Dear Commons Community,
Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. On assuming control of the House, Democrats elected Ms. Pelosi of California speaker, returning her to a historic distinction as the first woman to hold the post. They then moved to defy President Trump and passed bills that would open government agencies shuttered by an impasse over his insistence on funding for a border wall. The measures are almost certain to die in the Senate. As reported by the New York Times:
On the first day of divided government in a reordered Washington, Ms. Pelosi, now second in line to the presidency, and Mr. Trump clashed from their respective ends of Pennsylvania Avenue almost from dawn until dusk.
The California Democrat began her day by suggesting that a sitting president could be indicted. Late in the day, Mr. Trump made an attention-getting appearance in the White House briefing room with a belligerent demand for a wall on the border with Mexico, drawing a rebuke from the newly installed House speaker, who said she would give no more than a dollar to fund what she branded “an immorality.”
In between, as the start of the new House showcased a younger and more diverse majority in the staid corridors of the Capitol, Ms. Pelosi pledged to run a “unifying” Congress that would bridge partisan divides and heal rifts in a polarized country.
“Our nation is at a historic moment,” she declared. “I pledge that this Congress will be transparent, bipartisan and unifying, that we will seek to reach across the aisle in this country, and across divisions across our nation.”
In ascending to the speakership, Ms. Pelosi finds herself at the fulcrum of a bitterly divided body politic, poised to do battle with and demand accountability from an increasingly combative Mr. Trump in ways that the Republican Congress of the past two years refused to. With Mr. Trump, his presidential campaign and his businesses all under federal and state investigations, Ms. Pelosi’s approach to confronting him — both through investigation and legislation — will probably define the 116th Congress.
She wasted no time in doing so on Thursday, hours after being sworn in. The late-night, nearly party-line votes on reopening the government began a pattern in an era of divided control, with a Democratic House passing legislation that has no chance of being signed by the Republican president, and the Republican Senate running interference to protect Mr. Trump. The White House had also issued an official statement threatening a veto.
“Let’s not waste the time,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader.
Mr. Trump used his abrupt appearance in the White House briefing room — his first since taking office — to talk about the importance of the wall; he was flanked by border agents who echoed his message.
The president congratulated Ms. Pelosi on her election and said he had high aspirations for the new Congress. But he turned immediately to making the case for a wall that Democrats have uniformly rejected, saying, “Without a wall, you cannot have border security.” Mr. Trump also used social media to press his message, posting on his Instagram account a photograph of his face with the text “The Wall Is Coming,” a take on an advertisement for the cable TV series “Game of Thrones” that bore the ominous slogan “Winter Is Coming.”
Congratulations to Ms. Pelosi and the Democrats. Let the games begin!
Tony
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
