Reese Gorman analyzes Virginia's redistricting victory, which created a 10-to-1 Democratic advantage despite Republican blame on MAGA Inc. for underfunding. The discussion covers congressional resignations, including Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick following ethics sanctions, Eric Swalwell, and Tony Gonzalez amid sexual misconduct allegations, while Speaker Mike Johnson debates expulsion protocols. Gorman also addresses a $1.5 trillion defense budget facing war concerns, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRomer's resignation over family harassment investigations, and calls for Tulsi Gabbard's removal, concluding that Washington faces simultaneous crises of ethics, fiscal policy, and leadership stability. [Automatically generated summary]
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Payoffs and Election Concerns00:14:20
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With us to start off our open forum block is my esteemed colleague, politics reporter for notice, Rhys Gorman.
Good morning, Rhys.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me on.
All right.
Big week here in Washington.
You've had some great reporting this week.
First, I want to start with the results in Virginia, that special election where Virginia has decided to allow lawmakers to redistrict those congressional districts in a 10-to-1 Democratic result.
What are you hearing about it?
Yeah, I mean, Republicans are obviously extremely upset.
They lost four seats.
It's now 10 to 1, and it's going to be a real battle for Republicans to keep the majority, especially because they were hoping redistricting would help them.
It's now at least a break-even if you're counting Texas, California, and now Virginia.
And a lot of Republicans are mad in Virginia at the national Republican apparatus and also just Republicans on the Hill as well.
They don't believe that institutions such as the RNC, such as Trump Super PAC MAGA Inc., invested enough money into this and really saw it as kind of, and this could be kind of kind of Monday morning quarterbacking, but at the same time, I mean, they are upset that the national public apparatus does not take this as seriously as they believe they should.
So what does it mean for the midterms?
Obviously now they are about even.
I believe that due to these redistricting battles, Democrats have gained nine seats, Republicans have gained 10 seats.
I may have mixed up those numbers, but it seems at the moment there is a bit of parity.
Obviously, Florida is that kind of outstanding question.
What does it mean for November?
Yeah, it means it's just really going to be, it just, there's less competitive seats now because of November.
And also, I mean, you say that Democrats gained, I believe, those nine Republicans have gained 10, but a lot of those 10 seats that Republicans have quote unquote gained, same with Democrats, are still vulnerable seats.
They are not, they might go from a lean Democrat to a lean Republican, but you're looking like in Texas, there's a new district kind of in my hometown of Church, Texas, that is not as Republican as the people, when they redistricted, they hoped it would be.
I mean, it is still a seat that Democrats can be competitive is.
And so while they are adjusting some of this, it's still, I mean, if what Democrats are hoping for this kind of blue wave of the midterms, you could see that a lot of these seats that they redrawn to be quote-unquote safe Republican seats could go the other way.
And I want to mention something that you scooped just yesterday, of course, scoop machine we have with us, is that Congressman Sheila Scherfilis-McCormick resigned from Congress just before the ethics committee was set to announce her sanctions against her after they went through that investigation.
Talk to us about how that all went down.
Yeah, so obviously she was under intense scrutiny.
She's been indicted by the Department of Justice down in Florida for basically just using funds that she should not have gotten.
There was a mishap on kind of when they were paying her out for work she did for the state.
And she donated some of that money to her campaign.
She did a lot of really sketchy things with it.
Congress found her guilty on almost 28 different charges, this House Ethics Committee hearing, which kind of acts as though, as a jury, where they hear these, that's the jury as a judge, where they hear a lot of these complaints and a lot of the evidence against her.
Congresswoman McCormick gets the chance to defend herself, and they found her guilty on about 28 of them and said that.
And yesterday they were going to announce what sanctions they believe should have take place.
It was widely believed that they were going to recommend expulsion.
They had not recommended it yet, and that would have led to her expulsion.
She would have definitely been expelled.
There's enough Republicans and Democrats to expel her.
So just hours before that hearing, that announcement was set to be made, she resigned from Congress.
I mean, but she is just the latest in the string of congressional resignations that we've seen just over the last two weeks.
Obviously, she resigned yesterday.
We know that Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez, two congressmen, one Democrat, one Republican, resigned last week over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Of course, perhaps Florida Congressman Corey Mills is next.
Let's take a listen here to Speaker Mike Johnson.
Actually, we are going to go to that, but I just wonder what is somebody like Speaker Mike Johnson or somebody else in the Congress, what are they talking about when it comes to the idea of resignations or expulsions, particularly happening at this clip?
It really depends on who you talk to.
Obviously, there is a lot of people wanted Tony Gonzalez and Eric Swalwell and Congresswoman Sheila Shurfilis-McCormick to resign.
They believed that their allegations in Sherfiles McCormick's case, stuff that the ethics committee had found her guilty of, in some sense, egregious enough that they should resign.
Tony Gonzalez, Eric Swalwell did not go through the ethics process.
That had not occurred yet.
The investigations were still ongoing, but they resigned prior.
They knew Swalwell in his case said that he wants to quote unquote fight the allegations.
Now I think it's about six women who have accused him of sexual harassment or sexual assault.
He has three criminal investigations, the DOJ, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the LA County District Attorney all investigating him right now.
And in Tony Gonzalez's case, he had an affair with a staff who later killed herself.
And text messages were being released where he was pressuring her for sexual images and sex.
And so what we were looking at there is Tony Gonzalez's, his colleagues were urging him to resign.
So following Swalwell's resignation, that's when Tony Gonzalez resigned.
And members, they like to see this people being held accountable.
They want, now, they'd rather members just not do this at all and not have to resign.
But when stuff like this is coming out, there are significant calls for resignations.
And they would rather them resign than have to expel them.
And now in the Senate side, Ruben Gallego has come under some fire, including by Republican House member Ana Polina, who has accused him of misconduct.
Senator Gallego has really denied these allegations.
Where does that go?
Yeah, so that was referred to according to Leader John Thune's office.
He said the office said that they were, Ana Paulina Luna reached out to them and they referred all these allegations to the Senate Ethics Committee.
Senator Gallego has said this is a, quote, right-wing hit job and that this is all made up.
And the Senate Ethics Committee is notoriously slow, notoriously does not get a lot of information out.
And their investigations usually prove fruitless.
So I would not be so surprised to see nothing really come of this investigation.
We don't know what Anna Paulina Luna gave Leader Thune or the Senate Ethics Committee.
She has not said publicly.
Leader Thune has not said publicly, nor has the Ethics Committee over in the Senate.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see if anything does come of it.
But Ruben Gallego, to his point, is denying any allegations that Luna has made against him, saying it's just a right-wing hit job.
And Another thing I want to turn to before I go back to the Virginia Redistricting here is the budget.
What is going on with that $1.5 trillion defense budget?
What issues might Speaker Johnson run up against to now that the House has a thin majority?
Of course, the levels are a little bit different now that Sheila McCormick resigned.
But what's happening with that?
Yeah, me and my colleagues reported...
I believe last week that there are significant concerns amongst fiscal hawks about the $1.5 trillion budget requests.
They believe that this request is a lot.
They're not saying that they're outright going to vote no, but they are saying they have concerns and they want to see some pay force and they want to see more specifics about how to get this done.
And they would like to see this offset in some way, which is going to be really hard to do.
But defense budgets usually do pass along bipartisan lines.
Both Republicans and Democrats usually support defense.
But the issue here is a lot of Democrats are really against the war in Iran right now and have not seemed kind of willing to give Trump any more power or leeway or any kind of thing that could help him advance this war without coming to Congress first and kind of getting approval for it.
And so I could honestly see that this could run up into real trouble because a lot of Democrats do not seem keen to support anything that could go towards this war in Iran.
Another story that you broke this week was Labor Secretary Laurie Travis de Rimmer had resigned.
A Labor Department spokesperson didn't immediately respond to you.
I'm looking now at a notice article.
But can you walk us through how this happened?
Obviously, my byline is also on this.
Scoop from the bottom of my face.
I'm going to scoop for anyone out there.
But talk us through how this happened.
Obviously, she is the third woman to, a third cabinet official, also a woman, to be fired basically from the administration since January.
So she's been under intense investigation from Anthony D'Esposito, who is the Inspector General of the Labor Department.
And there were significant allegations against Lori Chavez-DeReamer, specifically pertaining to her and her family's actions.
There was rumors that there was allegations that she had had an affair with one of her staffers.
There are allegations that her husband had sexually harassed women in the office.
He's actually, according to reporting, banned from the Labor Department's main office here in D.C. There's also text that the New York Times reported that showed Lori Chavez-DeReamer's bad texting Labor Department employees stuff that made them feel uncomfortable and sexual in nature.
And a lot of this just kind of played out.
And she was set to be interviewed by the Inspector General.
She's about to talk to Congress next week, where she definitely would have had to answer for these questions.
I think it all just kind of lined up where she did not want to be questioned about this and be on the record about it.
So she resigned.
She claimed that this was a deep state attack against her, that people are coming after her.
The text messages, I don't know how her dad was, I mean, of course, if the New York Times reported to be believed, her dad was texting people very sexually explicit things and making women there fear uncomfortable.
But it was only a matter of time whether before she was fired or resigned, and it appeared she chose to resign as we reported.
Before we turn back to Virginia, is there anyone that you believe in the administration that could be next, obviously, as the president is facing some low approval rates and we head towards the midterm election?
I mean, there's a lot of reporting and circulation and rumors that he is kind of unhappy with some members of the cabinet.
Tulsi Gabbard is someone that routinely comes up.
But, I mean, Trump has been known to surprise people before.
And so who knows who kind of is next?
I mean, Tulsi is kind of just a person that you routinely hear rumors about and whispers that, oh, Trump's unhappy with how she's handling things.
But, I mean, to your point, while three cabinet members have left, Trump has been kind of weary of this go-around to fire people in his administration.
So, really, who knows where there is who's next?
All right, turning back to Virginia, obviously, those election results last night where voters approved voters approved lawmakers who are intending to put a 10-to-one map in Democratic favor.
I want to turn now to Everett from Brawley, North Carolina, an independent.
Good morning, Everett.
I'm calling to speak about the same old tool with the last Representative Stutsman saying the both sides thing.
But if anything, we know that Donald Trump started the whole thing with trying to do the redistricting or whatever early, so it gives him an advantage.
So, Virginia did exactly what they were supposed to do.
So, he tried it, and then, okay, they're making him pay for it and whatnot.
So, in the future, nobody tries that again.
And another thing is, thank God for Senator Elizabeth Warren because they don't get things, they don't get to play games with her.
She really knows the numbers and whatnot.
So, they don't get to play games with her.
It's like the corruption and the cost that goes with Donald Trump is just utterly ridiculous and whatnot.
So, and if you, if you're a soldier, you don't even know what's going on, like he just keeps going back and forth.
It's on, it's not on, but it seemed like it's always Everett.
I wonder if I can jump in here.
Reese is here, our reporter from Notice, who can answer any questions you have about he's from Texas, so he can answer questions about the Texas redistricting or the Virginia redistricting.
I wonder if you have a question about it.
Yes, I don't see why there's such a big uproar being that Donald Trump started the whole redistricting thing in the first place.
I don't see why it's still such a big uproar.
And another thing that is a problem with Americans is he gets to be corrupt, he gets to make your cost of living high and whatnot, but he's making his sons billionaires.
And one more thing, one more thing.
We spoke before when I said something about Biden bringing the inflation rate from 9.1 to 3%.
Why would I believe Donald Trump anything if he fired the lady or the people that would give the real numbers?
So, how can we possibly expect Donald Trump to give us real nibbles?
He can't even give us a real answer about what's going on in Iran.
And pretty much we both know that he lost.
All right, Everett, let me have Reese.
There was a lot of bites of those apples.
Democrats Claim 2022 Origins00:02:38
You take it, however, I'm going to talk about redistricting.
Republicans point to Republicans' claim is that Democrats started this in New York back in 2022 when they attempted this.
Obviously, the New York State Supreme Court threw it out and ruled that this was not allowed.
And so, that's how they point to it and say, But I mean, at least this campaign cycle, this election cycle, for this midterms, Republicans did start this redistricting cycle this midterm.
And they started in Texas, they tried in Indiana, failed.
I believe they were successful in North Carolina.
Democrats then fought back and said this is what they were doing.
And I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong in this instance, but I'm just saying that Republicans, for at least this midterms, did start the mid-cycle redistricting.
And we're seeing, I mean, they can honestly also finish it.
Florida, to your point, does vote to redistrict.
They do redraw their maps.
I mean, Republicans could come out on top in some way, shape, or form.
I know minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has vowed to, at the very least, kind of go after a lot of these members if Florida does redistrict, members who they believe would be vulnerable in a potential redistricting.
And so you could see Republicans do come out, might come out more on top of this if Florida does, in fact, do this, and depending on how aggressive Ron DeSantis decides to get.
But yeah, I mean, it just depends on who you talk to.
Republicans do claim that Democrats started this back in 2022 in New York, which is accurate.
I mean, New York did attempt to redraw the map.
It was eventually blocked.
But as far as this midterm election is concerned, I mean, Republicans were the first to do it down in Texas.
All right, Rhys Gorman, Notice, politics reporter, Scoop Machine, and my colleague.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
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