and so, they will do everything they can to rig those elections in harris county and prevent folks from accessing their god given rights to the ballot box. i think that s going to be, there will be many lawsuits about that. i think there s lots of reasons to think it s essentially unconstitutional, what they are trying to do. we will see. in terms of the trial now in the senate, i mean, it was interesting to me. paxton sort of did this big, i guess you could call it charm defensive, but mostly it was like a lot of threats. he was calling your colleagues in the well, right? like, basically threatening them politically. donald trump tweeting ted cruz, it didn t seem to make much of a difference either way. do you think he s cooked in the senate? i certainly hope so, you know? i think we should all pause to recognize what an extraordinary thing this is. the fact that republicans in this age of extreme partisanship, this extreme polarization, were able to hold one of their own accounta
those two parts of the answers are somewhat intentional with them. you re saying, look, if the leadership in the white house, the white house, we generally trust, thinks it s a good deal, they re explaining why they think it s a good deal, why a member should vote. but then the second part is, kevin, buddy, you negotiated this. this was your doing. we can t give you, you ve got to do the heavy lifting on these votes. well, he s got to do his part to avoid a default. but i do think that, for the reasons that i outlined, in the protection of those democratic values, social security, medicare, medicaid, veterans, you know, vulnerable individuals, the homeless, people who are aging out of foster care, these are all communities and issues that we fight hard for, as democrats. that president biden protected. but at the same time, if we are going to have a bipartisan resolution to this, that means that in addition to house democrats, helping to avoid it evolved, that s exactly what house re
since i ve been in washington, d. c.. what did republicans get? i can t answer that. mccarthy, biden proposed or even slow down deficit spending. this bill is un-american, it defies conservatism. tomorrow s bill hands biden blank check. this bill keeps all of joe biden s policy, all of joe biden s spending, intact. no republicans should vote to validate and own biden s agenda. and that is what this bill does. now, it s notable to me, their complaints tend in the mean to be about the fact that republicans got outplayed, which i think shows how conservatives tend to see everything, through the lens of, are you owning the lives or are the lives owning you? there s a deeper question at play there, though. we ve got this radicalized, i would say, largely nihilistic house republican caucus, the majority of whom, let us never forget, in the last congress, voted for donald trump s coup. at the very beginning of this
leaders in the republican party, conservative movement, the classic ronald reagan, paul ryan vision. they wanted to cut the social safety net, they wanted privatized medicare, they wanted to impose austerity, all while singing the praises of the free market. and republicans, in that moment in 2011, were able to actually narrate those two factions quite effectively. the boots on the ground, the people, or the base. and the people steering them were paul ryan. and it resulted in a disastrous deal that came out of that that ceiling hostage crisis. throughout the country for years, and here s, and here s, it was terrible. so now a dozen years later, the republican leadership continues to pretend they care about things like spending and the deficit, but here s the thing. even that pretense has grown so threadbare in. they can barely convince themselves. remember what happened with president joe biden s first major piece of legislation, the american rescue plan? amid a key debate and vote on
republicans have also succeeded in slapping work requirements for benefits, including food stamps, on some more folks that currently have access to those programs. substantively, if not with democrats would have crafted themselves and i ve got to say, if you re one of those people that have start repaying your loan early or find yourself kicked off of food stamps, it stinks. but it is also nowhere near as bad as it could ve been. indeed, as bad as i feared just a week ago for president biden, for the democratic party, but most importantly, for the country. it is a considerably better outcome on the merits than the last time we had this exact same fight back in 2011, which i also covered. with the disastrous budget control act and the sequester. and because of all that, because it s nowhere near as bad as 12 years ago, conservatives in the far-right freedom caucus, our whaling. this deal fails, feels completely. not one republican should vote for this deal. it is a bad deal. this