Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here are two translations from your parliamentary congress-speak to plain English dictionary. Continuing resolution" means they passed the stop-gap funding measure for a few weeks rather than a full year's budget, so we'll have more government shutdown drama in about six weeks.

"Motion to discharge" translates as-- Wait. What? Most Republicans and most Democrats voted together to approve a continuing resolution rather than stay in their camps with no bipartisanship? Yes, that's what happened. "Motion to vacate" definition? Well, that's not about going on vacation, though, maybe they should. Motion to vacate means kick house speaker out of his job because he wasn't Republican enough for the Republicans, and certainly not Democrat enough for the Democrats. Not Republican enough for Republicans like Matt Gaetz.

Congressman Matt Gaetz: Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January, and since then he has been in brazen repeated material breach of that agreement. This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we had set up is a last straw. Then overnight, I learned that Kevin McCarthy had a secret deal with Democrats on Ukraine.

Brian Lehrer: Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz on CNN State of the Union with Jake Tapper yesterday. Gaetz from the far right of the party that wanted much bigger spending cuts than they got in the continuing resolution. How big? Just asked New York, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: They tried to cut across the board 30% of the budgets of critical agencies like the Social Security Administration. They voted some of the most moderate members, "moderate members" of the Republican Party casted votes for things like 80% cuts under the Department of Education to low-income schools. This is not a moderate party period. There are not moderates in the Republican party. There are just different degrees of fealty to Donald Trump, but it starts with a lot of fealty and then it goes to extreme fealty.

Brian Lehrer: AOC also on CNN with Jake Tapper on State of the Union. Democrats, by the way, will probably vote to kick Kevin McCarthy out of his speaker's chair, along with Matt Gaetz, despite the weekend deal, unless McCarthy makes some very unusual power-sharing agreement. Still to be debated, funding for Ukraine, which did not get continued under the continuing resolution and will be considered separately.

That's where we start, in national politics today. With us now to explain the implications is Kadia Goba who covers Congress for the news organization, Semafor. She previously worked for BuzzFeed News covering national politics with a focus on the Republican party. Before that, she covered Congressional Democrats for Axios, so she's been covering both sides here.

As her bio page notes, Kadia Goba is from Brooklyn, where she covered local politics before moving to Washington. Kadia, thanks for coming on after you had to pay attention, I guess, to the news all weekend while the sun was shining in DC and even in your hometown of Brooklyn after Friday's monsoon. Welcome back to WNYC.

Kadia Goba: Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: I think our listeners know by now some of the basics, like that Speaker McCarthy did this very rare thing, letting a majority of Republicans vote with a majority of Democrats for a compromise measure to keep the government funded, freezing out dozens of his own party members who disapproved. He may lose his speakership over that and we'll get to that, but what did they want to cut? Did AOC get it about right in that clip, what they staved off?

Kadia Goba: That's negotiable or still up for debate. The idea is that Republicans, or I should say the far right of the party in Congress, they are adamant about passing spending gaps, spending limits at 1.47 trillion. This is a spending limit that was used a few years old. Yes, you imagine because of inflation because just things in general start to cost more, that is essentially going to be a spending cut.

I want to preface that once that, like you mentioned in your intro, they are going to go through this fight in 45 more days or 44 more days at this point. That number is going to change. Even if they pass it in the House, it's going to go to the Senate and I highly doubt that we're going to be at such cuts. There might be some cuts we will see, but the Senate is on a very different page from what the House majority is talking about.

Don't forget, once that bill goes to the Senate and comes back to the House, there has to be some negotiations, and that includes Democrats. Democrats don't want those kind of cuts. I'd be very leery about suggesting that those cuts are going to remain.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That was, I think, what she said they wanted and didn't get from the right wing of the party. Many people are describing McCarthy's deal with the Democrats as a surprise turnaround when they thought he would not freeze out the Republican hardliners and risk his speakership.

It is so unusual to go against that majority of the majority code of ethics or code of politics, I guess that both parties generally stick to. If you can't get your own party alone in the House to vote on something, then you just don't go there. Why did he do it?

Kadia Goba: I think the key measure here is that Republicans have a very small majority. There's about a four-person gap between Republicans having the majority and Democrats being in the minority. You just have to have bipartisanship going forward. McCarthy is going to constantly depend on Democrats to move anything across the board or anything that would actually pass muster in the Senate.

Even at the risk of his speakership, which we see right now that Matt Gaetz is threatening that speakership, I think it's impossible to get it across the Senate. I have to say that the hard right was arguing, why don't we go into this with our best foot forward having introduced the most conservative position? It doesn't seem like McCarthy is on board with that.

Again, making deals with Democrats is just his only way, the only way he's going to get anything I guess passed, and that means funding the government. The alternative would have been a shutdown. Just wouldn't look good for Republicans at this point, or for Joe Biden at this point.

Brian Lehrer: How could both Joe Biden and Republicans be losers in that scenario?

Kadia Goba: Yes, that's a good question. If you are paying close attention, it is very clear that Republicans are just in disarray and they're fighting. However, there are a lot of talking points out there on the Republican side that are speaking to conservative radio. I was talking to a young woman the other day who only listens to Fox and her point was that, "Oh, we can't fund the government because Joe Biden spent so much money."

There's something to say about narratives being spun out there on the Republican side that would give him some blame, or give President Biden some blame here. Not to say that it's warranted. We saw McCarthy try to spin this a little bit last week when, all of a sudden, reporters were asking him questions and he started calling on the president, which had nothing to do with the negotiations right now in the House of Representatives.

Brian Lehrer: Am I seeing these numbers right from the weekend? 90 Republicans out of the 220 or so in the house voted against this continuing resolution.

Kadia Goba: Yes, 91 Republicans. Some of them obviously did. You're right, 90 Republicans and one Democrat. Some people are just fed up with this idea of continuing resolution. Let me explain what that means. In general, the Congress is supposed to go through regular order where they pass 12 separate appropriations bills. Those bills then go to the Senate, and then the two chambers negotiate. Well, I'd say for the past 20 years that hasn't happened.

What happens is they wait till the last minute and to avoid a government shutdown, after numerous continuing resolutions, they came up with an omnibus. Well, a lot of people are just fed up with that. And their point is that in an omnibus, you can sneak a whole bunch of secret funding inside or do marginal cuts that people aren't aware of and they're just sick and tired of it. Their point was, we want to get this passed through regular order. That said, McCarthy should have started this all the way back in June and not maybe a week and a half ago when the House started to pass their appropriations bills. Some of it was a vote of protest; some people just don't like McCarthy. We'll see how some of this hashes out after they have the 45 days to pass the rest of these appropriations bills.

Brian Lehrer: Back to the parliamentary Congress speak to plain English dictionary for just a second. Omnibus would be a big huge spending bill that includes all 12 of those aspects of the federal government that would fund it for the full fiscal year, and the fiscal year does start each year on October 1st, which is why this is all happening right now. Correct?

Kadia Goba: That's absolutely right. Sometimes this legislation is 4,000-page text. Who can read that? Sometimes they give people 40 to 48 hours to read all the legislation. It's virtually impossible. Members of Congress are just sick and tired of that, and they just want to go through a regular order where this process is gone through as meticulously, as it was meant to be in the US Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but that 90 out of 220 or so, that's a lot more Republicans than the number we usually think of as Freedom Caucus or Hotline Right-Wing, isn't it?

Kadia Goba: Yes, definitely. There's about 40 members of the Freedom Caucus, so if you include them, then there's an additional 30 people who probably are either unhappy with Kevin McCarthy, are, as I mentioned, just won a vote and protest against a continuing resolution, and won a vote in protest of the spending cap, because remember, the hard right did not get their say with the $1.471 trillion as a spending cap.

When you talk to members of Congress, some of them push back. They're just tired. They want to address inflation, and they want again, to address this idea of regular order. They want to make sure the spending bills so they can go home and say, "Hey, we fixed the government. We fixed Washington DC."

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open for your reactions to our questions about the temporary stopgap measure, called a continuing resolution agreed to over the weekend to keep the federal government open for about 45 days. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

One specific question too for anybody who wants to answer it, Democrat or Republican, Democrats especially though, I think, because your role would be the most different from the Congressional norm. Would you endorse a power-sharing agreement to keep McCarthy as Speaker since he worked with Democrats for this stopgap against the wishes of many Republicans as we've been hearing? That would mean Democrats voting for McCarthy for speaker probably this week when Matt Gaetz and some others tried to oust him. The other alternative is probably that the Republicans alone will elect someone and that person will be to McCarthy's right. That's a hard vote for any Democrat to vote for a Republican for speaker, but they may be put in that position as early as this week.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Kadia Goba, congressional correspondent for the news organization, Semafor. 212-433-9692, give us a call or you can text your question or comment to that number, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Kadia, let's get into this part of it. You reported last week that the head of the Democratic Progressive Caucus in the House, Pramila Jayapal- I've only said that name a million times- said the Democrats would require some power-sharing arrangement if they agreed to form a coalition with McCarthy like the one they did for him for the continuing resolution over the weekend for the stopgap measure. Did the Democrats get any power-sharing and exchange?

Kadia Goba: Ilhan Omar suggested this. Pramila Jayapal said that she would not vote for Speaker McCarthy. Now, this would be very unprecedented. I can't imagine this happen, but I give it to Democrats for just shooting their shot and putting it out there and saying, "Hey, I'm going to start with this as a negotiating measure." Now, obviously, this is going to be up to leadership and whether or not- which means, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar, whether or not, or how they maneuver all of this. Democrats, especially now, since McCarthy introduced the impeachment inquiry, I just don't see Democrats jumping to save him for just normal measure. They're going to want something back or in return. They're going to want to negotiate it. This was just members of the Progressive Caucus putting it out there like, "Oh, let's start with a 50-50 share."

Brian Lehrer: Power-sharing, yes. Before we even get to that, going forward, just looking back to the last few days, only one Democrat out of more than 200 voted no on this stopgap deal. Why did the Dems agree to this at all rather than let the Republicans crash the government for a while which has historically hurt the Republicans in the next election?

Kadia Goba: Well, I think it was important to, they've been consistent that they did not want the government to shut down, especially seeing how combative the House of Representatives is. No one could predict how long the government shutdown would last. Some people were saying it was going to last more than 30 days, which would be second to our last government shutdown. Democrats, specifically, were very out in the front about not shutting down the government, needing more time to negotiate these appropriations bill. Of course, they don't have as much power because they're in the minority, so they're not negotiating the actual bills. They felt shutting down the government would be detrimental.

Brian Lehrer: Who was the one Democrat who voted no? Do you know who and do you know why?

Kadia Goba: I forget his name, but I can tell you that he did it because he said he didn't want the CR, or Continuing Resolution, the same argument that some Republicans were making.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, so the Democrats wanted the government to stay open enough that they didn't try to enforce a power-sharing deal or get something of any kind in exchange for giving McCarthy his yes votes over the weekend?

Kadia Goba: Correct. I'll add that one thing that they did get out of the continuing resolution, or I think everybody is probably happy, especially considering what New York just went through the other day, they did get more funding for disaster relief. That was something that Senator Rick Scott, I remember, pushing hard for on the Senate side. There was some negotiating there. They were able to pass the Federal Aviation authorization. That was important, and an extension on flood insurance, which were, again, relevant to what is happening in New York.

Brian Lehrer: We just looked it up and the one Democrat who voted no was Illinois, Mike Quigley. I think it might be because he's co-chair of the congressional Ukraine caucus, and Ukraine funding was left out of this deal, right?

Kadia Goba: That's been a big debate, and it's going to continue to be a big debate going forward. I know there's a 45-day stopgap, but Ukraine funding is not only holding this up in the House, but it is also a contentious piece of a point in the Senate as well. There's going to be a lot of debate. People want to break it out of our larger funding package. They want to vote on it separately, even if just to show their constituents back home that they didn't support Ukraine funding.

The talking point has been, or many Republicans argue that we have a border crisis which is obviously impacting New York as well, and how can we justify spending money overseas on a war when we are not paying attention to, or we're spending money on [unintelligible 00:19:47].

Brian Lehrer: Enough money on the border in particular, are you saying, rather than on Americans in general, that's the [unintelligible 00:19:52]?

Kadia Goba: Americans in general, but it's very good fodder for the base if they specifically talk about the border. I know Marjorie Taylor Greene has been adamant making the parallels to the border.

Brian Lehrer: What's her role in this? You wrote a whole article about Marjorie Taylor Greene and her past support of speaker McCarthy even though she's on that right flank, but now that may be frank, what's the state of that relationship today as far as you could tell?

Kadia Goba: I still think she is somewhat of a reliable negotiator at least with him. I know she's in the office. She can talk to Kevin McCarthy. She's been consistent, I have to say from the very start, saying that she didn't want to fund Ukraine. Her request or demand was simply to just ask Republican leadership to separate it from the larger spending bill.

At one point, that seemed to be that that was going to happen and then all of a sudden, there was another reversal. McCarthy said that it would be included in the package. It is now not included. It was ultimately not included in the package.

Brian Lehrer: I'm getting dizzy.

Kadia Goba: I'm not sure where that relationship is going.

Brian Lehrer: Just to be really clear, Ukraine funding was not included in this stopgap spending bill, but everything I hear from members who support Ukraine funding is that they're confident that they will pass a separate deal, I guess, in the coming days or maybe very few weeks, so that there really is not an interruption in USA to Ukraine at this time. Is that your expectation?

Kadia Goba: That is. There's definitely some opposition in both chambers to funding Ukraine. However, I think it is not to the point where it would stop the funding right now. That doesn't mean that that sentiment to not fund Ukraine is not growing. They don't have enough people to actually stop the funding at this point. People want to be on the record, because they keep saying their constituents are just mad about having, like I said, funding Ukraine and not addressing border issues or issues at large in the United States.

Brian Lehrer: All right, we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and continue with Kadia Goba, congressional correspondent for Semafor. We're going to get specifically into that choice now facing the Democrats. Kadia, I don't know if you're going to be surprised by some of the supportive tweets and phone calls that are coming in from Democrats. One listener writes, "Democrats should vote to keep McCarthy in and it will marginalize the far right."

Another one, "A coalition government in the House would be awesome. It's about time the Republican Party split up and ditch their right flank. Of course, that might mean the Democratic Party ditching their left flank on some things as well." We have some calls to this effect too on one side or the other. We have another clip of Matt Gaetz, and another clip of AOC to play specifically on this question of the possibility of a coalition government to keep Speaker McCarthy as Speaker rather than let the Democrats elect somebody else who would probably be further to McCarthy's right. We'll take this on head-on right after this.

[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Kadia Goba, congressional correspondent for The news organization, Semafor. After the drama over the weekend, which did result in a 45-day-- I'm seeing 45-day. 47-day. Either way, it's about six weeks, continuing resolution or stopgap measure to keep funding the federal government. Looks like we'll be back for more brinksmanship about a shutdown in mid-November.

First, we're in for this new leadership drama right away. McCarthy's right flank, as we've been discussing, so unhappy with him over this continuing resolution that they're apparently going to bring up a vote to oust him. Here is Congressman Matt Gaetz. Again on CNN with Jake Tapper after being asked if he will file that motion known as a motion to vacate.

Congressman Matt Gaetz: I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to rip off the band-aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.

Brian Lehrer: How does that work? Kadia, can you explain what will actually happen now? Is it happening already today?

Kadia Goba: We don't know. Well, it won't happen till they're in session. Today is a flying day, we call it, so members won't vote until six o'clock. Essentially he introduces a motion to vacate and that just means that he wants to fire the speaker of the House. Let me take it back a few.

During the speaker's race, that was one of the prime negotiations. Republicans on the far right wanted to allow one person to be able to bring a motion to vacate to the floor. Typically, that has not been the case. Usually, you count on the majority leader who works lock and step with the speaker, so the chances of that ever happening was just like no.

Well, they negotiated to be able, just in case they were unhappy with some of McCarthy's decisions, to be able to bring this motion to vacate. What will happen is he will introduce it; the entire body will vote on it. Now, Democrats, as you mentioned, could vote present, therefore lowering the threshold. They could vote for Speaker McCarthy. They could vote for Hakeem Jeffries.

I do see a scenario that no one is talking about. That's introducing a motion to table, which would effectively stop the vote in its tracks. That would probably be more conducive for Democrats who say, I don't want to vote for Speaker McCarthy, but I assure you those Democrats certainly don't want someone on the further right of McCarthy either. Here, they're not on the record of voting for him or against him, but they're on the record for stopping a vote to oust him. Does that make sense?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. A motion to table meaning basically, they're, you just said it, stopping the vote, so no vote to oust him would actually take place. You think the Democrats plus maybe some Republicans have the power to do that?

Kadia Goba: Yes, I think so. The key is who will introduce it on the Republican side?

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here's the other scenario. I think maybe you are ahead of most people on this, because the scenario that most people are talking about is a binary and either or, is that now that McCarthy played ball with the Democrats to keep the government open, do Democrats feel they owe him their votes to at least save his speakership for the rest of this term in return? Here's an exchange about that, again, with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez on CNN yesterday with Jake Tapper, who asked if she would vote for McCarthy to remain a speaker.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: My vote beginning this term for speaker of the house was for Hakeem Jeffries. I do not intend on voting for a Republican Speaker of the House, but I believe that it's up to the Republican conference to determine their own leadership and deal with their own problems. It's not up to Democrats to save Republicans from themselves, especially.

Jake Tapper: Do you think that there will be any Democrats that might vote to save McCarthy?

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I certainly don't think that we would expect to see that unless there's a real conversation between the Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican and Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don't think we give up votes for free.

Jake Tapper: Would you vote to vacate? Would you vote to get rid of McCarthy as a speaker?

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: When I cast that vote, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. We have an AOC-Matt Gaet'z coalition or really, if they don't vote to table like you were laying out before and just not have that vote, if they do have the vote to vacate, it seems like it will be the far right of the Republican Party and most of the Democrats, yes?

Kadia Goba: Yes, that is exactly why progressives have been consistent in the past few days that they will vote to remove him.

Brian Lehrer: Is it just the left flank of the Democratic Party, AOC and other members of the squad and people like that, or is it really most Democrats or almost all the 200-plus Democrats in the House, oh, no, I can't vote for a Republican for speaker, we never do that?

Kadia Goba: A lot of them actually have pivoted and said things like, it's not our job to save the speaker or to save McCarthy, not saying whether or not how they would vote. Progressives have been the most vocal about saying, I will not vote for Kevin McCarthy. I will not save Kevin McCarthy, I will not vote for Kevin McCarthy, but a lot of people are pivoting and saying that they won't vote for, or they won't-- It's not their job to save and leaving it up to leadership.

Again, there's obviously the option to save him or to have this joint venture or shared responsibility between Hakeem Jeffries and McCarthy. That would be so unprecedented and fun to cover. I just don't see it.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Speaking of members of the squad, there was that Jamal Bowman moment over the weekend where he either pulled a fire alarm, actually pulled a fire alarm, causing an evacuation of people down there to delay a vote that he didn't want to take place, or it was an accident as he walked through a door that had a fire alarm trip. We will get to that before we run out of time. Staying on this question of whether Democrats should vote to save McCarthy Speakership if it comes to that. TJ in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, TJ.

TJ: Yes. Good morning. To you and to your guest. My opinion is better that the Democrats vote massively for McCarthy. The reason is their candidate, Hakeem Jeffries, has no chance of passing. The alternative is maybe the Republican will come with a very hard-right candidate and then Democrats will be marginalized. Now if they vote for him, at least maybe they have a chance to work with him and pass some laws rather than being sidelined completely.

Brian Lehrer: TJ, thank you very much. Let's get another response to that from Earl in Stafford Township in Jersey. Earl, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Earl: Hello. I feel that it's really incumbent upon the members of Congress to come together. Their job is to, through the process of debate and conversation and compromise, to chart the course for our country. If they all keep fighting like this-- Remember how long it took for us to even get Kevin McCarthy. It might be even somebody that would be even more hard-right. Let's get something continue to be stable. We have a core course that we're doing now. Let's keep going the same way instead of, now we're going to waste another two weeks of Congress time. This is why people don't have any respect for it. They're terrible. They don't do their job.

Brian Lehrer: Earl, thank you very much. That's two for a coalition to keep McCarthy as speaker. Here's a text message on the other side from a listener who writes, "Difficult choice indeed, Brian. As ours is sadly a legislative system where nothing beyond opposing parties fighting takes place, why not let the far right slaughter McCarthy this week and continue the bloodbath that shows their true colors?"

Kadia, that's another democratic take, is let the Republicans, as he put it, slaughter McCarthy, the far-right Republicans, and put somebody on the far right in the speakership, which theoretically, according to this Democratic writer, would make the Republicans look even worse.

Who would it be? Let's say they can't table that vote. Let's say that vote comes up and Democrats can't swallow the idea of voting for a Republican McCarthy for speaker and so he does get ousted. Who would the Republicans put in in his place, and how much further to the right than McCarthy would that person be?

Kadia Goba: One thing to keep in mind is that there's a whole coalition of more moderate Republicans, including the 18 that represent Biden-plus districts. They are going to have a really hard time if they vote for someone on the far right, but if we want to throw out the hypothetical, there are a number of people that would be an option. Jim Jordan, we saw this during the speaker's race earlier. He doesn't want the position. He's been very vocal about that.

There's also names from my hometown, New York, Elise Stefanik, who is the chair of the conference. Her name has been floated. Also, Tom Emmer, who is the Republican whip right now. Also Scalise. I know Scalise is experiencing some health issues, so I'm not sure. I should say a lot of lawmakers I talked to say that he's kind of out of play now because of those health issues. Those are some of the names I've been floating.

There's also some extremely weird scenarios out there, like a placeholder person like Don Bacon who would negotiate with Democrats. He's a more moderate. He's from Nebraska. He would be a good negotiator for the larger, broader conference. Again, 200 people voted for McCarthy time and time again, the 15 times that he won as speaker. I don't see how many of those will flip to someone on the far right. I just don't.

Brian Lehrer: Is there any kind of bipartisanship coalition in Congress, maybe reflective of our caller from New Jersey who identified himself to our screener as a moderate Republican and who said on the air that the problem is they don't work together, they don't get anything done? Bipartisanship advocates pushing for a power share and coalition. A lot of Americans of either party might not like it, but a lot of Americans fed up with polarization for polarization's sake might be very enthusiastic about giving this kind of a historic go and seeing what they could accomplish even if it marginalizes both the most right-leaning and left-leaning members.

Kadia Goba: I would say the most vocal group has been the Problem Solvers Caucus co-chaired by Brian Fitzpatrick out of Pennsylvania and Josh Gottheimer out of New Jersey. They've presented a plan to their own continuing resolution, a couple of weeks before Congress actually voted on the current continuing resolution. There is a lot of talk about people from that organization talking to leadership on both sides to come up with some kind of compromise.

I know there was definitely talks around a discharge petition which, who knows if that goes away 45 days from now. Essentially if the government is not funded in 45 days, there is a continuing resolution on the table that would actually push the vote forward, or force whoever is speaker into putting it on the table, then collectively, both Republicans and Democrats could just vote for that measure. I've heard that they have been behind the scenes. Also, Mike Lawler, which his also a New Yorker. Another person who has been vocal about what threatening--

Brian Lehrer: Republican in a swing district just north of the city.

Kadia Goba: Yes. He is actually threatened to sign the discharge petition. I know Marc Molinaro has been vocal about it as well, saying it's not on the table. Again, there's two things. There's a speaker battle that's about to come up, but then in 45 days, we'll be at this table again talking about whether or not we can fund the government or shut it down. I just think the moderates- I don't think there'll be that kind of coalition where they're actively legislating together, but I think it'll be in the form of some kind of saving the government from shutting down.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener who's a Democrat texts, "Let chaos rule among the Republicans. Let them chop each other up. Not a difficult choice. Like AOC said, not Democrats' job to save the Republicans. If they couldn't almost elect McCarthy, who are they all going to agree on?" As we run out of time, Kadia, what did happen as far as you could tell with Congressman Jamal Bowman over the weekend? A member of the squad Democrat, obviously, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County just above the Bronx.

The original reporting said he purposely pulled a fire alarm to cause an evacuation so the House couldn't vote on one version of something so that the Senate could vote first because they had a bill that was more to his liking that the House would then have had to consider if the Senate went first. I hope I'm not losing people in this timeline. That was the original reporting on why Bowman did that, and that he did it on purpose.

Then Bowman denied it and said, "No, no, no, I wouldn't do such a thing. It was just, I walked through a door that I didn't realize was an emergency exit that tripped the fire alarm. That was accidental." Do we know?

Kadia Goba: Yes. I can only go by his statement at this point where he says he came to the door that's usually open and then he activated the fire alarm. There's pictures of him actually touching the fire alarm. That's going to be debatable. I'm sure there's going to be an ethics issue or an ethics investigation around this. New York Republican Nicole Malliotakis is already sounding the alarm about expulsion. Some Republicans I spoke to thought that was a bit harsh, especially when you factor in George Santos who has his own investigations issues going on, and frankly, Senator Menendez on the Democratic side.

I'm sure there'll be an investigation. I understand that Bowman has lawyered up, and it will be very interesting to see how this plays out. I will point out that he was a former educator and principal of a school, so a lot of people thought the irony in him pulling or sounding a fire alarm.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes, of a middle school. I saw the New York Post editorial on this where they cited that he once said, "I'm going to bring some middle school energy to Congress as a former middle school principal." The Post concluded, "Yes, this is just the kind of thing a middle school kid would do, pull the fire alarm-

Kadia Goba: Oh gosh.

Brian Lehrer: -because you don't want the test." One more thought. One more name that's going to be new to most of our listeners. Laphonza Butler being appointed now by California Governor Gavin Newsom to finish out the term of Senator Diane Feinstein who died last week at the age of 90. Laphonza Butler, she's the president of the group EMILY's List which is an advocacy group that helps pro-choice Democrats get elected. She's also a former union leader with SEIU. Anything else you know about Laphonza Butler or what kind of senator she might be between, at least now and the end of next year when the current term runs out?

Kadia Goba: She was also Vice President Kamala Harris's advisor, which is notable. She is the first openly gay senator out of California. I think the big story is that she is a Black woman and that Gavin Newsom, the governor, had promised to appoint a Black woman in that seat, or to the California Senate after Vice President Kamala Harris became vice president.

Well, there's a little battle right now because Congressional Black Caucus and progressive groups were really pushing Barbara Lee, who is in the race right now against Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.

Brian Lehrer: To run for the Senate seat for next year in this primary?

Kadia Goba: Yes, they are all running for the Senate seat. People thought that Barbara Lee was going to be appointed, but Gavin Newsom chose yet another Black woman who obviously has the option to run for Senate next year as well. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out, but welcoming Senator Butler.

Brian Lehrer: Welcoming Senator Butler. It sounds like a multi-candidate, very interesting Democratic primary for US Senate in California next year. Kadia Goba, congressional correspondent for Semafor. Thank you so much.

Kadia Goba: Thank you for having me.

 

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