Looks like the House Republican majority is about to shrink AGAIN
House Republicans couldn’t function back when they had a five seat majority. Now they keep heading for the exits, for various reasons. George Santos was expelled. Bill Johnson resigned to take another job. Kevin McCarthy resigned because he’s Kevin McCarthy. Their majority keeps getting slimmer. Now it’s about to get even slimmer, at least for awhile.
House Republican Steve Scalise has multiple myeloma. Scalise is a bad person who’s hurt a lot of people, but I would never wish cancer on him, especially a kind of cancer as vile as multiple myeloma. But now he’s taking a month off from Congress to get a stem cell transplant. That’s surreal, given how hard the Republican Party has fought against stem cell research. But I hope the treatment works for him.
That said, there is a political reality to his absence. He’ll be unable to show up and vote in the House for the next month or more. This means that there will be at least a brief stretch where there will only be 218 House Republicans. The reality is that if any other House Republicans have to bail while Scalise is out, they could at least briefly cease to have a majority.
This is part of why it’s so important that we strongly rally behind Democratic nominee Tom Suozzi in the February 13th special election to replace George Santos. It’s a competitive election and it’s likely to come down to just a point or two in either direction. It’s crucial that the Democrats pick up this seat, because depending on how the wind blows in February and beyond, the Democrats could end up in a position to make a play for the majority. So let’s all volunteer and donate to Tom Suozzi right now.
