Elections
House adjourns after McCarthy loses 3 speakership votes

Republicans now have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and have failed to elect their new Speaker on Tuesday after three votes, adjourning until noon on Wednesday.
The vote headed to a second ballot for the first time since 1923 after 19 Republicans voted against McCarthy. McCarthy could not afford to lose more than four votes in order to hit the 218 vote threshold.
National Review reported, “Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, McCarthy signaled he was done negotiating with his detractors in an effort to win the speakership during a tense closed-door meeting, according to a new report.”
If no candidate wins a majority, the House must continue to hold votes until a candidate comes out victorious — a “scenario that has only played out 14 times in the chamber’s history, according to NBC News, with 13 of those instances having happened before the Civil War.”
House Republicans doubled down on their promises to oppose McCarthy’s bid after the meeting, with a handful of Republicans supporting Representative Jim Jordann of Ohio over McCarthy.
Before the second ballot, Jordan urged fellow Republicans that “we need to rally around” McCarthy. Those who received votes on the first ballot included Representatives Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), Byron Donalds (R., Fla.) and former Representative Lee Zeldin.
The defecting group of 19 lawmakers all voted for Jordan in the second round. Representative Donalds, who voted for McCarthy in the first two rounds, decided to vote for Jordan in the third round.
“The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes,” Donalds explained in a tweet about his decision to switch his vote.
“I committed my support to him publicly and for two votes on the House Floor. 218 is the number, and currently, no one is there. Our conference needs to recess and huddle and find someone or work out the next steps but these continuous votes aren’t working for anyone” he continued.

Elections
Judge orders Biden’s DHS to release files on agents accused of censoring election ‘misinformation’

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry made headway in countering federal agents involved in suppressing what liberal tech labeled “misinformation” on social media.
The Attorneys General moved to release testimony from five Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) employees after learning of their participation in the Biden administration’s counter-“disinformation” efforts. On Wednesday, a Louisiana judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release the files.
Court documents dated Jan. 19 show the agents participated. The judge’s motion Wednesday could shed light on a “switchboarding” tactic employed during the 2020 election, according to the order.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants, which include the named individuals as well as President Joe Biden and top officials from a variety of federal agencies, “colluded and/or coerced social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling the content “dis-information,” “mis-information,” and “mal-formation.”
The Daily Caller reports that the five CISA employees allegedly served as a “switchboard” to route requests from federal agencies to censor disinformation to various social media companies, according to the documents.
Switchboard work employed “an audit official to identify something on social media they deemed to be disinformation aimed at their jurisdiction,” top CISA election security agent Brian Skully testified in a deposition released Thursday.
“They couldforward that to CISA and CISA would share that with the appropriate social mediacompanies.”
UPDATE: The judge granted our motion to compel. CISA has 14 days to comply. https://t.co/2bhwQQJTG6
— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) January 25, 2023
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