Principals

☞ White House: Biden will appear in Kentucky today to highlight plans to upgrade the Brent Spence Bridge, a project funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law. He’ll be joined by Republicans Mitch McConnell, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman.

☞ Chuck Schumer: The first day of the 118th Congress in the Senate was utterly devoid of the drama that consumed the House chamber. Schumer gave a nod to the bipartisan work of the last Congress in floor remarks yesterday and congratulated Mitch McConnell for making history as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.

☞ Mitch McConnell: House Republicans continued to attack McConnell, the new Cal Ripken Jr. of Senate leaders, for cutting a spending deal with Democrats on Tuesday rather than waiting for them to take over, but the chaos of the day didn’t exactly make the decision look worse.

☞ Kevin McCarthy: “It might not happen on the day we want it, but it’s going to happen,” McCarthy said Tuesday night after failing three times to secure enough votes to become Speaker of the House. He needs 16 of 20 holdouts to change their mind — and fast.

☞ Hakeem Jeffries: The new Democratic leader secured every vote in his caucus, in contrast to McCarthy.

The Biden administration took two big steps to expand abortion access post-Dobbs on Tuesday. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating that the Postal Service can deliver pills capable of terminating a pregnancy to residents of states with abortion restrictions “because there are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs.” The move was a victory for reproductive rights advocates who’d pressed for action on the front. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration said it would allow the sale of abortion pills at some retail pharmacies for the first time.

Ron DeSantis sure sounded like he was warming up for the 2024 stump while swearing in for a second term as Florida’s governor Tuesday. His speech touted the sunshine state as the place “where woke goes to die” and took shots at the Biden administration on issues like immigration and inflation.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Semafor that he plans to make a decision on a potential Senate run against Democratic party defector Sen. Kyrsten Sinema soon. “I had a great conversation with my family over the holidays and took a lot of input and now we’re listening to the people of Arizona and we’ll be making a decision sometime this year, pretty soon,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y. spent his first day playing with his phone alone on the House floor and then being chased by reporters in the hallway before finally putting out a press release that erroneously claimed he had been sworn in. To be fair, others accidentally did the same — they didn’t expect the speaker’s vote to delay their announcements.

— Morgan Chalfant and Shelby Talcott

Punchbowl News: McCarthy dispatched top allies, including Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., to talk with his conservative opponents in hopes of cutting a deal, but an hours-long meeting Tuesday evening did not yield an agreement.

Playbook: Meanwhile, other conservative McCarthy opponents “spent their evening calling fellow Republicans to see if they could peel off more McCarthy votes.”

The Early 202: McCarthy seems to have a new strategy: win 213 votes — one more than Jeffries received — rather than 218. “The thinking is that a handful of Republicans could vote present or not vote during roll call, which would lower the threshold for the votes needed to be selected speaker,” the Washington Post reports.

Three ways the House’s historic speaker standoff could end

What now for House Republicans? After three rounds of voting, Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to secure enough support to become speaker on Tuesday, leaving business in Congress frozen and his party seething.

Here are the three possible paths out of the mess.

MCCARTHY PULLS OUT A WIN

There are two not-entirely-exclusive ways McCarthy might still become speaker.

• He could cut a deal with his rightmost flank to secure their votes.
• Conservative allies could apply enough pressure on the holdouts that they feel they have to give in or risk their future standing in the party.

Neither path is looking great right now.

Despite some concessions to House Freedom Caucus members in recent weeks, talks broke down ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Some allies even suggested they should withdraw their existing offer and start making threats of their own.

“We’re just not going to allow the tail to wag the dog in this,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas said ahead of the first vote.

McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday night that he adjourned the House so members could “get in the room and talk.” But it would be a humiliating climbdown to concede more to the rebels now, who are demanding more influence on rules, committees, and investigations, and there’s no guarantee it would work.

As for door number two, it’s hard to credibly threaten upwards of 20 members with retaliation given the small majority. But some McCarthy supporters suggested that conservative media might ride to the rescue. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Penn. speculated to Punchbowl that “Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro” would beat up on the holdouts.

Those hopes seemed slightly misplaced by Tuesday night; During his Fox segment on the speaker vote, Tucker Carlson called McCarthy “not especially conservative,” said his “real constituency is the lobbying community in Washington,” and insisted that he would have to make more concessions to secure the gavel, including appointing a hardline conservative to investigate the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies. McCarthy nemesis Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. tweeted out a clip.

Sean Hannity was more critical of the holdouts, saying their demands were slippery and that they risked derailing the entire Republican agenda in the House and turning the party into a “total clown show.” Laura Ingraham was also not pleased, saying they could make Jeffries speaker.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump seemed to be inching away from “my Kevin.” On Tuesday, he declined to reaffirm his endorsement of McCarthy to NBC News, saying “We’ll see what happens.” McCarthy said later that evening that Trump reiterated his support and asked him to stay in the race.

A REPUBLICAN REPLACEMENT EMERGES

McCarthy’s closest allies have pledged to vote for “only Kevin,” but if he continues to look like a lost cause, there’s going to be more and more pressure to consider other options.

The first tiny crack in McCarthy’s united front appeared Tuesday on the third ballot, when Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. switched his speaker vote to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

“The one thing that’s clear is [McCarthy] doesn’t have the votes,” Donalds, who is considered a rising star in the caucus, told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “At some point as a conference we’re going to have to figure out who does.”

Following the first vote yesterday, McCarthy’s opponents coalesced around Jordan, a House Freedom Caucus founder who supports McCarthy and even gave a speech nominating him on the second ballot.

But a more formidable figure might be another member who has yet to receive a single vote: Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the would-be majority leader if McCarthy were to succeed. Like Jordan, he has said he supports McCarthy for the gavel, but at the same time hasn’t ruled out a run himself were McCarthy to fail.

It’s far from certain, however, that Scalise wouldn’t run into similar problems in trying to get 218 votes. One holdout, Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale, has said he’d oppose any speaker nominee who was part of House GOP leadership in the last 10 years.

DEMOCRATS CUT A DEAL

There have been some whispers that a group of Republicans — most likely moderates — could come to an agreement with Democrats on a candidate more palatable to both sides of the aisle, but it seems unlikely for now.

“We haven’t had any outreach,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday evening when asked about the possibility. As to whether he’d consider supporting a Republican for speaker, he said “we’re looking for a willing partner to solve problems for the American people, not save the Republicans from their dysfunction.”

“It is possible, but we’re not there yet,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. who has raised the possibility of a Democratic-backed speaker before, told reporters Tuesday night. “When we get there, I’m not going to advertise it.”

Some Democrats seemed receptive to the notion. Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa. even suggested that McCarthy himself could be the one to strike a bargain with Democrats, inviting the would-be speaker to stop making deals with “koo-koo birds” and negotiate with the “vast swath of Democrats” who could work with him instead.

That would be a hard sell among other Democrats, who aren’t particularly fond of McCarthy.

“I don’t think that House Democrats have any interest in saving Kevin’s speakership,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who offered that any unity candidate would need to resemble a moderate like Bacon or Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.

— Benjy Sarlin, David Weigel, Kadia Goba, Morgan Chalfant, and Jordan Weissmann contributed

As Republicans struggle, Democrats break out the popcorn

Officially, Democrats spoke with regret about the GOP’ speaker stalemate on Tuesday; House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries had called it a “sad day for the American people,” and a setback for members of Congress who were “ready to get to work.”

Unofficially, they relished seeing Republicans flail around. Multiple members and the DCCC tweeted pictures with popcorn as they watched the action unfold.

“It’s a shitshow on the one day you can’t have a shitshow,” said Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, at a reception for Florida Rep.-elect Maxwell Alejandro Frost (whose delayed swearing-in led to the tweet of the night). He speculated that the GOP might abandon Kevin McCarthy and pick a new speaker, now that 20 colleagues were on record against him.

One-liners about the once-a-century mishap were everywhere. “Are you ready to see Maxwell Frost sworn in as a member of Congress?” California Rep. Nanette Barragán asked the crowd at the reception, the future tense suddenly becoming a punchline.

California Rep. Tony Cardenas joked that a colleague’s baby was “born on the first round of votes” and had just turned “4 months old.” New York Rep. Ritchie Torres said that his legislation to punish candidates who lie about their resumes couldn’t pass until he was sworn in, but he saw an upside: “George Santos still isn’t a congressman.”

The botched speaker vote did inconvenience families in both parties who had come to see members sworn in, which was postponed by the fiasco on the floor. Pennsylvania Rep.-elect Summer Lee bemoaned how her relatives were stuck in a viewing gallery, unable to check their phones, as she tried to update them on what was happening.

But there was plenty of schadenfreude to make up for it. Late Tuesday, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz tweeted a letter he’d sent the architect of the Capitol, asking why McCarthy was able to work out of the speaker’s offices when he hadn’t been elected speaker. New York Rep. Grace Meng, a Democrat who rarely votes with Gaetz, shared it and joked that “we may have a squatter and potential adverse possession situation.”

— David Weigel

One Good Text ... with Rep.-elect Becca Balint

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WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: A document released by Matt Taibbi in the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” claimed that aides for Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. requested that Twitter suspend Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations for promoting QAnon conspiracy theories that triggered harassment.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: A new omicron subvariant is driving concerns about a possible COVID-19 surge in the United States.

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— Steve Clemons