The Dictatorship
The House GOP’s biggest hurdle next year may be the House GOP
When President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office again on Jan. 20, it will complete a Republican takeover of Washington. The House and the Senate will have been sworn in two weeks earlier, offering the party a do-over for the trifecta it held in 2017 at the beginning of Trump’s first term. But while back then it was typically the White House acting as the biggest stumbling block to the Republican agenda, it seems likely that baton has been handed off to the incoming 119th Congress.
It’s easy to feel a sense of growing dread at what it means to have Republicans in full control again. I was filled with a similar sense ahead of the 2022 midterms — but one should never underestimate Republicans’ willingness to punch one another in the face out of spite. In many ways, a large number of the policies laid out in Project 2025 may not even need an organized resistance: At least in Congress, all Democrats need to do to notch a win is sit back and let the GOP tear itself apart, especially on the looming fight over taxes.
At least in Congress, all Democrats need to do to notch a win is sit back and let the GOP tear itself apart
You see, there’s a beautiful irony at work when it comes to the House Republican caucus. The last two election cycles have seen them capture, then retain, a majority of seats and the speaker’s gavel. When the last Congress was gaveled in, Republicans held 222 seats to the 213 that Democrats had won. The GOP then needed 13 rounds of voting to elect a speaker, only to narrowly avoid defaulting on America’s credit, before dumping said speaker nine months later. Add multiple occasions when a federal shutdown was averted thanks only to Democrats’ swooping in to save the GOP from itself, and it makes for a historically shoddy track record.
Most of that infighting centered on far-right members of the Freedom Caucus who pushed dead-end legislation to slash spending on the social safety net or otherwise to own the libs, be it by attacking transgender health care or yelling about gas stoves. With President Joe Biden in the White House and with Democrats running the Senate, it was an impractical strategy that undercut any leverage Republicans might have used to extract smaller concessions in the face of Democrats’ united opposition. The far right lashed out in anger at any yielding to political reality, even stymieing Republican messaging bills from reaching the House floor in protest as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., attempted to keep the train on the rails.
This time around, Republicans are on track to hold as few as 220 seatsthe smallest starting majority in more than a century. If all members are present on both sides of the aisle (and assuming the Democrats can maintain party discipline), the GOP can afford to lose only three votes on any given bill before it fails. That margin could shrink even further in the weeks to come as the seats several of Trump’s Cabinet picks will vacate remain pending special elections. Even if the far right is completely placated in every bill Johnson puts forward, swing-seat Republicans still exist. Many of those front-line members barely staved off their opponents in the last election. Two years of backing Trump’s most divisive policies might be too much for their constituents to bear.
For a sense of how much this micro-majority might struggleremember that the only major legislation to emerge from Trump’s first term was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Most of the tax cuts and other major provisions in that law expire after 2025, making their potential reauthorization one of the biggest fights ahead in this incoming session. When the bill first passed through Congress, it did so with 12 GOP defections in the House. That’s four times as many votes as the GOP can lose before a bill is tanked — with Democrats perfectly happy to let taxes on the middle class spike on Trump’s watch.
Democrats will be well within their rights to point out that the people holding the matches are also the ones stepping on the firehose.
Most of those GOP “no” votes in 2017 came from Republicans from more populous states, like New York and California, who were upset that the legislation capped the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction people could claim on their taxes. Trump has suggested he would lift that cap this time around, but without even bigger cuts to spending, doing so would blow an equally big hole in the deficit. While it seems likely the White House could unilaterally attempt to eliminate that spendingthe amount of borrowing required may be enough for the GOP’s remaining fiscal hawks to pause before promising their votes.
Fiscal hawks, SALT advocates, the Freedom Caucus — already that’s multiple competing factions, each attempting to get its way, that need to be appeased to get all the Republicans on the same page. Satisfying all of them may prove impossible when you consider that the Senate also must get on board with Republican senators having their own set of priorities. The lack of leverage that House leadership will have to force loyalty will only be compounded if it leaves in place the rule that allows a single member to call a vote on whether to topple the speaker, as we saw in 2023.
And that’s not considering the other basic housekeeping hurdles lined up down the track. The annual spending bills for the current fiscal year still need to be passed, and the debt ceiling will be un-paused in January, setting the stage for a potential crisis later in the year.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board correctly clocked that Republicans have roughly a year to get anything done legislatively before fretting about the midterm elections takes over. “Perhaps Donald Trump can keep them in line behind Speaker Mike Johnson,” their essay warned, while “factionalism will mean the end of a functioning majority and guaranteed defeat in 2026.” And with the whole of Washington in Republican hands, Democrats will be well within their rights to point out that the people holding the matches are also the ones stepping on the firehose.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
President Donald Trump is giving fragile U.S.-Iran diplomacy “some space” before deciding whether to resume strikes, United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said Sunday.
Hours later, however, Trump posted images to social media depicting the U.S. attacking Iran.
Waltz also dismissed concerns over the United States’ diminished munitions stockpiles, even as he conceded that “a lot” of weapons have been depleted, which he said was because of the Russia-Ukraine war and fighting with the Houthis.
“I want to be crystal clear: The U.S. military — and I’ve verified this every which way — has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Waltz’s comments came on the second consecutive day of paused fighting between the United Sates and Iran amid reports of a dwindled U.S. stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors, among other munitions.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the depletion of interceptor stockpiles is among the reasons why the administration is wary of resuming major combat operations in a war launched without congressional authorization and which has grown exceedingly unpopular.
But Waltz underscored that the pause in fighting is to allow for an opportunity for peace — not because of an insufficient weapons supply, and warned that those leaking information to the press about the U.S. not having sufficient weaponry “deserve to be in jail.”
“What the president is doing right now, as we’ve seen all along, is giving some talks some space. Talks are ongoing,” Waltz told NBC. “They’re happening at every level, from the more technical aspect of it all the way to the highest levels, of course, within both the Iranian government and the U.S. government.”
He reiterated in an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that Trump “is giving diplomacy a chance.”
But even after Waltz publicly touted giving peace a chance, Trump posted several AI-generated images on Truth Social Sunday afternoon depicting the U.S. striking Kharg Island. In one imageTrump is standing on the deck of an Iranian oil tanker with an American flag in hand.
Trump met with top aides on Friday to weigh escalating military action against Iran, according to a senior White House official. On Saturday, the president told a French journalist that he is “absolutely” considering resuming full-scale war with Iran if the U.S. doesn’t “get 100% of what we want.”
Waltz declined to give a timeline for when the war would end.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that if Iran plays any role in attacking Israel, it would be making a “terrible mistake” and that the response would be “very forceful.”
“If Iran attacks Israel – either directly or through proxies, either with ballistic missiles or UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]’s or killer drones — it will make a terrible mistake,” he said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”“Because our response, Israel’s response, will be very, very forceful.”
Netanyahu, who launched the war with Iran jointly with Trump on Feb. 28, is set to meet with his U.S. counterpart at the White House on Tuesday, the same day he’s scheduled to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Jake Traylor and Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attackthat left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.
Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.
“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
Dobrindt put the total number of wounded at 29. The attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.
Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They’ll never erase us, we’ll never be gone,” they said. “As long as humanity has existed, we’ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
Suspect convicted of ties to Islamic extremism
Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors have appealed.
The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.
He was released from detention pending the appeal.
Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festivalknown as Christopher Street Daywas ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.
Police said a woman was killed.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Hundreds of thousands had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+celebrations.
“We are simply stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. “This suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.”
Amsterdam says it will celebrate freedom in the wake of Berlin attack
Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that law enforcement would find the suspect.
“I would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don’t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated,” he said. “These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.”
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly strengthened.
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas marketkilling 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, an attack that saw a Syrian man convicted in March and sentencedto 13 years.
This week, Amsterdam will be hosting World Pride alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but aim to prevent any extra measures getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.
Katy Perry lambasted the Trump administration over the weekend for using her song “Firework” in one of its social media videos about U.S airstrikes on Iran.
The pop star said she was “deeply appalled and angry” over the use of her song in a White House TikTok video featuring bombs exploding set to Perry’s 2010 hit — specifically featuring her lyrics “boom, boom, boom.” A caption on the video, which has more than 6 million views, reads: “Iran has been warned.”
“I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it. I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments,” Perry wrote in an X post on Saturday. “To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.”
White House aide Kaelan Dorr responded to Perry, saying“This you?” He posted Perry’s own military-themed music video of her song “Part of Me,” in which she’s dressed in combat uniform.
Perry, who is in a romantic relationship with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is among many other prominent artists who have rebuked the Trump administration for using their music in videos on official accounts.
Kesha publicly admonished President Donald Trump’s administration in March after the official White House TikTok account used her song “Blow” in another video about military action. “Stop using my music, perverts,” she said on X.
The Filipino American pop star Olivia Rodrigo expressed outrage at the Trump administration after it used her song “All-American Bitch” last fall in a video threatening deportations. She responded to the Department of Homeland Security at the time, saying, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”
While the video is still visible, Rodrigo’s music has been removed.
And last December, Sabrina Carpenter condemned the administration for using her song “Juno” in a video about immigration arrests, which she called “evil and disgusting.”
“Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” the singer wrote at the time.
Ariana Grandealso posted on her Instagram story last September criticizing the administration over its immigration policyanti-LGBTQ+ messaging and alleged censorship. In response, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told her, “Save your tears,” a reference to one of her songs. Last month, after the White House used her song “Bye” in an anti-immigration video on TikTok, she commented“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Taylor Swift. The White House poked fun at the mega star earlier this month when shemarried Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. Its official X account posted photo-shopped images of the venue’s billboards blaring, “TRUMP IS YOUR PRESIDENT.” After she endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election, Trump wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Last year, Trump went after Bruce Springsteenfor insulting the president at a concert in Manchester, England, where the Boss called the administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous.” Trump called the Grammy-award winning artist “highly overrated,” writing in part, “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
- Trump tells Thune to keep Senate in session to pass SAVE America Act
- ‘Figure out a way to get it done’: Scalise warns pressure is building on Senate GOP to move on reconciliation
- Capitol agenda: Thune tries to focus as Trump fumes
- ‘Figure out a way to get it done’: Scalise warns pressure is building on Senate GOP to move on reconciliation
- Mark Sanford launches Senate bid in South Carolina special election
- ‘Figure out a way to get it done’: Scalise warns pressure is building on Senate GOP to move on reconciliation
- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp isn’t done with EVs
- A bipartisan House duo’s final pitch for pre-midterm AI action
- DSA co-chair: ‘Establishment Democrats should be worried about the voters’
- Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say Iran war has been harder than Trump administration expected: Poll
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words