Wednesday thread: a speakerless House

Mega-MAGA takes down McCarthy, and everyone goes home as House of Representatives is paralyzed.

Well, dear readers, that was quite a train wreck.

While Democrats made history in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and person of color to serve as VP, swearing in Laphonza Butler as California’s newest senator—the first Black lesbian U.S. senator in history—Republicans in the House made their own dubious history, with fascistic extremists removing the House Speaker for the first time ever.

I’ve been calling them mega-MAGA, not to be confused with regular MAGA or MAGA Lite. Since there are no “moderate” Republicans—and since they’re all just varying degrees of subservience to the authoritarian Donald Trump—it’s easier to put them into these three categories. And really, MAGA Lite only accounts for two or three members. (Think Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.) The bulk of the GOP are regular MAGA, which is to say, pretty damn extreme.

And then there’s mega-MAGA—also known as MAGA on steroids—whose leader yesterday was Rep. Matt Gaetz, who introduced the motion to vacate Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They’re hellbent on 24/7 chaos and destruction. Not all eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy, however, are actually mega. One has recently been shifting to MAGA Lite.