Impromptu Friday Miscellany

Hakeem Jeffries ... Zohran Mamdani ... Mike Johnson

Events (the ones you’re thinking of) overtook this week’s Friday essay, so I decided to hold it for the time being. But to keep my end of the bargain with free subscribers, and the rest of the open internet, I thought I’d flag a few stories unfolding mostly out of view.

INFINITE HASCREAM

Behind the paywall of my writeup of the Donald Trump-Jeffrey Epstein bombshell, I alluded to an opportunity House Democrats had to kill an unassuming but important Republican bill.

You may have seen this alluded to over the past few weeks as a “rescission package,” because its purpose is to “rescind” funds Congress instructed the executive branch to spend in its appropriations legislation. This can be routine—sometimes there’s money left over, or consensus that certain programs should be defunded—and in routine scenarios, the process is unremarkable: The president formally requests the rescission, and Congress votes on it up or down—no filibuster. The only catch is that, by law, Congress must act within 45 days of the request or the funds must be spent.

What made this rescission request extraordinary is the lack of consensus. Trump and Republicans wanted to retroactively defund public media, food aid, and other line items Democrats strongly support. There’s no rule or law preventing a partisan majority from approving the rescissions anyhow, but in practice it amounts to a huge breach of faith. The parties compromise to fund the government, then a partisan bloc reneges on the agreement, transforming the federal budget into one that could never have passed in the first place.

Republicans decided to renege, making fools of the Senate Democrats who helped them pass the budget back in March, and laying down a marker for the coming appropriations deadline: we reserve the right to amend any budget you pass, so either eat shit or shut down the government. On the face of it, that’s all on Republicans. They deal in bad faith, but they had the votes.

Except yesterday was day 44. To kill the bill, all House Democrats had to do was slow things down for 24 hours, and the rescissions would expire. Hakeem Jeffries in particular enjoys a tool called a “magic minute,” which allows the minority leader to hold the House floor as long as he can before final passage of legislation. But then a few hours after the Epstein news broke, House Republicans passed their rescissions unobstructed.

Here’s how Axios previewed the cave, in a Thursday piece I didn’t happen upon until Friday morning:

House Democrats are largely shooing away the idea of trying to make Republicans miss their deadline to codify around $9 billion in DOGE cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid…. House Republicans are scrambling to pass the rescissions bill, which would codify cuts to PBS, NPR and foreign aid, before a Friday deadline…. But there is a widespread belief among Democrats, including leadership, that the Trump administration would simply ignore or side-step that deadline as they have in other cases…. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) demurred when asked if he would pull a repeat of the record-breaking eight hour, 44 minute speech he gave to delay passage of the "big, beautiful bill."

[But] senior House Democrats and leadership aides told Axios that the prospect of a long speech appeared unlikely as of Thursday afternoon…. Instead of trying to hold up the bill, Democrats see the most productive strategy as continuing to force Republicans to block their efforts to bring up bills forcing the Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files…. "It's lunacy to wring our hands over a statutory deadline that the administration will simply ignore when we've been able to send the Republicans into utter chaos," [a leadership] aide said.

Jeffries will have to contend with expectations from his grassroots base, which are sometimes untethered to the reality of congressional procedure…. [But] members "would be really unhappy," if Jeffries gave a long speech "after what he did on July 4," a third House Democrat said on the condition of anonymity. Some lawmakers were frustrated that Jeffries spoke for nearly nine hours after his team maintained he would only go for about one, forcing them to scramble to reschedule flights ahead of the July 4 recess. "The base doesn't even give a s*** about this. The rescissions thing is not on their radar," the lawmaker added, arguing that if the grassroots does take notice of it, "they'll forget about it two days later and be like, 'What's next.'"

To summarize, Republicans said their plan was to abuse power to play Democrats for suckers. Democrats had an opportunity to stop them, but chose to accept the slap in the face, offering four excuses:

1. The Epstein story is a more “productive strategy.”

2. Republicans will probably just break the rules anyhow.

3. Losing valuable weekend time really sucks.

4. Our voters aren’t paying attention, and if they happen to notice, whatever! They have the collective memory of a housefly.

Well, I’m here to alert Democratic voters and lengthen their memories.

1. Jeffries could have devoted hours and hours of floor time to the Epstein scandal.

2. Force Republicans to break the rules instead of making it so they don’t have to.

3. Losing democracy really sucks.

4. If angry Democratic voters understood this story in its fullness, they’d demand a purge of the leadership, and rightly so.

We chose not to stand up for ourselves, our constituents, the party, and important priorities—in a fight we could’ve won—because quitting was easier, and, really, the people who hold us to a high standard are really annoying.

House Democrats allowed Republicans to alter this deal unilaterally. If Senate Democrats help Republicans pass new appropriations in the next couple months, without refunding the rescinded spending and changing the law to close the rescission loophole, they’ll be retroactively sanctioning this double-cross, and setting themselves up as suckers all over again.

DARKEST BEFORE THE MAMDAN

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

In a couple recent newsletters, I noted both that Zohran Mamdani’s full, original comments about the phrase “globalize the intifada” weren’t terribly objectionable, but also that I suspected he’d get another bite at the apple before the general election and address the question in a more well-rounded way.

Here was my stab:

Few unscripted answers to unscripted questions are perfect. Mamdani probably could have hit a sweeter spot if he’d been more willing to parse distinctions: If you say “globalize the intifada,” because you believe Israeli civilians and diaspora Jews are fair targets for violence, of course I condemn you; if you say “globalize the intifada,” because you think it’s an edgy way to make Palestinian human rights a larger international cause, I share your objective—but I don’t use that language because I understand how threatening it can sound to Jews. Particularly because the phrase has ambiguous meaning.

Well, Mamdani did indeed get another bite at the apple, and so here he is in his own words.

I’ve thought about this quite a lot, and for some NYers this phrase is one that refers to civil disobedience, and protest—a call to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. But I know for many Jewish New Yorkers it brings to mind images [of violence]. I was sitting with a rabbi not too long ago, who told me how the same phrase is heard very differently by her, and it’s heard as a reference to bus bombings in Haifa, restaurant attacks in Jerusalem, and engenders a fear in her and in others of the possibility of those very attacks coming home here in New York City. And that distance between what some intend and what others hear is a bridge that is too far. And it is why I have not used the phrase, and why I discourage its use.

That’s about right. These remarks aren’t for me because, Jewish or not, I’m not a New Yorker, and I wasn’t terribly troubled by his original comments. But I do think this should be enough for his open-minded critics. They may have other reasons to oppose him still, but not over this.

BALLS AND MIKES

Donald Trump isn’t just denying he wrote an incriminating love letter to Jeffrey Epstein publicly. He apparently also denied the allegation privately to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who swallowed it whole.

The wallet inspector told Johnson it’s ridiculous to worry about the contents of his wallet. Fair enough. But then here’s an obvious followup for reporters on Capitol Hill: “what consequences will you and Congress impose if it becomes undeniable that Trump lied to you?”