I think she’s looking at the totality of what’s come across the floor over the past few months, and she is expressing extreme disappointment with that,” Ryan Walker, executive vice president of Heritage Action for America, says of Greene. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation, of which Heritage Action is the grassroots arm.)
Greene left Washington at the end of last week without introducing the motion to vacate the speaker but said during an interview Sunday on Fox News that she still planned to try to oust Johnson.
“Mike Johnson’s speakership is over,” Greene said on “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding, “He needs to do the right thing—to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”
Less than one year after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the role, Capitol Hill is bracing for the potential of another speakership battle when Congress returns to Washington next week.
Walker joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the reason for the sharp divide in Congress over the foreign aid package and the likelihood Johnson will face removal as speaker. Walker also explains where Congress is getting the money to send to Ukraine.
Listen to the podcast below:
The post Why Speaker Johnson’s Job Is on the Line After House Votes $60 Billion for Ukraine appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Two months ago, the House voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Next week, the Senate will receive the two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is expected to dismiss the charges just as quickly as he receives them.
“Schumer is going to table it,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., predicts of the impeachment articles.
The articles were originally expected to be delivered to the Senate on Wednesday, but some Senate Republicans asked House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to delay the delivery until next week. Fox News reported that the benefit of delaying the delivery of the articles is to allows more time for debate without the time restraint of the coming weekend.
Schumer has not indicated he plans to change his position on the articles of impeachment if they arrive next week instead of Wednesday.
If Schumer does dismisses the charges against Mayorkas, it will be a historic first, according to Marshall.
“This has never happened before,” the Kansas lawmaker said, adding that there have “been 21 impeachment trials over on the House side. Four of those, the person died [or] they resigned, but 17 of them still had the person in office when those impeachment articles were delivered, and every one of those was followed through with the trial. Again, this is so toxic that Chuck Schumer is going to table it. That’s certainly what it looks like, but we’re going to go down screaming and fighting,” Marshall says.
The Republican-controlled House voted 214 to 213 on a party-line vote to impeach Mayorkas on Feb. 13 after a failed attempt a week prior.
The House’s first article alleges that the homeland security secretary has failed to secure America’s border and enforce immigration laws, instead executing policies that incentivize illegal immigration.
The House’s second article of impeachment contends that Mayorkas is in breach of the public trust and knowingly has made false statements to Congress and the American people.
Marshall joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the Senate’s expected course of action on the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, and to explain what course of action remains for conservative lawmakers seeking to secure America’s borders.
Listen to the podcast below:
The post Senator Vows to Go Down ‘Screaming and Fighting’ in Mayorkas Impeachment Battle appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The places where they were raised and to which they traveled formed the Founding Fathers’ geographic orientation, which influenced their view of the nation and what the country could become, according to Michael Barone.
While George Washington had “a map that goes north by northwest,” Thomas Jefferson “saw the country from [the] perspective of the West,” says Barone, a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner and a co-author of “The Almanac of American Politics” since its first edition in 1972.
In his new book “Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America’s Revolutionary Leaders,” Barone explains how the differing “mental maps” of Founders such as Washington, Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton were sometimes in opposition, but together formed our great nation.
Barone joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the little-known facts about the Founding Fathers he uncovered while researching the new book.
Listen to the podcast below:
The post Understanding the Founding Fathers’ ‘Mental Maps’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Tim Murtaugh became a familiar face to many Americans as President Donald Trump’s communications director for his 2020 reelection campaign. As one of Trump’s most visible spokesmen, Murtaugh had a front-row seat to the most-watched campaign in history.
But just a mere four years earlier, Murtaugh found himself in a much different spot. After struggling with alcoholism for years, he was jailed in 2015 for public drunkenness and unsure of his fate. That’s when he decided to give up alcohol and focus on turning his life around.
Murtaugh would go on to work for Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue before joining Trump’s reelection campaign. Today, he’s running his own communications firm. He joined “The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about his new book—out today—called “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It: My Escape from Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign.”
Listen to the interview, watch the video, or read an abridged and edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: Tim Murtaugh, you’re the author of a new book, “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It.” You’re somebody who our Daily Signal audience will probably remember as a return guest to this show. You’re the founder and principal at Line Drive Public Affairs and the former communications director for the Trump 2020 campaign.
Tim Murtaugh: Good to see you, Rob. Thanks very much. And there was a time where I was a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation as well.
Bluey: We appreciate your contributions during that time. And I’m thankful to you for telling this story. Take us back to in 2015. You are in a Fairfax County jail. It illustrates so much how far you have come in just a few short years.
Murtaugh: On May 16, 2015, I went out and as I liked to do at the time, got drunk. And at that time, I was charged with drunken public intoxication, something along those lines. I ended up in the Fairfax County Adult Correctional Center and that’s where I came to.
That day was different from many of the other times that I had been drinking too much because I was on probation for the second of my two DUIs, and I had 80 days of suspended jail time hanging above my head. And if I had gotten convicted of that public intoxication charge, I was going to have to go serve nearly three months in jail, and it would have been pretty much the end of everything. I would have lost my job on Capitol Hill. I would have lost my career.
My family was about at the end of their rope. My new wife didn’t know what to do with me, and so it really could have been the end of everything. And that’s the day I took my last drink, and I have never looked back.
I wrote this book for two reasons. One, because when I was in rehab—and I went to rehab five times—when I was there, I spent a lot of time in the bookstore buying titles and just devouring them. They were more autobiographical in nature, people writing about their own stories and how they made it through their battles with addiction. I wanted to write a book that helped people like me who are in rehab.
The other reason was, I had some opposition researchers coming after us on the Trump campaign. Back in 2020, they were trying to get reporters to write stories about me and my background. And I thought, if I just write a book about it myself, they’ll never be able to attack me with it again.
This is the story of my 2 lives – one with alcohol and one without. (Spoiler: one is better than the other.)
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) January 26, 2024
Oh, and half of it is about politics & the 2020 Trump campaign.
It would be so kind if you’d take a moment, check it out & consider ordering:https://t.co/RIgo9dWk59
Bluey: Was it difficult for you to put it all out there?
Murtaugh: Writing it, actually, was cathartic. I’m not sure that there’s any single person who knows everything that I went through. My wife certainly knows a lot about it. My parents and my brother, my close friends and close relatives, know big parts of it. But I don’t know that anybody, except for me, knows everything else that I went through.
I’m coming up on nine years now since I took my last drink. And I know that any day I could slip and pick one up. If I had that first one, it would be a downward spiral from that moment. Writing the book was an exercise that helped me stay sober for that period of time.
When you have been an addict—and you’ve managed to defeat it—there is always that lingering fear that if I’m not careful this could come back and get me.
Bluey: What have you found to be effective in terms of resisting that urge?
Murtaugh: This is really just a story of how I did it. It’s not entirely about this. It’s half a political book, half about my life in the Trump 2020 campaign, which at the time, until this next one, was the most-watched political campaign in world history. There are a lot of stories from behind the scenes from that campaign.
But the other half of the book, it is about my struggles with alcoholism and my whole story. It is not a how-to book—it’s just a story of how I got through it.
>>> An Insider Takes You Behind Scenes of Trump’s Campaign
People might find some parts of it that they can relate to or at least laugh about because not every word of it is deadly serious. There are some ridiculous things that people like me do when they’re in the throes of all that. It shouldn’t be looked at as a how-to fix-it sort of manual—just how one guy got through it. That’s all it is.
Bluey: You work in a high-stress environment, political communications, and I would imagine being right there in the forefront on the Trump campaign was at the pinnacle of that. What were some of the ways you found to be effective in terms of keeping your mind on your work and not getting distracted by alcohol?
Murtaugh: There’s a lot of pressure in politics. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the presidential campaign, which I was, or on lower campaigns, which I have also done. Whether they’re races on the state level, congressional, Senate, governor’s races—it doesn’t matter. There’s varying amounts of pressure. It all seems like the most important thing in the world when you’re going through it.
It helps to stay busy for sure. I broke the day up into little chunks. Could I get out of bed and get dressed and get ready to go to work without having to stop for a drink? Could I get from home to the office without stopping to buy a drink? Could I make it through the day and not sneak out somewhere at noon? And then at the end of the day, can I make it all the way home without stopping somewhere to pick up a bottle or to stop and get a drink?
I relied a lot on Alcoholics Anonymous, going to meetings like that. I found using the Serenity Prayer, just helped me if I had a little storm going on in my brain and I was worried that maybe I was going to veer off to the side and do something that I shouldn’t do. Stopping for 15 to 20 seconds to say the Serenity Prayer really helped me sort of refocus and get back on the rails.
Books about Biden are not selling well, so maybe this will interest people.
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) March 28, 2024
It’s not like any other political book you’ve ever read – it’s partly about the 2020 Trump campaign & partly about my battle with alcohol.
Order now for Tuesday’s release:https://t.co/RIgo9dWk59
Bluey: Family played a big part in your recovery. You come from a proud family. Your grandfather is Danny Murtaugh, the legendary manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a two-time World Series champion. What role does family play for others who might be struggling with alcoholism?
Murtaugh: It’s a really big, very important part of it. My wife is a very private person and she doesn’t relish a lot of these details getting out—or any of them really. But in fact, a few years back, it was her idea to write this book. And if she had not been on board with it, I wouldn’t have done it. And the fact that she is on board, is an illustration of how important she has been to me throughout my entire recovery.
Without her, I think there’s no question that I would either still be in jail or I would be dead. I don’t think there’s any two ways about it. And my parents were very instrumental in guiding me to rehab and helping me.
Bluey: In 2015, you found yourself at a low point. Then, within a span of four years, you are the communications director for the most-watched presidential campaign in history. Did President Trump know about your circumstances and did others on the campaign know about what you were going through?
Murtaugh: I felt like it was my responsibility to tell them. I started on the Trump campaign in February 2019. It was about four years after I had already taken my last drink. However, I did have pretty checkered past and I did have a history with law enforcement. I had two DUIs, served five days in jail with some suspended time for the first one, served 10 days in jail with 80 days suspended for the second one. I also had a variety of different drunk in public and different public intoxication charges.
Opposition researchers, and anybody who looked into it, would find all that stuff in about 10 minutes. So there wasn’t any point in hiding it.
When I went to work in the Trump administration for Secretary Sonny Perdue—I was his communications director for two years before I went to the Trump campaign—I told Secretary Perdue up front as I was interviewing. And then when I was being considered for the Trump campaign, I told Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, that very same thing. I said, “You should look into this because this is what I’ve got in my past and the president needs to know this.”
At the time, Sonny Perdue said, “Listen, as long as you’re not drinking now, I really appreciate you telling me, you’re going to be fine.” And then Brad Parscale went and ran it past the president and came back and he said, “Look, the president likes a good redemption story. He likes a good comeback story.” He himself doesn’t drink because he blames alcohol for the death of his brother, but the president was aware of it. And Brad said, “You know what? You’ve conquered it, let’s move on. And if anybody comes after you, I’ll stand by you.”
And he did because a lot of reporters called us because they had gotten the material from the opposition researchers, and they were threatening to write stories. Brad stood by me, and the campaign stood by me, and the president stood by me.
None of those stories ever got written. We managed to talk them out of it and talk them into agreeing with us that that was in the past.
Bluey: Are there any resources that you would recommend to individuals who may be struggling with addiction right now?
Murtaugh: There is always going to be an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that you can find and get to. And they truly are welcoming. Anyone can walk in off the street and find people who understand what you’re going through. That helped me an awful lot.
If you need more than that, then find a way to check yourself into a 28-day program. An inpatient rehab program can do wonders for people. As for me, I went to rehab five times. So sometimes it doesn’t take right away.
I would hope that people pick up the book. It’s called “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It,” available on Amazon.com right now, or other retailers as well. I hope that they can find some humor in it, and also maybe find some way to look at it and say that I can relate to it.
Bluey: Tim Murtaugh, thanks so much for having the courage to share your story. We’re proud of all that you’ve accomplished.
Murtaugh: Rob, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
The post An Addict’s Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign appeared first on The Daily Signal.
This week’s episode could be mistaken for the Three Martini Happy Hour, because this week’s installment comes with a tangy twist. John Yoo is away this week, so we brought in a ringer to take his place: Prof. Hadley Arkes! Thus this episode become a Positivism-Free Zone, in which we review the deepest ground of the natural law unencumbered by John’s usual alarums, excursions, and errors.
The episode comes in three parts: Hadley made some news yesterday, celebrating the retirement of the noted Notre Dame Law professor Gerard V. Bradley, who will be joining Hadley at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Law and the American Founding.
Gerard V. Bradley
From there Hadley proceeds to answering the question that we’ve been kicking around ever since the Dobbs decision, namely, just how should pro-life politicians break out of their self-imposed muteness about abortion. Hadley has the strategy.
Finally, we spend some time toward the end getting down some of Hadley’s “origin story” that brought him to Leo Strauss’s classroom at the University of Chicago back in the 1960s, and key friendships made along the way—especially our late friend and unsung hero Michael Uhlmann.
Note: We had some internet glitches while recording this episode that weren’t easily edited or smoothed over, so we ask listeners’ indulgence with these hiccups, in return for which we’re presenting this installment ad-free.
As usual, listen here, or at our hosts at Ricochet when it goes live there.
Lucretia hosts this week’s episode, which we recorded in the morning over coffee instead of whisky because travel schedules prevented the normal and proper Friday evening happy hour, and guess what? We’re even worse without whisky!
Among the news and issues treated this week: Why Biden isn’t FDR (he’s not even Harry Truman); why this was the worst SOTU (Lucretia offers a different acronym) speech ever; whether there are signs of life for the GOP in California after all; how immigration and abortion are playing out in the campaign cycle so far; how to think about the Supreme Court decision in the Colorado case dealing with Trump’s eligibility for the ballot (hint—it ain’t over till it’s over); and finally, can Harvard be serious in asking for a government bailout? The unifying theme here is galloping dishonesty, which is being normalized more and more every day.
Our articles of the week are (from me): Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s classic essay “Defining Deviancy Down,” newly salient in an age of truth-denying euphemisms like “justice-involved youth” and “newcomers” instead of “migrants” (which was a substitute for “illegal alien”); Lucretia ponders the challenges of Alex Berenson’s Substack article on new threats to free speech; and John draws our attention to the original 14th Amendment article from Baude and Paulson that brought us to the Supreme Court steps earlier this week, plus responses (also here) that got overlooked at the time, now largely vindicated. (I wondered whether Baude and Paulson were a rope-a-dope set up to make liberals look stupid and induce still more MSNBC primal screams.)
As always, listen here, or from our hosts at Ricochet.
There is no Three Whisky Happy Hour podcast this week, because we practiced a bit of “settler colonialism” by occupying the flagship Ricochet podcast yesterday and expelling the pervious residents.
Well not literally. Rob Long and Peter Robinson were both away, so the producers asked the 3WHH crew to fill in for the whole hour. And hoo-boy, with James Lileks in charge of the discussion, the sparks flew on immigration, as we successfully flushed out and scolded John “Open Borders” Yoo. The comment thread there is taking off like a Starlink rocket launch, but if you’re not a Ricochet member, you can use the comment thread here as usual.
Ricochet calls the episode “Drunken Monkey Business” on account of the whisky reviews we offer at the end, and you’ll definitely want to listen all the way to the very end to take in the daring high seas tale of Lileks “urinating” on a certain former National Review writer. (We also covered some of the latest Trump legal news, the Gaza War, and the hysteria over “Christian nationalism.”
This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald’s hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (I think the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn!
Say what?
Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump’s alleged fraud trial in New York City, apparently has a case of Anthony Weiner envy, and posted some rather racy locker room pics of himself some years back. And right in the middle of our discussion Lucretia flashed the pictures up on the Zoom screen, sending John and me rushing for some eye-bleach. There must be something in the bottled water Manhattan Democrats drink. (And doesn’t Engoron sound like the name of a dwarve or elve who goes bad in Lord of the Rings?)
In any case, we do finally get around to a new segment of the 3WHH, where we note three articles from the last week for what they can tell us about something. John chose those stupid presidential rankings; Lucretia chose an MSNBC articlefrom leftist columnist Paul Waldman that unwittingly admits that everything conservatives say about the administrative state is completely true; and I picked Karol Markowitz’s NY Post column reflecting on how recent social science that ratifies the conservative view that two-parent families are the best way to raise children is so controversial with the left, which is no surprise. (Honorable mention to a parallel column on the same subject by Mark Judge in the Washington Examiner.)
So listen here or from our hosts at Ricochet. But have your eye-bleach for your mind’s eye at the ready.
Vaunce News 