Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur looks at a make-or-break week for the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson. Additionally, on Day 2 of Donald Trump’s hush money trial, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki explains how the venue of the proceedings, Manhattan, has become a voter gold mine for Democrats.
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Mike Johnson faces his most dangerous moment yet as Speaker of the House of Representatives
By Sahil Kapur
House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing the biggest threat to his presidency nearly six months after his appointment, as the walls close in on both sides of his divided Republican Party on providing aid to U.S. allies.
After dithering for months and exhausting his timeouts, he finally makes the decision: a trigger for separate votes on four bills: aid to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and a hodgepodge of other national security priorities important to Republicans.
Each will have a unique coalition, and that’s the point.
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In theory, Israeli aid could go mainly to Republicans, rather than the progressive opposition. The aid to Ukraine – structured as a loan – can be accepted mainly by the Democrats, but by the conservative opposition. The Republican opponents of helping Ukraine can vote against it, and the Republican supporters of giving the country weapons to fend off Russian aggression are finally getting rid of Johnson.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s public Republican opposition just doubled: Rep. Thomas Massie announced Tuesday that he would co-sponsor Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to remove him as chair. Massie said he is “pretty confident” that Johnson has more Republican opponents today than the eight who ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker in October, though he did not name any names.
“Mike Johnson is going against our base for the Triple Crown here. He voted for an omnibus that outspends Pelosi. He has put his finger on the scales to get through FISA without a warrant. And now he’s about to attack Ukraine without protecting our own border,” Massie said. “This will be called and he will lose the vote.”
Two votes may not seem like much, but after this Friday Johnson will have a staggering one-vote majority. Two defections and Johnson loses – unless Democrats step in to save him and vote against an eviction motion. That would be extremely unusual, but some centrist Democrats say they would do it, especially if Johnson brings up aid to Ukraine.
‘He has to manage his politics. And if they try to kick him out as speaker, I’m going to vote to keep him,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y.
Massie said a Democratic bailout would ultimately do Johnson more harm than good.
“Then he goes further into the gap with the Republicans,” Massie said. “He’s becoming toxic to the conference. For every Democrat who comes to his aid, he loses two to three more Republicans. … There is no lasting solution if Democrats bail him out.”
And that sums up Johnson’s dilemma: he can’t govern with his far-right rebels, but he can’t keep his job without them. The same dynamic became too much for McCarthy to navigate. Today, Johnson has an even smaller majority.
Yet he realizes that he cannot be deterred by such threats, lest he be completely captured by the troublemakers. And this could be the last major effort until the 2024 elections, when voters will once again determine the makeup of Congress.
“I’m not resigning. And it is, in my view, an absurd idea that anyone would table a vote of no confidence when we are just here to do our job,” Johnson told reporters. “I’m not worried about this. I’m going to do my job.”
The first jurors are in Trump’s hush money trial
By Adam Reiss, Dareh Gregorian, Jonathan Allen and Lisa Rubin
The first seven jurors were selected Tuesday in Trump’s hush-money trial, amid a battle over potential jurors’ old Facebook posts and calls to “lock him up” and a warning from the judge that the former president should not try to to intimidate panel members who will be prosecuted. determine his fate.
“I don’t want jurors to be intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make this crystal clear,” Judge Juan Merchan told Trump and his attorney Todd Blanche. The judge told Blanche that Trump had “audibly” said something toward a juror while she was “10 feet away from your client.”
Merchan said he did not know what Trump said, but that he had been “mumbling” and “gesturing” at the juror, and instructed Blanche to talk to his client about his behavior. Blanche then whispered something in Trump’s ear.
The incident underlines Trump’s tendency to act in court and the problems his lawyers may have in keeping him under control.
The drama took place on the second day of jury selection. The jury is anonymous, so their names were not used in open court. The panel members do include a salesperson, an oncology nurse, an IT consultant, a teacher and a software engineer.
Overall, the search to find a jury of 12 people and six alternates who could be “fair and impartial” when it comes to the polarizing New Yorker and former commander in chief was moving at a faster pace than Monday.
The trial will not take place on Wednesday, so the trial will resume on Thursday.
Read more about the second day of the Trump trial here →
Trump needs a different kind of swing voter in Manhattan
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
Trump’s legal team argues that the former president faces “real potential prejudice” in his hush money lawsuit because of the location: Manhattan, the bluest borough in one of the bluest major cities in America.
Whether this could actually have any impact on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s ability to receive a fair trial is a matter of debate. But simply in terms of its political leanings, Manhattan’s partisan tilt is strong.
As a whole, New York City supported Joe Biden over Trump by a 76-23% margin in 2020. But of the five boroughs that make up the Big Apple, it was Manhattan that delivered Biden’s most lopsided margins:
Each of these districts has its own specific demographic and political mix. For example, Staten Island’s only red redoubt has by far the smallest population and is more suburban in character, with significant local support for secession from the rest of the city.
The other four boroughs are densely populated Democratic bastions. But even among these four, Manhattan stands out. Why is it a shade or two bluer than the others? A comparison of the demographics with that of the city as a whole reveals an explanation:
Simply put, Manhattan is whiter and wealthier, compared to New York City overall, and contains a much deeper concentration of white residents with college degrees. That’s a demographic mix that, especially in the Trump era, has been political gold for Democrats.
Registered voters in Manhattan (one of the sources from which potential jurors are drawn) are more than ten times as likely to be Democrats (72%) than Republicans (7%). Political involvement is also higher in Manhattan: although it makes up 19.2% of the city’s population, it represented 22.9% of all votes cast in New York City in 2020.
The combination of its size, turnout levels and partisan tendencies makes Manhattan one of the largest sources of Democratic votes anywhere in the country. To put this in perspective, the 603,040 votes Biden received in Manhattan in 2020 were greater than his total in twenty states.
When it comes to his legal fate in Manhattan, Trump will need a very different kind of decisive voter.
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
