Thursday Thread And AMA

Kindof a lot's happened since the last one

D’OH! (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

You might remember eight days and one speakership ago, we held our first AMA during a GOP presidential primary debate, which featured (I think by law?) a lot of ghoulish spectacle, but significantly less real news.

No such luck this week! To the contrary, it’s almost like the opposite. In the week-plus since that little experiment:

• President Biden delivered one of his quasi-quarterly warning speeches about Donald Trump and the MAGA threat to democracy—I believe this was his fourth in one year;

• Trump leveled threats against a judge and prosecutor from inside one of the five or six courthouses where he stands accused—didn’t even make it to the steps—and is now under a limited gag order in that case;

• House Republicans almost shut down the government, but blinked in the end and agreed to a 45 day reprieve, at the expense of the U.S. aid effort in Ukraine;

• The Biden administration (thus?) transferred munitions it seized from Iran to Ukraine.

• The House, led by eight far-right Republicans, booted Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, for reasons that are complicated and multifaceted but include: Those Republicans were mad they didn’t get their shut down. McCarthy announced he would not seek to be reinstated, effectively ending his political career;

• The interim House leadership, at McCarthy’s urging, began a campaign of petty revenge against Democrats for not saving McCarthy’s hide;

• Republicans launched semi-serious effort to make Donald Trump the speaker of the House;

• I made a comment about House Speaker-emeritus Nancy Pelosi without providing explanation, and it confused and angered some people (but there is an explanation);

• Clarence Thomas finally felt compelled to recuse from something.

That’s a lot of stuff—and it’s the kind of stuff that leaves things much more uncertain than they normally are. I keep turning wildly different scenarios over in my head, and they’re all equally plausible or implausible. So let’s talk about them. Comments are open—I won’t be promoting this thread on social media, to avoid attracting trolls and spoilers. Hopefully, even in this free launch period, we can foster conversation for people who genuinely want to be here. You can leave questions for me—about the stuff above or anything else really—and I’ll answer them, but I’ll also jump in here live at 2 p.m. ET for anyone who’s interested in a real-time chat/grilling.

Thanks as always for being here.