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A ballot box is emptied and the counting of ballots begins. In Bavaria, the election for the 19th Bavarian state parliament took place on Sunday.
What We're Watching: Three votes that matter
The first took place on Sunday in Germany. In the states of Bavaria and Hesse, voters continued a trend we’ve seen in recent years in France, Italy, and several other European countries of abandoning traditional mainstream parties of both the left and right in a shift toward new names and faces.
Inflation, a stagnant economy, and rising anxiety over migration into the country are making life tougher on incumbents. The center-left parties that now govern Germany in coalition performed poorly, but the conservative Christian Social Union, which has governed Bavaria since the 1950s, also floundered, taking its lowest vote share in the southern state (37%) in more than half a century.
Public support in Germany is now moving toward populists. In particular, the populist Free Voters weathered an antisemitism scandal involving its leader to take more than 15% of the vote in Bavaria. The far-right Alternative for Germany party has seen its approval numbers surge alongside a rising number of foreign migrants entering the country. Its 14.6% vote share in Bavaria and 18.4% in Hesse show that the party, which has built a base of support mainly in Germany’s east, is beginning to post impressive numbers in the west.
The second noteworthy vote is expected to take place later this week inside the US House of Representatives, as the Republican majority tries to elect a new speaker to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy.
For now, the lead candidates are House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio. Broadly speaking, Scalise is considered the more experienced legislator and dealmaker, while Jordan offers himself as an unapologetic partisan firebrand with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
It’s not clear that either man can win the 218 votes needed to become speaker this week, raising the possibility that interim speaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina might be asked to hold down the job for several weeks, with a clearer understanding of his temporary legislative authority and its limits, as Republicans hash out their differences.
At stake is continued funding of the US government, ongoing US support for Ukraine, and a host of other critical issues.
Finally, voters in Liberia will elect a new president on Tuesday against a backdrop of the violent breakdown of democracy in several other West African countries. President George Weah wants a second six-year term, and the fragmentation of opposition support among 19 challengers might help him win in the first round.
The issues Liberian voters care about most are those that most directly impact their lives. Weah, a celebrated former footballer, can point to wider availability of affordable electricity and greater investment in new roads as accomplishments, but rising food prices have twice triggered major protests during his presidency and could again.
In this case, the vote itself will be a major accomplishment for Liberia. Just in the past five years, there have been coups or coup attempts in the West African states of Mali (twice), Niger (twice), Guinea, Gabon (twice), Burkina Faso (three times), and Sierra Leone. By contrast, Liberia has been a democracy at peace since the 2005 election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
Weah’s election in 2017 was the first peaceful transition of power from one democratically elected president to another in Liberia’s history.
Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks to reporters after he was ousted from the position of Speaker
McCarthy inside the belly of the beast
It’s tempting to gather around a partisan tailgate party and warm your hands on the political fire that is Washington politics. The trouble is, lawmakers set this one themselves, and arson is not a smart way to stay warm. Eventually, the fire spreads everywhere, and that is exactly what’s happening.
The unprecedented ouster of Republican Kevin McCarthy as House speaker by eight far-right radicals is not just a domestic disaster but a global one that has leaders from Kyiv to Ottawa putting on their protective gear.
What does it all mean? We’ve been extensively covering the implications of the McCarthy mayhem, including:
- What happens now?
- Will this lead to more government shutdowns?
- And Ian Bremmer and Matt Kendrick weighed in on the impact this will have on Ukraine here and here.
But for all that, the fundamental question remains unanswered for US allies: Is America the Indispensable now America the Unreliable?
Not yet, but it is moving in that direction.
The Group of 8 who ousted McCarthy – I have heard partisans call them “the Crazy 8s” – may have little internal support in the GOP, but they now essentially control their party. That’s bad news for Ukraine, bad news for the US economy, and bad news for US allies.
Canadian officials now hold long strategy sessions planning not only for a potential Trump government but for immediate US dysfunction. Trump was already promising a government of reprisals, not reliables, but that has now been accelerated by a year. Once Congress stops believing in support for Ukraine, it’s not that lawmakers no longer believe in Ukraine, it’s that they no longer believe in support in general. That sends a bad message to allies.
And what does it say to Moscow? It’s a huge win for Russia. Let’s be clear: Putin is the big winner of the McCarthy debacle.
McCarthy’s fate is a lesson to democracies around the world — Canada, France, Hungary, the UK, you name it — dealing with far-right factions that are growing in support. McCarthy tried to appease them – he tried to give them concessions in hopes they would come round. But it didn’t work. Once you feed the radical beast, you end up in its belly, and that’s where both McCarthy and the Republican Party now find themselves.
Democrats are not blameless either. Not a single Dem voted to support McCarthy. Why? As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained, Dems should not be “strengthening someone who voted to overturn the election, held the entire US economy hostage, launched a baseless impeachment inquiry without a vote, and refuses to honor his word.”
OK, but now what? Dems may have loathed McCarthy, but at least he tried working with them to secure last weekend’s funding deal. Politics is all about working with people you disagree with for the greater good. Progress moves like a crab in a democracy — to the right, to the left, but slowly ever forward. That ain’t happening now.
Who will come next? Is there really an expectation that by emboldening the Gaetz 8 – the G8 – that things will get better?
The Dems view this purely as part of a political strategy game – as in, the Republicans will wear the political pain of a government shutdown, and watching them infight and collapse will help Biden in the next election. Maybe. The thing is, people vote for politicians to be policymakers, not game players. The Dems may have a short-term victory, but at what cost?
It's hard to see clearly inside the belly of the beast. And while this is disheartening for US voters, it’s the same for US allies. America the Unreliable is not a brand the world needs right now.
A collage showing the US Capitol, former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Washington chaos rings alarm bells in Ukraine and Europe
You’ve heard the news. Rebel Republicans and unsympathetic Democrats ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his job yesterday. That post is now officially “vacant.” For now, Patrick McHenry (R-NC) holds the post of Speaker Pro Tempore to ensure there’s someone there to keep the lights on and the process moving toward the election of a new speaker.
Americans (and the world) are now trying to figure out what it all means. But keep in mind, this has never happened before. The only previous attempt to fire a speaker of the US House of Representatives failed, and that was 113 years ago. The cliché “uncharted waters” fits perfectly here.
But … you’ve got questions, lots of questions, and I’m here to give you the best available answers.
We just survived a shutdown threat last weekend. Should we expect more of these congressional showdowns?
Absolutely. Current funding for the government runs out on Nov. 17, and we may not have a speaker to make a deal by then. Even if the House is able to elect a new speaker well before then, that person may feel obliged to continue this game of legislative chicken well into next year by continuing to offer only short-term government funding deals in exchange for concessions from Democrats. In short, the “shutdown showdowns” have only just begun.
Who will be the next speaker?
Get ready for a potentially bloody fight among Republicans. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), conservative Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) have already made moves to enter the race, but there will be more names. For now, Scalise has the most friends with votes, so he’s the early favorite.
Can McHenry, the temporary speaker, get stuff done while we wait?
Again, we’re in uncharted waters. McHenry, McCarthy’s hand-picked successor, has an open-ended ability to preside over House business. There are no rules that prevent him from holding the job indefinitely.
But because this has never happened in American history, the limits of McHenry’s authority aren’t clear. The House parliamentarian is the person with the responsibility to tell us what the rules say. (Be glad you don’t have that job.) Whatever the rules-interpreter/rules-keeper decides will create a precedent.
What does all this chaos mean for Ukraine?
It’s bad news for Volodymyr Zelensky, to be sure. It’s possible that Congress will approve new money for Ukraine before the end of the year, but it’s looking a lot less likely now than it did a few days ago. There are a sizeable number of House Republicans who don’t want the US to send more money to Ukraine, certainly not the additional $40 billion that President Joe Biden wants.
Step back for a moment to last weekend, when most of us were breathing a deep sigh of relief that the shutdown had been averted. To get that deal, pro-Ukraine Democrats had agreed (at least temporarily) to pull new Ukraine funding from the budget deal. They fully intended to fight over that another day, but they set a precedent that Ukraine aid was a bargaining chip they were willing to put on the table.
Anti-Ukraine-aid Republicans saw that, and now they’ll want that concession every time they bargain with Democrats to keep the government open.
OK, so why didn’t Democrats save McCarthy yesterday? They could have done that, right?
Yes, they could have. But the Dems felt McCarthy had backed away from too many promises to deserve saving. From the Dems’ point of view, McCarthy went from condemning Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and calling for an investigation of his responsibility to backing Trump and then to launching an impeachment process against Biden. Democrats made clear early yesterday they had no intention of bailing out a speaker they neither liked nor trusted.
But the Democrats do want to support Ukraine, right? Haven’t they left Ukraine in a precarious place?
Yes, they have.
Here are the scenarios that could protect near-term US aid for Ukraine …
- Republicans could elect a speaker who’s willing to defy dozens of his fellow Republican members of Congress to pass a bill that includes billions more for Ukraine.
- Or Democrats in the Senate could refuse to compromise on Ukraine aid and dare Republicans to shut down the US government.
Neither is all that likely.
By the way, it’s not that all US financial help for Ukraine has stopped. The Pentagon still has $5 billion in additional aid and drawdown authority in its budget. That will meet some of Ukraine’s needs in the coming months.
So, what’s the lasting damage from all this?
Ukraine’s leaders now know the US isn’t a reliable long-term backer, even with a supportive president and the backing of most members of Congress. And they know they’ll have to fight their war differently now. They’ll have to keep more firepower in reserve to be sure they don’t run out of weapons and ammo at a time when new supplies aren’t coming.
They knew that was a risk tied to Trump and next November’s US election. But now, Kyiv must deal with this risk immediately.
Washington’s chaos is also ringing alarm bells across Europe, where leaders know that, particularly on the weapons front, they can’t backfill what will be lost if supplies from Washington begin to run dry.
And the Europeans have to think about their own security. What, they wonder, does all this mean for NATO if this is the future of the Republican Party in America?
In short, a lot of trust has been lost, and it takes much longer to rebuild trust than it does to lose it.
Ousted U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy is ousted as House speaker. What comes next?
In a historic first, the most powerful Republican has been ousted.
After just nine months on the job, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was booted on Tuesday when Democrats joined eight Republicans in backing a vote calling for his ouster. Crucially, the vote was brought by the right flank of McCarthy’s party.
How’d we get here? A handful of anti-establishment, far-right Republicans have opposed McCarthy’s speakership from the get-go, but the immediate trigger was the speaker’s decision to work with Democrats over the weekend to pass a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Though that stopgap measure, which will expire on Nov. 17, did not include more aid for Ukraine, McCarthy did agree to introduce a separate measure to dole out more funds to Kyiv, infuriating far-right members of his caucus.
The House is now in uncharted territory. The bruised and battered McCarthy, who appeared to relish the job he fought tooth and nail for back in January, said late Tuesday that he would not put his hat back in the ring, and it's unclear who might replace him. Going forward, the tear-it-all-down wing of the party, though small, likely won’t be inclined to back any lawmaker they consider to be part of the GOP establishment they despise, and so it’s unclear who – if anyone – will be able to reap the 218 votes needed to become speaker.
The repercussions are huge. As Congress controls the purse strings, the House and Senate must pass appropriation bills to fund the federal government before the current measure lapses in mid-November. Failure to do so could cause major losses for the US economy (more on that here).
Given the unprecedented nature of the situation, it’s unclear how long it’ll take to vote on a new speaker and whether the temporary speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a McCarthy ally, will bring bills to the floor for a vote.
While this chaos dims the chances of the House passing a spending bill before the mid-November deadline, it also makes the future of US aid to Ukraine increasingly murky. That’s because the right flank of the GOP vehemently opposes ongoing aid to Ukraine, and a new speaker might not want to push the matter given how it panned out for McCarthy.
Despite the fact that a majority of US lawmakers support ongoing aid for Ukraine, it’s the speaker of the House who decides which bills come to the floor for a vote.
A sign of the depths of disarray? When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked a GOP lawmaker on Tuesday evening whether he anticipates a new speaker will be tapped soon, he replied: “I have no earthly idea, brother.”
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in DC, shares his thoughts on what’s likely to come next after McCarthy’s ouster. Tune in here.
What's next after Kevin McCarthy's ouster?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Kevin McCarthy' is out. What's next?
So Kevin McCarthy today became the first speaker in American history to be removed from his job involuntarily, and the House is now going to be plunged into a period of uncertainty, with American governance losing the leader of one of its most important branches.
Patrick McHenry, a representative from North Carolina and an ally of Kevin McCarthy, is going to be the interim speaker and he will have to be able to execute most of the duties of the speaker, at least until there could be a new vote to replace him. But the question is going to be, who on earth has 218 votes to become speaker in this environment?
There's a small group of conservatives who are showing a lot of muscle here by taking McCarthy out, and they could do that to a future speaker as well, all over the issue of spending, and what's likely to happen now is that you get possibly flat funding on spending into next year. And the biggest loser from all of this could end up being Ukraine aid, because the same group that took McCarthy out are among the biggest opponents of additional Ukraine aid in the United States Congress, and that can make funding a new round of Ukraine aid well into 2024 a lot more difficult than the Biden administration was hope for.
So this could potentially have, this is a small vote that started with a disgruntled member from Florida, that could have massive geopolitical consequences that are felt for years.
Ukraine's aid struggles will worsen if McCarthy is ousted
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week and a challenging week indeed for President Zelensky as we start to see more pushback on the ability to continue to support the Ukrainians in defending themselves against the ongoing Russian invasion.
A few different stories here. The most meaningful one being the push against Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, particularly around support for Ukraine aid. And if McCarthy goes down, that is a big hit to the ability to get additional Ukrainian aid approved over the coming months. Any future speaker that sees that the conservatives of the GOP were prepared to take out Kevin McCarthy for willingness to work with the Democrats and get Ukrainian funding done separately would certainly mean that his replacement is going to be very hard pressed to put forward legislation that would continue to fund them. So this has become a big political football in the United States. Republicans, now identified Republicans, a majority say that too much aid is going from the United States. Ukraine should be significantly reduced, if not cut off entirely. Democrats, those numbers are also going up, but they're still in the minority, about 30% and independents more like 40 to 50.
But that's very, very different from where aid to Ukraine was three months ago, six months ago, twelve months ago, not aligned with President Biden, not aligned with what had been a bipartisan consensus. And while there's a lot of economic aid that goes from Ukraine, from Europe to Ukraine, the military support comes overwhelmingly from the United States. So this is a very serious problem, makes it very hard to imagine that Ukraine would be able to engage in a second offensive next year. And, of course, that means that the land that they presently occupy is the land that they look to be occupying for at least the near term, foreseeable future. That's one point.
Secondly, Canada, which has been one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine with a large Ukrainian population, ethnic Ukrainian population, that's politically very salient in Canada. They had their speaker of the Canadian parliament forced to resign after introducing and celebrating a man as a war hero that had fought with a Nazi unit in World War II. It is very clear that the speaker had no idea that that was his background. And he comes from northern Ontario. He knows nothing about foreign policy. But hugely embarrassing for the Trudeau government and for a government that has been, again, very, very outspoken in what they're willing to provide for the Ukrainians. And if you oppose that, you now have a lot of grist for your mill.
And then finally, Robert Fico, the former PM of Slovakia had been forced out for corruption, just had an election. Parliamentary election. His party came in front. They will form a coalition in the coming weeks and he ran on a left wing Slovak populist platform, but also on a strongly pro-Russian platform and has said that there will be no more military aid coming from Slovakia to Ukraine. That doesn't actually matter. They don't provide very much that they did. That matter was just at the beginning. And also, it's not going to prevent the EU from ongoing economic support. The Slovaks will be bought off, especially in coalition. But these are significant pieces in showing a level of fatigue for supporting the ongoing Ukraine war. It is a meaningful effort. It is tens and tens of billions of dollars in euros and no end to the war in sight. So increasingly you're seeing voices saying, well, how might one go about negotiation?
And of course, most publicly, the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, who just over the last couple of days was posting pro-Kremlin propaganda, going after Zelensky. An enormous turnaround for a man who had done among the most of anyone to support the Ukrainians in providing his own Starlink system, ostensibly just for humanitarian purposes. But he knew very well it was being used and supported it being used to help defend the Ukrainians from invasion made a big difference. He's not there now. Now he's saying this war needs to end, the aid needs to end and has been supporting and promoting a lot of pro-Russian and anti Ukrainian accounts.
So you put all of that together.I do think that this is a much more challenging set of headwinds for Zelensky and for the Ukrainian people trying to defend themselves. Now, what does that all mean? Well, it's not going to affect the EU accession process, which continues to move and will provide a lot of economic support and promote a lot of economic reform in Ukraine, which is necessary. And the Russians are not going to be able to suddenly turn on their own offensive because they don't have the troops available. They haven't yet put forward a new mobilization and Putin is unlikely to do that until after his own internal parliamentary elections in the coming year. And once you do that, you still need to train them.
So I would say we're probably a minimum of a year before the Russians would be able to make significant additional gains against Ukraine in the worst case scenario for the Ukrainians. Also, the Ukrainians have had some successes, not in terms of taking territory, but in their ability to target the Black Sea fleet and their ability to engage in successful drone strikes against Crimea occupied by Russia as well as against Russian territory, the Russian homeland itself. They've also been able to get their own ships out into the Black Sea, which means more food and fertilizer coming from Ukraine, even though that deal that had been brokered by the UN and Turkey has fallen apart. So, I mean, these are not end times for the Ukrainians by any means, but it is very hard to see anything that looks like what the Ukrainians would describe as a victory, meaning at the minimum, pushing the Russians out of all the territory that they have taken of Ukraine since February 24th. And I'm not even thinking about things like war reparations and the rest.
And in that regard, you know, the need for the Americans and NATO to sit down with the Ukrainian government and try to figure out how one might, over time get to a cease fire, what can be provided to the Ukrainians that would allow them to and accept a reality where all of their land is not coming back to them? Politically, that's almost inconceivable right now. I can't see any Ukrainian leader that would be able to sell that to his own population. Maybe the exception is if there was full NATO accession as a member that ensured that the West would actually defend non-occupied Ukraine from further assault. But the Americans are not there right now and that gets harder to promote the closer we get to the upcoming elections. There's also risks and that of course, because it means yes, indeed, the West would actually be defending Ukraine from further Russian strikes. So this is looking increasingly difficult in terms of endgame and more problematic for the Biden administration and the coherence of NATO.
That is the analysis as I see it. And we'll keep following this very closely of course. I hope everyone’s doing well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
The U.S. Capitol.
The US government is heading toward a shutdown. What does that mean?
The US government looks set to shut down this Sunday after House Republicans indicated that they would not support a bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the federal government past this weekend’s deadline.
Absent a last-minute agreement, many federal agencies could soon shut down, while millions of federal workers could be placed on furlough without pay due to a lapse in funding from Congress, which controls the purse strings.
What led to the current stalemate and what does it mean?
You might recall that, back in June, House Republicans agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, Republicans and the White House agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this sort of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But that is now up in the air as a number of “tear-it-all-down” Republicans are refusing to fund the government – an annual procedural measure – and are calling for deeper spending cuts. Crucially, they also oppose ongoing funding to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, overseeing one of the slimmest congressional majorities in decades, is hesitant to pass a funding bill with the backing of House Dems that these vocal members of his own caucus oppose, fearing they would call a vote seeking his ouster. What’s more, to appease the right flank of his party, McCarthy gave his caucus the go-ahead to start an impeachment inquiry into President Biden (the hearing will kick off Friday), but that doesn't seem to have gotten the hardliners to back off.
Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters don’t want the government to close.
What happens if the government shuts down? While some government departments – like the military – will continue to function, hundreds of thousands of workers (out of 4 million government employees) will be told to stay home without pay. The last time the government shut down in 2018 for 35 days, it cost the US economy a whopping $11 billion.
Plus: We asked Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, to share his view on how long the shutdown may last. Hear what he had to say here.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
Will McCarthy stop a government shutdown?
Late Tuesday, the US Senate agreed to a bipartisan temporary funding plan in a bid to avoid a government shutdown on Sunday. The agreement would guarantee Ukraine funding by tying it to domestic disaster relief – a cause even Ukraine-wary Senate Republicans were reluctant to vote against.
Trouble is, it is unlikely to pass in the House. Speaker Kevin McCarthy would need to rely on Democratic votes for it to pass, risking a party backlash, and far-right Republicans are threatening to push for his removal if he brings it to the floor.
The chances of a last-minute deal are high. McCarthy’s position is just as threatened by a shutdown as it is by his far-right caucus, so he is expected to eventually call for a House vote on a bipartisan bill.
Even if legislators do miss the deadline, any shutdown is expected to be brief and relatively painless because Republican leaders want to avoid the political costs of a prolonged shutdown and protect their leverage going into end-of-year funding negotiations.
This is just the warm-up for the real funding fight. At the end of the year, funding battles have the potential to cause a prolonged shutdown or a potential 1% cut to all federal spending if a deal isn’t reached.