Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation – 02/25/2025

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had failed the Republican Party by refusing to open the House of Representatives for legislative business during the government shutdown last year.

During an appearance on C-SPAN this week, host Dasha Burns noted that the year ended without passing an extension for health care subsidies, causing insurance costs to skyrocket for many Americans.

"Republicans having the majority should have planned further in advance instead of the last weeks of the year to see how am I going to deal with this," McCarthy replied. "So now they've kind of got a political football. Remember what happened in the House."

"The Democrats did shut the government down. Everybody would agree with that," he continued. "But the Senate kept working. The House kept everybody away. And when you only have a majority for two years to pass a bill, you have to have a hearing, then you have to have a markup, then you've got to pass the bill, then it's got to go the floor? You just lost two months."

"Was it a mistake for Johnson to send the House home?" Burns wondered.

"The House, you have the power as the Speaker and the majority," McCarthy pointed out. "If you give that power away, you may look at the end of the day, oh, I gave two months, maybe the Democrats won the shutdown."

"How many other bills could we have passed? How many things could we brought to the floor that was an 80-20 issue that actually put the Democrats in a bad place for shutting the government down?"

A prominent conservative analyst ripped President Donald Trump's administration on Monday for its "dorkiest" attempt to bully one of its political foes.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense was reducing Sen. Mark Kelly's (D-AZ) retirement pay as punishment for participating in a video with five other Democrats in which they told military personnel to be suspicious of orders from the Trump administration. Trump described Kelly's comments as "seditious" in a Truth Social post.

Bill Kristol, the editor at large for The Bulwark, discussed the administration's move on a new episode of "The Bulwark Podcast" on Monday.

"Just how disgusting it is what they're doing," Kristol said. "Mark Kelly is a United States Senator serving with distinction, and he happened to make a correct argument that you don't have to obey unlawful orders, and you should be wary of some of the orders coming from this administration."

Kristol also warned that there could be unintended consequences of the move against Kelly.

"It's dorky, and it's stupid, and Mark Kelly doesn't care," Kristol said. "There are a lot of retired military and ... not all of them are famous like Mark Kelly, and some of them are living off their retirement and whatever, and don't want to be publicly humiliated and knocked down a rank."

"I worry always about the intimidation effects of these things even when they're done in the dorkiest bullying way," he continued.

Sen. John Kennedy warned that invading Greenland would be a "weapons-grade stupid" idea after the White House refused to rule out military action.

The post Republican Senator Says Invading Greenland Is a ‘Weapons-Grade Stupid’ Idea first appeared on Mediaite.

Jim Cramer and his colleagues had to awkwardly navigate a discussion about the stock market as their network's parent company had a brutal start to the day.

The post WATCH: Jim Cramer and Colleagues Tip-Toe Through Segment On CNBC Parent Company’s IPO — As Ticker Shows Stock Getting Crushed first appeared on Mediaite.