A new Congress, a new GOP lead House and a new speaker…..and now the majority, GOP, sets its priorities for the new Congress session……

Is it fiscal policies….nope

It mostly centers around the Orange man from Florida….Donald Trump.

Republicans knew better than to make their biggest messaging bill a public display of affection for moneyed criminals. But Trump currently faces both legal and political trouble from his long and storied history of tax fraud. Shortly after the House vote, the Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to prison time for his role in Trump’s tax evasion schemes. While Weisselberg’s stiff sentence likely reflects his willingness to take the fall for Trump’s crimes, as Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center lawyer Steven Rosenthal told Mother Jones this week, the Trump tax returns released by House Democrats in December make clear that’s not the only tax trouble Trump still faces. He’s never gotten nailed for any of his likely tax cheating because Trump “overwhelmed” the under-resourced IRS. In other words, the Biden law is designed to catch lawbreakers of precisely the Trump variety. So consider this first bill of the House GOP majority — which will thankfully go nowhere — as a love letter to their favorite crooked ex-president. 

For instance, one of the first changes McCarthy pushed through the House involved a series of rules meant to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body empowered to investigate complaints about members of Congress. It’s no mystery why this is a top priority for so many Republicans in Congress. Multiple GOP members have been under suspicion for the role they played in the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and four were referred to the (now also defanged) House Ethics Committee by the Jan. 6 select committee last year. The Office of Congressional Ethics isn’t under Republican control, which means there’s a very real chance it could have found evidence of sedition-related crimes. Now, effectively disempowered, it may not get the chance.

(salon.com)

Then there are those impeachments of Trump and McCarthy has made it known his thoughts.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday that he would consider expunging one or both of former President Trump’s impeachments.

“I would understand why members would want to bring that forward,” McCarthy said in response to a question at a press conference on Thursday, before listing off several other key priorities for House Republicans. 

“But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,” he added.

In the last Congress, a group of more than 30 House Republicans led by Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) put forward a resolution to expunge Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The resolution was supported by the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.).

A smaller group, again led by Mullin, also introduced a resolution to expunge Trump’s December 2019 impeachment for allegedly attempting to withhold military aid from Ukraine in an effort to pressure the country to investigate the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump in both impeachments, after failing to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict him.

(thehill.com)

Was there any doubt in the direction that McCarthy and the rest of the slugs in the GOP would travel?

Not for me

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”