Tuberculosis cases are rising in New York. The city is struggling to keep up.

NEW YORK — The understaffed agency charged with monitoring tuberculosis in New York City is struggling to respond to new cases — fueling fears of a resurgence decades after the nation got TB under control.

The city has confirmed about 500 cases of active tuberculosis so far this year, an increase of roughly 20 percent from the same time last year, according to internal preliminary data reviewed by POLITICO. That rate would make it the worst year in a decade.

There are worryingly long waits for treatment at city-run TB clinics, said three employees of the city Department of Health’s Bureau of Tuberculosis Control. And matters could grow worse as the weather turns cold, increasing the likelihood TB and other respiratory illnesses may spread.

“When there are particularly high spikes in TB and other infectious diseases in New York City, that tends to be kind of a bellwether for the rest of the country,” said Elizabeth Lovinger, a health policy director at Treatment Action Group, a public health advocacy group with a focus on TB.

New York City’s situation is concerning but unsurprising to some tuberculosis experts given the widespread disinvestment in efforts to control and eliminate the infectious disease since cases last peaked in the early 1990s. The Bureau of Tuberculosis Control has been hobbled by years of budget cuts and widespread vacancies, leaving it with limited capacity to manage the spread.

It’s a phenomenon that health officials have repeatedly warned could lead to yet another spike, despite a common misconception that TB is no longer a threat in America.

Tuberculosis has been relatively scarce in the U.S. since cases peaked decades ago during the AIDS epidemic, but the situation in the nation’s largest city foreshadows a possible resurgence of the disease — still a leading killer globally. The disease, which is caused by bacteria, spreads through the air and can be deadly if not treated.

Experts predicted an uptick in tuberculosis cases after the Covid-19 pandemic hindered efforts to diagnose and treat cases.

That was magnified by the arrival of more than 100,000 migrants to New York City since spring 2022. Migrants are at heightened risk of developing an active tuberculosis infection since the disease can spread especially quickly in the kinds of congregate settings where the city is housing them.

The city’s preliminary 2023 data has surpassed expectations, according to the TB bureau employees, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The internal figures suggest the city is on pace to exceed last year’s 536 newly diagnosed patients, or a rate of 6.1 cases per 100,000 people — already one of the highest in the country. If the current rate persists, this year’s case count would be the highest in the city since 2013.

“This is definitely a more dramatic resurgence than we would have probably expected,” Lovinger said.

The city, meanwhile, has been mum on the rise in cases.

A rise in TB raises concerns

The city Health Department declined to make commissioner Ashwin Vasan or the director of its TB control program, Joseph Burzynski, available for interviews. Burzynski told staff not to respond to POLITICO’s inquiries about the city’s tuberculosis control efforts, according to a copy of the email sent to the bureau.

The situation is exacerbated by the closure of the department’s chest center in Washington Heights, one of four city-run clinics that offer no-cost testing and care for TB and the only such location in Manhattan.

City Health Department spokesperson Patrick Gallahue said the Washington Heights clinic was repurposed to help with the Covid response and is being considered for renovations; he said its reopening depends on the viability of upgrading the facility, but did not provide a timeline.

The average wait time for an appointment at one of the city’s three remaining TB clinics is two to three days for actively infectious patients, he added.

But two of the employees said wait times are increasingly longer than that; one of them cited an example from earlier this year of an actively infectious tuberculosis patient who waited over a week for a medical evaluation. The third employee said active TB patients must sometimes be double-booked to get them seen quickly.

The TB bureau’s practice manual says actively infectious patients should be evaluated within three days to minimize any public health threat. The longer they go unmedicated, the greater the risk of the disease spreading and the harder it is to treat.

It’s not just trouble getting an appointment. A shortage of technicians means patients may wait even longer for a chest X-ray to determine whether they have active TB. The understaffing is so severe the department recently tapped Lenox Hill Radiology, a private company, to perform chest X-rays under a contract valued at up to $500,000.

Gallahue did not directly address the internal data or the understaffing claims.

“The health of our city is our core mission, and we’ll do whatever we can to ensure that no one goes without care,” he said in a statement.

Funding woes

The combination of rising tuberculosis cases and a resource-starved bureau harkens back to the late 1980s, when New York City last saw a major spike.

Following a 1960s-era peak, the city’s Bureau of Tuberculosis Control was whittled down at the time to 140 staffers and eight clinics. Together, with the emergence of HIV, which suppresses the immune system and leaves people more vulnerable to active TB infection, the disinvestment created a perfect storm for a resurgence.

By the early 1990s, New York City was the epicenter of a nationwide tuberculosis epidemic. The city spent $1 billion to expand its TB control program, staffing the bureau with over 600 people to treat well over 3,000 cases a year. As local cases receded into the hundreds, the city and federal government again slashed funding.

By 2014, the city’s tuberculosis control funding had been cut by over 50 percent, to about $23 million. The bureau was budgeted for 240 positions.

“It seems paradoxical, but many disease control programs struggle harder during the elimination phase than they do during a surge — because the level of staffing and political commitment declines more rapidly than the case numbers,” said Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who served as the Health Department’s deputy commissioner for disease control under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Resources have since declined further: The city’s current budget devotes $14.3 million to tuberculosis control with just three clinics. That accounts for 151 personnel, down from 170 in last year’s budget, plus a handful of grant-funded positions. It is unclear how many positions are vacant; Gallahue, the spokesperson, would not provide data on the vacancies.

To the three employees who spoke to POLITICO, the staffing is insufficient. They described shortages across a range of roles, from physicians and X-ray technicians to case managers and epidemiologists. That has left staff with heavy workloads due to the time-sensitive and lengthy process of treating tuberculosis.

Most patients are diagnosed at an emergency room and start treatment in the hospital, but the Health Department’s TB bureau oversees a patient’s care during the monthslong treatment regimen and often handles follow-up visits. At any given time the bureau is treating about 1,000 people with active or suspected TB, Gallahue said.

Added one of the city health employees: “We’re all just doing triage all the time.”

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Leader of gun safety group Giffords to step down

Peter Ambler, the longtime executive director of the gun violence prevention group Giffords, is stepping down after 10 years with the organization.

At a coffee shop in Southeast D.C., he shared the news in a conversation with POLITICO. He won’t leave the movement entirely — he’s staying on board with Giffords as an adviser — but his departure represents a major changing of the guard for one of the more important advocacy communities in the progressive tent.

Ambler was circumspect about it. A decade at the helm of any major political institution is a long time. Helping build a gun violence prevention advocacy group from scratch in an era when political fights over guns have grown more charged and divisive can be all-consuming.

There have been victories. But sipping his coffee and picking at his half-eaten oatmeal, Ambler also joked about the gray hair he didn’t have when he started. He’s a father now — a biographical detail that has upended his work life in ways he never anticipated. He says it is nearly impossible now to talk about gun violence without thinking of his children.

It makes the job hard. And, already, it’s been a job with hard moments, such as the phone call he received as a young legislative director when his boss, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), had been shot in the head while meeting with constituents.

In a sit down with West Wing Playbook, his eyes welled up when he described that moment. He also talked about his career, and the evolution of the gun safety movement. This conversation has been edited for length.

So Gabby was shot in 2011, but tell me about the start of Giffords in 2013. 

I stayed close with Gabby and [husband, Sen. Mark Kelly], and over the next year, there was the shooting in Oak Creek, Wis. There was the Aurora shooting. A lot more shootings. 

Then on Dec. 14, 2012, the Newtown shooting happened, which catalyzes this national awakening on the gun violence issue.

I remember being on the phone with both of them that day. And Gabby, having fewer words then than she does now, kept saying, “Enough. Enough. Enough.” 

Weeks later, on the two-year anniversary of Gabby being shot, we launched. 

So why step down now? 

I was at a dinner with David Axelrod two months ago. He was at the other end of the table. I guess he just left the University of Chicago. Like “Oh, why are you leaving?” And he basically perked his head up and said, “Nobody should run anything for more than 10 years.”

I was like, “Alright, Peter.” It sort of jolted me. 

At Giffords, we’re at an interesting pivot point. We’ve shown that we can win the political argument. The gun safety movement is talking to a broader group of Americans about issues that they deeply care about. 

And this didn’t feel fast to me — I’ve got gray hair I didn’t have before. But I think in the context of social movements and how they grow and evolve, this is something that’s happened on a lightning-quick basis.

Not only have the politics around guns changed, but so has the make-up of the movement. There are a ton of organizations now instead of just the big players.    

I’ve heard a lot along the way, “Well there’s just one NRA, shouldn’t there be just one anti-NRA?” Oftentimes what matters as much as message is messenger. And being able to have different leaders and different institutions coming at this problem from different perspectives is very helpful. 

What approach have you found works best for moving Biden? 

We’ve been working with him and his team on this issue since 2013. 

The day that Manchin-Toomey [the gun proposal to expand background checks] was filibustered, Gabby was sitting with then-Vice President Biden. And she was devastated. The vice president said something like, “Gabby, this is a dark day for the Congress and for the country. But what you’ll see here is this will catalyze people.” And that’s exactly what happened. 

One of the parts of the magic of Gabby Giffords is that she at the same time is this sort of national popular icon, but also a fantastic inside player. And I sort of do more of the inside player part of it. 

But it’s a let Biden be Biden kind of approach, and to the extent that we elevate the issue and partner with his administration and his advisers and provide the infrastructure that’s necessary from the outside. He’s somebody that you need to support his policymaking and his work as president more than you need to hold his feet to the fire.

But even with Biden, progress has been incremental. The Office of Gun Violence Prevention is a good example. 

It’s been incremental by necessity. We partner with many people in the movement, outside and in the world on a comprehensive plan for what the president can do. And he hasn’t done, like, literally everything, right? But I know he’s considered literally everything and done the vast majority of it. Not a week goes by where we’re not talking in some way, shape or form with the administration about what you can do to move the ball forward. We’re in a challenging political and legal landscape as well. Like any president, there’s a limit to their executive authority. 

I describe our approach as sort of radical incrementalism. And that’s inspired in a lot of ways by Gabby, whose incremental recovery from being shot was by necessity. She gets from the pavement of a supermarket in Arizona with a bullet hole in her brain to what she’s able to do now. Not because there was a genius who invented a medical intervention that accelerated her recovery. There wasn’t a particularly kick-ass day in speech therapy. She didn’t have a breakthrough day at the gym. It’s the hard work each and every day. 

What are you most proud of during your time as executive director? 

One of my goals a decade ago was to work to ensure that Giffords is an enduring part of our cultural and political landscape. I think that we’ve achieved that.

What’s been the hardest thing?  

I thought that when Gabby was shot, that that would be the most personally I would ever be connected to a tragedy. 

I thought that I could compartmentalize, stay focused on building the organization. But one thing that happened along the way is that I had kids. 

The day of Uvalde, it was also the last day of my daughter’s [transitional kindergarten]. So I go to the “graduation.” I’m there, and I’m watching this tragedy unfold. 

A couple days later, my wife and I were taking her to her first day of summer camp. She just starts talking in the backseat, and she started talking about a lockdown drill that she’d done in school. And she talked about the kids shot at a different school, asking if that was going to happen to her? 

Having a very real human experience like that — and then being proud of what we achieved — it just makes me furious. 

Do you feel like you’re leaving with more optimism than when you began? 

I’m an optimistic person. I think that the gun safety movement, with Giffords as a very critical part of it, has proven the doubters wrong. 

I cannot tell you in the very early days, walking the halls of Congress with Gabby Giffords, how many people doubted us. Told us to our faces that the politics are too difficult. That the NRA was too powerful. That thanked us for our work, but told us, I can’t vote with you. 

If I could obliterate the one thing that exists on this issue, it’s the ingrained skepticism. We face a lot of challenges in this country. This is a solvable problem. 

We’ve punched above our weight. And we’ve achieved things that people didn’t expect. 

What did Gabby say when you told her your news? 

She said, “Sad. End of an era.” 

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Leonard Leo says he will not cooperate with D.C. Attorney General tax probe

Judicial activist Leonard Leo is not cooperating with an investigation by Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb for potentially misusing nonprofit tax laws for personal enrichment, his attorney confirmed.

David Rivkin, Leo’s attorney, said in a statement to POLITICO that Schwalb has “no legal authority to conduct any investigatory steps or take any enforcement measures” because Leo’s multi-billion-dollar aligned nonprofits — which poured millions into campaigning for the nominations of conservative Supreme Court justices and advocating before them — were organized outside of D.C.

Leo’s consulting firm, CRC Advisors is registered in D.C. and his main aligned nonprofit, The 85 Fund, used a D.C. mailing address for at least a decade.

Schwalb is also looking into liberal “dark money” group Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm founded by a former Clinton official that manages a handful of nonprofits, POLITICO confirmed, after Republican attorneys general recently complained that Schwalb should instead be probing Arabella.

“Arabella Advisors complies with the law and will cooperate with the District of Columbia Attorney General’s civil inquiry,” said Arabella spokesman Steve Sampson said in a statement. “We’re confident in the systems we have in place to ensure our business conforms with legal and regulatory requirements, and Arabella Advisors is proud of the work we do."

The subpoenas come a few weeks after POLITICO reported that Schwalb is looking into the multi-billion-dollar dark money network aligned with conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who has not said whether he is cooperating with the investigation.

The investigations — and subsequent subpoenas — are in response to dueling complaints from liberal and conservative watchdog groups filed with the IRS that began after POLITICO reported that the lifestyle of Leo and a handful of his allies took a lavish turn beginning in 2016, the year he was tapped as an unpaid adviser on judicial nominations to former President Donald Trump.

Arabella was targeted in the complaint from Americans for Public Trust, a watchdog mostly funded by DonorsTrust, often described as the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement which has given millions to Leo-aligned nonprofits and his consulting firm, CRC Advisors. A liberal watchdog, Campaign for Accountability, once affiliated with Arabella, filed a complaint with the IRS and D.C. Attorney General following POLITICO’s reporting on Leo's lifestyle.

Gabe Shoglow-Rubenstein, Schwalb’s communications director, declined to confirm or deny the existence of either probe.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed last week said Schwalb lacks jurisdiction to investigate since Leo’s aligned groups are located in Virginia or Texas and criticized him for failing to investigate Arabella. It cited a recent letter sent to Schwalb from a dozen Republican state attorneys general.

The opinion piece did not note that a Leo-aligned group has been the top donor to the Republican Attorneys General Association or that The 85 Fund, one of Leo’s primary aligned groups, quietly relocated in recent months from the capital area to Texas amid the investigation. The 85 Fund had been incorporated in Virginia for nearly 20 years but it was using a UPS drop box in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood as its principal office address.

The conservative watchdog’s complaint, filed in mid-August, asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether Arabella’s founder, Eric Kessler, took in funds that exceeded fair market value in exchange for services provided by his nonprofits. It claims that more than $228 million has been “diverted” back to Arabella over the past two decades.

Leo has long pointed to Arabella as his inspiration in creating his network of nonprofits which have poured tens of millions of dollars over the past decade to promote Trump’s Supreme Court picks, file briefs before the court and, more recently, used an alias to push for voting restrictions and accuse Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election.

Liberals cite significant differences between Arabella and Leo’s network, much of it registered as “charitable” and “social welfare” groups managed by a handful of allies.

Leo is considered the architect of the ultraconservative Supreme Court who recently received a $1.6 billion contribution, believed to be the biggest political donation in U.S. history, from a far-right billionaire. Trump chose his three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, from a list drawn up by Leo.

Arabella, which says on its website that it focuses on “philanthropy” and “impact investing,” acts as a vendor to nonprofit groups to supply human resources, legal and other administrative services. It has stressed that it does not direct the spending decisions of its clients whereas Leo has declined to say what services were provided in exchange for $43 million which has flowed to his company over two years.

Schwalb, who took office in January, has a background in tax law and served as a trial attorney in the tax division of the Department of Justice under former President Bill Clinton.

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Pro-Christie groups urge New Hampshire Dems to switch parties and back him

Chris Christie’s political operation is aggressively trying to persuade New Hampshire Democrats to switch parties to vote for the former New Jersey governor in the state’s first-in-the-nation Republican presidential primary.

Two organizations aligned with Christie — who is centering his campaign around his outspoken opposition to former President Donald Trump — have launched advertising campaigns targeting Democratic voters. Those efforts come just days ahead of the state’s Oct. 6 deadline to switch party registration.

The pro-Christie Tell It Like It Is super PAC is sending mailers to registered Democratic voters ahead of that deadline, urging them to switch affiliations. The mailer tries to woo Democrats by telling them they can help “make sure” Trump “never sees the inside of the Oval Office again.”

“This can’t happen again,” the mailer says, against a background photo showing rioters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. “You can make sure it doesn’t. Stop Trump by switching parties & voting in the Republican primary.”

In an effort to assuage concerns, the mailer tells voters that “it’s easy to switch your party affiliation back after” next year’s primary.

Another pro-Christie group, an under-the-radar nonprofit policy organization called American Leadership Today, has begun running a digital ad in New Hampshire educating voters on how they can switch their party affiliation.

“In New Hampshire on a cold January night, democracy will be on the ballot,” the commercial says. “Will we continue to uphold our constitution?”

American Leadership Today has also been sending out text messages and direct mail to New Hampshire Democrats. Like its TV ad, the organization’s mailer tells voters how to switch their party registration and also notes that unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in a primary.

“Exercise your right to vote,” the mailer says. “You can protect our democracy.”

Collectively, the efforts by both groups underscores the degree to which Christie has hitched his political future to anxiety over the prospect of a second Trump presidency. The former governor has run predominantly on his willingness to call out the former president, who he once supported. He has aggressively attacked the Republican frontrunner for, among other things, his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege and for refusing to participate in the primary debates.

And he has campaigned largely in New Hampshire, hoping that his opposition to Trump will resonate with independent-minded voters who factor prominently in the state. His popularity with Democrats in New Hampshire has soared.

An American Leadership Today spokesperson said the organization’s “goal [was] spreading awareness about available choices through a multi-faceted campaign and expanding voter participation in the Granite State’s proud First In The Nation primary process.”

While pro-Christie groups are now trying to build a voting base around an anti-Trump candidacy that extends well beyond the GOP primary electorate, Christie himself has stopped short of explicitly encouraging Democrats to switch parties for him. He said in a Sept. 19 town hallin North Hampton, N.H. that he was “uncomfortable with the idea of asking people to change their party. Because I think that's something that's very personal for them to decide.”

But, he added, “whoever is eligible to vote …and wants to vote, should go out and vote and vote for the person that they think will make a difference."

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, dismissed the pro-Christie super PAC’s gambit.

“Of course Chris Christie is begging Democrats to support him. Chris Christie is a stone cold loser who spends every day on the cable news casting couch auditioning for a contributor contract whenever his joke of a campaign ends up in flames,” Cheung said.

Adam Sexton, a reporter for the New Hampshire TV station WMUR, first reportedon the Tell It Like It Is mailer.

Recent polls have shown Trump with a commanding lead in the state, with Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley trailing.

Christie, who parted ways with the former president after he left the White House, similarly focused on New Hampshire during his short-lived 2016 presidential campaign. The former governor has said he would “leave” the contest if he doesn’t perform well in the state’s primary.

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Justices voice doubts about challenge to consumer protection agency funding

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears likely to escape a potentially devastating blow from the Supreme Court after several conservative justices expressed doubts about arguments that the agency’s funding stream is unconstitutional.

During oral arguments Tuesday, all the court’s liberal justices and at least three members of the conservative majority sounded skeptical about claims by financial services companies that Congress's decision to insulate the CFPB from the annual budget process ran afoul of the Constitution’s clause about appropriations of federal money.

Critics of the funding arrangement, which lawmakers adopted when they created the bureau more than a decade ago, say it effectively takes future Congresses out of the loop, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh forcefully rejected that claim.

“Congress could change it tomorrow,” Kavanaugh said. “There’s nothing perpetual or permanent about this.”

The case is being widely watched because it threatens to curtail the power of the bureau and upend some of the industries it regulates. Depending on the scope of the ruling, the case has the potential to disrupt financial markets and cast doubt on the functions of banking regulators beyond the CFPB — a scenario the Biden administration and allies of the consumer agency have repeatedly raised.

Noel Francisco, a lawyer for payday lenders and other financial firms fighting the CFPB, said Congress’s decision to fund the bureau out of Federal Reserve fees and to impose an annual cap of $600 million, adjusted for inflation, allowed the executive branch to determine how much the regulators would spend each year.

Francisco insisted that, under the government’s view, Congress could essentially sign over all its spending powers to the president.

But even Justice Clarence Thomas — a conservative stalwart — sounded skeptical that the arrangement was unconstitutional simply because it was novel.

“Not having gone this far [before] is not a constitutional problem,” Thomas said. “It may be a problem with analogues, but it doesn’t prove your case.”

“I think we’re all struggling to figure out what the standard is,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said to Francisco.

“It’s difficult to come up with a hard-and-fast rule that says how much is too much,” Francisco acknowledged.

Almost a year ago, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the financial arrangement violates the Constitution’s requirement that Congress pass appropriations for federal spending. Based on that conclusion, the appeals court scrapped the CFPB’s 2017 payday lending rule on the grounds that the agency was unconstitutionally funded when it devised the regulation.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling was groundbreaking. It is the only ruling by any U.S. court that Congress violated the Constitution’s appropriations clause through a law that it passed, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices Tuesday.

While the government contended the funding process is constitutional, it also appealed to the justices to sever that provision from the rest of the law creating the CFPB if they hold otherwise, rather than invalidate its existing rules and previous actions.

A retrospective remedy tossing out all prior CFPB actions would be destabilizing, Prelogar argued.

“It would create profound disruption in various economic markets that would hurt the regulated industries themselves,” she said.

Still, a Supreme Court ruling that all funds an agency expends must be appropriated by Congress could disturb the longstanding funding streams for numerous federal agencies like the Fed, various bank regulators and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Emergency legislation could be needed to shore up some of those operations.

A broad ruling against the CFPB could also limit the flexibility of some agencies to weather a government shutdown like the one narrowly averted last weekend. Many agencies and the federal judiciary rely on user fees and similar payments to keep their operations going when more traditional Congressional funding lapses.

A decision in the case is expected by late June.

The funding fight arrived at the high court amid a drive by its conservative majority to curtail regulatory power, paring back the authority of the sprawling federal bureaucracy critics deride as “the administrative state.”

While the justices have sometimes reached out for obscure cases to plumb theories of regulatory excess, in this instance the Supreme Court had little choice but to step in.

Allowing the 5th Circuit ruling to stand threatened to defund an entire federal agency and would’ve allowed the New Orleans-based appeals court that has produced much of the fodder for the justices this term to effectively resolve the funding question for the whole country.

In addition, the justices almost always accept cases urged on them by the solicitor general. Those often include cases where a federal statute has been found unconstitutional.

The case argued at the high court Tuesday is also a measure of the power of conservative judges — especially the stridently conservative ones nominated by former President Donald Trump. All three judges on the 5th Circuit panel that ruled the CFPB’s funding mechanism unconstitutional — Don Willett, Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson — are Trump appointees.

The bureau was established by the landmark Dodd-Frank law in 2010 to police consumer lending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The agency said this summer that it has returned $17.5 billion to consumers affected by fraud and other abuses.

The Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision three years ago that a different part of the CFPB’s structure, a director who could only be fired for cause rather than at will by the president, was unconstitutional. But the agency itself survived after the court concluded that infirmity was no reason to toss out all the agency’s enabling legislation.

“[T]he Dodd-Frank Act contains an express severability clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in that opinion. “There is no need to wonder what Congress would have wanted if ‘any provision of this Act’ is ‘held to be unconstitutional because it has told us: ‘the remainder of this Act’ should ‘not be affected.'"

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Canada’s Parliament elects first Black speaker

OTTAWA, Ont. — Canada's House of Commons has elected Liberal MP Greg Fergus as speaker — the first time a Black Canadian will hold the role.

Fergus, who represents a Quebec riding across the river from Ottawa, bested six other candidates: Chris d'Entremont, Carol Hughes, Alexandra Mendès, Peter Schiefke, Sean Casey and Elizabeth May.

Fergus takes on the task of presiding over a fractious House. "What motivates me, and what I vow to work night and day to promote and advance, can be summed up in one word, respect," Fergus said during a short speech before polling stations opened in the chamber.

He promised to be "firm, thoughtful, collaborative, consistent and certainly fair."

Some Conservatives were vocally opposed to Fergus's candidacy. Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner claimed a past ethics violation made him unfit for the role.

Still, Poilievre smiled as he guided Fergus to the chair with the help of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — a centuries-old parliamentary tradition in which the new speaker feigns reluctance at taking on the job.

MPs voted in person on a secret ranked ballot. The detailed vote breakdowns are never released publicly.

— The backstory: Fergus's election caps a tumultuous period in the House.

Former speaker Anthony Rota lost the confidence of every party in the chamber last month after he publicly recognized a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran who fought under Nazi command.

Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had just delivered a historic address, joined Rota and the rest of the chamber in standing ovations for Yaroslav Hunka, whose personal history evaded any screening processes.

Rota faced widespread resignation calls from Jewish groups and eventually every party in the House of Commons. He quit on Sept. 27, setting in motion a rare mid-session speaker election — the likes of which hadn't occurred in the chamber since 1986.

— The perks: The speaker receives the base MP salary of C$194,600, plus a top-up of C$92,800 and a C$1,000 car allowance. They hobnob with dignitaries in a private reception area and travel on official visits to other countries. The gig also comes with an official residence, The Farm, located on an estate north of the city in Gatineau Park.

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Newsom’s says his ‘incredible’ pick for Senate can run if she wants

SAN FRANCISCO — In his first public remarks about his Senate appointment, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday it’s completely up to Laphonza Butler whether she’ll run for the seat previously held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein — before listing reasons why she’d be an ideal candidate.

He also expressed some regret about saying last month he'd choose an interim senator as he praised the 44-year-old Butler.

“I just think Laphonza Butler is uniquely positioned, simply the best person that I could find for this moment in this job,” Newsom told reporters at a Democratic congressional fundraiser in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood.

Butler, who will be sworn in Tuesday, hasn’t publicly expressed her plans and isn’t expected to make an announcement until after Feinstein’s memorial on Thursday, according to a person with knowledge of her timeline.

She will serve out much of what was left in Feinstein's term, which was to end next year. She will have to decide soon if she wants to run for the seat — jumping into an active primary that includes three Democratic House members: Barabara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.

Newsom, who had pledged in 2021 to fill the seat with a Black woman, if given the opportunity, said he has left the decision in Butler’s hands, despite having earlier refused to name Lee to the post to avoid interfering with the race.

“We didn’t have that conversation. I said, ‘This is up to you.’ That was the end of that conversation,” Newsom said.

Whatever she decides, the governor said she would be an ideal candidate for the seat if she chooses to run for it. He noted Butler’s age, as well as her background advocating for abortion rights, LGBTQ people and labor unions.

“I’ve got an incredible appointee,” Newsom said.

Butler is president of EMILY’s List, the national fundraising giant for Democratic women candidates. She previously worked as an adviser on Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and led a union of long-term care workers. Butler has also done policy consulting work for corporate clients, including Airbnb and Uber.

“You in some ways can't even make all of this up, if I had to literally design from the mind of imagination, put pen to paper, someone I would like,” Newsom said. “Including the time of life, she’s just 44 years old.”

Newsom told “Meet the Press” in September that he wanted a placeholder appointee to avoid tipping the scales close to the March 5 election.

That comment drew a furious response from Lee, who said it was an insult for Newsom to appoint a Black woman to a caretaker role.

On Monday, Newsom said the comment had been a “hypothetical on top of a hypothetical” because he didn’t expect Feinstein to die in office.

“With grace, I walked into it by saying I didn’t want to get in the middle of the primary,” Newsom said. “I said what I said. That’s rearview mirror stuff right now.”

Melanie Mason contributed to this report.

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