Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
We begin today with Annie Karni of The New York Times writing that House Speaker Mike Johnson now has a status within the Republican Party equivalent to former Vice President Mike Pence due to the House passage of funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan yesterday.
When Mr. Pence refused former President Donald J. Trump’s demands that he overturn the 2020 election results as he presided over the electoral vote count by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — even as an angry mob with baseball bats and pepper spray invaded the Capitol and chanted “hang Mike Pence” — the normally unremarkable act of performing the duties in a vice president’s job description was hailed as courageous. (…)
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Pence, both mild-mannered, extremely conservative evangelical Christians who have put their faith at the center of their politics, occupy a similar space in their party. They have both gone through contortions to accommodate Mr. Trump and the forces he unleashed in their party, which in turn have ultimately come after them. Mr. Pence spent four years dutifully serving the former president and defending all of his words and actions. Mr. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, played a lead role in trying to overturn the election results on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
I’ll give Ms. Karni the “in their party” observation. But Mike Pence was quite sure that he would be breaking the law if he did as the shoe salesman asked him to do when he presided over the counting of electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021 and to the extent that he wasn’t 100% sure, Mike Luttig and former Vice President Dan Quayle told him that Trump’s request was unconstitutional.
Speaker Johnson was trying to get needed security funding passed after delay after delay after delay and in defiance of the right flank of his party. Many people in the political world underestimated his ability to do it. So I’ll toss Johnson a cookie and say job well done but still…that does not make him Churchill.
Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney of POLITICO report that Speaker Johnson has staved off a challenge to his speakership for now.
That could go two ways for Johnson. Tempers could cool as lawmakers return to their districts for a week and focus on their constituents and reelection bids. Or members, particularly in deep-red districts, hear more from an angry base — prompting more members to entertain action against Johnson.
Greene and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, the second Republican to back ousting Johnson, are betting it’s the latter. And they reiterated their promises on Saturday that Johnson will ultimately face a choice: resign or face a referendum. (…)
Despite the intense fury among conservatives, some say they still won’t support the so-called motion to vacate. But if Johnson gets booted and goes for the gavel again, or tries to run to lead the GOP again next term, they said they wouldn’t support his bid.
David Frum of The Atlantic writes that the passage of the Ukraine funding bill in the House is yet another Trump loss on a policy issue and a sign of the shoe salesman’s diminished status.
The anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine rebellion started in the Senate. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats to approve aid to Ukraine in February. Dissident House Republicans then threatened to force a vote if the Republican speaker would not schedule one. Speaker Mike Johnson declared himself in favor of Ukraine aid. This weekend, House Republicans split between pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine factions. On Friday, the House voted 316–94 in favor of the rule on the aid vote. On Saturday, the aid to Ukraine measure passed the House by 311–112. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will adopt the House-approved aid measures unamended and speed them to President Biden for signature.
As defeat loomed for his anti-Ukraine allies, Trump shifted his message a little. On April 18, he posted on Truth Social claiming that he, too, favored helping Ukraine. “As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!” But that was after-the-fact face-saving, jumping to the winning side after his side was about to lose. (…)
To make an avalanche takes more than one tumbling rock. Still, the pro-Ukraine, anti-Trump vote in the House is a very, very big rock. On something that mattered intensely to him—that had become a badge of pro-Trump identity—Trump’s own party worked with Democrats in the House and Senate to hand him a stinging defeat. This example could become contagious.
Renee Graham of The Boston Globe looks upon the criminal trial of the shoe salesman with some sadness.
So after months of delays due to Trump’s run-out-the-clock legal strategy, having the former president on trial is both overdue and welcome.
But it’s the latest disorienting moment exacted on this country since Trump’s literal descent into politics in 2015 with his first first presidential run. We have endured two impeachments; a deadly insurrection; his fanboying of murderous dictators; unveiled threats of retribution against his perceived enemies; and a profane disregard for the pillars of American democracy.
Now there’s the twisted possibility of a presumptive Republican presidential nominee also being a convicted felon. And despite this, tens of millions of people, mostly his fellow Republicans, including those like Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshirewho once pretended he could never support Trump, will vote to return to the White House the man who once called it “a real dump.”
It’s a disturbingly sad state of affairs.
Luis Feliz Leon writes for his labor blog Labor Notes (reprinted by In These Times) about the historic victory of workers who have voted to unionize at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The United Auto Workers is riding a wave of momentum after winning landmark contracts at the Big Three automakers last year. Production workers at Volkswagen earn $23 per hour and top out above $32compared to $43 for production workers at Ford’s Spring Hill assembly plant by the contract’s end in 2028. (…)
To head off a union drive, Volkswagen boosted wages 11% to match the immediate raise UAW members received at Ford. Peoples saw her pay jump from $29 to $32 an hour. (…)
The vote was a key test of whether the union could springboard the strike gains to propel new organizing in longtime anti-union bastions in the Souththe anchors of big investments in the electric-vehicle transition.
The vote was 2,628 in favor of forming a union to 985 against. There were seven challenged ballots, and three voided; 4,326 workers were eligible to vote.
Edward Russell of The Washington Post report that construction is about to begin on a high-speed rail line connecting Las Vegas to a suburb of Los Angeles.
Travelers have a lot to look forward to. Electric trains will depart every 45 minutes from a Las Vegas station south of the city’s storied Strip and a Southern California station in Rancho Cucamonga, a Los Angeles suburb about 40 miles east of downtown.
Traveling at up to 186 mph — faster than any other train in the United States — Brightline West trains will make the 218-mile trip in about 2 hours and 10 minutes. (…)
Other high-speed railroads that would carry passengers at 200 mph and faster are in the works in California, Texas and the Pacific Northwest.
Driving between Rancho Cucamonga and Las Vegas takes at least three hours without traffic, according to Google Maps.
David Remnick of The New Yorker tries to make sense of the Iran-Israel kerfuffle as the Netanyahu government continues its destruction of Gaza.
There is no way to know whether another volley will be coming in the short term, but what is clear is that the decades-long shadow war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer confined to the shadows. A line was crossed when Israel carried out a lethal air strike on Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a leading commander in Iran’s Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and six of his associates, who were meeting in a consular building in Damascus. That strike, as precise as it was deadly, was followed by Iran’s massive launch of drones and ballistic missiles on Israeli territory—an attack that was thoroughly repelled by a coördinated effort involving Israel, the United States, Britain, Jordan, the U.A.E., and Saudi Arabia.
By deploying such a relatively mild response near Isfahan, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seemingly attempted to thread a kind of political needle, at once mollifying the Biden Administration and the Sunni Arab leaders to avoid a regional escalation and yet satisfying his domestic political allies who demanded that he “do something.” Indeed, the Iranian leadership decided to absorb the latest attack with theatrical cool. State television showed “life as usual” footage in the area and insisted that the regime’s nuclear and military sites in the region were undamaged.
Zia Ur Rehman of German wave reports on the chill in the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The relationship between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s government has been growing more and more strained since the fall of Kabul in August 2021.
Many experts attribute the current tensions to the increase in cross-border terrorism originating from Afghanistan.
But some of Islamabad’s recent actions have also embittered the Taliban regime — last year, Pakistan enforced trade restrictions on its neighboring country, expelled 500,000 undocumented Afghan migrants and implemented stricter visa policies at border crossings. (…)
As ties with Pakistan cool, the Taliban administration is forging new partnerships.
Western powers remain hesitant, but other players such as China, Russia, Iran, India, and some Central Asian states are cautiously engaging with the regime.
Finally today, I ate breakfast at a local restaurant yesterday and was quite audible saying things like “she is nuts” as I was reading George Parker’s batsh*t crazy interview with former British prime minister Liz Truss in The Financial Times.
Truss explains that she is having Lunch with the FT because “you’ve got to know the enemy” — before clarifying that she doesn’t regard the FT as part of the deep state per se, more a kind of flying buttress propping it up. Along with other sinister elements in a leftwing “anti-growth coalition” — she has singled out “Brexit deniers”, people with podcasts and those living in north London town houses — the FT apparently helped to ensure that Truss’s time in Downing Street famously had the longevity of a supermarket lettuce.
Liz is one step away from talking about Jewish space lasers, y’all!
Have the best possible day everyone!