11/11/26: Bernie Breaks From Schumer, Dem Elites Threaten Hakeem Challengers, Hegseth Vote Fails As Dems Absent

This is an "I Heart" podcast. Guaranteed Human. It's all just a joke. What is the value of these women? I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season two of the podcast, Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants, whistleblowers, and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks at me and goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." I never received scholarship many to pay for my student loans. Maybe this is the meta question for the podcast. What is Miss America at this point? Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the "I Heart" radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. [MUSIC PLAYING] In October 2021, my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A year later, he convinced me to make a podcast with him. This podcast-- My biggest fear is that I am afraid of being forgotten. My brother David is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm going to share all of it with you. OK, so here we go. Listen to my brother David on the "I Heart" radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How to busy day. Don't have time to listen to the show. Catch up on Breaking Points with our free daily newsletter. You get our breakdown of every daily story. And lots of links in your inbox every day. So head over, breakingpoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. [MUSIC PLAYING] Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. We have an amazing show today, don't we? Yeah, I mean, we're just over here reading "Marc Levin" tweets. So we're pretty-- we're pretty amped. He got locked out of his AOL account yesterday. If anybody felt the need to send up good vibes to-- If anybody has "Marc Levin"'s password, he's lost it. Please send it to him. He can't get into his AOL account. Don't send it to us. Send it straight to "Marc Levin." If you have his password, do not send it to us. All right. Speaking of very old people who don't know what they're doing, Democrats are trying to pick a new Senate majority leader. We'll talk about that off the top. And also the race to potentially block Keem Jeffery's from becoming a speaker. Heed up a little bit, Iana Pressley, kind of teasing a potential, like name, putting-- Maybe. Maybe we need a fighter out there. We'll see how that goes. Things are changing. Things are changing. We'll talk about the Republicans tabling the motion to impeach Pete Hegstheth yesterday, which a bunch of Democrats missed. We have some details about why they missed that vote. Emily's going to tell us who Jim Jordan is-- Yeah, that's right. --what he's all about. The Republicans. --going to be the minority leader in the House. Yeah, finally, elected a minority leader after trying for a better part of a decade, conservative movement, trying to put them in the leadership slot, so we'll see what's to come. And "thropic" thinks it's going to be worth about $1.5 trillion, trying to go public next week. We will tell you whether or not you should invest or not-- I'm kidding, we will not do that. And we're going to have-- we'll talk about this crooked panelist as well as updates on the absolutely dystopian horrific conditions that are battering Gaza as the winter rains combine with Israel's continuing blockade of reconstruction materials to put people in a position where, for the fourth winter in a row, they're effectively living out in the elements. Yeah, there's a lot to get to. Today, let's go ahead and get started, Ryan, with the chaos on Capitol Hill over-- Oh, don't forget to sign up for your one month free. Oh, well, we would be remiss if we did mention that you could get a month free of Breakingpoint's Premium. Breakingpoints.com. You get our newsletter and you get early access to the full show without any commercial breaks, which is really the best way to watch the show. We designed the show to be watched that way. So if you want to give it a try breakingpoints.com is where it can sign up. It is free for a month. Should we get to it? Yeah, and there's a band of rogue AI agents that are kind of swarming your bank account right now. So you might as well just go ahead and use that money before they get it. Yeah, yeah. We'll take it. Have to have it. All right, let's start with the top of the show here, which we're going to focus on. What's happening at Capitol Hill with Democrats as they push, as many new members of Congress push for new leadership, specifically in the upper chamber, when it comes to Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders. Yesterday it made this statement. So if this campaign was about anything, it was about change and the need for the Democratic Party and my view to move in a new and bold direction. I personally have known Chuck Schumer for over 30 years. And I like Chuck, nobody who works hotter than Chuck Schumer. But in my view, the time is now for change. And I will not be supporting Chuck to be re-elected as the Democratic leader. Ryan, you've been chronicling these dynamics for years. Not as long as they've been together. Can we sit with that for a moment? Chuck Schumer was elected to the House in 1980. Bernie was elected to the House in 1990. And so then they served together for about eight years in the House when Schumer left him for the Senate. But about eight years after that, 2006, Bernie joins Schumer over in the Senate. That's about when I met this couple. So they have been together in Congress for 36 years. Schumer has been in it for 46 years. Can you imagine that you've been working together for 36 years? And you're like, love you man, but you're not my guy for this. I mean, I haven't even been alive for 36 years. So I can't imagine that's remarkable. But actually, the break is-- But if you don't like each other 36 years ago, 36 years of being together isn't going to change that. Not that they don't like each other, I'm just saying. Well, actually, do you have insight on that? That was a pretty polite break from Chuck Schumer, as is Bernie. Bernie is extremely polite to everybody. He doesn't believe in negative campaigning, and he doesn't believe in making it personal. Remember when he flipped out at his campaign targets for calling Joe Biden corrupt, saying Joe Biden had a corruption problem. He kept calling him out my friend Joe Biden. He's a very friendly guy. Whether my understanding is that they have a bit of a rocky relationship, but respectful. Interesting. Well, let's actually listen here to Chuck Schumer, who, as others were organizing against him yesterday, had this to say. Confident I will be elected majority leader. And our caucus is really united in focusing on bringing down costs, on ending the corruption, on ending the chaos, on ending the war. We have great unity in our caucus, and I'll be proud to lead it as majority leader. Well, let's listen to Senator Rafael Warnock getting questions about who he supports in what looks to be a real contest. I've had it at caucus lunch at a few minutes, so we'll see what Senator Schumer has to say about what he sounds like to do. Sounds like you're on the side. It sounds like I don't know who's even running. So he's running. Yeah, I know he's running. Chris, Stan, how am I? I think we're at an inflection point in our country. The voters are demanding that we stand up and fight for them. And so any member of my caucus that feels like they should lead in this moment, I look forward to hearing their case. If you read between the lines there, the country's at an inflection point. And maybe he's saying the moment calls for more than the status quo. But a little early to say, on the other hand, Ryan's on the edge of his seat right now, literally, waiting to hear where John Fetterman is falling in this. Who's, where's his loyalty? Let's take a listen here to Senator Fetterman. Well, I absolutely stand with Schumer. I'm going to vote for Schumer. He helped recruit a great class. And I can't imagine why you would vote for someone like Van Holland with no record of doing anything. All right, Ryan, this is getting real though. So Manu Raja and that clip mentioned to Senator Warnock, the possibility of Chris Van Holland running. That's absolutely something that's happening behind the scenes. You can tell us more. And yeah, here's, we can source this as somebody familiar with how Van Holland is thinking. And this aversion of this has been out and other outlets. The Senator has received an outpouring of calls on running for majority leader and is now in active listening mode that door is not shut. Contrary to Fetterman's point there that Van Holland has never done anything, Van Holland was in leadership in the House of Representatives and was actually sort of considered to be a potential next speaker before he left and went over to the Senate. Partly that was-- he was close with Pelosi, wasn't he? Yeah, he-- yes, he was kind of in the Pelosi team. Partly that was-- Pelosi was being very clear she wasn't going anywhere, ever. Although, interestingly, if he'd stayed in the House, well, identity politics probably would have blocked him from making a serious challenge right now against the King Jeffries. But finally, there's been a turnover in leadership there. So it's not true that he's never done anything. He was, of course, one of the most outspoken critics of US complicity with what was going on in Gaza. Like that was-- he went to the floor. He repeated attempts to try to kind of seize the floor and then use various mechanisms to try to block weapons from going there block or try to get aid in. And that really kind of. have elevated his stature. Well, it seems like he is in. Like he has said, basically, that he's making calls. He's talking to his colleagues. Schumer has said that he believes he has a majority of commitments, whether or not those commitments hold is going to be the question. Because let's say you told Schumer a year and a half ago, so I'm sure he asked, if we get the majority, you're with me, right? Of course, I'm with you, Chuck. The Senate is a place where your word is supposed to be your bond until it's not. And so Schumer's going to find out, I think-- I would suspect he does have a majority of the caucus, who, at one point over the last couple of years, told him, we get the majority again on with you, whether those votes hold is going to be the major question. November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, and I want to tell you about my brother, David, a podcast that documents my brother's journey with this disease. It's important to let people know what my experience is. I think quite often, the experience of pancreatic cancer patients goes under the radar. Dr. Callis about it, but just because we die so fast, I think it's important to share this story and hopefully give some more understanding to what pancreatic cancer patients go through. My brother, David, tells the unflinchingly real story of the last year of my brother's life. Let's change the pancreatic cancer narrative and turn sympathy into survival. Listen to my brother, David, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more than a century, Miss America sold the country of fantasy. Well, are you ready, ladies? OK, here we go. But over the past decade, the crown's been slipping. They said, goodbye to swimsuits now, hello to lawsuits. I'm Bridget Armstrong. Last season, we took you inside the world of America's next top model. Now I'm back with season two of this podcast, Curse of Miss America, investigating the rise, fall, and uncertain future of one of America's most iconic institutions, the Miss America pageant. I never received scholarship. I need to pay for my student loans. He looks and he goes, you don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder. It's great, but looks too ethnic. It's a story the Miss America organization really doesn't want us to tell. An exploitation of our Miss America's is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In the same goes for Republicans right now, we'll talk about this in the impeachment block regarding Hegseth. If you're in a state that just saw, for example, me like Kero's Colorado get elected to Congress or just saw double-digit margins for somebody running an economic populism like James Telleriko, that's a message if you remember. I mean, obviously there aren't damn senators from Texas, but you're looking around at what the country is choosing and even in red states. And it's pretty obvious that there's a populist or a chapter right now and you know that that can come knocking on your door at the next cycle. And Van Haaland on the economic populism front, he's the one that was pushing, he has the bill to basically make the first $45,000 you are in tax-free, like he's trying to make that. And he pushed up against a lot of liberal interest groups who were upset about that for a variety of different reasons. So that would reflect a shift in how Democrats are willing to take populist messaging up against some of the orthodoxy. He's also palatable to somebody like a Raphael Warnock, because as we were just talking about, he comes from-- Really establishment-y figure over the-- Who's just shown-- I don't know if you have insight into this, but he's shown that he understands where the base is at the moment, which is that they want somebody who's bare knuckle-fighting with Kamar Brigha Garcia, for example, people loved the fact that he was just not taking any shit from the administration. And he watches breaking points and reads drop sites, so-- Oh, no way. That's an indication. It's kind of a divide among the political class at this point, like, are you familiar with independent media? Or are you just getting New York Times clips from your staff? It's good to have that have your name in it. So meanwhile, he's drawing some real lines in the sand when it comes to the US relationship with Israel yesterday. He circulated a letter demanding that Section 219, which is the provision that merges the Israeli and US military defense production bases together in the NDA, that that be stripped from the NDA. Meanwhile, he's insisting that Democrats wage a shutdown fight in order to prevent Trump from re-engaging in the Iran War. Let's roll A5. The American people have spoken loudly and clearly. We need to end the war in Iran now. We need to protect our service members, and we need to bring down the costs of gas and everything now that's been pushed up. From the war that Donald Trump said, he would never start. So what's the fastest way to end this war? Well, to stop funding it, to stop giving it the fuel it needs to keep going. On December 11, the funding for the US government runs out, and we should not continue funding the war in Iran. It President Trump wants to tell the country that he'll shut down the entire government, all federal agencies, in order to keep his illegal war going. That's his decision. And Trump site's Julian Andrioni caught up then with Patty Murray, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and asked about this effort to use the upcoming spending bill as the tool to end the war. Let's listen to what she says here, and then what she says, just a little bit later, on the Senate floor. We are going to explore every option to stop this war. We can end Trump's war with Iran, but not with the snap of our fingers. Emily, that's almost Jon Stewart worthy. We're going to explore every option. Well, we can't do it with that option. Not that option. Any option, but that one is hard. And on the House side, Kim Jeffery was asked about this, and he responded, I'm going to leave Iran policy up to Rosa Delora, who's top Democrat on Props in House and Patty Murray, top Democrat, which by itself is kind of crazy. It's like, all right, these are influential committees, but we're not completely outsourcing Iran war policy to these two, this one Senator in this one House member. The public was very clear. So Van Halen is drawing a line here, and it's going to be fascinating to see whether Democrats are like, yes, this is the fight we want. We want to be with the base. We want to be against the war. And we're going to fight Israel on Netanyahu, who insisted on putting in this section 219 that merges these two provisions. And so if they follow Van Halen, that's going to be a real indication of a willingness to fight. Alyssa Slocke and very importantly, appeared at that press conference with Bernie Sanders. Yeah, what are you reading into that? By the way, she knows there's this great moment. We're Julian asks Bernie Sanders about all the corporate money that Schumer gets and how he thinks that that influences the kind of structure of what Democrats are able to get done. And Bernie is like, Alyssa, you want to take this? Bernie doesn't like to-- What a pro. He doesn't want to make it personal. It's what a pro. And then Alyssa says it's not about ideologies about whether you're willing to fight. But so the fact that you have-- That's really interesting, actually, because that's what we were just talking about with Van Halen, basically. Right. So if you have everybody from Bernie to Alyssa Slocke, it's just one of those moments where I don't know how it's going to end. The conventional wisdom in DC is that this is not a contest. Schumer's got it locked up. And there was never a contest. I don't know that that's true. Meanwhile, people were speculating over the last couple of days about Republican leadership. And they just went ahead and realized that John Thune quietly into the position-- They liked John Thune. Instead of having it real, they don't. I mean, nobody likes John Thune, et cetera. Like having him as leader. Like, there's this weird-- and I think I came as benefiting from this, but I'm curious for your take-- there's this weird thing that exists in all institutions that all of the ambitious people kind of fight against each other. And then if they can't get it, they don't want their ambitious rivals to get it either. So they all find somebody who they're all OK with-- Like Mike Johnson. Yes. Yeah. Or he came Jeffries or John Thune. Right. Like-- Somebody's willing to take it. Yeah. Because they want-- And they're not threatened by them. Right. And he's going to let them kind of do their thing. He's not LBJ. Yeah. But is that-- like, what don't they like about Thune? And then let's go to the key side. I mean, I think they think Thune is sort of the worst of both worlds. Like, he pretends to be kind of a staunch conservative. But I mean, the Savak stuff was actually insane from just a perspective of like, is a political. party responsive to its voters. John Thun did everything to actually, he couldn't bring that bill to the floor, despite there being plenty of mechanisms for him to do that. And, really, I shouldn't say plenty, but there being options for him to do that. - Richard Bauer would have found a way to get it to the floor. - Oh, she did, I didn't listen to her. But yeah, it drives him crazy because on this, he's not pretending to be Mitch McConnell. He's pretending to be somebody who's a little bit more conservative than Mitch McConnell, but at the same time, he doesn't really listen to the base either. That's what Mike Johnson turned into. Mike Johnson's pitch was that he was a real conservative, sort of adjacent to Freedom Caucus world. But anyway, actually, the reason this conversation is worthwhile is because it feels like, even just the conversation about independent media, a lot of this feels like, 2012, watching this new class or 2010, watching this new class of like citizen legislators come into the Capitol after a populist surge in the Tea Party moment. And I think Democrats have learned lessons from just politically what went wrong during a lot of the Tea Party years. And that's very interesting to watch that like, they never had a sort of Chris Van Hollen type figure who was palatable to the base because he was willing to fight and understood what Alyssa Slotkin said there that it's not necessarily about ideology. It's about showing that you're gonna fight for the priorities of your voters. And that's a, I think that's a significant populist lesson. I don't know if he's drawing it directly from the Tea Party, but you can learn it from the Tea Party's mistakes for sure. All right, well, let's, let's move over to the House of Representatives. (soft music) - November is pancreatic cancer awareness month. And I wanna tell you about my brother David, a podcast that documents my brother's journey with this disease. - It's important. It's a lot of people know what my experience is. I think quite often the experience of pancreatic cancer patients goes under the radar, not to call us about it, but just because we die so fast. I think it's important to share this story and hopefully give some more understanding to what pancreatic cancer patients go through. - My brother David tells the unflinchingly real story of the last year of my brother's life. Listen to my brother David on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - But more than a century, Miss America sold the country of fantasy. - Well, are you ready, ladies? Okay, here we go. - But over the past decade, the crown's been slipping. - They said, goodbye to swimsuits now. Hello to lawsuits. - I'm Bridget Armstrong. - Last season, we took you inside the world of America's next top model. Now I'm back with season two of this podcast, Curse of Miss America, investigating the rise, fall, an uncertain future of one of America's most iconic institutions, the Miss America pageant. - I never received scholarship. - He looks at me and goes, you don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder. - You look great, but looks too ethnic. - It's a story the Miss America organization really doesn't want us to tell. - An exploitation of our Miss America's is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. ♪ Miss America ♪ - Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Nobody expected Don Leonard, a Democrat, running in the Columbus area in Ohio to flip a heavily Trump district. Nobody except Don Leonard. He said he always saw a path to victory. He won on election day. Now he's in Washington DC for orientation. And he posted on Instagram a rather damning allegation. Want you to listen to what incoming representative Don Leonard said about the pressure he's under when it comes to this leadership race? - Tonight I met with, we'll call them senior members of the Democratic House who told me in knowing certain terms that the decision, as to whether or not I support Jeffries, regardless of his willingness to speak with me and meet the interests of my constituent. So on a couple of key issues. Number one, being a constitutional amendment to incidences united. And number two, ending US support for the war in Iran and the country Israel that let us into it. That that would basically mean both making my life a living hell for the next two years here in Washington as well as being sure to lose my election in two years. - And so I spoke with somebody close to Jeffries who said that nobody, nobody, he did not deputize anybody to make any threats to representative Leonard. We invited him onto the show. We haven't heard back from him yet. A lot depends on what he means by senior House Democrats there. But the threats he's describing are quite clear. And they're the kinds that Alexandria Cortez and others have said kind of drive the way that people think about this leadership race that if you oppose Jeffries and you fail, then your life is going to be potentially made a living hell. Now I think what happened here is it's this wave and at least swept in a bunch of people who are not here to play by the normal rules. - Yeah. - Like a normal kind of climbing Democrat who is a county commissioner and then the state senator and then runs for House and loses and then runs for House and wins isn't going to go on Instagram and say something like that. Isn't gonna bring people in in the same way. - I just think that it's such a good point because, precisely because we were talking earlier in the show about independent media, there just used to be a status quo set concrete process. And it doesn't exist anymore. Things are much more fluid because you can bypass the gatekeepers and go straight to either the people or to independent media. So you can basically tell your side of the story instantly on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or wherever and it doesn't have to be filtered through a journalist that's friendly with leadership that might know that they're in a tug of war with leadership over potential scoops in the future and access in the future and that sort of thing. And so it's just, they have way less control and I don't know they were fully prepared for critical mass to be hit this cycle and sweep so many people in that have zero allegiance or loyalty to the old system. - And so what Leonard said his demands are and not that it's accomplished overnight but that you commit to try was, you know, a constitutional amendment to end citizens united and an immediate end to the war and to block funding to Israel. Like those were the, interestingly, like, and I think that pretty much sums up where the democratic base is. Money out of politics, America first ironically. Like end the war and stop the foreign military aid which is kind of revealing about where, and this is a Trump plus 15 district or something like that. - And it's also just not super controversial. - Right, yeah. - To the average, right? You can see why he was elected right in Ohio. You know, most people were just like, whoever the Democrat is, I'm voting for that person. Right, but I'm sure a bunch of independence out there. You know, Matt Donnellan is like, yeah. This guy is representing, would represent me if he went to Washington. So them trying to make his life a living help probably helps him back in Ohio. - Yeah, but it does. - So Julian Andreoni of Dropside caught up with AOC and asked her about kind of where she is on the leader on the speaker contest. Let's roll AOC here. - Do you think there's a chance that if enough people were to hold out, perhaps Jeffries refuses to stop any and all funding for the Iran War and people say that's a red line? You think there's a chance we could get a difference? - I think that should be absolutely part of the conversation. But you have to remember during that time, there was a very small margin that allowed for that kind of thing to happen. - You personally have any red lines, whether that be his policy towards Israel, Medicare for all, he said he doesn't support funding in the war in Iran. Is there anything that would make you withhold your vote for Speaker of the House? - I think the thing is about the circumstance, right? 'Cause the thing is, is someone is going to be Speaker. - That's for sure. - And if there's, it is an unopposed race, then there's really no material scenario until there is a race. It's not a race right now, right? - That's sort of why I brought up. - When the question, yeah. So, I think the, and the situation with McCarthy was that he was dealing with a four or five-seat margin where four or five members can make that difference. We're dealing with like what a. - You'd probably need 40 defections. - 40, right, so you think that's possible or not? - Well, 40 present with no alternative. I think it's probably, to be my assessment, would be that would be unrealistic. In a contested race is a different situation. - Key line there, in a contested race, it's a different situation. We may now have a contest. Squad member, Iana Presley, or former squad member, when there was a squad, Iana Presley. She posted on Twitter. This is last night. And Republicans have been flooding the zone with lawlessness, cruelty, and corruption. And Democrats have a mandate to match their energy boldly and unapologetically. It's not enough to be the adults in the room. We have to prove that we are the fighters in the room. And so this was read around Washington as a trial balloon for a potential challenge. Immediately, Shorikot Chakrabardi, who was AOC's former chief of staff, posted a petition saying, like, if you want, I honor Presley to run, like, sign this petition. So, like, somebody stepped into this breach. And the point I had made yesterday is that there's a collective organizing problem with this challenge. In other words, most of the caucus, I think, would much prefer somebody else, other than Jeffrey's, be the speaker, because they're getting just absolutely bombarded with phone calls. He's also not very good at it. He's not great, but he's good at it. He's a bad messenger. He might be a good fundraiser. And what people in the caucus do like about him is that he is much more hands-off than Pelosi. Pelosi ran that thing. She micro-managed and ran it with an iron fist. Whereas Jeffrey is much more like, he's going to let the committees do their work. He's going to let people do their thing. The flip side of that is he doesn't really have his own vision. It's just kind of people can just do it. So, you can imagine if you're a committee chair or an ambitious Democrat in the caucus, you'd actually prefer that, because you have more room to maneuver. But overall, they understand that they're getting flooded with these calls from constituents that voters want change, that it's kind of ridiculous to go up with the same old leadership after a giant change election. Doesn't it? Shouldn't Charlemagne call him a PAC-shakur? Yes, a PAC-shakur. A PAC-shakur. A PAC-shakur. Yeah, he's not super popular with the face. We can put it that way. But if they try to organize against him, and that gets back to leadership, that's going to cost them. If they don't succeed. It's even just chatting with somebody, because there's this old saying in Washington, if you want a friend, get a dog. You cannot trust anybody in one place. Ryan has three pets. No friends, three pets. And so you can't trust anybody to strategize or concoct conspiracy with, or you can't even float. Hey, what do you think about it? Because they have an incentive to go back to leadership. It's like a prison break. Yeah. And be like, look, this guy's over here talking about alternatives to you. How about that subcommittee seat that I asked for? Mm-hmm. I'm the one that's loyal to you. He's not. Or she's not. And so there becomes this collective action problem. But what that timidity across the board creates is an opportunity for one person to just take the risk. And so you know what? Do or die. I'm going for it. I'm in. And everybody kind of thinks I, on a press, he wants to be a senator, a senator from Massachusetts when a seat opens up there anyway. So what's the downside? So like, let's say she runs. Let's say she loses. And Hakeem says he's going to make her life miserable in Congress. What does that even mean for Iana Press? Right. Doesn't she fundraise plenty of money in your own? Plenty of money. And she's, and she'll just work her connections and build her brand until she's then ready for a senate seat. So to me, it makes, from an individual aspirational perspective, an ambition perspective, it makes perfect sense for her to like just go for it, just like why not. So her name's out there. We will, we'll see where that goes at this point. Let's roll, let's roll A11 because meanwhile, a lot of members are trying, assuming that Jeffries is going to get in, they're talking about kind of what they're hoping to get out of them. It's a historic class, one that has a lot of firsts, and again, we might have different ideas about how to accomplish certain things, but we all agree that we have to reduce costs for working families. We all agree that we have to root out corruption in government. We all agree that our foreign policy has to actually reflect our values. And in order for us to be able to do that, we needed an agenda that's bold enough to meet that vision. And so what we're demanding is, is an agenda, it's not about the individual, it's about what kind of priorities, what kind of floor votes, what kind of plan do we have to actually fight for the bold changing of people, sent us here again. And we're not withholding votes, what we're doing is saying we're undecided, we're not going to rubber stamp anything, we want to sit and have a conversation about the issues, and what's the plan going forward. And I think that's what the American people elected us to do, is to have these conversations. Tish James, meanwhile, saying forget about it, let's put up Bay 12. If you couldn't hear her, she's saying, basically, DSA is drunk on power if they think they can challenge her. Kim Jeffries. Primary, right? Well, she's talking about that for leader. Oh, okay. Yeah. But she said the same thing when GOC threatened to start at a primary challenge, which then Mom Donnie kind of dialed back. That is ridiculous, given everything happening in New York right now, to take a shot at the DSA. It's very interesting. She was the first candidate ever elected solo on the Working Families Party ballot, like ran against the Democratic Party. And yeah, that part's interesting. Anyway, could you get 45 votes for IANA, which then sends it to another ballot? Why not? 45? There's not that many. I'm forgetting which one. But, however, to be not to lie to the viewers here, everyone watching thinks this race is over, and that there's zero chance that you can find 40 plus people to say no on the first ballot. Does it Cologne, who said, I think it's kind of crazy that so many leaders are from one part? I live like 10 blocks away. Yeah, he's like from the same burrows. And it's like New York establishment Democrats are, they're the ones that are drunk on their power. Actually, they think, like Chuck Schumer and Tish James, even though, I mean, do they feel like they're controlling Mom Donnie that they're like caging him in, like Hocal and Tish James thing that they have? So what are they doing? They're the ones who are drunk on power to think that they can take shots at the DSA and get away with it. That's insane. It is truly incredible. The entire legs on which they built their power base have been knocked out from under them in New York City. They are on a sand castle that's washing away. The entire city basically is under the control of their internal adversaries. The only reason they're going to rise to this position of national leadership is because of this kind of old, bizarre seniority system that we have in Congress. Like if we had a different system that incentivized an open race after every election, does anybody think that the Senate and House caucuses would be like, yeah, you know what we're going to do? We're definitely going with these guys. Right. No. Getting this gracious. Anyway, so their job, though, on the House side is to get people to show up for a vote. That's the number one job. Let's talk about the impeachment vote regarding Pete Hanks at the yesterday. November is pancreatic cancer awareness month. And I want to tell you about my brother David, a podcast that documents my brother's journey with this disease. It's important. I think quite often, the experience of pancreatic cancer patients goes under the radar, not to call us about it, but just because we die so fast. My brother David tells the unflinchingly real story of the last year of my brother's life. Listen to my brother David on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast for more than a century, Miss America sold the country of fantasy. They said goodbye to swimsuits now, hello to lawsuits. Now I'm back with season two of this podcast, Curse of Miss America, investigating the rise, fall, and uncertain future of one of America's most iconic institutions. The Miss America Patent. I never received scholarship, I need to pay for my student loans. He looks at me and goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." "It's great, but looks too ethnic." It's a story the Miss America organization really doesn't want us to tell. An exploitation of our Miss Americas is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This week, Republican Representative Thomas Massey introduced an impeachment resolution against war secretary Pete Hegseth. Republicans moved to table it or to send it to committee yesterday afternoon and put this element of the screen. It's passed by a vote of 211 to 204, but you had 11 House Democrats who did not show up. Emily, I forgot my glasses. Tell us who those 11 are. All right. Well, if my glasses are powerful enough, we'll see if we can get through it. Actually, we just took it off the screen. So it means I can use my computer. So this list is Julia Brownlee, Lou Corea, Laura Gillan, Steven Horseford, Jonathan Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, Brittany Peterson, Melanie Stansbury, the one and only Haley Stevens, Marilyn Strickland, and the one and only Frederica Wilson. A little surprised by Frederica Wilson. Yeah, what are you going to do? Now, Julie and Andrew O'Neill and I have been doing a little bit of reporting on where some of these folks were. But first, let's roll B2 with her Sydney calmager dove that Los Angeles representative reacting to her colleagues not showing up for this vote. What happened out there with head size with Democrats having attended decisions again? You know, I have to say this. Pathetic Pete should have been impeached a long time ago. This is a dude who is wholly unqualified. It really undignified to be in this seat. Demand don't have no aim. He's probably on some gender affirming care, which I support. Okay, this is obviously a gender fluid brother right now, but he's spent over $100 million basically to rebrand the defense Department of Defense Department of War. And here's the thing. And then he lost the war and he spent a whole bunch of money. And I have to tell you this, we knew that this vote was coming. So people should have gotten their raggedy selves up to your steps to vote. There is no reason why we should have lost this vote because of attendance issues. This is what people have been talking about. You man, you know this man should not be in this position. That's why he got up at 8 o'clock in the morning with his sorry self to plea to the American people. Hey, this is, you can't be doing this to me. This is so scandalous. Well, you scandalous. You do a stuff that's unconstitutional. So you need to go. So shame on folks who weren't out here because these people lost. They lost and they still found the way to show up to table this bill. Shame, folks. All right. So because it failed by less than the number of Democratic votes, there's a lot of questions about why their sorry selves did not show up for this. They're raggedy selves. And so let's put up B6 here. So the vote was started at 5.30 p.m. There was an event held by the pack elect Democratic women. We'll talk about that pack in a second as if you've been following our covers. The last year you are familiar with this, this pack chaired by Lois Frankel. They had a reception at the roost, 1400, 1401 Pennsylvania. So that's about a mile and do East. Right. It's 14 blocks down, basically. That's how Washington is laid out. From 4.30 to 6.30. A new member reception was held. Now, the members who missed it have said one of the most expensive apartment buildings on the hill, by the way. Oh, is it? Yeah. The venue. Now, members who missed it said that there was a bumper to bumper traffic jam down Pennsylvania Avenue. That was the result of some van or bus getting a police escort. And there are enough people who say that that I think I'm sure there was a draft. I'm sure there was some sort of traffic incident down there. Some made it by walking. Some who were at that event made it by walking. So we put that up yesterday speculating. We heard that maybe some of the members were at this and it made sense because a bunch of the members who missed it were involved in this organization. Andrew Solender at Axios. He reported per several members. Some of the House Democrats who missed the Hague Southern impeachment vote were on their way back from an elect democratic women event at a venue about 1.5 miles down Pennsylvania Avenue. So the confirmed they were partying at this EDW event. Now, EDW is a very, very influential organization because it has a lot of money. Why does it have a lot of money? Well, because over the last cycle, about 50 percent of its money came from the United Democracy Project, which is the Super PAC for APAC. And so if and if you look at the members who missed Julian, we can put up this next element. He went through it. He points out he writes Catherine Clark as the Democratic Whip in the House. Clark is also a founding member of EDW of the 11 members who missed the Hague South vote. Eight have received support from EDW or its APAC tied Super PAC EDW action fund of those eight two are sitting board members. So this is a real come on guys moment. Not even I'm not saying it's like EDW's fault actually. It's the members of EDW. And what is EDW? So elect Democratic women, it's this PAC run by, chaired by Lois Frankel. That's a sensible purpose is to what the name says elect Democratic women. Yeah. But what a lot of these PACs have started to do particularly because big money has been very hard to come by over this last cycle on the Democratic side. APAC stepped into that gap and said, we here, we agree with you. And so then EDW action fund and its sister PAC pro choice majority would go into races and spend big money on APAC supported candidates, but it wouldn't say supported by APAC it would say supported by elect Democratic women. But obviously the fault is with the members. Like, yeah, and also there's there's often traffic in DC. Like, what are you doing here now? Hegseth would not have been removed by this vote. He would have been impeached, which would have been a kind of brutal thing to have happened in a Republican because it's still a Republican held Congress. The Senate would then have to try him. And this Republican led Senate is not going to bother itself with trying Pete Hegseth between now and January, right? No. So they're going to come back. Democrats will come back. Mass he was able to get a vote on it through procedural mechanism. That's like a privileged resolution. It's like an obscure, yeah, exactly parliamentary thing. Yeah. So, anyway, they'll be back in January. And now this only basically forces Democratic leadership's hand. Like, they have to impeach Hegseth now in January, whether you know, if they wanted to punt on that, they can't do that anymore. By the way, the Harmoos letter notes that every single one of the Democrats that missed the vote is a recipient of APAC money, many of them big recipients of APAC money. So that's why the EDW connection, which you have reported out in the past is especially well though. The way these things work in Washington is if, like, these events, who comes to the event, is a sign of how powerful the organization is. So if an organization, as Emily knows, as an organization gives somebody $100,000 or spends a million dollars on their campaign, when they host a happy hour at the roost, that member better come. It's for access. Yeah. And also it's a sign like to lobbyists and other powerful people, like, oh, I was there and I saw 10 members of Congress just mingling about, like, this is a powerful organization. And if you take hundreds of thousands of dollars from an organization and you blow off their events, it is seen as a huge kind of slap in the face. Yeah. APAC, we spend $500,000 on your election through EDW and you don't come to the event. And also there's some meaningless symbolic vote to impeach access. I'll dare you. If there was a vote that was important to pro, the pro Israel lobby, they would absolutely say, oh, you know, we're just where we're mingling, we're waiting for the vote to, we'll probably extend, you know, we'll pay the bar an extra hour to preserve the space for longer. Like everybody holding pattern right now, cheer them on, that type of thing. Also, all of these members show up late to things. If they would have gone at 430, be there on time. Say your help, say your thank you for the half million dollars and then leave. You would have made it on time. You should up late. That was your problem. Anyway, so put up this, put us next element. This is B3, President Trump and Stephen Miller. According to Elena Trinhare, I've told Hegseth that their plan is to fight against the efforts to impeach him and they're going to stand by him. But the Emily, this is where I want your insight. How hard and how long are the Republicans and Trump in particular, because he's the only one that matters, going to stand by Hegseth. What's your sense? We want to know about JD. You know, I think what's going to be especially difficult for them is corralling. First of all, Tom Telis is still in office. People like him still in office. But John Cornyn is still in office. But corralling, even in the next Congress, people like Ted Cruz, who I think actually we have audio from in a second. I don't think Ted Cruz would. Yeah, let's, I don't think Ted. is going to vote to impeach Hygceth, but he's an example of probably a higher-profile name. Jerry Moran is the senator from Kansas, the Republican senator from Kansas, who just looked at big margins being put up in their state, North Carolina, Georgia, you know, even if you're from Florida and you see what happened in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, places like that. If you're a Republican senator and you're looking around you and you see in fairly red states close elections and you look at the political calculus of having, you know, the media be saturated with stories about the girl school because that's part of the articles of impeachment. The vote bombings also part of the articles of impeachment, which I just do want to mention Jonathan Turley, who's a kind of fixture on Fox News. He did an analysis of Massey's articles of impeachment yesterday and said basically he thinks a lot of them, he's a centrist and was against a lot of the, like, law fair against Donald Trump. He said that there's, most of these articles make no sense, he's against most of them, but even he said that the two strongest articles are the one of the destruction of the drug boats and the article in the effort to punish Senator Mark Kelly for his controversial videotape to the military. But just think about the drug boats. He says the double-tap allegation would be a war crime, if true. Well, we're both President Trump and Secretary Hikesett denied such orders were given. So if Democrats can prove that that happened, here you have even the, like, centrist Fox news anti-lawful GW professor coming out and saying, well, at least one of these articles might have some merit to it. So you combine that with the atmosphere where Republicans, many of whom never really liked Trump to begin with, and we're just marching a lockstep with him because they learned their voters were demanding, or enough of their voters were demanding they marched a lockstep with him. As soon as that spell is broken, can you break five to ten Republicans away? Maybe. That's actually not an insane possibility. So let's actually listen to Ted Cruz's prediction here because I think it speaks to some of that. This is going to be B5. Hand in hand with that is going to be an impeachment battle over initially Pete Hikesett. So I expect that to be the opening salvo. Listen, one of the reasons the house has been out of session for a couple of months and the reason they've been out of session is because they didn't have the votes to stop a Hikesett impeachment back in September. And as I said, the reason the speaker said everyone home is as they were counting votes, they didn't have the votes to stop a Hikesett impeachment. I think we're going to see that teed up very, very quickly. And one of two things is going to happen. Either Hikesett is going to step down, either he will resign voluntarily or Trump will fire him. Or if that does not happen, I think it is extremely likely, if not certain, that the house will impeach him. Because on the face of it, the votes are there. Now, it only takes a majority to impeach. Okay. So I think Ted Cruz is speaking to the new political reality for Republicans because, again, after January 6, you could sense the relief here in Washington among the Republicans who had come to sort of accept Trump and tolerate Trump, but never really liked him privately. They felt like they had finally, the spell had finally been broken between Trump and enough Republican voters. They learned very quickly within a couple of days that a lot of voters were still with Trump. After Iran, you see this, they should have known it earlier, but then they get this major referendum at the ballot box in red states. Does that finally break the spell? It looks like Republicans are actually starting to realize that their voters may no longer be demanding that Trump is sort of necessarily the lesser of two evils between them and the Democrats. And they're sick of all the nonsense. And then imagine the media being saturated with corruption stories and impeachment hearings on this war that is very, very unpopular for the next several months. That's a tough political climate for Hakseth legitimately. Right. And I think so when Democrats in PeeChim come January, they'll rewrite, they'll take Massey's resolution and they'll rewrite it and put in some of their own things. And you can imagine them saying that JD Vance eviscerated the civilian protection unit inside the Pentagon and then launched an AI-driven assault at the end of February that began by killing 123 children, the biggest massacre of children in many, many decades in a single attack. And then at the trial and the Senate, you're then going over the decision to gut, you know, in your hearing testimony from people inside the Pentagon who will tell you about the process that led up to that. And then, we still have not seen the footage of the second strike on the double tap, the second on the double tap where they killed the survivors. That footage apparently exists. It must. They've put out all this other footage. So this is a vote. So this is a vote strike. It's a vote strike where you have two survivors. This is what Outsman described in the press, two survivors who don't understand what happened. As far as they know, their engine just blew up, like they don't understand that they just got attacked from the sky. They look up, they see drones, and they're probably waving, right, like help. It is flatly illegal to kill like drowning and stranded sailors like that. And then they fire at them, beyond impeachable. It's a criminal offense for which, you know, a person would spend the rest of their life in prison for. And so do we get to see that in an impeachment trial? So these are all the reasons I think the Ted Cruz is right that he would be forced to resign at that point, rather than this Trump want two to three weeks of going over the worst crimes that Hegg said that's committed. Well, that Elena Trin report is fairly interesting because what it's signaling is Steven Miller and Trump are trying to reignite the spark of Trumpism and MAGA, which is actually, yeah, we will confront this head on and say, we are not taking your attacks. We are going to, like, just go full on, meet it, head on, and we don't care about the kind of traditional Washington hysteria over anything. Well, that's what they say until they don't. Right. Yeah, exactly. But it's interesting that that's like the strategy that they're trying to project to the media right now because it sounds like that's a signal to other Republicans that, no, we're still doing this MAGA thing. We are not pretending that MAGA is over. Although if you look at JD Vance's response, it was kind of weak to me. Is it before? Yeah. So Vance yesterday posted that as Hegg said, committed impeachable crimes, the question is absurd and the answer is obviously not. Like so much of Congress impeachment has become a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking. By the way, I think a lot of people actually do feel like that after we've trained in impeachment. Congress has so many tools. In part, you're telling green submitted articles of impeachment against Biden like they want. Anyway, Congress has so many tools for registering its policy disagreements. Rather than use them, they're going to try to impeach Hegg said they did the same to Donald Trump. Legislation is hard. Impeachments are easy and ultimately inconsequential. The irony is that legislators are most angry at Pete on the issues where he's most correct. Repositioning forces away from Europe, Ukraine, and reorganizing the general officer corps. This isn't about Iran. It's about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon. You know, it is, I guess there's one way, that's one way to look at it, that it's all about Pete Hegg said draining the swamp of the Pentagon. Was that a ringing defense though? There's nothing really complimentary about Pete in there, other than he took on the Pentagon. But there's no like, Pete is a brave, courageous, freedom-fighting blah, blah, blah. Like none of that. It's all like, you're not really mad about the extra-judicial killings and his Iran war failures. What you're really mad about is Ukraine and. That is interesting. I think that's actually very clever. So he didn't redirecting to Ukraine. Or is it too clever? JD has a tendency sometimes to be too clever. I think he's probably telling the truth that he thinks the impeachment is absurd. You know, JD Vance is obviously like less interventionist than most of the Republican party, but he also comes from teal world, which is full of defense contractors and is somebody cut from that cloth. On the other hand, I think you're right to read something into him refocusing on this just actually being about Ukraine and globalism and that type of thing because it's so very clearly about Iran and he has his own thoughts on Iran, so it's a bit of a strategy. A baby, I don't think that's going to fly. All right, let's move on to the house side. I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season two of the podcast Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants whistleblowers and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks and he goes, "You don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder." I never received scholarship, I need to pay for my student loans. In October 2021, my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A year later, he convinced me to make a podcast with him, this podcast. My biggest fear is that I am afraid of being forgotten. It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm gonna share all of it with you. Okay, so here we go. Listen to my brother David on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.