Today in Politics, Bulletin 499. 11/9/26 FRESHMEN ORIENTATION!

 

Today in Politics, Bulletin 499. 11/9/26 Ron Filipkowski Nov 9 ∙ … Today was freshman orientation on Capitol Hill, and the mood of incoming Democrats in both chambers was joy, optimism, hope and determination. For those of us who have been beleaguered and besieged over the past two years with MAGA ascendant, it was like watching the cavalry arrive. This was a group photo of new House Dems: … Rep-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier (D-NY) to Meidas reporter Pablo Manriquez: “We have to make sure that we’re rooting out corruption, whether that is corruption with these corporations that are profiting from corruption in the WH, whether that is from the war machine that we’re seeing, where so many people are profiting off the deaths of so many humans, or whether that is corruption and the violence that we’re seeing from ICE and immigration enforcement. And so, making sure that we are being really diligent with our oversight, making sure that we’re holding all bad actors to account.” … Speaker Mike Johnson was asked by CNN’s Manu Raju if Republicans need to course correct if they want to get back in the majority again: “I’m not going to tell the president how to do his job. I’m sorry that the voters made the wrong choice. I really do believe that this next two years is going to be a bit of a circus. It’s going to be chaos, and that’s a great tragedy.” … The average age of the 15 departing senators is 70 years old. Their replacements are coming in at roughly age 55. That will bring the average age of the US Senate down from 65.4 to 62.8 years. Of course, if you take 93 year old Chuck Grassely out that brings it down more. … Capitol Hill reporter Allison Pecorin took this photo of several of the new senate Democrats. … At the same time that was going on, the Mango Menace was posting on Truth Social from the WH that the midterms were rigged: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” … Axios: “House Republican leaders are bracing for enough GOP defections to impeach Pete Hegseth when the measure comes to a vote this week. Republicans who were defeated in Tues’s election-night bloodbath have little left to lose and could be more willing to back impeaching Hegseth, whose overall support has eroded since the start of the Iran war. … Hegseth doesn’t have ‘a lot of love’ on Capitol Hill, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Fox. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is planning to force a vote on his resolution to impeach Hegseth for allegedly defying Congress and illegally continuing the US war in Iran. Republican leaders avoided the measure before Election Day after Mike Johnson canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early. … The political calculus has now shifted dramatically since Tues, with the GOP’s crushing defeat fueling anger within the conference and increasing the number of Republicans willing to back impeachment. The blame game is already in full swing among House Republicans, with the Iran war emerging as a top target of their ire.” … Politico: “The House is expected to vote on impeaching Pete Hegseth this week - and depending on post-election attendance - the measure could easily pass. Rep. Thomas Massie filed new articles of impeachment today to force a House vote. … Several House Republicans believe the upcoming Hegseth impeachment measure will pass after Tues’ catastrophic losses, with some members hungry to place blame for the party’s defeats. Even if only a few Republicans support the measure, dozens of GOP members who lost their seats could skip votes entirely this week. … One House Republican: “With the absences I expect from our side, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it passed. Assuming Trump doesn’t extricate him first.” … Massie was on fire at his press conference today to announce the resolution: “I hope he addresses the 8 articles and doesn't misquote the Bible in Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and call everybody fat and gay like for being for this impeachment. I may have just given you half of his speech.” “The irony of it is he was attacking Sen. Mark Kelly for saying you don't have to carry out illegal orders. Well, that's the consequence of this—Hegseth ignoring Sen. Kelly's advice—6 of these articles of impeachment are for him carrying out illegal orders.” He said Republicans lost RFK Jr’s MAHA voters in the midterms: “I sat over here in the Supreme Court and watched our DOJ argue that Monsanto should be immune from lawsuits. I suspect Susie Wiles had something to do with it.” On JD Vance: “Well, he whipped the big beautiful bill so he can't get away from that. One of the things he can try to get away from is the Iran war, but that's going to be harder and harder to do if this thing drags on. But at some point he's either with the admin or not with the admin on this.” Q - Do you think Vance should resign? Massie: That’s up to him. We’re doing one impeachment at a time.” “This secretary has used our troops to go seize oil for large corporations. You shouldn’t be used like that. You signed up to pledge your life for this country if need be, and that obligation shouldn’t be diminished to stealing oil for big corporations.” … MS NOW: “Pete Hegseth short-circuited a merit-based process for promoting senior officers and instead relied on newly invented criteria that disproportionately removed from advancement women and people of color who had already been approved for promotion. A senior official said internet searches were used by Hegseth’s office to withhold promotions from women and people of color. … The senior official also described how Hegseth intentionally scuttled the promotions of senior officers who were perceived to support DEI initiatives; played a role in implementing the Pentagon’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate; were involved in the evacuation from Afghanistan; or had a connection to former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley. … The senior official described how Hegseth’s executive office led a planned and deliberate process that involved creating paper-only files filled with printouts from internet searches that were inaccessible to the officers under consideration. Hegseth’s office gave instructions about the new criteria over the phone instead of in writing. … That meant brushing aside highly decorated officers with decades of experience leading carrier strike groups, thousands of flight hours on dozens of different aircraft, multiple joint assignments inside the Pentagon and shore and sea duty locations around the world. … Some had multiple advanced degrees from schools like MIT and Johns Hopkins, and others had deployed in support of several conflicts like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS. … The way that Hegseth’s office intervened may have also broken the law, said the three senior officials. Cody Harnish, military defense attorney and former Army judge advocate general, said the way that officers were pulled from the promotion list after being selected is illegal.” … 11 of the 31 members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus members lost their seats in the midterms. Rep. Lauren Boebert officially lost today. … Democratic strategist Matt McDermott: “For the first time in 16 years, Democrats are poised to control more state govts outright than Republicans. Democrats are on track for 22 state govt trifectas, their most in at least 34 years. The political map that Republicans built in 2010 is unraveling. Republicans spent the past 16 years building an empire of state power. Democrats just delivered the most significant challenge to that political order in a generation.” … Huff Post: “Mississippi US Senate race update: Democrat Scott Colom now leads Sen. Cindy Hyde‑Smith by 2,574 votes with 97% of votes counted.” … Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) posted today: “What happened last Tuesday was shocking and historic. It calls for a historic response. Christians need to gather and seek the Lord. I’m going to host a time of fasting and prayer for the nation on Tuesday, Dec 15 from 12 to 1 at the Capitol. Meet me there!” … JD Vance tried and failed at humor again today: “I wanted to talk about the devastating loss last week. There are a lot of people unfairly criticizing the leader of the team. A lot of staff infighting and a conversation about whether the #2 has what it takes to lead the team. I am talking of course, about the Ohio State Buckeyes!” … NYT: “Nvidia said that it was opening an investigation into Jensen Huang, its CEO and co-founder, after he acknowledged to the company’s board that he had been intimate with a business executive who US intelligence determined was a Chinese spy. … Huang’s relationship with the woman, who goes by Alice Huang, became a US govt concern after surveillance revealed that she was feeding info directly to Beijing. The revelation raised troubling possibilities because Huang is one of the most powerful figures in the AI revolution as well as an influential ally of Trump. … In a brief comment to reporters on Sunday evening, Trump defended Huang. The president said he would ‘certainly take him’ on his upcoming trip to China: “I haven’t heard he’s done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else. I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what’s going on. I think he’s an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it. He has done an amazing job for our country. “ … Trump added that he had no regrets about his own lack of action when he was told about a year ago that the US intelligence community was electronically surveilling Ms. Huang.” … NBC: “The scandal threatens to engulf a global leader of the AI revolution, and a key ally of Trump, at a crucial moment for both the technology’s future and the clash between Washington and Beijing. The Democrats’ sweep of the US midterm elections already promised greater scrutiny of the industry after months of mounting concern over its potential threat to humanity. … As the co-founder of Nvidia, the American chipmaker at the core of the global AI boom and the US-China technology race, Huang is one of the most powerful figures in AI. The billionaire regularly counsels Trump, has traveled with him on AF One, and has advocated against US curbs on the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China. … Like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Huang has also served as an informal business ambassador between the US and China on tech issues, sitting at the head table with Trump, Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a WH state dinner for Xi in Sept. … Anshel Sag, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy: “Jensen is quite influential when it comes to Trump himself and overall AI policy, especially given how central Nvidia is to so many companies that depend on the admin for govt contracts and export controls.” … Politico: “Congress is back, and Nvidia’s on the menu. News that the chipmaker’s board will investigate CEO Jensen Huang after he was reportedly the target of Chinese espionage is set to energize Capitol Hill efforts to restrict its exports to China and accelerate congressional scrutiny of the AI giant. … Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) former Chair of House Foreign Affairs: “The US should immediately pause the shipment of advanced AI chips to China until we can get to the bottom of this incident and ensure our national security is not being undermined.” … The fallout is also being felt in the Trump admin, where disagreement over the chip exports question has been simmering. The revelations are set to test Trump’s tight relationship with Huang. … Nvidia was already set to face off with Congress during the lame-duck session, thanks to a bipartisan effort to attach chip export controls to the annual, must-pass defense package. Now, Democrats in favor of the policy plan to push for even tougher limits.” … A congressional staffer: “Republicans who’ve been nervous about crossing the WH on this know the next version gets written by Democrats if they don’t deal now.” We had so many great questions submitted by you for today’s Ask the Editor show. I chose these 5 because most of them were asked by more than one person. The show should be out shortly after this Bulletin. These were the 5 questions: This one for Pablo - now that you have had a chance to interact with some of the new Democratic members in DC, what are your general impressions of them so far? Talk about the leadership elections for both parties in the Congress. How will they play out? What is the best way for Democrats to force an end to the Iran War? What was your impression of Trump’s 60 Minutes interview and what was the MAGA reaction to it? What is your take on Trump asking UFC President Dana White to be press secretary only to later claim it was just a joke? If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin recapping the entire weekend, you can find it here. Meidas+ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. … Trump’s sat down for a lengthy interview with new 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat. Two of his answers - on immigration and his faith - angered many of his own supporters. These were some of the key exchanges: Q: If I said Joe Biden is the part owner of a company and it has all of these investments from the Middle East, you would say that sounds corrupt, right? Trump: Well, he did have a lot of different things. Q: Sure, but why is it different for you? Trump: Because I know nothing about it. I made a lot of money before. Q: Why do you need the money? Why not just divest, walk away? Trump: I do. Q: No, you didn’t. Trump: I have a company. My sons are in the company. It’s hard to say to them, don’t do anything anymore for 4 years because I’m president. Q: But you could divest from the company yourself and let them do whatever they want. Q: Do you think the people—the people who are investing in the company that you co-own with your sons, who are coming from foreign countries, who want things from your govt—don’t you think they think that they are buying influence? Trump: I don’t know, but that’s true. Look, every president has a problem. You have people, and they work for you. And guys like you cover them, and you do profiles on them, and they become like everybody thinks that Trump loves them and everything else, which in some cases is true and some cases are not. This is true for every president, going back to George Washington. Q: Every president has not owned a crypto company, however. Trump: But they own something, whatever crypto was at the time. Okay, you know, there’s crypto. And before that, there was oil. Okay. And every president has had this problem. On Ukraine: When they had their first meeting, there was great disrespect shown to Russia. I think a deal is going to happen and they’re going to end up with a little differently shaped Ukraine. Q - What is one thing you would like to work with Democrats on? Trump: I would say immigration. I think that’s something that’s actually doable. If they are good people working in a landscaping company or hotel, there’s a large group of people who think they should stay. I think that’s something which is doable. Q: Doable to create some kind of legal status for the landscapers? Trump: Yeah. When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that’s worked there as a maid, as a cleaner, as a waitress. And all of a sudden, they’re being taken out of the country. It’s tough. It’s a tough thing. But there’s a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out. Q: Do any of those people work in your admin? Are they in the building with us right now? Trump: Yes. There are a lot of those people. On pardons: I don't want to have good people that are serving this country and doing a great job spending the rest of their life, like I had to do for 4 years, defending myself by radical left lunatics, by people that were very nasty and mean. I intend to issue tremendous numbers of pardons. Q - What do you think will happen when you die? Trump: Well, I hope I’m missed. I’m a religious person, so in theory, I go to heaven. I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell. Q - If it was necessary to forgive your political foes in order to get into heaven, if you were given that requirement, would you do it? Trump: “The answer is no. I want to be honest, no. The easy answer would be to say yes. But I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and always will. … Trump on the Tarmac in FL last night heading back to DC: Q: What made you suggest Dana White for press secretary? Are you serious? Trump: That was an example of something where I was kidding and that people said that's actually pretty good idea. … Axios: “Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) is calling for a delay in Tues’s Senate GOP leadership elections, injecting another note of uncertainty into what had been a largely foregone conclusion before Republicans’ devastating midterm defeat. He is asking his colleagues to pump the brakes on Tuesday’s internal elections. … McCormick joins Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in urging Republicans to postpone the leadership elections. No one has officially announced a challenge to John Thune, but there is clearly growing unease over the conference’s plans to move quickly to leadership elections. … McCormick: “One of the things I learned in business and the Army is that after a failure, you have to start with honesty, transparency, and accountability. A week ago, we had the worst election results in decades. We need a discussion about what went wrong, how we fix it, what we stand for, and how our agenda must focus on the concerns of the American people. I don’t believe we should move to leadership elections until we have digested and debated the lessons of the midterms and how to move forward. We need leadership in place fast, but Tuesday is too soon. I know it’s been the practice to go straight to leadership elections in recent years, but we should not rush it.” … Semafor: “Some Republicans, like UT Sen. Mike Lee, say they need a plan on how the lame duck will play out before deciding on their leadership votes. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who has run twice for leader, wants a commitment to pass the GOP’s voter ID legislation. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s day in the spotlight will come, but not for a few weeks: Democratic leadership elections will happen in early Dec.” … Punchbowl: Sen. Chris Van Hollen is now open to a run against Chuck Schumer. Van Hollen has “received an outpouring of calls and is now in active listening mode. The door is not shut,” according to a person familiar with his thinking around leadership. … Van Hollen is a leading progressive and has said he needs commitments from Schumer before agreeing to support him for another term as leader. The Maryland Democrat has also been eyeing a presidential run.” … Politico: “Trump’s regulators have embraced the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket over the last two years, clearing the way for them to quickly expand their businesses with a frenzy of new wagers on politics, sports and stocks. Now, Democrats are gearing up for an aggressive oversight regime that is expected to put the upstart industry under intense pressure from Capitol Hill. … Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR): “Folks are rightfully concerned about dangerous bets on elections, war, assassinations, terrorism, and govt actions that go against the public interest. We need to rein in this gambling, and with Democrats taking back control of Congress, now is the time for long-overdue legislative action.” … Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is launching a bid to chair the House Financial Services Committee, pledged to curb “predatory lending and predatory platforms, including prediction markets, so that our constituents keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets.” … Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned the “legitimacy and regulation” of the platforms’ election-focused markets in a letter to Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) joined her on the letter. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is weighing whether to take up a case related to the markets and who should get to oversee them. … A former Wall Street regulator: “These guys don’t have an ally in Congress. To a certain extent, they might even be the new crypto as far as congressional attention from Democrats.” … Politico: “Sen. Lisa Murkowski is next in line to become the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee in early January, when Democrats retake control of the House and Senate and Collins, the current chair, leaves office. The senator has already vowed to ‘get back to governing in the middle’ and is expected to work with both parties to rein in Trump’s moves to wrest spending power away from Congress. … That could include siding with Democrats in continuing to block WH budget director Russ Vought’s efforts to put political appointees in charge of approving grants and preventing Trump from executing another mass cancellation of federal dollars next fall - two Trump admin actions Murkowski has denounced.” … Former GOP Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen: “Russ Vought’s gonna meet his match. She believes in the process, the power of the purse, and I think she’s going to be a power to be reckoned with. Not that Susan Collins wasn’t. But I’m hugely admiring of Murkowski’s outspokenness. She’s had quite a lot of opinions on the admin breaking the law.” … Iran analyst Danny Citrinowitz: “I think we need to distinguish between the short-term and long-term implications of the US midterm elections. In the long run, Iran has achieved a significant strategic success. The blue wave has demonstrated something that every future American president will have to consider before launching another war against Tehran: Iran does not need to defeat the US militarily to impose enormous economic and political costs on Washington. Disrupting global energy markets, driving up gas prices, and increasing the cost of living for ordinary Americans can ultimately have devastating political consequences. But in the short term, the situation may actually become more dangerous. Tehran feels strengthened by the election results. It has little incentive to make major concessions, particularly regarding the Strait of Hormuz, frozen Iranian funds, and its ability to export oil. Iran was unwilling to surrender before the elections, and it certainly has no reason to do so now. This leaves Trump with several difficult options. He can walk away without a meaningful agreement, but that would hardly look like victory. He can accept some Iranian demands regarding Hormuz to open the door to nuclear negotiations. Or he can continue the current pressure campaign, hoping Tehran will eventually blink.” … ProPublica: “The Trump admin awarded a small biosecurity company nearly $40 million to screen for Ebola and other infectious diseases just months after a firm linked to Trump’s elder sons invested in its parent company. The contracts, one to screen for Ebola in several US airports and the other to respond to disease outbreaks in the Congo, are 7 times the total value of govt contracts the company had directly received before. … The company, XpresTest, has years of experience monitoring for COVID-19 and other diseases for the govt at US airports. That makes its parent, XWELL, an unusual hybrid, selling both spa treatments and biosecurity services. Last year, it made most of its money from waxing salons and airport spas that offer manicures, massages and “chakra beds.” … The contracts are the latest example of the president’s family benefiting financially from his admin’s actions. And the stakes for these deals are particularly high. In the Congo, an Ebola outbreak has killed more than 5,000 people this year, and the federal govt is trying to stop the pathogen from coming to the US. … XpresTest has never worked with Ebola or provided biosecurity services abroad, let alone in the kind of volatile locales it’s now expected to work in. Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the govt’s response to a 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, said it’s concerning that the govt would award such a lucrative contract to a company that has no experience in Africa: “There are countless organizations in the world that have decades of experience doing this work. I have to wonder why the hell they’re not going with someone who has actually done this before.” … A spokesperson for Donald Jr. and Eric Trump said that they are “merely passive, minority investors in a fund that invested in this company,” and that they had no “involvement in or knowledge regarding the negotiation or procurement of any of its contracts, including any govt contracts.” … Politico: “Democrats intend to find a more prominent location to display a memorial plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 - which Republicans currently have relegated to the basement of the building. … Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) , the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, confirmed he plans to facilitate the move when his party retakes the majority in January. And while he is still working out the logistics, the relocation would send a strong message about how Congress remembers a widely traumatic event that remains politically divisive. … The Democratic-controlled Congress passed legislation in 2022 authorizing a plaque to be displayed in the Capitol, in honor of the Capitol Police, DC Metro Police and others who “bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy.” … By the time the plaque was ready to be installed, however, Republicans had taken over Congress - and many GOP lawmakers preferred to downplay or ignore the episode implicating Trump in inciting the riot to protest the results of the 2020 election. … In March 2026, the plaque was mounted in the basement of the Capitol building’s Senate side in a hallway that looks out over the West Front - where some of the most intense fighting happened on that day. Democrats have continued to insist it be moved so more people can regularly see it.”