I'm two doors down from @aoc
 and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway... https://foxnews.com/politics/aoc-un [...] ring-riots

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) claimed during a Fox News interview last August that “there’s no place for QAnon in the Republican Party.”

Following Wednesday’s meeting, McCarthy said during a press conference that Greene made remarks “denouncing QAnon” — something she has not done publicly — then added, “I don’t even know what [QAnon] is.”

National security adviser Jake Sullivan says US will also freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia

The US has announced an end to its support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, citing the role the bombing campaign has had in creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
 
The announcement was made by the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a preview of a speech Joe Biden is due to deliver at the state department,
 
A bipartisan majority in Congress has already voted to cut off support to the Saudi campaign, citing the civilian death toll and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, by Saudi security agents, in 2018. But Donald Trump used his veto to block the move, and its supporters were unable to muster the two-thirds vote in Congress needed to override the veto.
 
The US will also freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and name a special envoy to Yemen, to put more pressure on the Saudis, Emiratis and the Houthi forces they are fighting, to make a lasting peace agreement.
 
“We have spoken with both senior officials in the UAE and senior officials in Saudi Arabia,” Sullivan said. “We are pursuing a policy of no surprises when it comes to these types of actions.”
 
The announcement and Biden’s speech caps a whiplash fortnight of dramatic foreign policy changes since his inauguration.
 
The distancing of Washington from Riyadh is one of the most conspicuous reversals. Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, treated Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as a major ally in their campaign to cripple Iran through sanctions. To that end, Pompeo used emergency powers to sidestep Congress to keep arms supplies flowing to the Gulf.
 
Blinken by contrast, spoke bluntly, about Saudi culpability in the Yemen war. He has so far made over 25 introductory calls to counterparts around the world, and the Saudi foreign minister has not been among them. Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, pledged to produce a declassified account of Khashoggi’s killing, which is expected to incriminate the Saudi crown prince.

His polls are sinking. Democrats are mobilizing. The Newsom recall just got real.
 
California Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to talk about the recall. But his allies can’t ignore it.
 
The campaign to oust Newsom went from unlikely to unavoidable this week as pervasive frustration with Newsom’s pandemic management cut sharply into his approval numbers. The longer businesses have been closed, hospitals full and school campuses shut, the more the movement has gained traction beyond conservative social media circles.
 
(...)
 
He has adamantly denied that his abrupt decision to reverse stay-at-home orders last month was an attempt to quell voter frustration. And he seems determined to avoid legitimizing the effort by acknowledging it.
 
(...)
 
Nearly 18 years ago, California's only gubernatorial recall drew 135 candidates, including several B-list celebrities and one A-lister: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who swept into office on a Republican promise to clean up state government.

With just two statewide elections in the U.S. this year — governors races in Virginia and New Jersey — another California recall would likely become the biggest political event of 2021.

The recall could still fail to qualify. The deadline to certify is March 17, and the campaign is still operating on a shoestring budget by statewide campaign standards, relying on volunteers and some paid mail to collect the 1.5 million valid signatures they need. Proponents claim they have 1.3 million total signatures, still a ways off the nearly 2 million they will likely need to compensate for invalid signatories.
 
(...)
 
Two of the state's most respected polls this week showed that Newsom's support has fallen after the state's worst stretch of the pandemic, during which hospitals were filled beyond capacity and the state surpassed 40,000 Covid-19 deaths.  (...)
 
Growing voter dissatisfaction may lead to the recall qualifying, but that doesn't mean it will pass. Democrats have a 46 percent to 24 percent registration advantage over Republicans in California, and the IGS poll shows a 45 percent plurality said they would vote to retain Newsom, compared to 36 percent backing his removal.

I said when I was running for office I would not be beholden to any party or person if you sent me to Congress. I would follow the Constitution, my principles, and my conscience.

Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed today that she hasn't promoted QAnon since being elected. But on Dec. 4, she praised an article promoting Q in a now-deleted tweet. The story Greene praised as "accurate" calls QAnon an "objective flow of information” that's "uniting Christians."
 

 
 

 
 

‘He’s clearly laying groundwork’: Hawley paves 2024 path
 
The face of the Biden resistance is taking shape in the Senate: Josh Hawley.
 
In a prelude to a widely expected 2024 presidential bid, the Missouri Republican is the only senator to oppose every one of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees — a distinction sealed Tuesday when he voted against confirming new Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
 
(...)
 
Hawley, whose Senate seat is up for election in 2024, has said repeatedly that he isn’t running for president.
(...)
But aside from Hawley’s allies, no one familiar with presidential politics or the U.S. Senate is taking the 41-year-old at his word — especially after several Democratic senators used their opposition to early Trump appointees as a springboard to 2020.
 
(...)
 
Hawley is becoming more of a regular on Fox News, the most-watched cable channel for Republican primary voters, and his fundraising has kept pace with his growing national profile. Negative news media coverage and the Democrats’ ethics investigation of him and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for their roles leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has served to stoke his coffers: (...) nearly $1 million in January.
 
(...)
 
The youngest senator when he was elected in 2018, Hawley is a soaring orator with a sense for tapping into Trump’s confrontational style of populist politics.
 
(...)
 
The Senate’s Trump lane has three top names so far: Hawley, Cruz and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who shares a consulting firm with the junior senator from Missouri. Along with five other senators and 139 representatives, all three opposed certifying Biden’s Electoral College win — even after the deadly Capitol riot.
 
(...)
 
“Josh Hawley is doing all the right things to capitalize politically on a significant portion of the Republican base, positioning himself to become a future presidential candidate, absolutely,” said Terry Sullivan, a former presidential campaign manager for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “What Hawley does with this, we’ll see. But it’s important to remember that any time a U.S. senator or governor looks in the mirror, he sees a future president.”

Breaking:
 
MIAMI (AP) — Voting company Smartmatic files $2.7 billion libel suit against Fox News, Fox hosts, Giuliani and Powell.

The lawsuit, filed in New York state court, accused Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Will be a surprise to none, but Trump legal team formally rejects Raskin’s demand that the former president testify for his impeachment trial, calls the request a PR stunt