Mitt Romney, and His Roughly One-Third of a Backbone, Will Not Seek Reelection

Mitt Romney announced Wednesday that he will not seek a second term in the Senate and will leave office in January 2025.

The Utah senator cited his age as a primary factor in his decision to resign. If he served a second term, he would be in his eighties by the time it ended.

“Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. “They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, was the only member of his party to vote twice to convict Donald Trump during the former president’s impeachment trials.

But his legacy will be marked by a history of remarkable flip-flopping. He was a vehement Trump critic, speaking out against Trump in 2016. Romney swore he would never accept a Trump endorsement—only to accept one during his Senate campaign in 2018.

He also gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor about the importance of the truth in the wake of the January 6 attack. But Romney also gladly backed the ultraconservative policies that Trump pushed while in office.

Romney had promised in 2012 to repeal Obamacare, only to take credit for it three years later. He tried to get rid of Obamacare again in 2019, despite Senate leadership saying they were uninterested in reopening that can of worms.

Romney supported the Republican-controlled Senate’s decision to block Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, saying it was “consistent with history” to wait until after a presidential election. But after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, Romney helped the Senate rush through the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett.

It’s commendable that Romney is stepping down and making room for younger generations, especially as questions swirl about whether Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein are still fit for office. But it’s a shame that he wasn’t consistent with his morals.

This story has been updated.

Kevin McCarthy was called out Wednesday for not having the votes to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and he did not respond well.

The House speaker launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Tuesday, after months of the GOP insisting that the president is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas. Republicans have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims.

McCarthy ordered House Republicans to proceed with the inquiry, despite promising less than two weeks ago that he would not open the probe without a vote. When CNN’s Manu Raju asked him about that, McCarthy lashed out.

“You told Breitbart 12 days ago that you had the votes, so what changed?” Raju asked.

“You know what’s interesting to me?” McCarthy snapped back. “I just laid out to you a lot of allegations … so you don’t care about any of the answers.”

McCarthy accused Raju of not caring about whether Biden or his son, Hunter, had committed crimes. Typically, an impeachment inquiry would occur because there was already proof of crimes committed, not as a way to try and find that evidence.

The California Republican also attacked Nancy Pelosi for impeaching Donald Trump the first time without first holding a vote. McCarthy had similarly criticized Pelosi for doing so in 2019, so you would think that he would want to avoid copying her.

Another major difference is that a month after Pelosi opened the impeachment inquiry into Trump, the House voted to formalize the impeachment. It was unlikely the House would have backed McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry, though, as multiple Republicans said they were not on board with his plan.

Donald Trump privately met with Marjorie Taylor Greene to discuss what a “painful” impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would look like.

These talks happened just ahead of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement Tuesday of a formal impeachment inquiry of the president.

Trump and Greene caught up on their plan for getting Biden impeached over dinner at his private Bedminster, New Jersey, club on Sunday.

“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Greene told The New York Times. Greene added that she told Trump she wants the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

Greene is one of several Republican lawmakers that Trump has been privately meeting with to discuss Biden’s impeachment.

Trump has also spoken with Representative Elise Stefanik on a weekly basis as well as conservative House Freedom Caucus members pushing for impeachment.

House Republicans argue that as vice president, Biden made decisions to benefit and profit from his son’s business dealings. But despite months-long investigations, they have yet to provide any actual evidence of Biden’s supposed crimes.

“Biden is a Stone Cold Crook—You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven.” Trump wrote on Truth Social in August. “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!”

Trump himself was impeached twice during his presidency and has been criminally charged four times this year.

Republicans could have avoided opening an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden simply by subpoenaing his son. But they have no good answer for why they didn’t take that option instead.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Tuesday, after months of the GOP insisting that the president and his son Hunter Biden are guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas. Republicans have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims.

And throughout all of the hearings and interviews, Republicans have not once subpoenaed Hunter Biden for testimony. When asked Wednesday why that was the case, House Oversight Chair James Comer, who has led the charge against the Bidens, couldn’t answer.

During an interview with Newsmax, Comer said that Hunter Biden is “more than welcome” to testify on Capitol Hill. “He’s invited today. We will drop everything,” the Kentucky Republican said.

When host Rob Finnerty pointed out that Hunter Biden was unlikely to voluntarily appear before Congress, Comer haltingly replied, “Well, he can fight the subpoena in court. It’s very difficult … if it were easy to get a president or their son in front of a House committee, then the January 6 committee probably would have done that with Donald Trump.”

Comer’s right that the House investigative committee on January 6 struggled to get Trump to appear. But that may be due to the fact that Trump swore in 2019 that he would fight “all the subpoenas” for investigations into his actions. His administration refused to provide information for more than 100 congressional investigations, and Trump even sued his own accounting firm to try to block it from giving his tax records to Congress.

In comparison, nearly 70 Biden administration officials have provided testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews. Oversight Committee members have been briefed by high-level FBI and Secret Service officials, and they have received thousands of documents from the Treasury and the FBI.

But rather than subpoena Hunter Biden, Republicans moved right to an impeachment inquiry. Despite Comer’s hedging, the GOP has already admitted why. Republicans know they don’t have enough evidence to actually impeach and convict Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election.

Representative Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a theater in Denver on Sunday for “causing a disturbance” during the performance—and now we have the video footage.

Employees at the Buell Theatre asked two patrons to leave the evening performance of Beetlejuice after their behavior sparked three complaints from other attendees. An incident report says the pair were vaping, singing along, recording the show, and generally disrupting the performance, The Denver Post reported Tuesday.

While the venue’s report did not name Boebert or identify the person she was with, her campaign office confirmed she was escorted from the show. Security footage from inside the Buell shows venue security officials asking Boebert and a man to leave the show and then escorting them out of the theater.

It is not clear who the man with Boebert is. She filed for divorce from her husband earlier this year.

In the video, Boebert is seen initially refusing to leave her seat. One of the ushers had to threaten to call city police before the pair agreed to leave, according to the venue’s incident report.

Police were called and stayed in the theater lobby until Boebert and her companion had left. While they were being escorted out, the pair told employees “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ [and] ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” the report said. The video also shows Boebert giving the finger to security as she is being escorted out.

Boebert’s campaign manager confirmed that the representative had been asked to leave the show, but he denied that she had been vaping. He also confirmed that Boebert had used her phone to take a photo of the performance but said she didn’t know that wasn’t allowed. Typically, theaters announce before shows begin that photos and video of any kind are prohibited.

Elon Musk had wanted to recruit Rudy Giuliani in the early 2000s to help turn PayPal into a bank, but the outgoing New York mayor was too skeezy even for Musk, according to a new biography of the Tesla founder.

Musk co-founded PayPal in 2000. He originally wanted to name the company X and dreamed it would disrupt the finance sector (sound familiar?). Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, which was released Tuesday, reports that Musk and investor Michael Moritz flew to New York soon after to see if they could recruit Giuliani to act as their political fixer and banking policy adviser.

When Musk and Moritz met with Giuliani, “it was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in Isaacson’s biography. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”

“They asked for 10% of the company, and that was the end of the meeting. ‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

Giuliani went on to become known as “America’s mayor” after shepherding New York City through the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He then unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and eventually became Donald Trump’s personal attorney. While he initially amassed millions as a lawyer, consultant, and public speaker, his finances have been struggling of late.

Trump has refused to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, forcing Giuliani to fly to Mar-a-Lago and beg for Trump to pay up. Giuliani is also struggling to pay his own legal bills as he battles an indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

BP CEO Bernard Looney has resigned. On Tuesday afternoon, the Financial Times reported that his departure was the result of his failure to disclose the “extent” of his “past personal relationships with colleagues,” per BP. “He did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure,” the company said, noting that that it was conducting an ongoing investigation into his conduct following multiple “allegations.” Looney, 53, who has worked at BP since 1991, was brought on as CEO in 2020 as a fresh face to pivot the company formerly known as British Petroleum toward the future. He made $12 million last year, which is more than double what he took home in 2021.

Details about Looney’s departure are still scant. But in a less than auspicious coincidence, the news came on the same day that International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol announced that, for the first time ever, the agency projects peak demand for coal, oil, and gas to arrive before the end of this decade. He called it the “beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” In 2018, two years before Looney took office, fossil fuel pollution was found to be responsible for one in five deaths worldwide.

Under Looney’s watch—during which time there has been a drumbeat of catastrophic, climate change–fueled storms, floods, and heat waves—BP first made and then broke its much-hyped plans to scale back oil and gas production and double down on lower-carbon ventures like electric vehicle transport, wind, and solar. Like its competitors, the company saw record profits from oil and gas extraction in 2022. That made it less attractive to spend big on less profitable low-carbon businesses.

Earlier this year, BP, which has been linked to the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, announced that it would look to cut fossil fuel production by 25 percent against 2019 levels by 2030—not by 40 percent as it had pledged earlier. BP’s spending on low-carbon ventures, it should be said, has always been small. The U.K.-based think tank Common Wealth found that, in 2022, BP spent 14 times as much on shareholder payouts (including both dividends and share buybacks) as it did on “low carbon” ventures.

BP is not Beyond Petroleum, as it once tried to brand itself. It is decidedly, though, Beyond Looney.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden on Tuesday, and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is calling it out for the deeply unserious move that it is. 

When asked for a response to the news, Fetterman feigned shock and distress.

 “Oh my God, really?” he asked, his voice squeaking upward in pitch as he grabbed his head in his hands.

“Oh my gosh, you know, oh—it’s devastating!” Fetterman went on, before breaking into laughter.

“OooOooo don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” he moaned, clutching at his heart as his aide pulled him away. “Oh no, oh no!”

Fetterman’s response says all we need to know about how the Democrats feel about this impeachment inquiry: It’s one big joke.

The House speaker has launched this inquiry, despite having no evidence of wrongdoing by the president and despite criticism from members of his own party. On Sunday, Republican Representative Ken Buck slammed the entire impeachment inquiry. 

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence—linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said. “That doesn’t exist right now.” 

The impeachment inquiry could also spell trouble for the 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020.

When Fetterman was asked about McCarthy’s plans for the impeachment inquiry last week, he responded: “Go ahead. Do it, I dare you.”

“It would just be a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” Fetterman added.

A group of voters in Minnesota filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove Donald Trump from their state’s presidential ballot, the second such suit against the former president in less than a week.

The voters filed the petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing that Trump should be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That section of the Constitution states that anyone who has taken an oath of office to the United States and then “engages in insurrection or rebellion” against the country is banned from holding public office again.

Trump has been indicted twice, once federally in Washington and again at the state level in Georgia, for trying to overturn the election. While he has yet to be tried in either case, the lawsuit argues that “during his 2020 re-election campaign, and after the results made clear that he had lost the election, Trump inflamed his supporters with claims that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged.”

“None of this conduct was undertaken in performance of Trump’s official duties, in his official capacity, or under color of his office,” the suit states. “Rather, Trump engaged in insurrection solely in his personal or campaign capacity.”

This is the second lawsuit to remove Trump from a state ballot that has been filed in less than a week. Last Wednesday, a group of Colorado voters represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a petition to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot. The voters are either Republican or unaffiliated.

Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold would be responsible for declaring Trump ineligible for the ballot. Although she is named as the defendant in the suit, she appeared to welcome it because it could clarify the law.

“I look forward to the Colorado Court’s substantive resolution of the issues, and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office,” she said in a statement.

Election officials in multiple states are looking into whether Trump is even eligible to run next fall. A survey conducted by The Messenger of all 50 secretaries of state found that six are already looking into legal arguments to keep Trump off the ballot.

As Matt Ford pointed out in The New Republic last week, there is the potential for this to wreak havoc on the election if Trump is disqualified during or even after primary season. But “the rest of the American political system should start thinking about the possibility that Trump, the leading GOP contender for next fall’s presidential election, might not end up on the ballot at all.”

A MAGA Republican candidate for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee, used other people’s social media posts to pretend they were her supporters, a new investigation has revealed.

The city of Franklin votes for mayor on October 24. Gabrielle Hanson, an alderman, is running against incumbent Mayor Ken Moore. Both of them are Republicans.

Hanson posted two photos to her campaign’s social media accounts last month, one of a large crowd at an event she described as a “meet and greet” and another of a group of women in a restaurant. Both photos show racially diverse groups of people.

But neither photo is from a campaign event. In fact, neither photo was even taken this year, NewsChannel5 reported Tuesday.

Both photos were taken in Chicago in 2016. The photo of the crowd has since been deleted, but the picture of the group of women is still up on Hanson’s Facebook page (with a new caption). NewsChannel5 tracked down some of the women in the photo, and all of them were outraged that Hanson had used the image without their permission.

One woman, speaking anonymously, said she was “appalled, absolutely appalled.”

Another woman, identified as April, said she does not support Hanson. “I actually do not know who that is,” she told NewsChannel5.

April explained the women in the photo had been chosen for an ad campaign with the clothing brand The Limited, and they had all gone to brunch afterward. Some of the women said Hanson may have been part of the campaign too, but she wasn’t at the brunch.

Hanson, however, doubled down on her claim in a phone interview with NewsChannel5. She refused to answer any of reporter Phil Williams’s questions, instead insisting that the women were her supporters or friends who live all over the country and threatening Williams with legal action.

But the women in the photo maintained that Hanson is lying.

“I am appalled at the misuse of this photograph and the inaccurate representation of what is happening in it,” a third woman, speaking anonymously, said in a statement to NewsChannel5.

“Such blatant falsehoods being published exemplify the character of a candidate. As I’ve learned more about Gabrielle Hanson and her views, such an egregious attempt to show diverse female support is disgusting.”

Hanson voted in June to block Franklin’s Pride celebrations. She tried to pressure sponsors to stop funding a Juneteenth celebration, and she opposed building remembrance monuments at spots where lynchings occurred.