Bernie says NO to Chuck Schumer

The House voted 211-204 Tuesday to send Rep. Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth to the Judiciary Committee, which effectively kills them for the rest of this Congress.

Massie was the only Republican who voted with the Democrats.

Eleven Democrats weren’t there to vote with him. Nancy Pelosi, Haley Stevens, Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen, Steven Horsford, Jonathan Jackson, Brittany Pettersen, Melanie Stansbury, Marilyn Strickland and Frederica Wilson all missed it.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury says a traffic incident and a police escort for a bus blocked her from the Capitol, and she got there just as the vote gaveled out. Rep. Laura Gillen says she was stuck behind the same escort.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Gillen has pulled in more than $250,000 from AIPAC-affiliated donors, according to Newsday. Another no-show, Haley Stevens, had their backing in her Michigan Senate primary, then endorsed Republican Mike Rogers two days before the election.

And the man who wrote the articles? AIPAC’s super PAC spent more than $3 million to beat Massie in his primary. He lost.

We’re not saying AIPAC was driving the bus. We’re saying it’s one hell of a coincidence.

Nancy Pelosi didn’t even claim traffic. She flew home to San Francisco to accept an award.

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed had some choice words when Kaitlan Collins asked about the no-shows.

Trump posted that Democrats “FAILED.” Rep. Maxwell Frost has already drafted articles of his own, and Democrats take over the House in January.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Tuesday he won’t support Chuck Schumer to stay on as Senate Democratic leader.

“The time is now for change,” Sanders said. “And I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the senator who flew to El Salvador last year to check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is weighing a run. “I am in the process right now of calling my colleagues,” he said.

Schumer, 75, says he isn’t worried. “I’m confident I will be elected,” he said.

On Monday, he called last week’s results the biggest Senate landslide since the ’50s. On Tuesday, the longest-serving independent in Senate history said it was time for him to go.

Bernie Sanders wants Democrats to use their new majorities to lower the Medicare age to 55, add dental, vision and hearing coverage, and cover every kid from birth through 19.

He says all of it “can be passed with 51 votes in the Senate through reconciliation,” so no filibuster. Trump can still veto it. “Let’s do it,” Sanders wrote anyway.

He calls it “an immediate first step toward Medicare for All.” For the steps after that, there’s a guidebook, and one of its authors was just elected to the Senate.

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed co-wrote Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide back in 2021, with a foreword by Sanders and Pramila Jayapal. Since he beat Mike Rogers last week, it’s going viral again.

His resume and education credentials are a little ridiculous. He graduated from Michigan with highest distinction and gave the commencement speech. He was the school’s first Rhodes Scholar in five years, earned a doctorate at Oxford while captaining its lacrosse team, then finished his medical degree at Columbia. He was running Detroit’s health department at 30.

The man expected to lead House Democrats doesn’t back the book’s big idea. Hakeem Jeffries co-sponsored Medicare for All in the past, then said on Meet the Press in August that he doesn’t support it.

We dug into what changed. Our video traces how Jeffries went from co-sponsor to $170,000 from health insurance PACs. Snopes fact-checked us, and we answered them in the same video.

So one of the newest Democrats in Congress literally wrote the book on Medicare for All. The guy who wants the speaker’s gavel won’t sign on.

Rep.-elect Don Leonard just flipped an Ohio district Trump won by 10 points. Now he says senior House Democrats are threatening him because he won’t back Hakeem Jeffries for speaker without conditions.

He has two. “Number one, getting a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United,” he said. “Number two, ending U.S. support for the war in Iran and the country, Israel, that led us into it.”

In a video published by Drop Site News, Leonard says he was told in a meeting Monday night that sticking to them would mean “making my life a living hell for the next two years here in Washington.” He says he was also told he’d lose in 2028.

He isn’t budging. “I’m just a stubborn SOB,” he said.

About 40 Democrats would have to vote for someone else to block Jeffries. Leonard says he’s still trying to get a meeting with him.

House Republicans elected Jim Jordan as their next leader Tuesday, 106-73 over Steve Scalise, in a closed-door secret ballot.

Mike Johnson stepped aside after last week’s wipeout. Jordan will be minority leader when Democrats take over in January.

“I am battle-tested on the oversight front and I know the Democrats’ playbook,” he said as he sought the job.

He also brings Ohio State with him. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach there for years while team doctor Richard Strauss abused at least 177 students, according to an investigation the university commissioned.

Several former wrestlers say Jordan knew. He has always denied it. “There was no truth to the fact that I knew of any abuse,” he said in 2018. Ohio State has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle survivors’ claims.

Nine members of the Kennedy family asked a federal judge Tuesday to block Trump’s planned 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery.

They say it would cast a shadow over the graves of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and “fundamentally alter the experience of visiting the gravesites.”

Rory and Maxwell Kennedy, speaking for the family, described “a towering arch casting shadows across the graves of our father, mother, and uncles.”

The arch would stand more than twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial. “Only Congress has the constitutional power to authorize an intrusion of this magnitude,” said Norm Eisen and Steve Jonas of the Democracy Defenders Fund, who represent the family.

Judge Tanya Chutkan already barred construction for 14 days last week. The White House says “The judiciary should not be abused to politicize a structure designed to unite our nation.”

One of Robert F. Kennedy’s children didn’t join the lawsuit. He works for Trump.

Dave Chappelle joked about Charlie Kirk’s killing during a set at Madison Square Garden over the weekend, and clips leaked even though the show was phone-free.

“Ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered—and I shouldn’t say this publicly, but I feel better,” he says in one clip.

Erika Kirk called it “beyond disgusting.” Elon Musk posted “Shame, shame, shame” at Chappelle.

The bit riffs on a line Tony Hinchcliffe used at Kevin Hart’s roast to mock George Floyd’s murder. Hinchcliffe performed at Trump’s rally in the same building in 2024.

Back in 2021, Kirk himself called George Floyd a “scumbag” at a speech in Minnesota.