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A short window is all we need in the House to reinstate Kevin McCarthy and change the rule, Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) told POLITICO.

Duarte also said he thought the Biden administrations positions and our disarray in the House, were factors in the timing of the attacks.

Israel attacks have moderates holding out for the one person who can truly unite us: Kevin McCarthy, according to a third House GOP lawmaker.

McCarthy is aware and grateful of the growing effort to reinstate him, but hes not engaging at this point, this lawmaker added.

The attempt to reinstall McCarthy faces long odds. Two strong candidates are running active campaigns with only days to go before voting, and many dozens of Republicans have already made endorsements. There is little reason to think the basic math for McCarthy has changed for McCarthy since last Tuesday.

Republicans behind the push, however, believe the urgency to address the terror attacks and aid Israel could pressure the eight House Republicans who voted against McCarthy earlier this week to switch their stance. The third House GOP lawmaker said the members behind the push are still livid at the Republicans who voted against McCarthy, a staunch Israel supporter, and are using this moment to show how wrong they were.

McCarthy played an active role in the House GOP response to the attacks Saturday, railing against the Biden administrations actions and noting the House is currently unable to move major legislation without a speaker.

There is nothing the House can do until they elect a speaker, and I dont know if that happens quickly, McCarthy told Fox News.

Lawmakers are also are looking into outlining more clear powers for acting Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry in the short-term or possibly by electing him speaker outright.

The House could take other actions to get around McHenrys restrained role, including voting him in as a speaker pro tempore, thus shedding his acting title to give him more authority while Republicans figure out who they want to lead them. If McHenry attempts to act, on Israel legislation or any other, without broader authority from the House, he risks being challenged on the floor and votes to overturn his actions.

The push for McCarthy or McHenry are more palatable options for many vulnerable Republicans, especially those in Biden districts, who are not closely aligned with either of the current candidates Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

A major complicating factor is that both Democrats and Republicans in the House have made clear that they are interpreting McHenrys role in its narrowest form, which at this point would limit him from bringing legislation to the floor before a speaker is elected.

There is no precedent for how broadly McHenry can exert powers within the House, and that has driven some Republicans to explore other paths to move legislation to bolster Israel in the coming days or weeks.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) said Saturday that she will introduce legislation to supplement funding for Israels Iron Dome missile defense system and is urging Republicans and Democrats to quickly bring this bill to the floor.

Our disunity in Capitol Hill is weakening Americas position as a global leader and hindering our ability to respond to atrocities committed by Hamas on the Israeli people, Rep. Jim Baird (R-Ind.) said Saturday. We must stop these political games and show leadership during this international emergency.

But that as seen in January is not a swift process. House Republicans are expected to host a candidate forum on Tuesday and hold a closed door, secret ballot internal election on Wednesday. With neither candidate close to the 218 votes needed to clinch the gavel, it is not yet clear when it could reach the floor for a final vote.

Other House Republicans have called for McHenry and House GOP conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to move up the speaker election thats slated to begin next Wednesday.

We need to have a forum Sunday or Monday, Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) posted on X Saturday.

We are paralyzed as a body, Alford added. World events dictate urgency.

Read more:
Some Republicans making bid to bring back McCarthy to move on aid to Israel - POLITICO - POLITICO

WASHINGTON To Rep. Mike Collins, China is a bigger threat to the United States than Russia. So the Georgia Republican has voted against providing military aid to Ukraine as he advocates for doing more to arm Taiwan, the self-governed island thats at risk of military aggression from Beijing.

For Collins and other Republican lawmakers, Taiwan and Ukraine are effectively rivals for a limited pool of U.S. military assistance. But thats not necessarily how Taiwan and many of its supporters see it. They view Taiwans fate as closely linked to that of Ukraine as it struggles to push back a Russian invasion.

They say China is watching closely to see if the United States has the political stamina to support an ally in a prolonged, costly war. The U.S. aid to Ukraine also has led to weapons manufacturers stepping up production something that could benefit Taiwan in a clash with China.

Read More: Taiwan's Civilian Soldiers, Watching Ukraine, Worry They Aren't Prepared to Defend Their Island

Ukraines survival is Taiwans survival. Ukraines success is Taiwans success, Taiwans diplomat in the U.S., Hsiao Bi-Khim, said in May at the Sedona Forum hosted by the McCain Institute.

Still, Taiwan has been careful not to weigh in on the U.S. debate about continued funding for Ukraine, which has become a divisive political issue after initially having strong bipartisan support.

Asked about Congress removing Ukraine funding from a temporary spending measure that prevented a U.S. government shutdown on Oct. 1, Taiwans diplomatic office responded with discretion.

Taiwan is grateful to have strong bipartisan support from the U.S. We will continue to work with the U.S. to maintain the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.

But Congress refusal to include the aid raises alarm bells in Taiwan. said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund. She noted that the Taiwanese government has argued that Ukraines victory is existential for Taiwan.,

These worries exist even though most Republicans who seek to end U.S. support for Ukraine are still very pro-Taiwan and willing to do more to help defend Taiwan, she said.

Taiwan is the thorniest issue in the frayed U.S.-China relationship. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island, which lies roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the mainlands southeastern coast, and vows to seize it, by force if necessary, to achieve national reunification. The United States wants a peaceful resolution and has a security pact with the island, supplying it with military hardware and technologies to prevent any forced takeover by Beijing.

Read More: Both Wary of War, Taiwans Voters Eye China and China Eyes Taiwans Voters

China's military actions near the island have fueled concerns over armed attacks. President Joe Biden has said he would send troops to defend Taiwan in case of war, while Chinese President Xi Jinping has demanded the U.S. respect his country's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Collins traveled to Taiwan on his first overseas trip as a congressman. When he returned, he called for timely weapon deliveries to the island, especially since as much as $19 billion worth of weapons sold to Taiwan have been delayed.

These delays are primarily a result of a U.S. manufacturing backlog and a distracted Biden administration with weapons deliveries to Ukraine taking preference over Taiwan, Collin said. We must get serious about offering support to our ally Taiwan because ultimately when it comes to countering China, our interests align.

Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center of Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, disagrees with that logic.

It's not a zero-sum game, he said. Taiwan supports the U.S. aid to Ukraine. They understand that the deterrence message works.

And on a practical level, Bowman said, the aid for Ukraine is helping the U.S. expand its weapons production, which will both benefit Taiwan and enhance U.S. military readiness.

Read More: China Plays Long Game With Softer Response to Taiwan President Visiting U.S.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who in April led a congressional delegation to Taiwan as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said support for the island has not diminished on the Hill.

Throughout the conversations about aid to Ukraine, I have not heard a single person take a swipe at Taiwan," McCaul said at a recent National Day celebration hosted by Taiwans representative office in Washington.

Glaser said the Chinese leadership is unlikely to discount the U.S. support for Taiwan, even when U.S. support for Ukraine is waning, but it is likely to exploit any failure to fund Ukraine in a disinformation campaign to sow doubts among the Taiwanese people about the U.S. commitment to their defense.

In a social media post, Hu Xijin, a retired chief editor of the Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper and now a political commentator, said this month that most U.S. overseas military interventions have rotted if the U.S. fails to cinch a rapid victory.

Read more here:
Some Republicans Want Less Aid for Ukraine and More for TaiwanBut Taiwan Doesn't - TIME

If youre new to Utah, be prepared to be struck by two things: Its magnificent redrock and its equally red political landscape.

Im Robert Gehrke, a political columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune. Ive covered government and elections in this state for more than 25 years and Im going to help get you oriented, and hopefully understand, some of the forces that shape Utah politics.

Buckle up.

Well start our journey looking at a fairly broad measurement:

According to data published by the state in May, 52.4% of voters are registered Republicans, 13.8% are Democrats, 28.2% are unaffiliated and the remaining 5.6% belong to a third party.

That level of GOP registration is the highest it has been since at least 2014, and over that same span the unaffiliated registration has trended downward. Democratic registration trended slowly upward until 2021 and has dipped slightly since.

Part of that may be because some number of Democrats and unaffiliated voters (we dont know for sure how many) have aligned with the GOP so they can vote in the partys primary elections. Republicans in Utah have closed primaries meaning you have to be registered with the party to vote, and for many seats those primaries are the most consequential elections.

We should also note that, while nearly three out of 10 voters dont ascribe to either major party, when Y2 Analytics pressed these independent voters after the 2022 on which party they are most in tune with, 53% said it was the Republican Party and 38% said Democrat. So the GOP seems to have an advantage, even among those independent voters.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints werent always die-hard Republicans, but since the 1960s they have become one of the most reliable GOP voter blocs in the country.

Whole books could be written (and have been) about the evolution, but to oversimplify it, Republican allegiance grew largely out of cultural divides civil rights, abortion, Equal Rights Amendment, same-sex marriage and so forth.

In the 2020 election, 62% of LDS voters supported Donald Trump according to Y2 Analytics post-election poll, which is only marginally higher than the 58% that Trump finished with. But among active LDS members, support was even stronger, with 71% saying they had voted for Trump.

Roughly the same margin translated into the race for governor that year, with Spencer Cox receiving 72% of the vote among active LDS, compared to 63% of the vote he received among all voters.

According to the most recent U.S. Religion Census a major nationwide survey of faiths the percentage of Utahns who are LDS has fallen slightly from 72% in 1990 to 65% in 2020, that massive voting bloc is still a decided advantage for Utah Republicans.

And in June, the LDS Church warned its members against straight-ticket voting, saying that blindly casting a ballot for one political party without weighing individual candidates and their position on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with the faiths teachings.

As you can guess, the simple math in Utah has made it almost impossible for a Democrat to win a statewide race. The last to do so was Jan Graham, who was elected attorney general in 1996. Scott Matheson won as governor in 1980, and Frank Moss, in 1970, was the last Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate. Lyndon Johnsons win in 1964 was the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state.

From 2000 to 2020, we have had six presidential races twice with a GOP incumbent, twice with a Democrat and twice it was an open seat. Over the course of those elections, the Republican candidate prevailed by an average margin of 63% to 29%.

That 34% disadvantage which might have been higher if independent candidate Evan McMullin hadnt received 21.5% in 2016 is a decent approximation of the hole every Democrat who runs statewide is staring up from.

So weve established that the state is somewhere between two-thirds and 70% Republican or GOP-leaning. But there are pockets that are less staunchly conservative.

In the last six presidential elections, there are three counties that have been won by Democrats Summit, Salt Lake and Grand. That said, Mitt Romney won all three when he was the GOP presidential nominee and Trump won Grand in 2016, so theyre a light shade of blue bordering on purple.

Theres also a distinct urban-rural divide in the state. Utah has five counties that we might consider urban Utah, Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Washington.

Taken together, those five counties went Republican in the last four presidential elections by an average margin of 35%, so better than two-to-one. Pretty dang red. Thats nothing, though, compared to the rural neighbors that backed Republican nominees by a margin of 52%, or a three-to one margin.

Based, again, on the last four presidential contests, the five most Republican counties are:

5. Millard (+71.1% R margin)

4. Sevier (+72.4% R margin)

3. Uintah (+73.7% R margin)

2. Duchesne (+74.1% R margin)

1. Piute (+75% R margin)

And here are the five most Democratic counties (or at least the least Republican ones):

5. Weber (29% R advantage)

4. San Juan (9.9% R advantage)

3. Salt Lake (Even)

2. Grand (2% D advantage)

1. Summit (11.3% D advantage)

But isnt Salt Lake County blue? Well, because when Romney won the county in 2012 by 20 points, the numbers are a bit skewed. Take that one race out and Salt Lake leans Democratic by 6.7%.

Read more:
Republicans rule in Utah. But how red is the Beehive State? - Salt Lake Tribune

Most Republicans in a new poll want the new Speaker of the House to be loyal to former President Trump.

A new CBS News/YouGov survey found that 59 percent of all Republicans prefer that the new GOP Speaker be loyal to the former president. Among MAGA Republicans — Trump’s most loyal subsection of the GOP — this number jumps to 84 percent.

The poll comes less than a week after the House voted to boot former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his top spot. Trump has said that he would like to see a Speaker who would help him, and now the former president has endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to be the next Speaker.

Among all Republicans, 58 percent said they would like to see the new GOP Speaker work with Democrats. Another 49 percent of all Republicans said they would like that the Speaker be a part of the MAGA movement, which jumps up to 85 percent among MAGA Republicans.

Seventy-two percent of Republicans also want the Speaker to impeach President Biden — an effort that is already underway by the House GOP.

Republicans were split on whether they approved of the GOP removing McCarthy as Speaker. Fifty-three percent of Republicans said they approved, and 47 percent said they did not. One-fourth of Americans overall said that McCarthy’s removal will be good for the country, 23 percent said it would be bad for the country and about 51 percent said there would be no change.

Overall, 71 percent of all Americans want the new Speaker to work with Democrats, 64 percent want to see them cut federal spending and 51 percent say they want to see them speak up to the MAGA movement.

The poll was conducted among 2,155 Americans between Oct. 4 to 6 and the margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.

Excerpt from:
Most Republicans want new Speaker to be loyal to Trump - The Hill

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

My son and 12-year-old grandson stopped by, and we went down to the storage room, where I pulled out a large tub filled with lots of memorabilia.

There were pictures of me and my late husband when we were children, and there was lots of memorabilia of our two children from when they were in school and other adventures of their lives while growing up. There was a box of letters from our son when he was in the Navy during Desert Storm. He was on the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier and actually bombing from the Red Sea. My husband and I were glued to CNN during that time, and we were both frightened and feeling anxious worrying about what was happening. The letters were very important to us.

When my son and I saw the box of letters, I told my grandson that these were letters from his dad while in the Navy, and he got so excited to see them. But then he opened one and said, "I can't read that!" I felt so bad and also a bit angry because he cannot read nor write in cursive. It is not in the curriculum anymore.

There were also letters in the tub from his grandfather that he will never be able to read. What a tragedy this is! How about grandparents' journals or diaries or family members who have written things about parents, grandparents or other family members? History of our families may be lost forever.

Cursive isn't the only thing not being taught in our schools anymore, and given where U.S. students rank in the world, maybe it's time to put some of basics back into the curriculum, like reading, writing and arithmetic.

Dora Fitzgerald, Prior Lake

As a young resident of the Third Ward in St. Paul, one of my top concerns is housing affordability. At 24 years old, I have lived in the ward for all but four years for college, yet I find myself increasingly priced out of the neighborhood I grew up in. Voters across the city share that concern, which led to the passage of the rent stabilization measure.

Despite this wide democratic support, I was frustrated by the decision of the City Council to dramatically water down the measure. This year's City Council elections provide a fantastic opportunity to support the overwhelming public sentiment of creating affordable housing for all.

Throughout her campaign, Saura Jost has left me impressed with her support for comprehensive renters' rights, but also her willingness to listen to the concerns of voters in the ward and spend the time with the data to work with City Council to implement the goal of safe, affordable housing for all in St. Paul. Saura is unequivocal in her commitment to accountability to her constituents. For a council member who supports an affordable home for all and puts voters above big-business interests, I will be voting for Saura Jost and encourage other Third Ward residents to do the same.

Patrick Verner, St. Paul

I'm a longtime Highland Park resident and rent retail space to several small businesses. Like many others, I have strong concerns about the direction of St. Paul and am looking for someone to work on essential city services and just bring a balanced approach to the city.

Many of the retail businesses I rent to have strong concerns about public safety. Issues with people trying to break into properties, theft, and threatening customers and employees are common. These issues are also common for other business owners, who have experienced fights and people using drugs in their restrooms.

We need a candidate who puts the concerns of residents and businesses first and foremost, and that candidate is Isaac Russell. He knows we can't defund our police. We need someone who will focus on our issues and not be part of an ideologically aligned slate of candidates. Independent thought matters, and not all Democrats agree on all things.

I don't agree with Isaac on everything, but that isn't what I'm looking for. I want someone who will take issues we all care about and try to move us forward together.

Joe Hughes, St. Paul

In a recent editorial ("All hands needed to return kids to school," Sept. 30), I noted intrinsic bias of the editorial writer(s) in the first few sentences: "School staff must use extra efforts to get students back in the classrooms. And families and communities must also get involved ." (Italics mine.)

"Must also?" Huh? Families must be the primary advocates of school. What can "school staff" do if the kids aren't there? Why was school staff mentioned first? Why did parental responsibility come second?

I think it's because newspapers have unfortunately accepted the nanny state as the way forward.

Parents: We must get our kids to school if we want them to have chance.

Jack Priest, Minneapolis

Was it purposeful, or merely ironic, that the Oct. 4 Star Tribune editors placed the photo of a dog who had just been blessed along with other assorted animals ("All creatures great and small") directly above a photo of a majestic elk shot to death ("Minnesota boy, 13, drops massive 1,000-pound bull elk") by someone too young to grasp the meaning.

One person brought her beloved animal to church for a life-affirming ritual, while another person experienced the power of life-taking domination. The beautiful and unfortunate elk whose life was taken is now destined to "go on a wall" as a trophy killed, not blessed.

Robert and Christine Lewis, Minneapolis

As an avid canner (actually, "pickler"), I read the Oct. 2 Business article "Can you can? Yes, you can!" with much interest. While there was much good information there, the article missed an important and valuable suggestion for those who still have produce left over after filling their jars: Donate your produce to your local food shelf. Donations of produce from places like supermarkets are down. Locally grown produce will be eaten immediately that is certain. All you need to do is search for "food shelf" in your area, and your neighbors in need will thank you!

Doris Rubenstein, Richfield

Republicans say government doesn't work. Then they get elected and prove it.

David Pederson, Excelsior

Continued here:
Readers Write: Cursive writing, St. Paul's Third Ward, editing ... - Star Tribune