𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The House Minority Leader began his remarks to the House at 4.53am ET and is still going strong.

Impressive stuff and entirely appropriate given the seriousness of what’s at stake.

He has repeatedly call the bill “shameful” and characterized the Trump administration as defined by “chaos, cruelty and corruption.”

Why did the hard-line Republican cabal fold so easily earlier this morning after complaining so loudly that the bill was “not ready for primetime”?

Here’s more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia on Capitol Hill:

“When the vote on the rule to pass the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ remained open, the main holdouts were the usual suspects, the House Freedom Caucus, that group of hellraisers who helped oust John Boehner in 2015, blocked Kevin McCarthy from the speakership in 2023 and helped install Mike Johnson.

“Unsurprisingly, by the morning vote in the wee hours, the holdouts who withheld their votes were mostly from the Freedom Caucus and all of them flipped.

“Surprisingly, the one ‘no’ vote on the rule was not from a conservative, but a moderate, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania’s 1st District, which voted for Kamala Harris. Fitzpatrick is considered a moderate and moves like this allow him to keep his credibility with Democratic voters.

“Meanwhile, this has become a common cycle for the conservatives since Trump returned to Washington. On January 3, during the first vote for speaker, Rep. Ralph Norman voted for Jim Jordan to be speaker instead of Johnson and when his name was called, fellow caucus member Rep. Chip Roy initially just tapped his foot and remained silent in the middle of the aisle. Eventually, both relented.

“The Freedom Caucus would repeat this same song and dance in February for the initial budget resolution. Then they would do it again during the second budget resolution in April and repeated it again last month during the House’s first passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.

“When The Independent asked if the Freedom Caucus was bluffing, Norman said they did not. ‘The reason we have credibility is they know we’ll vote “no.”’

“Norman went on to vote for the rule.”

As Jeffries continues to put Republicans to the sword over Medicaid and the national debt, here’s more on the House Minority Leader from The Independent’s Eric Garcia on Capitol Hill:

“Hakeem Jeffries has so far refrained from endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor after he won the Democratic primary for New York City Mayor. But he also has a storied relationship with the current mayor Eric Adams.

“In 2021, Jeffires endorsed one of Adams’s opponents, Maya Wiley. And their history goes back to their time in the New York State legislature.

“In 2010, New York passed a law that banned authorities from compiling the names of people who were stopped by police but not arrested.

“The sponsors? Two up and coming state legislators from Brooklyn named Hakeem Jeffries and Eric Adams.”

Speaking of Mamdani, here’s Eric’s report on other Democrats who have so offered only tepid support for his candidacy.

The House Minority Leader is showing no sign of slowing down or running out of material with which to shame Republicans.

He is continuing to attack Trump’s bill as a “disgusting abomination” that will have “devastating consequences” for ordinary Americans.

To illustrate his point, Jeffries has been reading out letters from voters across the country explaining how vital Medicaid has been to their lives and what dire straits they will be placed in if the bill’s cuts to the program are passed.

Here’s how millions of people could lose their health insurance if Trump’s bill does indeed become law, as looks all too likely.

Jeffries, enjoying his Jefferson Smith moment, earns a huge round of applause from his exhausted colleagues as he vows to go on calling out the bill, having already spoken for more than an hour.

We’re a long way off Cory Booker territory here in terms od duration but this is still impressive stuff from the New Yorker.

Speaker Johnson will be up next and is likely to be much briefer, no doubt keen to put the situation, and himself, to bed.

Here’s The Independent’s Eric Garcia, still at it on Capitol Hill, on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is currently holding the floor with a brutal attack on Republicans for pushing through a tax and spending bill over which so many of them have profound objections:

“Right now, House Minority Leader is using the time allotted to party leaders to deliver a long speech criticizing the bill. Being in the minority in the House sort of sucks. Unlike in the Senate, which offers the minority the filibuster, or in the case of a vote-a-rama, the opportunity to offer unlimited amendments, the House has few tactics.

“His dress sneakers replaced the stilettos that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi often considered the best vote counter of her generation. Jeffries has yet to prove whether he can whip the votes for important legislation in the majority, since he came into power after Democrats lost the House.

“But one area where he’s decidedly much better is talking and communicating. Whereas Pelosi would sometimes make an off-the-cuff remark that would get her in trouble or that were ineloquent, Jeffries is frustratingly good at staying on message and annoying Republicans. A product of the Black Baptist church tradition in Brooklyn, he adopts the cadence of a preacher on Sunday.”

Meanwhile, here’s a few choice extracts of the New Yorker in action:

With the debate ongoing in the House ahead of the upcoming vote, anticipated later this morning, California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez got in this zinging line about GOP members like Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski who make a point of expressing their unhappiness with legislation like this and then vote for it anyway.

Here’s some more Democratic anger over the move the Republicans now look all but certain to make.

Personally, I think I’d rather just stick to toast.

This was the scene on Capitol Hill a short while ago.