“The House may vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week. But even if the articles pass, they may never reach the Senate,” Politico reports.
“The ultimate decision on that question comes down to Speaker Mike Johnson, who could simply refuse to send the articles to the Senate before the current Congress expires — kicking the matter to the next one, when both chambers will be under Democratic control.”
“Scott Colom, the Mississippi Democrat who is leading in the count of the state’s U.S. Senate race, says that polling analysts like the Cook Political Report make it harder for candidates like him in Southern states to compete and fundraise,” the Mississippi Free Press reports.
“Cook Political had the Mississippi race labeled as ‘Solid Republican’ in its analysis ahead of the election, suggesting the state was an impossible flip.”
Said Colom: “At some point, we have to talk about the Cook Political Report and other ‘prognosticators’ who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle. They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long.”
“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is ‘confident’ in his chances of being elected Speaker of the House in January, he told reporters Monday, even as some of the soon-to-be members of his caucus declined to offer immediate support for the man who would be the first Black speaker,” the Washington Sun reports.
“Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise is making what colleagues see as his final bid to become the top House Republican, looking to lead a battered party in the new Democratic-run Congress,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Scalise, 61 years old, is squaring off against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House minority leader after Republicans suffered sweeping losses in the midterm elections and Speaker Mike Johnson said he wouldn’t run to lead the party next year. Scalise and Jordan had a bruising clash three years ago when they competed to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) after his ouster in October 2023—and neither got the top job.”
“Former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, who held the job for just five days last month before being fired, is again the talk of Washington as several high-profile advisers to President Trump believe she’s angling for a second chance at the podium,” the New York Post reports.
“Three sources close to President Trump told The Post that Zacharia has been working to charm him and new chief of staff Stephen Miller into giving her another shot.”
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“I think this president just wanted someone even more unlikable than him in the cuck chair in the Oval Office.”
— Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), quoted by LGBTQ Nation, on Stephen Miller being selected as White House chief of staff.
“Last summer, Mississippi began an effort to ‘continue to build on the accuracy of Mississippi’s voter rolls and strengthen the integrity of elections,’ as Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson put it,” The Atlantic reports.
“Using data from the credit-reporting agency Experian, the state scrutinized its list of registered voters, searching for anyone who may have moved, left the state, or died. Tens of thousands of Mississippians had their active registrations shifted to inactive—a crucial step toward purging them from the rolls.”
“On Tuesday, many of those inactive voters showed up at the polls, only to be told that they were not properly registered. Their best option was to fill out an affidavit ballot, a more involved process that increases the likelihood that a vote will not count.”
Tom Nichols: “Pete Hegseth was in my neighborhood today. I live just up the road from the Naval War College, where I taught for 25 years, and where Hegseth gave a speech this morning about the future of military education…”
“Two things were clear at the end of Hegseth’s speech: First, the secretary has no real idea what goes on in war colleges. Second, Hegseth is very angry that the war colleges are not incorporating his personal political vendettas into their curricula.”
“Rep. Haley Stevens’ Washington office was locked Monday on the House’s first day back in session since September amid questions about whether the Michigan Democrat will return for the remainder of the Congress,” Politico reports.
“Stevens saw a mass exodus of staffers last week after she made an 11th-hour endorsement of Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat she lost to in a nasty August primary. El-Sayed went on to beat Rogers by 7 points.”
“Retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat, will flip Colorado’s 4th District, ending conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert’s tenure in Congress,” CNN reports.
“Boebert’s loss comes after she elected to run in a more conservative district last cycle in an effort to preserve her political future. But Laubacher, who served more than three decades in the Navy, capitalized on the national headwinds against the GOP and focused her campaign on affordability issues.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for construction to resume on one of the longest and most controversial sections of President Donald Trump’s security project along the Mexican border,” the Washington Post reports.
“The more than 500-mile stretch of road, cameras, vehicle barriers and sensors planned to cut through Texas’s iconic Big Bend National Park has generated significant backlash. It includes segments where a 30-foot border wall will be built, although the administration has backed off a plans for a wall inside the park.”
Steve Benen: “In April, Donald Trump tapped a conspiratorial lawyer named Joseph diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who also helped defend the president during his first term, to oversee the Justice Department’s sprawling ‘grand conspiracy’ investigation. The remit was simple: uncover evidence of Trump’s political enemies throughout the government who were secretly plotting against him.”
“Assorted far-right partisans and fringe influencers, heavily invested in the president’s conspiracy theories, had high hopes that diGenova would advance their cause. He did not: diGenova quit five months later, after having racked up a grand total of zero indictments.”
“On the surface, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s re-election victory in New York checked all of the relevant boxes,” the New York Times reports.
“She crushed her Republican challenger, the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, by 20 points, tripling her victory margin four years ago. She flipped a narrative that the Democrats had lost control of the suburbs — winning even in Nassau, Mr. Blakeman’s home turf.”
“She further stamped herself as a prodigious fund-raiser, raising $89 million for herself and her party. And she did it all as a moderate who had won over key leaders on the left, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who both joined her at a bar last weekend to watch her beloved Buffalo Bills at a campaign-style event.”
“Yet as Democratic leaders discuss potential options for the 2028 presidential election, the governor of New York — a position that often carries higher ambitions — has been largely left out of the discourse.”
“Mississippi’s edge-of-the-seat Senate race will come into focus this week as Democrat Scott Colom maintains his lead over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) on Monday morning, up by 2,574 votes in the unofficial tally, according to the Associated Press,” the Washington Post reports.
“Tuesday is the deadline for counting provisional ballots, known in Mississippi as affidavit ballots, which are required if there is any question about a voter’s status at the polling place. Tuesday is also the deadline for receiving absentee ballots by mail, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.”
“For years, President Trump has claimed without evidence that any election he lost or even feared losing was rigged. So it was a surprise to many when, on election night after his party was routed in the midterms last week, he said he was ‘absolutely willing’ to accept the results,” the New York Times reports.
“That lasted less than a week.”
“Another senior official resigned from the Justice Department after the midterm elections, and one more appears to be nominated for a federal judgeship,” the Washington Sun reports.
“Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, head of the Civil Division, on social media on Monday. Blanche praised Shumate for the administration’s legal victories in culture war cases involving corporate diversity policies, restrictions on transgender care, and immigration enforcement.”
“There’s really not a limit to the things that we can do if we’re willing to work hard and we’re willing to to drive our goals. We have, you know, God willing, a 56-seat majority, and I think we need to use it.”
— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI), quoted by the Washington Sun.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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