Congress
Mourning Dick Cheney — and the US House
It was just another Thursday in Washington.
Donald Trump was threatening to execute congressional Democrats, House members were mounting gangland-style political reprisals on one another and the following people sat next to each in the same pew at Washington’s National Cathedral to remember the life of Dick Cheney: Anthony Fauci, Rachel Maddow, Ken Mehlman and James Carville.
The former vice-president, who died earlier this month after modern medicine and a new heart let him see his grandkids become adults, would have been appalled at Trump’s conduct, amused by his coalition of the willing (mourners) and depressed by what has become of the House, where he represented Wyoming for a decade.
Cheney’s service was fittingly held the first full week his beloved House was back in session after a 54-day absence following the government shutdown. The dispiriting part is that after they reopened the government, lawmakers quickly turned on one another. Resolutions of disapproval and even expulsion were teed up, with the usual tribal, red-vs.-blue targeting of the other party — but also intra-party warfare between rival factions.
It was enough to make the bipartisan vote on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files look like a historic triumph of Article I power and legislative branch independence.
Now a decade into the Trump era, it’s easy to focus on his aberrant and indefensible behavior. In fact, we should — it’s important to not be inured to how he acts. Calling a female reporter “piggy,” treating visiting autocrats like they’re former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and saying of the Federal Reserve chair: “I’d love to fire his ass.” Which was all before he went on social media to say “Hang Them” of those Democratic lawmakers who recorded a video urging military service members to refuse illegal orders.
And that was all just this week.
Yet what’s disheartening about the breakdown of the House is it illustrates that the political rot runs deeper than just one man. Yes, Trump sets the example and has modeled the worst behavior. But we know who he is. This year makes clear, however, that the institutional decay in Washington may outlast his presidency.
Republicans have full control of the government, yet there have been more resolutions of disapproval or censure (three) voted on individual lawmakers than there have been votes on major bills (one). It has gotten so bad that a bipartisan duo is introducing legislation to raise the vote threshold to censure a member, to “raise the level of sanity in the House.”
Yes, the lack of legislative activity is in part because House members wrapped many of their priorities in legislation formerly known as the “one big, beautiful bill.”
But would any student of Congress really say this has been a productive year for the House? And could anyone tell you what their legislative priorities for the rest of this session have been since the BBB was signed in July?
And then there’s that pesky Article I language, the power distributed to Congress by the Constitution. There’s not a single member of Congress who could argue with a straight face, at least in private, that they’re acting the part of a co-equal branch.
Arriving for Cheney’s service, I encountered a former Republican congressional and White House aide, a conservative, dejected by Congress’s abdication of its authority. Had I seen, he asked, the clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this month in which the speaker says he’s “cheering for the president” to win the Supreme Court case challenging Trump’s power to levy tariffs without congressional approval? “I say that as a jealous guardian of the legislative branch of government,” Johnson added, irony unintended.
Not far away was John Thune, the Senate GOP Leader and a House member himself at the turn of the century. “It’s a different era,” Thune said.
“It’s a different era,” he said again, and without taking pleasure in the observation as he surveyed a sanctuary full of old guard Republicans and the Democrats doing their duty, whether out of obligation or respect for the Cheney family’s opposition to Trump after January 6.
The audience reflected the end of Cheney’s career, and the eulogists spoke of Cheney the father, grandfather, boss and heart patient more than they did the controversial vice-president, 30-something presidential chief of staff or Desert Storm-era defense secretary.
But there were reminders of the post that Cheney cherished so much, serving as Wyoming’s sole House member between 1979 and 1989.
There were a handful of his colleagues from that era, including the few still left in Congress such as Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyerm, as well as those who also ascended to higher office, like Al Gore and Dan Quayle.
And the man who, had he won, would have been Cheney’s classmate in the House class of ’78 couldn’t help but stand in the pulpit and recall his own defeat that year.
“The Republican wave didn’t reach West Texas that year,” said George W. Bush, recounting his only loss while generously noting that Cheney was undefeated.
More telling, though, were the descriptions of Cheney’s mind and curiosity. Nobody dared say it outright in such a solemn setting, but I couldn’t help but think of what has been lost in today’s House. There’s not many Dick Cheneys walking through that door (at Cannon) and the few who are soon look to run for the Senate, governor or walk away entirely.
Liz Cheney, his eldest daughter and the former congresswoman, recalled her father as a college dropout, working on power lines in Wyoming by day but reading Churchill’s history of World War in a sleeping bag at night. She and her sister, Mary, would grudgingly go along with him as young girls as he took them to museums and battlefields, reading every word on every plaque to their consternation.
And then in the winter of his life, as Liz recalled, she and her father went back to some of those same historic sites. And even as he declined, he would still come armed with that day’s newspapers, the latest issue of The Economist and a book.
He was, Bush noted, “a serious man.”
If only the same could be said for so many in today’s House.
This isn’t to bask in blind nostalgia — those beneath the gravestones at Section 60 in Arlington and even more Iraqis should have their say in any full appraisal of Cheney’s career.
Yet nobody would argue that the current Congress and particularly this House are worthy of a great country.
There are still members who would’ve flourished in Cheney’s day, but even they are sober about the state of the institution.
“This is one of those eras in which you read Kipling’s classic poem, ‘If—’ over and over and then get up and go to work every day,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Appropriations Chair, told me. “The aim isn’t to rebuild Rome in a day. It is just to make things a bit better every day.”
Liz Cheney can’t because, unlike most all of her former GOP colleagues, she couldn’t and wouldn’t get over what Trump did on January 6 — and her state rejected her because of it three years ago.
I thought Thursday about that 2022 primary and recalled what stood out to me about an interview I conducted with Liz shortly before her inevitable defeat that summer.
She inveighed against Trump and the danger he posed, but she said something more about her party and the institution in which she then served.
“What the country needs are serious people who are willing to engage in debates about policy,” Cheney told me then, wishing Americans would “vote for the serious candidate.”
Then she went further.
“I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert,” she said, adding of her then-House Democratic colleagues with national security backgrounds: “They love this country, they do their homework and they’re people who are trying to do the right thing for the country.”
Cheney’s father had just recorded an ad for her, calling Trump “a coward,” and she was thrilled to have him by her side in her final House campaign.
“I talk to him every day,” she said. “He’s just a source of tremendous wisdom across the board, he’s such a student of American history.”
I reminded her that he co-wrote a book with his wife, Lynne, on House greats — Kings of Blue Light News – and she laughed for one of the few times that day. “Well, my mother wrote that — a sore subject,” she joked.
Would you have stayed in the House had your dad not so revered the body? I asked.
She dodged the question but turned more serious, explaining she was “so glad” she stayed — even though her career was nearly over.
“Having the opportunity to help make sure that we protect any future January 6ths, it’s the right thing to be doing,” Cheney said.
Her father also left the House without becoming one of those Kings of Blue Light News.
Had he not been appointed Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush, the taciturn Wyomingite may well have become speaker. Cheney was House Minority Whip when he left Congress in 1989, the back-up plan for Bush after John Tower’s Pentagon nomination was rejected by the Senate.
He was a man of the House and relished that his daughter, Liz, followed him there and was even happier when she declined to run for the Senate in 2020. She seemed in that moment poised to eventually claim the post that eluded her father once he left Congress.
But five years later Liz Cheney was out of Congress, honoring her father’s fidelity to the Constitution over party and then, in a moment that spoke louder than words, stopping on her way down the aisle as his funeral ended to hug Pelosi.
It was a poignant moment, the two mothers of five and daughters of House members who rose to the leadership as political opposites but bonded when duty called.
Former Rep. Richard B. Cheney (R-Wyo.) would’ve liked it.
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.
Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.
But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.
Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.
“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.
That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.
While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.
Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”
In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”
Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.
“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”
Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.
Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.
“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.
Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.
Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.
Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.
“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”
Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.
Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.
Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.
The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.
“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”
MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.
So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship12 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words