Goodbye and Good Riddance to Mitch McConnell

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Wednesday that he is stepping down as GOP leader this November. The Kentucky Republican is the longest-serving Senate leader, and has served in Republican Senate leadership for nearly two decades.

McConnell, who is now 82 years old, will be leaving the post after a series of episodes last year where he seemed to freeze and shut down entirely in front of the press. The news comes as a wave of longtime members of Congress (especially Republicans) are also announcing their retirements, many of them exhausted by the infighting in recent years. McConnell will serve the remainder of his Senate term, which ends in 2027.

“I think back to my first days in the Senate with deep appreciation for the time that helped shape my view of the world,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I’m unconflicted about the good within our country and the irreplaceable role we play as the leader of the free world.”

“Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell concluded. “So I stand before you today...to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. However, I’ll complete my job my colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January.”

Republican senators were shocked by McConnell’s announcement, reportedly not having been informed of his resignation beforehand.

As Senate leader, McConnell had two main objectives in the role. First, he wanted to completely block campaign finance reform. Second, he wanted to stack the courts with conservative reactionaries.

McConnell’s main goal as Senate leader seemed to be to encourage more money in politics, welcoming the role of corporate America in U.S. democracy. It’s impossible to go through the full history of how he has blocked campaign finance reform efforts over his nearly 20 years in leadership, but he has opposed any real change at virtually every turn.

A big reason for his decades-long fight with former Senator John McCain, for example, was over McCain’s signature campaign finance law.

In 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, aimed to limit the role of “soft money” in political campaigns as well as the political advertising of corporations and nonprofit organizations in elections. Almost immediately after it became law, McConnnell took the law to court, challenging its constitutionality. By 2010, the Supreme Court weighed in with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overturning key aspects of the law and effectively freeing corporations to spend money directly advocating for the election or defeat of specific candidates.

This was a recurring theme for McConnell during his leadership. More recently, in 2021, he helped kill Democrats’ sweeping voting rights and election overhaul bill, which would have required additional disclosures on funding and stiffened campaign law enforcement. McConnell at the time called the bill, which would have also expanded voter registration and vote by mail options, “jaw-droppingly audacious.”

On the courts, McConnell was just as cruel in his leadership.

He single-handedly held up the appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court during President Barack Obama’s tenure—arguing that the president couldn’t appoint a Supreme Court justice in an election year. But when it came to President Donald Trump’s term, McConnell suddenly sang a very different tune.

He helped Trump appoint three Supreme Court justices, including Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. That Supreme Court, of course, overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the right to abortion just two years later.

And it wasn’t only the Supreme Court. McConnell helped Trump completely reshape our judiciary, allowing Trump to appoint 54 appeals court judges during his 4-year tenure. For comparison, President Barack Obama appointed only 55 appeals court judges over his eight years in the White House. The court of appeals, it’s critical to note, handles tens of thousands of cases annually and is reshaping laws in ways that don’t get nearly as much attention as what the Supreme Court is doing.

All this to say, McConnell did nothing good for this country as Senate leader. He used his position in power to help only himself and his party.

This story has been updated.

House Oversight Chair James Comer is finally laying down his cards. Republicans’ Biden corruption impeachment crusade is over, at least for now.

“I am ready to try to begin to close this investigation,” Comer told reporters in the Capitol Wednesday. “This has been a very difficult investigation. This administration has been very obstructive. They haven’t been cooperative, [feels] like we are having to battle the Department of Justice and the FBI on a daily basis to get basic information.”

“Many of our witnesses that we brought in would be what I consider hostile witnesses, but at the end of the day I think with every interview we’ve learned new information and the basis of what we’ve learned is that the Bidens didn’t have a legitimate business,” he said.

It’s an amazing and last-minute reversal by one of the main House Republicans spearheading the entire Biden impeachment quest. In fact, embattled first son Hunter Biden testified in a closed-door hearing on Wednesday as part of the GOP’s investigation. But what should have been a major win for Republicans instead was accompanied by Comer’s admission of loss.

The sign of defeat comes as two major developments have essentially doomed Republicans’ impeachment efforts.

First, earlier this month, Republicans lost their key witness, Alexander Smirnov, who made up the very foundation of the GOP’s corruption claims about the president. Republicans had for months pointed to an FBI informant who in 2020 reported that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden received $5 million each in bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch, thanks to Hunter Biden’s businesses. That claim, while unverified by the FBI, was the main piece of evidence Republicans pointed to in their impeachment quest. Republicans last year went so far as to publicly release the FBI’s report, over the agency’s objections.

But two weeks ago, Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI and essentially making up the whole thing. As if that wasn’t bad enough, upon arrest, the Justice Department reported that Smirnov confessed to law enforcement that the story actually came from Russian intelligence officers.

Republicans have been desperate to pretend that losing Smirnov wasn’t a big issue, but Comer’s admission on Wednesday seals the deal.

The other big problem, which Comer surely realizes, is that Republicans now have an even narrower majority in the House. Representative-elect Tom Suozzi will be sworn in on Wednesday, taking over George Santos’s House seat. House Republicans will soon hold a majority of just 219–213, with three vacancies in the chamber. As a reminder, they rushed through the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas with just one vote, hours before Suozzi was elected.

The numbers are no longer in Republicans’ favor, and the evidence definitely isn’t, either. Finally, Comer is waking up to that reality.

Republican Representative Lauren Boebert accused President Joe Biden of running a “crime family”—while just a couple hours before, her 18-year-old son was arrested in connection with a crime wave in Colorado.

Tyler Jay Boebert is facing 22 charges over “a recent string of vehicle trespass and property thefts” in Rifle, a town in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, which his mom currently represents, said police.

The teen faces “four felony counts of Criminal Possession ID Documents—Multiple Victims, one felony count of Conspiracy to Commit a Felony, and over 15 additional misdemeanor and petty offenses,” according to the Rifle Police Department.

On the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office website Wednesday morning, Tyler Boebert was listed as a current inmate at Garfield County Jail.

To be clear, the criminal justice system in this country is not a joke—and neither is dragging politicians’ family members (let alone teenage kids) into the news cycle. But the irony is a bit startling given Representative Boebert’s own post on crime families Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Rifle Police Department, Tyler Boebert was arrested at around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. At 4:35 p.m., his mom took to social media to warn about the “Biden crime family.”

House Republicans including Lauren Boebert have been leading a fruitless crusade to impeach President Joe Biden while exposing his family’s corruption. But so far, their efforts have revealed no real evidence.

Just this month, their star witness, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted for lying to the FBI about claims that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden both received bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. According to the Justice Department, upon arrest, Smironv admitted to law enforcement that the story came from Russian intelligence offices.

You know Republicans are in troubled waters when even Fox News has abandoned ship.

On Tuesday, a Fox host highlighted that Hunter Biden’s closed-door deposition would prove a critical juncture for a monthslong probe that has amounted to, basically, nothing.

“So this is coming at a critical moment for the Republicans’ impeachment inquiry,” said Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends. “And on Capitol Hill, a lot of Republican lawmakers say they have seen zero evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. And right now, the Republicans do not have enough votes to impeach. And after dozens of interviews and over 100,000 documents released to the committees, the Republicans have yet to produce any direct evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden.”

But the other anchors behind the desk couldn’t quite leave it at that. Instead, they offered their own spin on a probe that recently crumbled after its key witness, FBI informant Alexander Smirnov—whose self-admitted lies served as the primary foundation for claims that Biden pocketed millions in bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch—was indicted by the Department of Justice for making it all up with the help of top Russian intelligence officials.

“But man, this looks absolutely terrible, 150 suspicious activity reports around them,” Brian Kilmeade objected. “Joe Biden was in on meetings with every major deal regarding Hunter Biden. He said my dad is sitting next to me while talking to a Chinese CFC official.”

That led to a bit of sparring between the two, with Doocy doubling down that Republicans had come up with nothing—and yet again on the eve of a looming government shutdown.

“I think there are many lawmakers who say they’ve seen zero evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors,” Doocy repeated.

“But we just said that they have,” Kilmeade replied.

“But they’ve … to impeach somebody you need direct evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden,” Doocy said, flustered. “Look, Hunter Biden, it sure looks like he traded on his name and he’s going to have plenty of time today—”

Kilmeade then interjected, adding that “the role his dad played is key.”

“Some Republicans say they’ve got the goods on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. But a number of Republicans who I’ve spoken to on Capitol Hill say there’s no direct evidence of misconduct by the current president,” Doocy continued.

Even before the president’s son, once the GOP’s most sought-after witness, took the stand on Wednesday morning, House Republicans were already hyping their next witness, special counsel Robert Hur. His invitation—just weeks after Hur issued a damning report on Biden’s health—could prove to add yet another dimension to the seemingly endless impeachment probe.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper tried to cut off a guest panelist speaking about Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, during a segment on the number of  “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s presidential primary.

Former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner was reacting to the early results Tuesday evening, which had already revealed a high number of votes for “uncommitted,” thanks to a protest campaign over President Biden’s horrific backing of Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I am young enough to remember, colleagues, when Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and also Congresswoman Cori Bush called for a cease-fire very early on, they were called abhorrent,” said Turner, who’s been a vocal supporter of the “uncommitted” vote protest campaign. “And now fast-forward to all of these bodies laying in the wake, and people are living through this every single day.”

“By the way, there’s also been slaughter in Israel,” Cooper interrupted, as other panelists also tried to jump in. 

“So there’s a lot of pain on both sides,” Cooper continued, questioning why Turner was giving a “lecture on the problem.”

“I’m talking about the politics of this tonight,” he stated. “What, to you, would be a victory, as someone who was calling for this ‘uncommitted’ vote?”

“I’m not denying that pain,” Turner responded. “All I’m saying is that at a certain point after October 7, it becomes clear. I mean, you have a right-wing prime minister.” 

“Right. We don’t need to debate the issue,” Cooper interrupted again.

The whole exchange is mind-boggling and worth watching in full to see just how much Cooper and other CNN panelists seem to be missing the point.

More than 100,000 Democratic voters in Michigan’s primary election Tuesday chose to show up to the polls and check the “uncommitted” box rather than vote for Biden. That’s about 13 percent of voters, or one in seven people.

The reason for that protest vote is clear: Organizers of the “Listen to Michigan” and “Abandon Biden” campaigns spent weeks reaching out to Democratic voters, urging them to make their voice known—and help send a wake-up call to Biden on his support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

So despite what Cooper said Tuesday evening, it is actually critical to talk about Gaza in any analysis of Michigan’s results. Talking about Israel’s bombing of Gaza—and how Biden is backing that bombing—is the actual politics of the issue.

“I think sometimes as we’re talking about this issue, we are centering President Biden, we are centering former President Donald Trump, when the ‘uncommitted’ effort is the center, the people closest to the pain, and that is the Arab American community, that is the Palestinian community, that is communities that care about peace,” Turner said on CNN Tuesday evening.

“And so while this president was in the ice cream shop saying, ‘I think there’s going to be a ceasefire,’ 30,000 people have been slaughtered. People are living in famine. They can’t get medical care. So it can’t come soon enough for them, and that was really the weight that I picked up on when I was in Dearborn, [Michigan].”

Republican Representative Darryl Issa offered a strange prediction ahead of Hunter Biden’s testimony on Wednesday, leaving room for the possibility that a statement from the president’s son could basically crumble the investigation.

“Thanks for covering what might be a big nothing, or an incredible opportunity to get to the bottom of this very complex scheme that the Bidens worked out for a decade,” Issa said on Fox Business.

It’s a bout of unexpected waffling from the California Republican, who has been a vocal ally of former President Donald Trump since 2016. Issa has gone to bat on several conspiracies that were predicted to help Trump, including the 2020 election interference campaign.

The closed-door testimony will be the first time that the junior Biden yields to Republican insistence on a private meeting. In December, Hunter Biden made a splashy show by refusing to participate in a closed-door hearing, making a rare public statement just steps away from the U.S. Capitol and risking a contempt of Congress charge in the process.

Republicans are expected to press Biden on his father’s alleged involvement in his overseas business dealings and the contents of his infamous laptop—which, by the way, was never verified by the FBI.

Regardless of the apparently baseless allegations that President Joe Biden was tied to his son’s foreign business arrangements, appearing before the committee is a risky move for Hunter Biden, who is already under federal indictment for related tax crimes. Anything he says on the stand could potentially be used against him during his criminal trial.

Earlier this month, Republicans’ star witness Alexander Smirnov—an FBI informant who claimed Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from a Ukrainian oligarch—was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov has admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in cooking up the smear campaign against the sitting president and his son.

In a sane and rational world, you’d imagine that Hunter Biden’s appearance (which Republicans have purportedly been trying to secure for months) would be the pinnacle of their impeachment inquiry into his father. But instead, House Oversight Chair James Comer and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan have opted to hype another, forthcoming interview with special counsel Robert Hur. His invitation—just weeks after Hur issued a damning report on Biden’s health—could prove to add yet another dimension to the seemingly endless impeachment probe.

Meanwhile, Republicans are using the opportunity to stall yet again on a government funding package, this time with a pressing deadline set for Friday.

The Michigan primary results are in—and the number of “uncommitted” Democratic votes is astounding.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 100,000 Democratic voters chose to check the “uncommitted” box rather than back Joe Biden in his reelection campaign, according to the Associated Press. That’s about 13 percent of people—or one in every seven—who voted “uncommitted,” thanks in large part to a protest campaign urging the president to reverse course over his reckless support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza. Biden won the primary with only about 80 percent of the vote.

That 100,000 “uncommitted” number is a much bigger deal than it seems. Organizers of the “Listen to Michigan” and “Abandon Biden” campaigns had set a goal of just 10,000 voters—and they flew far past those expectations.

Uncommitted vote campaign organizers spent weeks reaching out to Democratic voters, urging them to make their voice known—and help send a wake-up call to Biden on his horrific support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

The number of “uncommitted” votes is also concerning if you recall what the 2020 election looked like. Biden won the state of Michigan by a mere 154,000 votes, a much narrower margin than most polls and pundits at the time had predicted. That margin is only about half of the number of people in Michigan who listed Middle Eastern or North African ancestry in the 2020 census. About 146,000 Muslim Americans voted in Michigan’s 2020 general election, according to an analysis by the Muslim advocacy group Emgage, nearly Biden’s entire margin of victory.

These aren’t just random numbers. Polling indicates that a majority of Muslim and Middle Eastern Americans backed Biden in 2020. The Associated Press reported that 64 percent of Muslims across the country supported Biden in 2020, while only 35 percent supported Trump. And in heavily Arab American counties in Michigan, voters backed Biden by nearly 70 percent.

All of this was a safe assumption in 2020, given that the race was between Biden and the guy who pushed the Muslim ban, which targeted several Middle Eastern countries. But by November 2024, that may be no longer enough.

“The overwhelming shift of voters away from Biden makes one thing clear to the Biden administration: complicity in genocide isn’t up for debate,” the Abandon Biden campaign said in a statement Tuesday. “And if Michigan’s message says anything, it is that what awaits Biden in November isn’t victory but loss. And what awaits the Democratic Party is irrelevance.”

Many Arab and Muslim activists from Michigan speculated that the large uncommitted vote means that it’s not even just Middle Eastern or Muslim Americans who are concerned about Biden’s policies in Gaza.

“The uncommitted results are showing that this isn’t just Arabs and Palestinians. This is an issue for all Democrats in [Michigan],” Abed Ayoub, the national executive director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, warned Tuesday evening. “We’ve been saying this for months, but the experts and paid consultants tried their best to refute this point.”

Michigan Representative Debbie Dingell, who before the Michigan primary tried to warn that Trump would be much worse than Biden and “nuke” Gaza completely, had another dire warning after the results came in.

“We’ve watched too many innocent people die there. Gaza is in terrible shape,” Dingell said on CNN Tuesday evening. “But I think [Biden] does need to sit down with this community when feelings are quite so raw.”

Dingell also warned that it’s not just Arab Americans responsible for the protest vote. “It’s young people,” she said. “They are watching innocent civilians being killed.”

For nearly five months, Biden has ignored a huge swath of Americans worried about Israel’s relentless bombing turned ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. He has downplayed the death toll in Gaza, studiously avoided using the word “cease-fire,” overseen the vetoing of multiple U.N. resolutions calling for a cease-fire, and bypassed Congress twice to deliver more than $250 million in military aid to Israel. The Biden administration keeps saying it’s doing something behind the scenes to stop these atrocities—but as Michigan’s primary results show, far too many Americans no longer believe him.

While congressional leadership met with President Joe Biden Tuesday ahead of yet another government shutdown deadline, one Senate Republican couldn’t contain his discontent at the stupendous amount of time wasted by his own party on skirting one of Congress’s primary jobs: funding the U.S. government.

“This was supposed to be done in September. I mean this is now almost March? I mean, this is just ridiculous. They have agreement on the [budget] top line. They’ve had it since January,” Hawley told CNN’s Manu Raju.

Apart from the meeting at the White House, practically nothing has changed since Congress passed its last continuing resolution one month ago to extend the shutdown deadline. The new deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown is Friday.

A proper budget is still being held hostage to the aggressive demands of House Republicans, who claim to want more funding for the U.S.-Mexico border, but capitulated earlier this month when that became a possibility, all because President Donald Trump wanted to leverage the issue in the general election.

“This is why I voted against the last [continuing resolution],” Hawley continued. “They’ve just been kicking this can down the road. I can’t believe that they didn’t get work done over the weekend. They’ve had months to do this stuff, I mean my patience has run out.”

“They’re all to blame. And at this point it’s just absurd, I think,” he added, saying that includes Republican leadership but refusing to name names.

Meanwhile, Schumer described the communal meeting with Biden as “productive and intense,” particularly with regard to sending more military aid to Ukraine, which recently surrendered the city of Avdiivka to Russian forces.

A key witness who was supposed to testify against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis seemed unable to answer a single question on Tuesday.

Donald Trump and several of his co-defendants in their Georgia election interference case have accused Willis of an improper relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Trump’s team says that Willis and Wade began dating in 2019, while the couple says they didn’t start seeing each other until 2022, after Willis hired Wade for the Georgia case.

Trump’s lawyers have argued the romantic relationship provides a legal basis to disqualify Willis and throw out her case against Trump entirely. On Tuesday, lawyers Ashleigh Merchant and Steve Sadow questioned Terrence Bradley to try to establish a timeline of the couple’s relationship. Bradley is Wade’s former law partner and divorce attorney, and was meant to be a key witness in the case against Willis.

Merchant had multiple text messages from Bradley stating that the couple began dating in 2019. But when she began questioning him, suddenly, Bradley didn’t know a thing—including when they actually began dating, how the relationship began, and the trips they took together.

When asked why he initially said Willis and Wade began dating in 2019, Bradley said he was just “speculating.” He said he’d actually only had one conversation with Wade about the relationship, and Bradley couldn’t remember when that discussion had taken place. He repeated that he was only speculating so many times that many people on social media began to point out that Bradley seemed more like an office gossip than a credible witness.

Bradley also continually said he couldn’t remember telling Merchant certain details. Merchant kept asking him to confirm things he had previously told her, but Bradley only answered, “I don’t recall.” It got to the point that presiding Judge Scott McAfee told Merchant to move on, because the line of questioning was going nowhere.

Trump’s legal team allege that Willis and Wade had an “improper intimate personal relationship,” and accuse the couple of taking extravagant vacations that Wade paid for in part by billing Willis’s office.

Willis has denied the allegations. She says the relationship began in 2022, after Willis joined the case, and that they each paid their own share of the vacation bill. But the most important thing to remember, Willis has stressed, is that Trump and his co-defendants are currently on trial for “trying to steal an election.”

If Willis is removed from the case, that would deal a massive blow to one of the four criminal trials that Trump currently has scheduled ahead of the 2024 general election. The process to replace Willis, or even decide to completely drop the case, would significantly delay Trump’s day in Georgia court.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who apparently only learned what in vitro fertilization is last week, has a message for the people affected by the Alabama Supreme Court ruling: it’s all good.

The ruling is little more than a week old, but it has already wreaked havoc on Alabama’s IVF industry. Multiple fertility clinics have paused their IVF services, and at least one embryo shipping company has temporarily halted business in Alabama, as well.

When asked Tuesday about the ruling, Tuberville (who, again, has had more than a week to prepare some answers) looked visibly flustered.

“I support that people wanna have IVF,” he told ABC reporter Rachel Scott. His voice rose a bit at the end of his sentence, as if he were asking Scott to confirm that he was even talking about the correct topic.

“The state’s getting ready to pass a law,” he continued haltingly. “It’s gonna be ok. They’re gonna pass it, then it’s, then it’s, then it’s gonna be positive.”

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that embryos created through IVF can be considered children and are thus protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Since it’s common for fertilized eggs not to survive the IVF process, the ruling puts doctors and clinics at risk of being charged for wrongful death of embryos.

When asked about it last week, Tuberville at one point referred to the ruling as a “bill” and said he was “all for it.”

“We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do,” he said of the ruling.

When a reporter pointed out that the ruling actually made it significantly harder for people to have kids, Tuberville became tongue-tied.

The Alabama state legislature is rushing to pass a bill that would explicitly state embryos, fertilized or not, cannot be classified as children. But even if the measure becomes law, it is already coming too late for many people.

Since the ruling, at least three fertility clinics have paused IVF treatment in Alabama. The CDC lists just eight clinics in the state that provide assisted reproductive technology services.

Patients can still ship their embryos out of state and continue seeking IVF treatment elsewhere, although this increases the already considerable amounts of time and money required to get IVF. But Cryoport, one of the leading embryo shippers, said Friday it would pause shipping in and out of Alabama to avoid legal prosecution. This makes it even harder for people to seek out-of-state care.

People who are preparing to undergo IVF will now have to stop their extensive medication routines, which are part of preparing their body for embryo transfer, until they can find a new clinic that will treat them.

Scott told Tuberville Tuesday that she had spoken to a woman named Kimberly in Alabama. Kimberly was supposed to get her fourth and final embryo transfer on Wednesday. But her clinic was one of the ones that has paused IVF treatment, and now Kimberly will have to start the entire process over again.