Hey everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for being here. And happy Veterans Day to everybody out there who served.
Our top story today. The 2028 Republican primary for president has begun, but right now it’s mostly about survival. Everybody who wants that nomination is tied to what happened last Tuesday one way or another, and they’re each trying to cut that tie before it sinks them. Every one of them has a story about why the party lost, and every one of those stories happens to leave them out of it.
We’ll also get into the ICE hiring scandal that just got exposed, House Republicans handing the keys to Jim Jordan, how the Hegseth impeachment vote fell apart, and some good news on accountability finally catching up with Alina Habba.
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Let’s get to it.
1. GOP 2028 Hopefuls Run From Trump
Every one of them put out their own explanation for the blue wave. And in the process, they gave us a sneak peek at their campaign strategies.
First up is JD Vance, who had the most to lose. Before the midterms, he was the heir to a Republican trifecta. Now he’s the heir to a movement and a president that the American people just disavowed.
That puts him in a lose-lose situation. On one hand, he’s trying to distance himself by blaming everything on the war. It’s a tidy story: one bad decision, and a year from now he’s cleared of everything else this administration did. But it’s not so simple. In the exit polls, only 34 percent called the war crucial. And Vance has said nothing about everything else, from corruption to tariffs.
On the other hand, even breaking on the war is too much for Trump’s hardline base. A Florida congressman just said he won’t back Vance in 2028 because criticizing the war is disloyal. So he’s stuck. MAGA sees him as a traitor. Everyone else sees him as Trump’s guy.
Marco Rubio is making the opposite bet. He still defends the war. He calls it “the right thing to do,” even though voters hate it. Otherwise, he’s kept his head down, hoping none of this administration sticks to him. Some Republicans are calling him the real winner of the midterms for exactly that reason. In this administration, the less you’re seen, the less toxic you appear.
Then there are the two Republicans outside the administration: Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz. They have it much easier. They don’t have to hedge like Vance or hide like Rubio. They can go after this administration for its failures from the outside.
Ron DeSantis called the midterms “close to an extinction-level event.” He also said Republicans “really were fighting yesterday’s battles,” even though he has built his whole career on those battles. And Ted Cruz? He called it “a Watergate-level repudiation,” blaming both the tariffs and the war. By his own account, he’s the only Republican left holding statewide office in Texas, only because he wasn’t on the ballot.
So both DeSantis and Cruz are making the same pitch. This administration led the party into one of the worst defeats in history. The future of the party has to come from someone outside it.
Where is the president in all of this? He told CBS he might sit out the 2028 primary: “Maybe I’m better off not getting involved.” How about that for a welcome change? The midterms made clear that Americans are tired of him. But nobody would be more grateful than the Republicans running in that primary.
And listen, that’s where the GOP is right now. A year ago, everyone in the party was fighting to stand next to Trump. Now they’re trying to stand as far away as they can without getting in trouble.
2. ICE Exposed Hiring Disgraced Cops
In late October, hackers broke into a DHS database and leaked the names of about 1,500 ICE officers hired since the president took office. The Washington Post ran background checks on 300 of them, most of them former police officers. Nineteen had red flags that should have kept them far away from another badge.
Five had use-of-force incidents. Another five were named in lawsuits that ended in settlements. And six had been fired, decertified, or quit before they could be fired.
Cruelty isn’t a disqualifier for DHS, and neither is incompetence. Among the names was a Mississippi officer who threatened to arrest a man for holding a sign, then admitted in deposition that he didn’t know the First Amendement. He resigned on December 30th and was an ICE deportation officer the following Monday.
The administration wants you to believe that immigration enforcement has to be cruel and violent. It doesn’t. The mayhem ICE has caused across the country is the direct result of choices to prioritize deportation numbers over public safety and proper vetting. Voters knew it. That’s why so many people who initially supported deportations voted for Democrats last Tuesday.
DHS clearly didn’t get the memo. Here’s the secretary last night.
First of all: the worst of the worst? Is he talking about his own deportation officers?
And what about the president? Just days ago he admitted that his deportation policy was too tough, and floated an amnesty deal with Democrats. But then Stephen Miller got promoted, and now the DHS secretary is directly contradicting what we heard from the president just a couple of days ago.
Look, the President knows this policy hurts him. He said it out loud and on camera. But he can’t afford to alienate the immigration hard-liners that elevated him to power, and a lot of them are in the Oval Office with him every day. They’re not going to let him change his tune without a fight.
3. House GOP Doubles Down on MAGA
Yesterday, by secret ballot, a bruised house GOP picked Jim Jordan over Steve Scalise. Both ran for Speaker in 2023 and both came up short. So what was Jim’s pitch to the conference this time around? Apparently, he’s “battle-tested on the oversight front” and knows “the Democrats’ playbook.”
His job, as he described it to colleagues, is to defend the president, his family, and his administration from the investigations coming in January. I’m not so sure he’s up to the task. Listen to how he defended the Iran War when gas prices were spiking.
What? With that kind of pitch, no wonder the GOP got clobbered.
The choice to make Jim Jordan minority leader says a lot about the total lack of reflection in the GOP. This is the guy who founded the Freedom Caucus. He defied a subpoena from the January 6th committee. He once told Anderson Cooper he had never heard the president lie. If you asked voters to draw a picture of what they turned down last week, a lot of them would draw Jim Jordan.
For the next two years, Republicans have a choice to make. They can break with the president and start earning back the people who left them last Tuesday. Or they can hunker down, circle the wagons, and shield Trump against the tide of accountability coming his way. Picking Jim Jordan to lead the way tells you which direction they are headed. They are going all in on MAGA, once again.
4. Hegseth Escapes Impeachment
On Monday, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. He filed them as what’s called a privileged resolution, which means the House has to deal with it within two legislative days.
Speaker Johnson has been trying to avoid an up-or-down vote on Pete Hegseth for months, so Republicans called a procedural vote to send the articles to the Judiciary Committee. If it passes, that’s where they would sit until this Congress ends. If it fails, the House would have to vote on the articles themselves.
Procedural votes are usually where leadership plays its games. But this one wasn’t a secret. The floor schedule for the day reportedly listed a possible motion tied to the impeachment resolution, with votes as early as 5:30. So every member was on notice. Or they should have been.
Unfortunately, the motion passed and sent Massie’s articles to the Judiciary Committee. The final count? 211 to 204. Eleven Democrats missed the vote. So where were they? Several of them say there was a police escort that blocked the way into the Capitol.
The Democrats who did show up weren’t pleased with their colleagues. Take Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove from California. Here’s what she said on the Capitol steps after the vote.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries tried to spin it. He says that, come January, Democrats will “run Pete Hegseth out of town.” And that additional articles of impeachment are already drafted.
Fine. But this was the chance to impeach Hegseth with Republican votes, in a Republican House. That would have been a bipartisan rebuke. Now Republicans get to call any future impeachment a Democratic witch hunt.
Look, things happen. I’ve been there. But we are only one week removed from an election that gave Democrats a mandate to hold this administration accountable. And on their first real opportunity to do so, they dropped the ball.
5. Accountability Catches Alina Habba
Over the past few weeks, we‘ve been following a corruption scandal involving Alina Habba, the president’s former personal lawyer.
While serving as a senior adviser at the Justice Department, Habba took a general counsel job with a company tied to a Venezuelan banker. The contract was worth 50 million dollars, paid out over four years. That kind of money screamed conflict of interest. As it turns out, the banker was seeking a pardon in a case that started as felony bribery charges. A few weeks later, he got one.
When the news broke, the president called the deal “totally obnoxious and outrageous,” possibly because he wasn’t in on the cut. He even suggested she donate what she’d been paid to his presidential library or one of his other causes.
Now two new reports add to the plot. According to the New York Times, the company has terminated her contract, citing a “failure to perform duties.” That’s rich. If her job was getting the banker a pardon, she certainly delivered. And Habba still walks away with plenty. She keeps the six and a half million already paid and an eight million dollar signing bonus.
And there’s more. Yesterday, the Washington Sun reported that the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ethics office filed formal charges against her. Not over the pardon. Over a separate ethical nightmare.
In 2021, a server at the president’s Bedminster golf club was preparing to sue her manager for sexual harassment. She had a lawyer. But Habba saw an opportunity. As a member of the club, she befriended the server and talked her into dropping her lawyer. Then Habba negotiated the settlement herself. Less than a month later, the president hired Habba’s firm.
The complaint says that agreement violated New Jersey law. It says Habba already admitted in June that her conduct broke the rules. It also cites her “cavalier attitude toward the disciplinary process.” Now her law license is on the line.
Habba’s arc sums up this administration. She landed the president’s business after settling a harassment case against his club. She got a U.S. attorney job from him, until the courts threw her out. Then she took 50 million dollars from a man who needed a pardon.
And look, this administration doesn’t just tolerate people like Habba. It rewards them. When Democrats hold the gavel in January, it’s time to close the book on every one of these stories.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Democrats’ midterm sweep could put the national popular vote plan within reach of 270 electoral votes. In last week’s elections, Democrats won full control of six state governments worth 71 electoral votes: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That matters because of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Member states agree to give their electors to whoever wins the national popular vote, but only once the compact reaches 270. Today, it sits at 222. Adding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan would get the compact to 266, leaving either Arizona or Nevada to push it over the line. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro says he will work with his new legislature on it. Wisconsin Gov. David Crowley says he’s open to it too. Governors in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada have not committed. Republicans argue the plan would let other states override their own voters. Conservative groups and legal scholars expect a constitutional challenge that could reach the Supreme Court. The push took off after George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. Each won the presidency while losing the popular vote.
Nine members of the Kennedy family are going to court to stop President Trump’s planned triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. Children and grandchildren of Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy moved to join an existing lawsuit in Washington. They argue the 250-foot arch would cast a shadow over their relatives’ graves. They also say it would block the sightline from the eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy’s grave, “destroying an essential element of the gravesite’s design.” A White House spokesman called the move “unfortunate,” explaining that the project is meant to honor the heroes buried at Arlington. The Kennedy family’s involvement marks the latest development in an ongoing battle. The arch already faces lawsuits from veterans, a historian, Virginia and Arlington County, and the District of Columbia. Last Thursday, the National Capital Planning Commission gave it final approval despite the lawsuits. But Judge Tanya Chutkan paused construction for 14 days, writing that the arch needs congressional approval.
