Meet the House GOP’s newly crowned comedy king

Every class has its clown, and in the House GOP no one has earned that reputation quite like Rep. Tim Burchett.

When the Tennessee Republican first met the wife of Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) in 2018, he simultaneously complimented her appearance while jokingly digging at her husband’s — taking off his glasses, handing them to her and saying: “Ma’am, you need these more than me.”

He once corrected someone who mispronounced his last name by telling them: “It is ‘birch’ like the tree, and ‘shit’ like the thing you ate for breakfast this morning.” And after visiting then-President Donald Trump at the White House with other members, Burchett was the last to run onto the bus — yelling they needed to peel out because he’d just stolen the baby Jesus from the Nativity scene (he had not actually done so).

“With Billy Long leaving Congress, the conference is in search of a new class clown,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.). “And I nominate Tim Burchett … he’s so unpredictable. He says the craziest things.”

Approachable and unguarded, Burchett is perhaps one of the least filtered members, making comments even to reporters that most politicians would fight to bury. His wisecracking and jovial nature have attracted him friends on both sides of the aisle, despite his conservative voting record, in a time when the House’s cross-party relationships are growing rarer. Asked about his unusual freewheeling approach, he replied that his constituents from East Tennessee “don’t care about that stuff.”

“I don’t take myself seriously. I take the job seriously,” Burchett said in an interview, one day before Christmas Eve.

Others agreed. GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy could tick off multiple funny moments courtesy of Burchett, but also praised him as a constituent-focused member. He said Burchett “uses that ‘aw shucks,’ but he’s very smart.”

“He has the ability to take a serious situation, lighten the room, but also make his point,” McCarthy said.

This month, Burchett invited media, colleagues and staff to a holiday party set to last 15 minutes, and said there would “possibly” be refreshments. The party, which did in fact last 15 minutes, featured a PB&J sandwich stand, a “charcuterie” board that was just Burchett spraying cheese whiz on Ritz crackers, and Christmas music courtesy of Texas GOP Reps. Louie Gohmert and Brian Babin strumming guitars.

And while the funny-guy persona has a way of overshadowing his message at times, he also uses his jokes to inoffensively vent about Hill dynamics. He isn’t a fan of the power structures that govern who rises in leadership or receives coveted committee roles, for example, which often includes alliances with party leaders, fundraising and general schmoozing.

“I get frustrated with the whole system,” Burchett said, noting that he has approached McCarthy requesting positions on certain panels, like the House Intelligence Committee. “I don’t kiss enough butt and I don’t raise money to move up in conference, so I get aggravated about that. There’s definitely some people I would say should be in some positions that they’re not, just because of that. And I hate missed opportunity.”

He also tries to provide levity in tense situations — with mixed results. Earlier this month, he elicited both chuckles and cringes during a heated moment in a conference-wide meeting, as some of his colleagues grew irritated that McCarthy allies were getting extra time from their colleagues to speak in defense of his speakership bid.

Burchett went to a microphone and bashed their weekly conference meetings as a waste of time where they never learn anything. And he told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who was managing whose turn it was to speak, that if he wanted to be disrespected by a woman, he’d go home to his wife and daughter. Some appreciated the humor, while others felt that directing the comment at the top woman in Republican leadership took the joke too far.

Generally, there is a sense among his Capitol Hill colleagues that Burchett is just that kind of person who can get away with comments that the rest of them couldn’t pull off.

“He says whatever the hell he wants to and people can get offended. He didn’t give a flip,” said GOP Rep. Mark Green, who is part of the Tennessee delegation with Burchett. “And he’s gotten to the point where people take it from him. If I said that, there’d be a [negative] article about me.”

There are plenty of incidents that back up Green’s claim. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) said Burchett calls him his “favorite Jew after Jesus.” And, according to Armstrong, when Burchett’s chief of staff got hit by a scooter and they’d verified he was OK, he and some others gifted the chief a helmet, whistle and cape branded with Burchett’s friendly nickname for his top staffer: “Big Sexy.”

At times, Burchett’s jokes feel absolutely random. Last year, he waltzed up to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), a first-term lawmaker who was wearing a purple ribbon to raise awareness about the opioid epidemic at the time, and told her purple was his favorite color. He said he grew up sleeping in purple sheets, but then when he was 12 his mom tried to throw them away after a baby gerbil ate holes in them.

“No, Momma, not my purple sheets!” he yelled, recalling the episode to a confused but amused Dean, whom Burchett said he had just met.

Unlike most politicians on Capitol Hill, the Tennessee Republican isn’t carefully constructing his image or donning the beltway uniform of penny loafers and button-down shirts. In fact, Burchett’s colleagues were more concerned about sharing the lawmaker’s jokes publicly, fearing bad optics or negative misinterpretations by the public, than Burchett was himself.

He saunters around the Capitol in the same tan-brown Carhartt jacket (don’t get his friends started on the reports that have dubbed Sen.-elect John Fetterman [D-Pa.] as Congress’ Carhartt ambassador), throwing out fist-bumps to friends, checking in on strangers and scandalized colleagues in a Holden Caulfield fashion, talking about how much he loves his wife and daughter, and randomly striking up conversations about when he used to sell items on Ebay as a side-hustle.

And while his voting record resembles those of members in the House Freedom Caucus, his relationships across the aisle are starkly different. He and Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly embraced after Burchett told her that he was praying for her husband after the violent assault at Pelosi’s San Francisco home, as the Tennessean recalled. He is also known to fist-bump with Democrats like progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an association that his GOP colleagues say would destroy other members among base voters.

But he doesn’t want his interactions with Democrats to end there. He has three goals he remembers listing off to now-former Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.):

“I want to run down South Beach hand-in-hand with [former Rep.] Donna Shalala. I want to go to the Bronx and party with AOC. I don’t know if she lives in the Bronx or not … I’ve never been to New York,” Burchett said. “And I said I want to party in the Kennedy compound.”

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McCarthy relents on key conservative demand — but uncertainty remains over speaker bid

Kevin McCarthy has made perhaps his biggest concession so far to the band of conservatives standing in the way of his path to speaker. Yet it’s not clear if it will be enough to clinch his gavel.

In a lengthy conference call on Sunday, McCarthy and his team informed members that he would lower the barriers for rank-and-file members to attempt to depose a sitting speaker, a change that some GOP lawmakers have warned could weaken their leadership team.

The extent of the rule change isn't yet clear: McCarthy and his allies are still determining exactly how many members will be able to force that no-confidence vote. The California Republican has previously said he is open to lowering the threshold to five members, but that decision is not final, according to multiple Republicans on the call.

And the New Year’s Day huddle made clear that several GOP lawmakers want more clarity from McCarthy and his team about how exactly these compromises are translating into support for his speaker’s vote on Jan. 3 — just two days away.

“Many of us said we’ll only agree to rules if we get 218 for Kevin,” said one House Republican, who is a McCarthy ally.

The tweak to the House’s no-confidence vote — known as the motion to vacate the chair — is part of a slate of changes that Republicans are proposing in their new majority. Many of these changes are wonky and procedural, involving everything from the way that budget score-keepers assess the cost of a bill to how the House raises the debt limit to whether members will be allowed to proxy vote.

One rule change, though, has been particularly significant for Republicans.

The motion to vacate — the same tool that conservatives effectively used to topple former Speaker John Boehner in 2015 — could be a serious threat to McCarthy as his conference takes power this week with one of the slimmest margins in history.

“Some of the rules changes are being made, some of us will live with them even though we think some of them may be unnecessary,” said another member, who is supportive of McCarthy.

There was another ominous sign for McCarthy on Sunday: A group of nine conservatives who haven’t said how they plan to vote on Jan. 3 released a letter saying they remained unsatisfied by McCarthy’s answers to their demands from last month.

“Despite some progress achieved, Mr. McCarthy’s statement comes almost impossibly late to address continued deficiencies ahead of the opening of the 118th Congress on January 3rd,” the group, led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), wrote.

The group said McCarthy’s response, which was delivered to them on Saturday, was “missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties,” though they said some of the progress has been “helpful.”

House Republicans had hoped to release their full package of rules changes by Sunday night. But the ongoing negotiations over certain elements — particularly the motion to vacate — makes that public release less certain.

Voting on a new set of House rules will be one of the first acts of the GOP’s majority later this week, but only after Republicans elect a speaker.

At one point during the call, Rep.-elect Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) asked Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) if he would support McCarthy if he agreed to lower the threshold to one. (This would revert back to the House rules prior to the Democratic takeover in 2019.)

Gaetz replied by noting McCarthy wouldn’t agree to that, to which the California Republican replied that it is the conference that will oppose that threshold.

And McCarthy said he’d like to hear Gaetz’s answer, but Gaetz — one of his most fervent opponents — said he’d think about it. At one point he asked: is that an offer?

Though it was a hypothetical, members also say McCarthy didn’t get into whether he’d go below five.

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Outgoing Republican leaders condemn Santos, suggest resignation

Scandal-plagued Rep.-elect George Santos "is certainly is going to have to consider resigning," outgoing Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on "Fox News Sunday."

"Right now, he would not be on the committee that I led," said Brady when asked by guest anchor Gillian Turner whether he would have been comfortable chairing a committee that included Santos.

"And, frankly, he's got to take some huge steps if he wants to regain trust and respect in his district," said Brady, who was the top Republican on the Committee on Ways and Means.

The New York Republican, elected in November, has refused to step down after investigations into his background found he falsified key portions of his biography from his Jewish ancestry to his career and education.

Whether the congressman-elect ultimately decides to give up his seat is between him and voters in his Long Island district, Brady said.

Brady said Santos has two choices: "politically ride it out" or "the tougher choice... own every lie that he's made and apologize to everyone and anyone for as long as it takes."

Asked whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is seeking the speakership, should condemn Santos, Brady sidestepped the question.

Brady suggested Santos may be able to earn the forgiveness and trust of voters.

"We’re a country of second chances," Brady said. "And when people are willing to turn their life around and own up to this and do what it takes and earn respect and trust again, you know, we’re willing to do that."

But outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican and former House member, called Santos' falsifications "unacceptable." The House Ethics Committee should "deal with this," Hutchinson said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"It breaches the trust between the electorate and their elected official," Hutchinson told host Jonathan Karl. "We have to have more integrity in our political environment, in our elected leaders."

Options for punishing Santos are "probably up to House leadership," Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said Sunday on MSNBC.

"Given the razor-thin majority they have, I think that's unlikely," Quigley said. "Any other job in the world, you’d get fired. Unfortunately, we don't have that option in Congress."

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Opinion | The House Should Not Have Released Trump’s Personal Tax Returns

The House Ways and Means Committee just released to the public six years of personal tax returns for former President Donald Trump. Trump could have released those returns when he was first a candidate, or as president, or when he recently announced his third candidacy.

His excuse for withholding his personal tax returns from public scrutiny — that he could not release them because they were under audit — is patently false. There is absolutely no law, rule or policy that precluded Trump from releasing his own tax returns, whether or not they were under audit. He simply chose not to do so. His excuse was a lie.

Breaking with significant norms of American politics was — and is — routine for Trump. So is lying. The fact that previous candidates and presidents have released their personal returns seemed not to matter to him. Trump took a chance that his voters would neither care nor punish him for ignoring this tradition. He turned out to be right about that, at least the first time around.

Last Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee did what Trump refused to do: It released his personal tax returns. I think that was a mistake. The committee certainly had a valid reason to obtain and examine Trump’s returns. No quarrel there. But did they have a valid reason to publish his returns? I don’t think so.

The committee noted that it:

[S]ought the return information and tax returns of the former President to investigate how the IRS’s mandatory audit program operated under the stress of a President who maintained financial interests in hundreds of related entities and reportedly was under audit every single year.

So, the committee’s focus was properly the IRS’ mandatory audit program. That program was established in 1977. Wisely, it took the onus off individual IRS employees to determine whether they “should” audit a president’s returns. That could be tricky, because the IRS is part of the executive branch, which is led by a president. To insulate the audit and the auditors from politics, the IRS manual transformed the “should” question into a “must” requirement: Since 1977, it provides that the “[i]ndividual income tax returns for the President and Vice President are subject to mandatory examinations.”

The committee learned that during Trump’s term in office, he filed five personal income tax returns with the IRS, all of which should have been subject to the mandatory audit program. But the committee found that three of the five returns — for calendar years 2017, 2018, and 2019 — “were not selected for examination until after [Trump] left office and only the 2016 tax return was subject to a mandatory examination.”

Oddly, the committee also noted that “the IRS sent a letter to [Trump] notifying him that his … 2015 return was selected for examination on April 3, 2019, which is the date the [committee] sent the initial request to the IRS for [Trump’s] … tax returns.” That does not seem to be a coincidence.

Why did the IRS fail to abide its own — nearly half-century old — policy? This was one of the major questions raised in the committee’s report. Perhaps the IRS failed because Trump’s returns were inordinately complex. Perhaps, relatedly, it failed because the IRS did not have sufficient resources to audit a complex return. Perhaps, and this is surmise, it was something more nefarious.

The committee report recommends ways to fix the structural failures at the IRS, going forward. That seems valuable. And that strikes me as a sufficient reason to obtain and examine Trump’s returns. For instance, the committee could not know how difficult it might be for the IRS to audit Trump’s returns if it did not know how complex they were, in the first place.

But publication of his returns is different. How does publication advance the otherwise valuable findings of the committee? Couldn’t the committee highlight the IRS’ failures in a report and keep Trump’s returns private? I believe so. Stated another way, what is the connection between the valid concerns raised by the committee — the deficiencies in the mandatory audit program they identified at the IRS — and the committee’s decision to make public Trump’s returns? None, that I see.

I am not, to put it mildly, a Trump fan so my next words may seem odd, but here goes: The committee’s decision to publish the returns was unfair to Trump. So why do I worry about being unfair to Trump? Because principles of fairness should matter to all of us, all the time, and apply to all of us, all the time, even if they do not matter to Trump.

Trump strikes me as a bad person. In many ways, he is not very different than many of the people I encountered as a federal prosecutor. He is greedy, dishonest, self-centered, narcissistic and reckless. But all the people we prosecuted deserved to be treated fairly for legal, ethical and moral reasons, and they deserved to be treated fairly all the time, whether or not we liked them. We cannot reserve fair treatment for people we like and unfair treatment for people we dislike. That would be a death spiral for our judicial system and for our democracy.

The committee did good work uncovering IRS deficiencies. Those deficiencies need to be fixed. But control of the House of Representatives — and its Ways and Means Committee — will soon switch to a different party. That party may find it politically expedient to obtain and publish the personal tax returns of people they do not like. And, the committee will have the power to do that. Perhaps the new House majority will surprise me and demonstrate restraint. Or, perhaps, they will try to “get even.” Time will tell, but we should all fear the latter.

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Lula set for inauguration to preside over polarized Brazil

Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be sworn in Sunday in the capital, Brasilia, and assume office for the third time, marking the culmination of a political comeback sure to thrill supporters and enrage opponents in a fiercely polarized nation.

But Lula’s presidency is unlikely to be like his previous two mandates, coming after the tightest presidential race in more than three decades in Brazil and resistance to his taking office by some of his opponents, political analysts say.

The leftist defeated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in the Oct. 30 vote by less than 2 percentage points. For months, Bolsonaro had sown doubts about the reliability of Brazil’s electronic vote and his loyal supporters were loath to accept the loss.

Many have gathered outside military barracks since, questioning results and pleading with the armed forces to prevent Lula from taking office.

His most die-hard backers resorted to what some authorities and incoming members of Lula’s administration labeled acts of “terrorism” – something the country had not seen since the early 1980s, and which have prompted growing security concerns about inauguration day events.

“In 2003, the ceremony was very beautiful. There wasn’t this bad, heavy climate,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo, referring to the year Lula first took office. “Today, it’s a climate of terror.”

Tanya Albuquerque, a student, flew from Sao Paulo to Brasilia and had tears in her eyes as she heard local leftists celebrating incoming visitors at Brasilia’s airport. She decided to attend after seeing pictures of Lula’s first inauguration.

“Maybe we won’t have 300,000 people tomorrow like then; these are different and more divisive times. But I knew I wouldn’t be happy in front of a TV,” Albuquerque, 23, said on Saturday.

Lula has made it his mission to heal the divided nation. But he will have to do so while navigating more challenging economic conditions than he enjoyed in his first two terms, when the global commodities boom proved a windfall for Brazil.

At the time, his administration's flagship welfare program helped lift tens of millions of impoverished people into the middle class. Many Brazilians traveled abroad for the first time. He left office with a personal approval rating of 83%.

In the intervening years, Brazil’s economy plunged into two deep recessions — first, during the tenure of his handpicked successor, and then during the pandemic — and ordinary Brazilians suffered greatly.

Lula has said his priorities are fighting poverty, and investing in education and health. He has also said he will bring illegal deforestation of the Amazon to a halt. He sought support from political moderates to form a broad front and defeat Bolsonaro, then tapped some of them to serve in his Cabinet.

Given the nation’s political fault lines, however, it is highly unlikely Lula ever reattains the popularity he once enjoyed, or even sees his approval rating rise above 50%, said Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at Rio de Janeiro’s State University.

Furthermore, Santoro said, the credibility of Lula and his Workers’ Party were assailed by a sprawling corruption investigation. Party officials were jailed, including Lula -- until his convictions were annulled on procedural grounds. The Supreme Court then ruled that the judge presiding over the case had colluded with prosecutors to secure a conviction.

Lula and his supporters have maintained he was railroaded. Others were willing to look past possible malfeasance as a means to unseat Bolsonaro and bring the nation back together.

But Bolsonaro’s backers refuse to accept someone they view as a criminal returning to the highest office. And with tensions running hot, a series of events has prompted fear that violence could erupt on inauguration day.

On Dec. 12, dozens of people tried to invade a federal police building in Brasilia, and burned cars and buses in other areas of the city. Then on Christmas Eve, police arrested a 54-year-old man who admitted to making a bomb that was found on a fuel truck headed to Brasilia’s airport.

He had been camped outside Brasilia’s army headquarters with hundreds of other Bolsonaro supporters since Nov. 12. He told police he was ready for war against communism, and planned the attack with people he had met at the protests, according to excerpts of his deposition released by local media. The next day, police found explosive devices and several bulletproof vests in a forested area on the federal district’s outskirts.

Lula’s incoming Justice Minister, Flávio Dino, this week called for federal authorities to put an end to the “antidemocratic” protests, calling them “incubators of terrorists.”

In response to a request from Lula’s team, the current justice minister authorized deployment of the national guard until Jan. 2, and Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes banned people from carrying firearms in Brasilia during these days.

“This is the fruit of political polarization, of political extremism,” said Nara Pavão, who teaches political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Pavão stressed that Bolsonaro, who mostly vanished from the political scene since he lost his reelection bid, was slow to disavow recent incidents.

“His silence is strategic: Bolsonaro needs to keep Bolsonarismo alive,” Pavão said.

Bolsonaro finally condemned the bomb plot in a Dec. 30 farewell address on social media, hours before flying to the U.S.. His absence on inauguration day will mark a break with tradition and it remains unclear who, instead of him, will hand over the presidential sash to Lula at the presidential palace.

Lawyer Eduardo Coutinho will be there. He bought a flight to Brasilia as a Christmas present to himself.

“I wish I were here when Bolsonaro’s plane took off, that is the only thing that makes me almost as happy as tomorrow’s event,” Coutinho, 28, said after singing Lula campaign jingles on the plane. “I’m not usually so over-the-top, but we need to let it out and I came here just to do that. Brazil needs this to move on.”

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‘New chapters’ as Croatia joins euro and free-movement area

European Commission’s von der Leyen hails “two immense achievements.”

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Appeals court upholds Florida high school’s transgender bathroom ban

MIAMI — A federal appeals court has ruled that a Florida school district’s policy of separating school bathrooms based on biological sex is constitutional.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced its 7-4 decision on Friday, ruling that the St. Johns County School Board did not discriminate against transgender students based on sex, or violate federal civil rights law by requiring transgender students to use gender-neutral bathrooms or bathrooms matching their biological sex.

The court’s decision was split down party lines, with seven justices appointed by Republican presidents siding with the school district and four justices appointed by Democratic presidents siding with Drew Adams, a former student who sued the district in 2017 because he wasn’t allowed to use the boys restroom.

A three-judge panel from the appeals court previously sided with Adams in 2020, but the full appeals court decided to take up the case. Though his assigned gender was female at birth, Adams began the transition to become male before he enrolled in Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, just southeast of Jacksonville.

Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote in the majority opinion that that the school board policy advances the important governmental objective of protecting students’ privacy in school bathrooms. She said the district’s policy does not violate the law because it’s based on biological sex, not gender identity.

Judge Jill Pryor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the interest of protecting privacy is not absolute and must coexist alongside fundamental principles of equality, specifically where exclusion implies inferiority.

Lambda Legal, a LGBTQ rights group that has been providing aid to Adams, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment from The Associated Press.

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