Concerns are rising around Capitol Hill as the two-day impasse among Republicans over who should serve as Speaker effectively keeps the chamber in limbo. 

Republicans have signaled some signs of progress within the party as talks remain ongoing; however, it remains unclear if House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) can cobble together enough votes to take the Speaker’s gavel. 

Frustrations are running high on both sides, as members say the stalemate is keeping Congress from performing basic functions. Below are just a few of those operations.

Swearing-ins

One of the biggest hang-ups lawmakers point to is the effect the delay has had on the ceremonial swearing-in of new members.

Experts say lawmakers are stuck effectively until the House accepts a Speaker — a delay that is also keeping Congress from installing heads of its various committees.

The historic stalemate marks the first time in a century that a Speaker was not determined in the initial ballot. But with six ballots down and the path to resolving the impasse uncertain, it remains unclear when Republicans will be able to find a solution.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), who is set to become the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said he hasn’t been able to meet with his “Republican counterpart because that hasn’t been chosen yet.”

“​​They’re not going to choose committee chairs like contested races until after the vote for Speaker,” he said. 

Bringing legislation to the floor

Republicans lament the hold-up the fight has had on legislation that House GOP leadership had hoped to bring up at the start of the new Congress.

“People care about real issues like border security, like inflation, like energy reliability, oh, like defining the 87,000 IRS agents — which is what we would’ve voted on today,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said late Tuesday. 

Crenshaw is referring to legislation Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said the newly GOP-led House is supposed to vote on that targets funding aimed at bolstering the IRS — part of a sweeping economic bill Democrats passed without GOP support last year.

The GOP-backed legislation faces a tough road ahead in the Democratic-led Senate. But it is among a list of ambitious bills spanning hot-button issues such as abortion, immigration and crime that are key to the party’s agenda. 

Committee operations 

The longer the fight drags out, the longer members on both sides say it will take for the chamber’s various committees to begin their work.

“Committees can’t hire their staff members as well because there are no committee chairs and ranking members,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill on Wednesday that the Intelligence panel is among those that would likely see the biggest impacts from the hold-up, noting, “Nobody on our committee can go down and get briefed on things.”

“The committee will need to be reconstituted. And most of the materials are only accessible to members of the committee and until reconstituted there are no members of the committee,” he told The Hill. “So Intel is more impacted really than probably just about any other committee.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) raised similar concerns. “I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. We oversee all 19 intelligence agencies. We are currently offline,” he told CNN.

“We have a third, one of our three branches of government, offline right now. That is a very dangerous thing for our country, and it cannot continue much longer,” he also said. 

Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), who serves on the Intelligence panel and the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that he also ran into problems, pointing to a planned meeting with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I’m a member of the Intel Committee. I’m on the Armed Services Committee, and I can’t meet in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] to conduct essential business. My point is we have work to do that we can’t do right now,” he said at a press conference.

Pay for certain staff

Boyle also said lawmakers might not have until even mid-January to resolve the issue before some staff could see issues with pay.

“I believe there’s a date of Jan. 13, regarding pay for committee staff,” Boyle said. “So that’s one date to look at if this dysfunction were to continue that long.”

In a guidance from the House Administration Committee first reported by Politico last month, committees were warned of the risk a delay in installing a Speaker would have on pay for certain staff.

“Committees need to be aware that should a House Rules package not be adopted by end of business on January 13 no committee will be able to process payroll since the committee’s authority for the new Congress is not yet confirmed,” the memo stated, according to the report.

Al Weaver contributed.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Southeast Asia’s tourist economies are set to be leading beneficiaries of China’s scrapping of travel bans as they have steered clear of the COVID-19 tests before entry that Europe, Japan and the United States have imposed on Chinese visitors.

Even as the virus tears through its 1.4 billion people, the world’s second largest economy is opening its borders from Sunday, a move that promises to unleash a wave of travellers eager for diversion after three years of strict curbs at home.

Such newly mobile Chinese tourists will opt for “minimal hassle” and head for destinations that do not demand testing, which in turn stands to benefit Southeast Asia, said CIMB economist Song Seng Wun.

“The busier regional airports are, the better it is for their economies,” he added.

While Australia, Britain, India, Japan and the United States are among the nations that require a negative COVID-19 test from inbound Chinese, Southeast Asian countries, from Cambodia to Indonesia and Singapore, have all declined such requirements.

Except for airplane wastewater testing by Malaysia and Thailand for the virus, the region’s 11 nations will treat Chinese travellers like any others.

“We are not taking the stance of discriminating (against) any countries,” said Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Interest in the region waxed high even before news of its lack of test requirements.

As many as 76% of Chinese travel agencies ranked Southeast Asia as the top destination when outbound travel resumed, according to a survey released in December by trade show ITB China.

The region is home to many tourism-reliant economies in which Chinese used to make up the bulk of visitors to beach paradises, luxury malls and casinos that have all been hit hard by their absence in the last few years.

Now, their tourism industries are gearing up to welcome Chinese travellers back.

In 2019, 155 million Chinese travelled abroad, spending $254.6 billion, or close to the GDP of Vietnam, said Citi, whose researchers expect “meaningful recovery” in mass tourism to start in the second quarter of 2023.

In Vietnam, almost a third of the 18 million foreign arrivals in 2019 were from China, while about a fifth of Singapore’s international arrivals were Chinese who spent S$900 million ($671 million).

Thailand already expects to welcome 5 million Chinese travellers this year, or about half of the 10.99 million of 2019. Neighbouring Malaysia projects 1.5 million to 2 million Chinese tourists this year versus 3 million before the pandemic.

And the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents is preparing for a road show in Chinese cities to woo visitors, said its vice president, Ganeesh Rama.

Officials have downplayed health worries aired by other countries, such as the United States’ concern over insufficient information and fear that more cases in China could spawn new variants of the virus.

Singapore said it had high population immunity, as about 40% of its people had been infected with coronavirus and 83% had been vaccinated, while it has bolstered healthcare capacity.

Karen Grépin, a public health professor at Hong Kong University, agreed with that approach, adding, “Everyday, countries import thousands of cases of COVID-19 from around the world.”

In Bali, Ida Bagus Agung Parta, the chair of the resort island’s tourism board, said it would “increase our defence”, as workers take a second booster dose of vaccine this month.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, an ally of Beijing, described other countries’ testing requirements as “propaganda” designed to “scare people”.

“Whatever other country wants to do anything, it’s their right,” Hun Sen said in a recent speech. “But for Cambodia, it’s an invitation to Chinese people: Chinese tourists, come to Cambodia.”

($1=1.3411 Singapore dollars)

“That’s an attack plane, Dad,” said one of David Tellez’s young children as they spotted Mexican military aircraft touching down alongside their Aeromexico passenger plane early on Thursday.

Then the gunfire began.

“As we were accelerating for take-off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane, and that’s when we all threw ourselves to the floor,” Tellez said after the incident in the northern city of Culiacan.

Violence broke out on Thursday throughout Culiacan after the arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo, and a senior member of the Sinaloa cartel.

Aeromexico said nobody on Tellez’s flight had been hurt. The Culiacan airport closed shortly after, as security forces patrolled the city, which was strewn with burned vehicles, attempting to contain the violent backlash.

Tellez, 42, was traveling with his wife and children, aged 7, 4 and 1, after spending Christmas with family.

He told Reuters he had reached the airport for his 8:24 a.m. flight without incident, despite encountering road blockades set up after overnight shootouts. Although Guzman’s arrest had not yet been confirmed, nervous security guards urged travelers to enter quickly.

“Authorities were not saying anything,” he said by phone.

Tellez hid in an airport bathroom with his family after hearing that gang members were in the airport. The rumor turned out to be false, and the Aeromexico travelers boarded quickly.

Yet, just as flight AM165 to Mexico City was about to take off, a succession of military planes landed on the airstrip.

Tellez took out his cellphone, recording several videos that show two large air force transport aircraft, smaller, fighter-like attack aircraft and military trucks on the tarmac. Then gunshots began to echo in the distance.

A video circulating on social media, appearing to capture the same incident, showed passengers crouching low below their seats as a child cried.

A flight attendant said the engine had been hit, triggering a leak. The crew directed passengers to disembark, moving them to a windowless waiting room in the airport.

It is not clear who was shooting at whom.

Tellez’s family plans to board another flight on Friday, but until then, is staying put.

“We prefer to stay at the airport until it’s safe to leave,” he said. “The city is worse. There is a lot of shooting and confusion.”

A U.S. warship sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Thursday, part of what the U.S. military calls routine activity but which has riled China.

In recent years, U.S. warships, and on occasion those from allied nations such as Britain and Canada, have sailed through the strait, drawing the ire of China, which claims Taiwan against the objections of its democratically elected government.

In a statement, the U.S. military said the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Chung-Hoon carried out the transit.

“Chung-Hoon’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the statement added.

In a statement, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said China firmly opposed the move and urged the United States to “immediately stop provoking troubles, escalating tensions and undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

“U.S. warships frequently flex muscles in the name of exercising freedom of navigation. This is not about keeping the region free and open,” the statement said.

“China will continue to stay on high alert and is ready to respond to all threats and provocations at any time, and will resolutely safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the ship sailed in a northerly direction through the strait, that its forces had monitored its passage and observed nothing out of the ordinary.

The narrow Taiwan Strait has been a frequent source of military tension since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the communists, who established the People’s Republic of China.

The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

China has never ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control. Taiwan vows to defend itself if attacked, saying Beijing’s sovereignty claims are void as the People’s Republic of China has never governed the island.

A Chinese military plane came within 10 feet (3 meters) of a U.S. air force aircraft in the contested South China Sea last month and forced it to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision in international airspace.

The close encounter followed what the United States has called a recent trend of increasingly dangerous behavior by Chinese military aircraft.

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Taiwan has again offered to provide China with assistance to help it deal with a surge in COVID-19 cases but Chinese authorities have not yet responded, official Taiwan media reported late on Thursday.

China scrapped its stringent COVID controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.

Victor Wang, Head of Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre, told the official Central News Agency it sent an email to Chinese authorities this week and asked how Taiwan could help with the surge of cases in China.

Rising cases in China has sparked concerns from the World Health Organisation that Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths.

Wang said Taiwan has also sent an email to China in early December to “remind” authorities there about an community outbreak and severe cases among children.

China, which claims the island as its own despite strong objections of the democratically-elected government, views Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen as a separatist and has refused to talk to her administration since she took office in 2016.

In a New Year address earlier this month, Tsai for the first time offered to provide China with “necessary assistance” to help it deal with a surge in COVID cases, but said Chinese military activities near the island were not beneficial to peace and stability.

Health Minister Hsueh Jui-yuan said Taiwan could offer medication or vaccine to China but it’s not clear if Beijing would accept it, according the Central News Agency.

Taiwan and China have repeatedly sparred over their respective measures to control the spread of COVID.

China has been ramping up pressure on Taiwan to assert its sovereignty claims, including almost daily Chinese air force missions near the island over the past three years.

Taiwan vows to defend itself, saying only its people can decide their own future and that Beijing’s claims are void as the People’s Republic of China has never governed the island.

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I write this as I watch Kevin McCarthy fail vote after vote. At this point I am not sure what number they are on. I’ve stopped counting. And you know what keeps going through my mind, refusing to stop? That Kevin McCarthy’s speaker dream has turned to ash.

Ashes, ashes, Kevin’s dream falls down. It is fascinating to see the disintegration happening right in front of us. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Many people are calling what’s happening Groundhog day. It sort of is, but there is one crucial thing to note.

Every time they vote — every time they reject McCarthy — not only does HE get a little weaker, but so does the Republican brand. Look, the Democrats are smart — brilliant, in fact. Do you not think this will come up in the 2024 elections?

Perhaps it will come up in debates, in commercials — the discord, the disorganization, the utter CRAZINESS of the GOP. They can’t lead, can’t govern, can’t do much of anything, and don’t know how to stop the trainwreck they have become.

Right now, we don’t have a Congress. It’s not because of us. We have remained unified against shocking odds. No it’s the GOP whose whole agenda has turned to dust. They look so deeply foolish on the House floor, Fighting and taking sides and sowing more and more discord. Meanwhile the American people watch the collapse — the turning to ash — of a whole political “party” that knows not a thing about what the american people need.

The post Turns out the lights Kevin McCarthy is over appeared first on Palmer Report.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed a condolence book for former Pope Benedict in Washington on Thursday, paying his respects to the former pontiff on the day his funeral mass was held in Vatican City.

Biden, a devout Catholic, lauded Benedict after his death for being “a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the Church, guided by his principles and faith.”

“I will always cherish our time together at the Vatican discussing theology,” Biden wrote. “He was a great scholar of the faith.”

The president, a Democrat, has been criticized by some in the Catholic Church for his support of abortion rights. Benedict’s death was a loss for conservatives, who favored the more traditional Catholic Church that the former pope championed.

Biden signed the book at the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Washington. Vice President Kamala Harris also signed the book during a separate visit on Thursday evening.

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Harbormaster Anna Neumann dashed from vessel to vessel, business to business at the port she manages near the mouth of northern California’s Noyo River, ensuring all was secure as storms bringing waves as high as a three-story building pummeled the state.

“You prep as much as you can, and then you just wait for whatever unknown issue that you didn’t prep for to happen, and then you respond,” Neumann said as she surveyed Noyo Harbor in the small fishing and tourism city of Fort Bragg.

Rain continued to fall throughout the state on Thursday, straining already swollen rivers and flood control systems from the coast to inland farmlands. In Sacramento County, southeast of Fort Bragg’s Mendocino County, crews used any pauses in the rain to work to repair levees south of the state capital that had been breached by the first of several anticipated waves of storms that began on New Year’s Eve, leading to flooding that killed at least three people.

In the popular seaside village of Mendocino just south of Noyo Harbor, Big River Beach was unrecognizable under heaps of debris including trees that had been ripped from the ground by winds of up to 50 miles per hour. Foamy water ponded on the sand, and the briny smell of the ocean was more pungent than usual.

Waves overnight in the area reached 33 feet, and winds reached 50 miles per hour. Waves of up to 30 feet were predicted for Thursday.

At the southern end of Mendocino county, the small towns of Point Arena and Gualala have been largely without power for around 24 hours. About 2,500 households and businesses were without power in the county, which is home to about 91,000 people.

California’s storied coast road, Highway 1, is closed in four places in Mendocino County because of fallen trees, the California Department of Transportation said. Fog, flooding and rock slides contributed to closures along the highway in other parts of the state.

No fishing boats were set to go out Thursday morning from Noyo Harbor, where small recreational boats and large commercial vessels have slips, and crab, rockfish and salmon are among the typical catches.

The high tide brought swells that washed debris across the beach and its parking lot, the high waves crashing into the mouth of the Noyo River.

Professional urchin diver Grant Downie, one of several gathered to check out the high water, said he’d moved his boat out of the harbor ahead of the storm just to be safe.

It was insured, he said, but he’d rather risk its being hit by a falling tree than sinking in the wild water.

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Welcome to the California Briefing, the weekly dispatch of California Jewish news from the Forward’s Louis Keene. In this edition: Dispatch from the deluge, a bookish bond and an all-important game of Jewish geography!

To get this in your inbox every Thursday, subscribe here: forward.com/california.

When the “bomb cyclone” hits your shul

Cheder students prayed by window light after the power went out Wednesday morning. Courtesy of Raleigh Resnick/The Cheder of the Bay Area

Twenty years into a drought, Californians are accustomed to the meteorological Catch-22 awaiting them each winter: Sparse rain means the drought worsens. Heavy rain might cut into the drought, but because parched land is less absorbent, flooding, landslides and power outages often follow.

That’s how students at the Cheder of the Bay Area, a religious school in the East Bay, wound up praying by candlelight Wednesday morning, as a Category 3 atmospheric river hit Northern California. Rabbi Raleigh Resnick, who runs the school as well as Chabad of the Tri-Valley, said the school lost electricity at 7:55 a.m. — five minutes before the start of morning prayers. It wasn’t restored for an hour and a half.

At Temple Israel of Alameda, Rabbi Cynthia Minster reported a leaky ceiling and said a number of her congregants’ basements were flooded. (Donation link here — Minster says to designate your gift for the building fund to make sure it goes toward roof repairs.) And that was just Wednesday.

Resnick said that as a native New Yorker, he was skeptical of “torrential” California rain forecasts. But the Cheder was closing early Wednesday, and he said he wouldn’t decide until that night whether to close the school Thursday.

“I think right now it’s more psychological panic than it is reality,” Resnick said. Let’s hope it stays that way for as many people as possible. In the meantime, San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler has a California rain meme for you.

What we’re watching (and not watching)

📖  The documentary Turn Every Page, about the adventures of author Robert Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb, is now showing in select theaters. Caro, 87, has been working on the fifth and final volume of his LBJ biography series seemingly forever, frustrating his legions of genuine fans and aspiring ones. I hope this film tides them over. (Gottlieb, whose daughter Lizzie Gottlieb directed the film, also joined Terri Gross on Fresh Air to talk editing Caro, Heller, Morrison, le Carré and others.)

💵  In a 2015 music video, rapper Lil Dicky cuts off Rich Homie Quan halfway through his verse to save money on his fee. Seven years and 180 million views later, Quan still thinks Dicky doesn’t get enough credit for his brilliance. “He reminds me of a Kanye — and I mean that in a good way,” Quan told HipHopDx. A necessary qualification! (Quan clarifies that he got his full fee for the verse.)

🧅  I seem to be the only person this side of Ben Shapiro who didn’t love Glass Onion. What makes me like the Knives Out sequel even less? Kate Hudson (whose character makes a blithely antisemitic comment) has been telling people she stuck to a diet of just cucumber leading up to her bikini scene. Eat your heart out, Kate Hudson!

What we’re reading (or at least skimming)

Out of roughly 175 nominees who weren’t confirmed last year, 85, including former LA mayor Eric Garcetti, will get another shot. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Image by

🇮🇳  President Joe Biden first nominated Eric Garcetti to the ambassadorship to India in July … of 2021. (Yes, I had to triple-check that.) After an investigation into harassment in the mayor’s office derailed Garcetti’s confirmation, Biden plans to nominate him again. Hey, if Kevin McCarthy got three tries …

🐦  Media provocateur and “Twitter Files” poster Bari Weiss achieved total dream fulfillment late in 2022: a 4,500-word hagiography in LA Magazine. The whole thing comes out to about 26,910 characters. So why wasn’t it just 97 tweets?

🐭  This has been making the rounds, but it’s good, so: Maus author Art Spiegelman reflects on a year of book bans.

🕍  “A tale of determination and innovation”: The LA Times recently published a fine history of the city’s Jewish community. (It doesn’t mention Rob Eshman, though. Make of that what you will.)

Your humble correspondents

I made friends with these post-IDF travelers in Argentina — but can’t find them to share the photo! Photo by Louis Keene

🧐  Reader, I need your help. I met delightful Israelis Yotam and Omer at the top of Cerro Campanario in Argentina, and took this cute photo of them on film. Now that it’s become clear that it’s the best picture I’ve ever taken, I’d like to send it their way! They mentioned they worked at a Jewish summer camp in California last summer, so one of you has gotta know them (or know someone who does). If we can track them down together, every Jewish geography conversation will have been WORTH IT.

🙋‍♂️  What California stories would you like to see in this newsletter in 2023? Reply to this email with suggestions, or else you’re stuck with whatever I come up with!

Finally, in the we-are-so-lucky-to-live-in-California-department…

The snowy owl was perched on a chimney in Cypress, a city in Orange County, California. Photo by Louis Keene

🦉  You may have heard about the snowy owl (obviously Jewish) that graced our presence in Southern California last week. I made the trip down to Orange County to find her perched on someone’s chimney, wholly undisturbed by the quiet commotion around it. I shot half a roll of black and white film just watching its head swivel. Until I get those developed, I’ll be staring at the photos above, which were taken on my smartphone through someone else’s very expensive spotting scope.

Any birders reading this? Send me your latest encounters!

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The post California Briefing: How Bay Area Jews are weathering the “bomb cyclone” appeared first on The Forward.