The Republican presidential candidate has been a little unhinged on social media in recent days, Truth Social airing his scattered grievances, attacking the wife of the judge overseeing his bank fraud trial in New York, and making a crazy decision. turn left by calling for a sudden alliance with the broader Black Lives Matter movement.
Launching the immediate flood of posts Tuesday night, Trump called the GOP’s MSNBC policy “illegal activity,” adding that the “so-called ‘step-by’ goes after the media” and “makes them pay. “
The former president then revived an old complaint that “Obamacare sucks,” reopening the option that his crusade would renew the call to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act that has dogged the GOP since this law went into effect. Less than 20 minutes later, he turned his attention back to the sexual assault allegations made against him through columnist E. Jean Carroll, spewing comments eerily similar to those that have already earned her two defamation lawsuits filed through the writer, in which she claimed the allegations were a “made-up fairy tale” that “was funded through political operatives” to interfere with the effects of the 2020 presidential election.
In the hours that followed, Trump warned that the allegations against him had opened “Pandora’s box,” which he then despised by snubbing Nikki Haley, his Koch-backed Republican opponent, as a “very weak and useless bird’s brain. “
In another article, Trump said he had done “more for other black people than any other president,” Lincoln added. He also enlisted the help of Mark Fisher, the founder of Black Lives Matter Incorporated, with that of the broader national movement, in spite of statements highlighted on the BLM INC website that they are not affiliated with “any other Black person. “Lives Matter Movement.
But the piece de resistance of Trump’s virtual rant was a series of attacks on the wife of the judge who oversaw his corporate fraud trial, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, whose gag order against Trump had been rescinded. . In five separate articles, Trump floated a conspiracy theory that Dawn Engoron and her husband were inherently biased in her case and that Ms. Engoron had attacked Trump and other “white politicians” online.
“Judge Engoron’s Trump-hating wife, along with her very disturbed and angry lawyer, have taken over the New York State witch-hunt trial that targets me, my family, and the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In a response to Newsweek, Engoron denied owning the account and its contents.
“I don’t have a Twitter account. I’ve posted anti-Trump messages,” he told the outlet.
That might have been enough to convince a New York appeals court that Trump wouldn’t do well without his recently suspended gag order, which the four-judge panel diligently reinstated Thursday in an effort to end the attack. verbally against the judge. , his judicial staff and, apparently, his family.
A Democratic congressman has figured out a way for Hunter Biden to strip naked in front of Congress, which could appease House Oversight Chairman James Comer.
On Tuesday, the president’s son, through his attorney, will be offered to testify at a public hearing of the House Oversight Committee, part of a new competitive defense strategy that his legal team must adopt. Comer, who led the investigation into the Bidens’ alleged criminal acts, rejected the offer almost immediately. He said Biden will first have to sit down for a personal deposition before he can testify publicly.
Rep. Daniel Goldman responded Thursday to Comer’s protest with a more subtle argument.
“Let me set the record straight,” Goldman tweeted to Comer at 00:30. “You welcomed nude photographs of Hunter Biden at a public hearing, but you will not settle for Hunter Biden’s testimony at a public hearing. “
“If Hunter testified naked, would you let him appear in a public hearing?»
Goldman is appearing at a House Oversight Committee hearing in July that included two IRS agents and their allegations that the Justice Department was slow to investigate Biden for tax fraud. The hearing, like the entire investigation, did not produce any irregularities.
Instead, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene attempted to claim that Hunter Biden engaged in sex trafficking and indexed bills to sex personnel as a tax deduction. For his argument, he showed poster-sized prints of Biden’s nude photos, which he later also posted on X (then called Twitter) and shared in his email newsletter.
Comer did not interfere with Greene at the hearing and has yet to convict her of using the venue to perform the bizarre trick. Instead, the official Twitter account of the Supervising Republicans appeared concerned by broadcasting the naked game, sharing Greene’s tweet, which included a video. Clip of her holding the photos.
Jamie Raskin, a member of the ratings watchdog, criticized Comer for refusing to arrest Greene or reprimand her after the fact.
“These photographs were published throughout the United States for purely voyeuristic, sensationalist and sadistic purposes,” Raskin said in a letter to Comer a week after the hearing. “Our committee, once chaired by public interest heroes like Henry Waxman and Elijah Cummings, is being temporarily downsized to the point of a ’70s dime peep show. “
Biden also responded to Greene: His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, filed an ethics complaint against him in July and sent a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan organization, calling for Greene to be investigated and sanctioned for his “outrageous and undignified conduct. “He does not appear to have opened an investigation into the matter.
A New York appeals court on Thursday restored silence in Donald Trump’s industrial fraud trial, ending two weeks of vitriol that reached levels even for the former president.
Trump wasted no time in attacking Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the fraud trial, as well as Engoron’s lawyer, after an appeal ruled on the suspension of the gag order while Trump’s legal team appealed the decision. The trials, however, put an end to Thursday’s verbal abuse.
Engoron said in court that the ruling also reinstated a separate gag order he had imposed on Trump’s lawyers. “I intend to enforce the gag orders rigorously and vigorously, and I need to make sure that lawyers inform their clients that the rest has been canceled. “he said.
Trump’s lawyer, Chris Kise, said he was aware of the ruling and complained, “This is a tragic day for the rule of law. “
The task of this specific litigation is to determine damages; Engoron decided in September that Trump had committed fraud. The New York attorney general charged Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and other corporate executives with fraudulently inflating the price of various real estate assets in order to offload more favorable bank loan terms.
Engoron ordered that all of Trump’s business certificates in New York be rescinded, leaving him on the verge of doing business in the state, a move that could well spell the demise of the Trump Organization.
From the earliest days of the trial, Trump has directed abundant anger at Engoron and his attorney, Allison Greenfield. Trump’s lawyers even requested a mistrial, arguing that Greenfield had been assigned an irrelevant lead role in the trial, even though she is a lawyer by training. Interns also do most of the studies for a trial and draft court orders, which are then signed by the judge.
Engoron imposed gag orders on Trump and his lawyers following repeated attacks by the former president. He fined Trump a total of $15,000 for violating the gag order twice.
After appeals ruled on lifting the gag order on Nov. 16, it took Trump just hours to start rambling on about Engoron and Greenfield on social media. He wrote in TruthSocial that Greenfield is a “politically biased and out-of-control” company. a worker who hates Trump” and a “disgrace” that “sinks” Engoron and his court “to new levels of lows. “
From there, Trump only came out worse. Also on Wednesday, he claimed that several posts on X (formerly Twitter) about his chances of serving a criminal sentence had been published through Engoron’s wife. The messages were first discovered through Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Trump fanatic.
“Judge Engoron’s Trump-hating wife and his very distraught and angry lawyer have taken over the New York state witch hunt trial targeting me, my family, and the Republican Party. ” ”Trump wrote in Truth Social.
It’s unclear who posted those posts, however, Dawn Engoron has stated in the past that she doesn’t have an X account.
Perhaps with only 24 hours left in Congress, Rep. George Santos now needs to laugh about deportation as well.
Congress is expected to vote Friday to oust the serial fabulist. Santos, who took it all incredibly badly, announced Thursday that he would respond by introducing a movement to oust fellow New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, because why not?
Santos told reporters he would later present a solution Thursday to oust Bowman for setting off a fire alarm at a House building before a key vote. The solution will be preferred, meaning the House will have to act on it within two legislative sessions. days.
“I think it’s a question of consistency,” Santos said. “Let’s hold ourselves accountable, but let’s make sure we do it in a way that respects House precedent. “
Bowman called Santos’ deportation “senseless. “
“No one in Congress, or anywhere else in the United States, is taking future former Congressman George Santos seriously. This is simply a nonsensical trick in their long history of scams, mischief and outright fraud,” he said in a statement.
Bowman argued that he mistakenly sounded the alarm as he rushed into the House chamber on a key vote. However, he took responsibility for his actions, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, in addition to writing a formal apology. to the Capitol Police.
Santos, by comparison, fabricated most of his personal and professional history and accused the federal government of financial fraud and identity theft. A House Ethics Committee report released two weeks ago found that Santos had used his campaign to solicit donations. only to use the cash for non-public expenses. These expenses include designer products, makeup, cosmetic procedures, and “small purchases on Onlyfans. “
Santos downplayed the issue Thursday, calling it “slanderous,” “unprecedented” and “riddled with hyperbole. “
The embattled new congressman recently panicked at his imaginable deportation. On Friday, Santos hosted a three-hour X-Ray (formerly Twitter) slot, during which he denounced his colleagues and said Congress was full of “criminals galore. “
In a curious move for someone who has taken such a hard line against hyperbole, he also called himself the “Mary Magdalene” of Congress, explaining that his fellow legislators were “all going to stone this m—- -f—– because it’s just politically convenient.
In order to keep theological knowledge clear, here are a few points: Mary Magdalene was a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and was not the most vulnerable user that a Jew (as Santos says) could cite as a means of comparison. It should also be noted that Mary Magdalene was not stoned to death.
In addition to abusing the campaign budget and lying about the history of his painting, Santos falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, that his mother was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that four of his painters were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Santos lied about starting an animal rescue charity and his role in the production of the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. (She also recently photographed with too many small children in her arms for this author’s liking, if the Ethics Committee says she “cannot be trusted” to govern, but it is highly unlikely that she can be trusted to care for her baby. )
Santos has been charged at the federal level with 23 counts of various types of money fraud. He pleaded not guilty in the first thirteen court cases in May and denied the remaining 10 court cases filed in October on a replacement indictment. Earlier this year, he also agreed to a deal with the Brazilian government to investigate him for monetary fraud to avoid prosecution. These are just a few more facts that possibly all, despite everything, we would be exempt from having to know in a few days.
It turns out that Elon Musk is running out of other people to blame for what has been a cataclysmic collapse of X (formerly known as Twitter) during his tenure as overseer of that platform. But in a public appearance on Wednesday, he explained his dubious strategy to avoid being blamed for the site’s demise: Unsurprisingly, it was about blaming everyone but himself and pointing the finger at corporations for destroying the site through an ongoing advertising boycott of the platform.
Musk threw a profanity-filled tantrum, telling an organization of the company’s biggest advertisers that he was no longer looking for his cash to back the platform, which, in his own words, has lost 90% of its price since I bought it back just over a year ago.
“If you need to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Fuck you,” he told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook conference.
“I hope that’s clear,” he added, before calling out Disney CEO Bob Iger by name.
“Fuck you. Fuck you. ” Elon Musk to advertisers who threaten to boycott. Later. ” G-F-Y. ” pic. twitter. com/klJ8YJOZLz
When asked by Sorkin about the economics of a step toward X’s reliance on advertisers, Musk replied, “G-F-Y. “
Advertisers have long rebelled against Musk’s designs for the site, which have consistently made the platform less attractive to brands. But in recent days, advertisers have discovered a new explanation for leaving the site, following an explosive Media Matters report published earlier this month. discovered that X placed anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi content next to classified ads from reputable companies. The consequences have been the hemorrhaging of some of the largest and most risk-averse advertisers, in addition to Apple, IBM, Disney, Lionsgate and Paramount.
But in the billionaire’s world, his own moves — add undermining X’s content moderation capabilities, his private account for propagating Nazi conspiracies, and allowing 105% more anti-Semitic hate speech to be spread on the platform — are never to blame. Amid his obscene panic, Musk all but admitted that the site was in a death spiral and that he was moving toward a new plan to absolve himself of any responsibility for its downfall — a plan he said was motivated by a conspiracy among the site’s members. major advertisers to deprive X of revenue.
“What the advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk said, adding that “Earth” — by which he seemed to refer to the population of the planet — will nonetheless give a verdict on who killed one of the men. “The Greatest Tech Corporations of All Time. “And everyone will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we’ll document it in wonderful detail. “
It is far from transparent that “Earth” reacts to X’s disappearance with anything other than indifference. As TNR noted elsewhere, Musk consistently overestimates his platform’s user base: “A Pew Research study found that less than a quarter of U. S. adults use Twitter. Among this segment of the population, an even smaller cohort is to blame for the vast majority of tweets: “The most sensible 25% of users in terms of tweet volume produce 97% of all tweets, while the poorest 75% of users produce only 3%. As it stands, the only other people likely to support Musk’s cause will be the small group of Musk hardliners who are stuck on his moribund platform.
Musk’s comments came just steps away from Linda Yaccarino, X’s impassive chief executive, who hired in part to court advertisers and will now be in charge of the futile attempt to find more in the wake of Musk’s rants.
As usual, Yaccarino responded to this recent controversy with a cloying, truth-indifferent message that made it, in the eyes of Defector’s David Roth, “the last remaining funny piece of Twitter. “”X allows for an informational independence that is uncomfortable for other people. We are a platform that allows other people to make their own decisions,” Yaccarino posted a few hours after the event. “And here’s my take on advertising: X sits at an exclusive and surprising intersection between free speech and Main Street, and the X network is tough and here to welcome it. “
Okay with all of this.
Here, in the final days of its latest session, the Supreme Court is turning its attention to a few key abortion cases that still remain on its docket.
The court is expected to make a ruling on Dec. 8 on whether to hear a case challenging the availability of a common abortion pill, mifepristone, a ruling that could have some of the most dire consequences for abortion since the conservative juggernaut of The court majority overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Mifepristone first evolved in the 1980s and, along with misoprostol, is part of a two-pill prescription commonly referred to as “the abortion pill. “Together, they account for more than a portion of all abortions in the U. S. According to a 2022 report by the Guttmacher Institute.
In April, a Trump-appointed court ruled on suspended access to the drug. Four months later, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the plaintiffs, the right-wing Christian organization Alliance Defending Freedom, and determined that even if the tablet were for the market, the Food and Drug Administration had overstepped its role by taking several actions. which expanded access to the drug in 2016: allowing women to access it 10 weeks after the start of pregnancy instead of seven, reducing the popular dose, and allowing access to the prescription via telemedicine. However, none of those changes were felt thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case. But all of that could be replaced if the nation’s highest court makes the decision to hear appeals.
“If the quantities in this order upheld through the Fifth Circuit could go into effect right now, they would alter the regulatory regime for mifepristone, with negative consequences for women performing legal abortions and for a physical care formula that depends on the availability of the drug under the current conditions of use,” the Justice Department wrote in court documents.
If the opportunity arose, whistleblowers would like to see more than limited access to mifepristone. In court papers, the Christian legal organization made clear that it expected the court to review the drug’s initial approval in 2000.
“The FDA’s moves regarding mifepristone, from approval in 2000 to the recent removal of safeguards, have consistently elevated politics above law, science, and safety,” they wrote.
But other demanding situations similar to reproductive health care may arise even earlier. One case, centered on Idaho’s emergency request to fully enforce its own state abortion law, could see a resolution as soon as this week. Then, on Friday, the justices will decide whether to file an appeal that would challenge state bans that currently prevent anti-abortion activists from harassing others who come to abortion clinics.
House Speaker Mike Johnson will speak at a Christian nationalist event next week, making it abundantly clear that the extreme wing of the Republican Party is now in full control.
The National Association of Christian Legislators revealed last week that Johnson would be the keynote speaker at the organization’s annual gala, but the announcement didn’t get much attention until Rolling Stone announced it on Wednesday.
The NACL is a Christian nationalist organization that says its purpose is to codify a “biblical worldview” into law. On its website, NACL states that its project is to “bring federal, state, and local lawmakers to transparent biblical principles. “Who wants the separation of church and state?
The organization is quite right-wing in terms of worldview: anti-abortion and, unsurprisingly, also anti-LGBTQ rights. NACL played a key role in the passage of several anti-abortion laws, adding the horrific Texas Abortion Justice Act, which tasked citizens with serving as de facto bounty hunters, with monetary rewards for those willing to eliminate caregivers. patients seeking abortions.
NACL founder Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state legislator, also worked to block abortion access. During his tenure, he drafted a law banning abortion at 12 weeks. He also drafted the abortion ban that went into effect after Roe v. Wade.
Rapert flies the Christian nationalist flag of the “Call to Heaven. “He managed to fly this flag over the Arkansas State Capitol in 2015. Johnson flies the same flag in front of his office.
It’s no surprise that Johnson was welcomed at the NACL gala. They have a well-documented record of opposing abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and environmental policy on the grounds that they are not Christian. His new staff leader, who in the past was his chief operating officer, is equally extreme.
Johnson has been a mainstay of right-wing parties, even if his appearances went unnoticed in the years leading up to his rise from the GOP’s secondary bench to the top of the caucus. In 2019, he delivered the keynote address at a convention of the National Policy Council, an elite right-wing event. He didn’t report his vacation on his money report forms, and it’s still unclear who paid for him to spend or how much the vacation cost.
The Louisiana Republican was also scheduled to give a keynote address to the International Freedom Initiative in early November. Johnson’s spokesman, Raj Shah, assured TNR that Johnson did not do so at any event this weekend, but declined to explicitly confirm whether Johnson was speaking in practical terms or why the speaker was so active on social media. WFI and at the exhibition for the event if you did not speak.
Johnson’s willingness to engage with those parties, especially now that he has ultimate power in the House, exposes his ideological leanings and suggests that the issues he supports and plans to prioritize in the bill will increasingly fall to the sidelines.
If Democrats continue to work with Johnson, as they did to pass a transit bill on government spending, then he will continue to exert that kind of force on social issues, and perhaps even politics. democracy.
“Stop laughing at your accountability software setup and your self-confessed biblical worldview,” Matthew Taylor, a devout scholar who specializes in Christian nationalism, tweeted Tuesday night. “Mike Johnson is partnering with some very harmful Christian leaders, who played a central role in instigating the #6janvier. “
The unwavering loyalty Donald Trump has managed to generate among his supporters reached a new level on Tuesday, when one of Trump’s billionaire donors said he would continue to fund the GOP front-runner’s presidential campaign, even if the former president is convicted.
Bernie Marcus, the 94-year-old retired co-founder of Home Depot, has thrown his hat into Trump’s latest bid for the White House, for the third time, after aligning Trump’s efforts in 2016 and 2020.
In an interview with Reuters, Marcus made it clear that his support for Trump would be unwavering regardless of the final results of his multiple criminal trials, telling the outlet: “I think it’s all made up. Intentional pun? Who knows?
Still, Marcus, who became one of the real estate mogul’s biggest supporters in 2016 by signing checks for the sum of $7 million, made it clear that there are some limits to his generosity and that he has no plans to break monetary records this time around. around.
“Of course I’m going to go to him to some extent, but I’m not one of his big donors, that’s for sure,” Marcus told Reuters, adding that Trump was “very happy” with his endorsement.
Trump is hardly in a position to turn away a benefactor. He has recently faced 91 charges in 4 felon cases. He has denied wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty in all of his trials. A potential conviction of Trump has raised valid questions about his eligibility for the White House, even if none of that turns out to matter to Trump’s most ardent supporters — or, apparently, his donors — who anticipate he will clinch the GOP nomination soon after the Iowa Caucus begins. on January 15.
“I never know his legal fees or his legal problems,” Marcus said.
Despite Trump’s volatile foreign policy positions, Marcus thought he valued supporting Trump because of his positions on the Middle East. He also thought Trump was a “fixer” who could gain advantages for the U. S. economy, the outlet reported.
Other potential nominees in Marcus’ group include former ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though he doesn’t think either of them has a fair chance of opposing Trump, who lately gets more than forty-five percentage points more than either of them. even though he skipped all GOP debates, according to a nationwide general vote conducted via FiveThirtyEight.
Mike Johnson revealed how weak the Republican impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden was, when he failed to make a substantial case for one of the main charges against the president.
Johnson held a news conference Tuesday with Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer, who led the investigation into Biden, to discuss the ongoing impeachment inquiry. Although Republicans have made various accusations against Biden in recent months, making accusations of political corruption, they have yet to present concrete evidence to substantiate their allegations.
One theme that Republicans have continually harped on is their claim that Biden, when he was vice president, had said the U. S. would withhold monetary aid to Ukraine unless Kyiv fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Republicans say Shokin had investigated Burisma, the Ukrainian oil company for which Biden’s son Hunter is a board member. This claim has been continuously refuted by U. S. intelligence, the former Ukrainian president, and the owner of Burisma.
At Wednesday’s press conference, HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney asked Johnson why the GOP continues to report on Shokin’s firing. Delaney noted that in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, “many State Department officials . . . they came and said, ‘This wasn’t Joe Biden’s policy, it was our policy. ‘ He didn’t do this for the sake of his son, he did it because we wanted him to do it.
American foreign aid is granted on the condition that the recipient country takes official action that Washington considers important. In Ukraine, he eliminated corruption in the government.
“So did they all commit perjury or will they bring them back for additional interviews?” asked Delaney. Why do Republicans ignore all these testimonies?
“No one ignores testimony,” Johnson said abruptly, before moving on to the list of foreign bills won through the Bidens.
This is surely a reporter’s question to President Johnson exposing the baselessness of the House Republicans’ impeachment campaign (note how Johnson ignores it and changes the subject) pic. twitter. com/YYGnATGdo7
Johnson also told Delaney that he’s “not going to answer questions outdoors about this,” though the testimony is obviously directly applicable to a central pillar of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
Shokin was fired in 2016 for corruption. Three years later, Trump and Rudy Giuliani floated a conspiracy theory that Biden’s family accepted a $10 million bribe to remove Shokin and thus avoid an investigation into Hunter Biden’s role in BurismaArray. This claim has been continuously refuted by Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
President Mike Johnson faces his first primary challenge as leader of the Republican caucus in the House: In just a few weeks, he’ll want Congress to reach consensus on two contentious issues: border investment and foreign aid. This has been achieved over decades, in a position where compromise has proven to be the Waterloo of Republican speakers.
Although Johnson has done his best to reach a deal, it will be a “difficult road” for the new president, as one lawmaker told The Hill. Senate negotiators, facing their own sticky situations as their members debate their part of the pending deal, aren’t sure whether their good fortune — if it comes to fruition — will be replicated through Johnson in the House.
The factor is a $105 billion national security plan proposed by the Biden administration, which includes more than $13 billion to address border factors, as well as $14. 3 billion in aid to Israel and more than $61 billion in aid to Ukraine. that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised. Advised can be the difference between winning or wasting the war.
The main obstacle is a familiar misconception: Republican infighting, fueled by a very narrow conservative primary in the House. The Republican group, whose infamous failure to achieve a combination led to Johnson’s inauguration, has already begun to infiltrate discussions about this new deal. And some lawmakers flatly refused to negotiate.
The chaos within the caucus is compounded by external pressures. The conservative political organization Heritage Action on Tuesday suggested lawmakers cancel any spending cuts from the upper chamber, insisting that H. R. 2, an immigration bill restricting asylum proposed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, was the “only solution to secure the border. “
“Worse, the proposal that emerged from those ‘negotiations’ will likely be used as leverage to promote President Biden’s call for $106 billion in fiscally irresponsible spending, adding another $60 billion for subconservative Ukraine and $13. 6 billion for bogus spending. . ‘ border security’ that would accelerate Biden’s open border operations,” Heritage Action President Kevin Roberts wrote in a statement.
“Conservatives in the House and Senate deserve to reject this proposal and commit to H. R. 2 to repair the safety and security of the American people. Anything else is unacceptable,” he added.
Even as conservatives buy time, Democrats have their own nerves over a deal that many fear will be willing to concede too much to the GOP in short-term negotiations.
“We were willing to give a lot in those conversations. We’re out of [our] classic convenience zone for Democrats,” one of the negotiators, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Mass. , told reporters. Republicans will have to say “yes. “