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Democrats are grappling with a very 2021 problemhaving to play whack-a-mole with unhinged Republicans. Strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, up pops Paul Gosar with a murder fantasy about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Discipline him, here comes Lauren Boebert with an unhealthy and profoundly bigoted fixation on Ilhan Omar. Because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has long ago made clear that there is no limit to the abhorrent conduct hell tolerate, it has become incumbent on Democrats to hold GOP lawmakers accountable for their bad behavior. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Republicans behaving badly.

Indeed, acting so recklessly and outlandishly that the Democratic majority is compelled to do something is becoming something of a badge of honor in the GOPa way of distinguishing between those in the party loyal to Donald Trump and those who are really, really loyal to Donald Trump. That presents a vexing issue for the Democrats: How do you reprimand someone who actually likes the punishment? This is hard because these people are doing it for the publicity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week. Theres a judgment that has to be made about how we contribute to their fundraising and their publicity on how obnoxious and disgusting they can be.

When taking questions Friday from reporters, McCarthy acknowledged controversies involving Gosar, Boebert, and Taylor Greene are things that Republicans would not want to deal with ahead of the midterms, but pivoted back to talking about inflation and gas prices.

A growing chorus of Democrats are demanding Boebert be relieved of her committee assignments over relentless attacks on Omar, a House progressive that Trump and other right-wingers have frequently targeted with conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim bile. The most recent episode began last month, as the House voted to remove Gosar from his committees for having posted an anime video of him killing Ocasio-Cortez. Speaking in defense of her fellow wingnut, Boebert called Omar a member of the Jihad Squad and suggested the Minnesota congresswoman had married her brother. A few days later, at a Colorado event, Boebert said her xenophobic dig at Omar on the House floor was not my first Jihad Squad moment, and launched into a story implying that the Democrat is a terrorist. I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers and he and I were leaving the Capitol...and I see a Capitol Police officer running hurriedly to the elevator. I see fret all over his face, Boebert said. I look to my left and there she is, Ilhan Omar, and I said, Well, she doesnt have a backpack we should be fine.

Omar said the anecdote was made up and condemned Boebert for her bigoted remarks. Boebert on Twitter apologized, calling the controversy her comments triggered a distraction, and said she had reached out to Omars office. But the remarks were part of a pattern; soon after video of the November 20 event, another video emerged of Boebert making the same Islamophobic backpack joke to a crowd in September. Boebert called Omar on Monday; according to Omar, Boebert refused to apologize and instead doubled down on her rhetoric. The Minnesota representative has since received anti-Muslim death threats, one of which she played during a press conference Tuesday calling for Boebert to be punished.

McCarthy, of course, has been utterly useless on thisappearing far more concerned with appeasing the MAGA rightand the few Republicans who have spoken out against Boebert have faced nasty attacks from her allies. When asked Friday about Boeberts Islamophobic comments and why he has such a hard time condemning something that is so clearly wrong, McCarthy suggested the Republican Party is for anyone and everyone who craves freedom and supports religious liberty; later indicated he wouldnt remove Boebert from her committee assignments, citing her apology to Omar.

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Kevin McCarthy Is Leaving It to Democrats to Keep Lauren Boebert In Line - Vanity Fair

After a group of Republican lawmakers defied the new vaccination policy at the New Jersey Statehouse on Thursday, Democratic leaders of the state Assembly have decided next weeks committee meetings will be held remotely, a spokesman told NJ Advance Media on Friday.

Its the first reaction following one of the most dramatic and polarizing days the the Statehouse has seen in recent memory.

A group of Republicans in the Assembly ignored a new policy that people in the building have to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test. They declined to present either document as they walked into the Assembly chambers after a standoff with State Police troopers. And they proceeded to stay on the floor for more than two hours as angry Democrats who control state government tried unsuccessfully to eject them.

But this likely isnt the end of the issue, with some Republicans planning to keep disobeying the policy and Democrats expected to keep trying to enforce it as coronavirus cases continue to rise in New Jersey.

The Assembly, the lower house of the state Legislature, has committee hearings scheduled for Monday and a quorum call on Thursday. Kevin McArdle, a spokesman for the Assembly Democrats, said Friday that leaders decided to hold next weeks action remotely a move that avoids another showdown for the time being.

The houses next full voting session is scheduled for Dec. 16, as lawmakers try to tackle bills in the lame-duck period before the next Legislature is sworn in Jan. 11.

Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, D-Essex, said holding next weeks meetings via Zoom is the smart thing to do until the issue is either resolved in court or through negotiations between top lawmakers in both parties.

Republicans also filed a lawsuit challenging the policy, arguing its unconstitutional and that the little-known state commission that approved it overstepped its authority. A judge on Thursday set a hearing date for Dec. 13.

Its unclear whether there will be a ruling by the Dec. 16 voting session at the Statehouse.

This has to be worked out, Caputo said. Hopefully we get this thing resolved by the 16th.

The Democrat said its not just a political matter but a health issue, to help protect both lawmakers and the public from a virus that has killed more than 28,400 people in the state.

We had people that broke the rules and really didnt care about the health consequences, Caputo said. Why would they want to risk spreading disease?

Assemblyman Brian Bergen, R-Morris, one of the most vocal Republicans who defied the policy Thursday, said he has no intention of complying for future voting sessions.

Theyre just so used to jamming everything down our throats, Bergen said of Democrats. We had no alternative to do what we did. The alternative would have been to acquiesce and accept.

Bergen also accused Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, of making next weeks meetings remote because he doesnt want to lose the battle.

Plus, Bergen dismissed the idea of the policy protecting people from rising case.

Stop with this, he said. Cases rise and cases fall. Its gonna be that way whether a policy like this is in effect or not in effect. ... The policy doesnt do anything to keep COVID from coming in the building. The only true way to prevent it would be to test everybody.

The policy was approved by the State Capitol Joint Management Commission in October. Coughlin and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, also released their own rules Thursday saying any lawmaker who doesnt present proof of vaccination or a negative test within seven days wont be allowed on their chamber floors.

What continues to be unclear is whether the State Police, who patrol the Statehouse, has the willingness or even the authority to enforce those rules.

Troopers initially tried to stop non-compliant Republicans from entering the Assembly chamber but ultimately allowed them. Bergen said a trooper told him they couldnt physically restrain them.

Coughlin later ordered security sweeps Thursday in an attempt to remove Republicans from the Assembly chamber. But no lawmaker ended up being ejected.

In a speech on the floor, Coughlin called Republicans actions a political stunt and said there was a colossal failure in security here at the Statehouse.

State Sen. Holly Schepisi, R-Bergen, countered that State Police troopers were put in a very terrible position Thursday.

Its not part and parcel of their job to be vaccine police and to try to prohibit members of the Legislature from doing their job, Schepisi said.

The State Police have not returned multiple messages in recent days seeking comment about the issue.

The nonpartisan New Jersey Office of Legislative Services recently said lawmakers cant be arrested solely for not following the vaccine policy, though Democratic leaders of the Legislature can exclude members from physically being in the building, as long as they are not barred from voting electronically.

Lawmakers are provided with rapid coronavirus tests at the Statehouse or have the option of voting remotely if they dont comply.

The Senate, the upper house in the Legislature, didnt have the same issue as the Assembly on Thursday. A number Republican senators oppose the policy but have said the proper way to oppose it is through the lawsuit.

This all comes one month after an election in which Republicans flipped seven seats in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Republican turnout soared, which experts say was partially because of anger over New Jerseys COVID-19 policies.

Democrats have accused Republicans of defying the vaccine policy simply to appeal to the base, to the detriment of public health.

Thursdays events are also reflected of the ever-divided political culture across the U.S.

Ben Dworkin, director of Rowan Universitys Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship, said its likely Republican Assembly members will find a very supportive base in their party for their stance but he noted the next legislative election isnt for another two years. The issue now, he said, is if Democrats and Republicans can get along to conduct the peoples business in the meantime.

I think the bottom line is that anybody whos served on any governing body knows you have to find ways to work together in order to be able to function, Dworkin said. When you dont, you end up like the dysfunction in Washington. New Jersey has largely avoided that. Hopefully the many reasonable voices on both sides will be able to find a way out of this.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.

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After Republicans defied N.J. Statehouse vaccine policy, angry Democrats say voting will be remote next week - nj.com

Hawaii Rep. Kai Kahele (D) raised alarms in a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday over water contamination near Pearl Harbor.

The Hawaii State Department of Health on Wednesday found petroleum products in water from the Navys water system that is used by 93,000 people, The Associated Press reported.

Residents suspect the contamination is from the Navys Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage facility and have called for it to be shut down,while the Navysays the tanks are needed for their Pacific operations, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

In the hearing, Kahele detailed panicked messages and emails he has received from residents, with one woman going to the hospital andbeing diagnosed with chemical burns in her mouth after drinking her tap water for a week while unaware of the petroleum.

Another woman emailed the representative panicking, saying she was six months pregnant and had been drinking the water. Local reports show many people going to the hospital for multiple ailments believed to be related to the contamination.

Right now, thousands of military personnel and their families are without water at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam. In todays hearing with the @USNavy, I demanded answers on the future of #RedHill.

People are suffering, and Hawaii deserves answers and transparency immediately. pic.twitter.com/IpfXzJY06p

We are committed to find the facts, get the root causes and make the appropriate corrections to anything we discover, Ricky Williamson, the Navy's deputy chief ofnaval operations for fleet readiness and logistics, said in the hearing.

Residents connected to the Navys water system, mostly part of military families, have been told not to use the water to drink, do dishes or wash laundry. The Navy and state health department are investigating the issue.

Military families are members of our community, Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D) said in an email to the Star-Advertiser. Im concerned for the health and safety of those living in the affected areas and understand their need for timely and accurate information. Ive urged the Navy to conduct a thorough investigation immediately and to take every precaution necessary to keep the community safe. Ive also ordered the State Department of Health to continue independent testing and to be prepared to take immediate action to protect our drinking water.

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Hawaii Democrat raises alarms over water contamination near Pearl Harbor | TheHill - The Hill

President Barack Obama stands onstage with Vice-President Joe Biden before signing an economic stimulus bill on February 17, 2009. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

One year ago this month, the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden, leaving most Democrats elated over the impending end of Donald Trumps presidency. It hasnt even been a full year since Democrats achieved what once seemed like an even more impossible dream: seizing trifecta control of the federal government via two victories in Senate runoffs.

But wow, has the sweet taste of victory curdled for the Donkey Party! For months now, it has been rare to read a story about the state of affairs in Washington that did not prominently feature the Democrats in disarray trope; the party is said to be divided over the agenda of a president with steadily falling job-approval ratings, doomed to a midterm defeat that might also usher Trump back to the brink of power. From hot takes to data-driven assessments of hard cold electoral facts, everyone pretty much agrees the future for this recently triumphant party is dim, and fingers of blame are being pointed in every direction.

There is one positive thought that Democrats can focus on as we head into this season of hope: This is far from the worst theyve had it. For all their struggles, Democrats remain the oldest continuously operating political party in the country, dating back to the 1820s. As the comedian Henry Gibson sang in the bicentennial satire film Nashville: We must be doing something right to last 200 years!

Heres a look back at some similarly sticky situations from the Democratic Partys past, which it managed to survive.

Joe Biden is the seventh Democrat to serve as president since the end of World War II. His current job-approval rating from Gallup is 42 percent. Of the other six, five (all but JFK) had Gallup job-approval ratings quite a bit lower than that. (Truman: 22 percent; LBJ: 35 percent; Carter: 28 percent; Clinton: 37 percent; Obama: 38 percent). Clinton and Obama were reelected after posting these abysmal numbers. And while Trumans nadir in popularity was achieved near the end of his presidency, he, too, was reelected in 1948 after receiving a job-approval rating of 36 percent in April of that same year.

By these standards, it is extremely premature to treat Biden as a failed president, or as any sort of convincing underdog for reelection, for that matter.

The loss of Virginias governorship earlier this month combined with a close brush with defeat in New Jersey has been the latest apocalyptic sign of Democratic decline, by some accounts. Its true that both states were adjudged as blue going into these elections. But still, Democrats have done poorly in these off-year elections periodically for a long time.

To be specific, since the late 1960s, Democrats lost the New Jersey gubernatorial race six times (in 1969, 1981, 1993, 1997, 2009, and 2013) and the Virginia gubernatorial race six times (in 1969, 1973, 1977, 1993, 1997, and 2009). Theses state-level defeats were followed by midterms gains for the national party in three cases and losses in five cases. Democratic presidents serving in years when the party lost one or both of these states gubernatorial elections were reelected in 1996 and 2010 and defeated in 1980. The point is, theres no pattern here; off-year election losses are never a good omen, but they arent always predictive, either.

For anyone with a long memory, much less historical knowledge, the idea that Democrats are currently divided ideologically to an unusual or intractable degree is laughable. Todays centrist-progressive rift existed to an even more alarming extent when Barack Obama was trying to enact his own legislative agenda. In the Clinton administration, conventional liberal Democratic dissent from the presidential agenda was so sharp and regular that the president often got as much or more support from Republicans than from Democrats for initiatives ranging from trade expansion to welfare reform. Clintons New Democrats (he had originally campaigned as a different kind of Democrat) and their orthodox liberal opponents warred constantly until the effort to impeach the president united them.

Going back further, Jimmy Carter had to head off an ideologically inspired reelection primary challenge from liberal lion Ted Kennedy. Divisions between pro-administration and antiwar Democrats during LBJs second term led to that presidents forced retirement as he faced an almost certain primary defeat, and a convention so intensely divided that the mayor of the host city was shouting anti-Semitic obscenities at a U.S. senator delivering a nominating speech with the whole world watching.

In 1948, Democrats were so divided that not one but two splinter parties (the Progressives under FDRs second vice-president Henry Wallace, and the Dixiecrats under then-Governor Strom Thurmond) ran candidates against Harry Truman. And going further back, the 103-ballot 1924 Democratic convention nearly flew apart during a vicious fight over a platform plank (which was defeated) condemning the Ku Klux Klan.

A lot of the doom-stricken talk right now is about inflation, supply-chain interruptions, and budget deficits, causing a free fall in Democratic support (actually, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans citing economic problems as the top concern is well below historic averages, but whatever). Todays economic anxieties are minor compared to those for which Barack Obama was unjustly blamed upon taking office in the midst of the Great Recession.

And neither Biden nor Obama have encountered anything like the horrid combination of economic conditions (double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, up-and-down unemployment) that Jimmy Carter inherited from the Nixon and Ford administrations. On running for president, Carter coined the term misery index for the combined inflation and unemployment rates a term that boomeranged when Republicans served it right back at him in 1980.

The one thing todays Democrats can plausibly cite as an unprecedented problem is an opposition party fully devoted to obstruction. But its important to remember that todays chief obstructionist, Mitch McConnell, is the same man whose declared primary goal in 2009 was making Barack Obama a one-term president. After 2010, Obama also had to deal with an intransigent tea-party movement that in turn stiffened the spine of the entire Republican Party.

And even though Bill Clinton worked with and often ran circles around his Republican opponents, he did face after 1994 in House Speaker Newt Gingrich a congressional leader who took partisanship to heretofore unknown levels.

It has largely been forgotten in faulty remembrances of Jimmy Carters fecklessness that the New Right and Christian Right movements that arose to smite him hip and thigh were very much the ancestors of yesterdays tea-party movement and todays MAGA extremists.

It is true that the task of defeating and ejecting President Donald Trump has put innumerable strains on the Democratic Party strains that cannot heal so long as a comeback by the tyrant is fully in play.

But once upon a time, a similarly unscrupulous Republican president, Richard Nixon, stood astride a prostrate Donkey Party after winning reelection in 1972 by a 23-point margin, carrying 49 of 50 states. It looked for all the world as though a massive and perhaps irreversible realignment had occurred in favor of the GOP, whose nasty culture-warrior vice-president Spiro Agnew was the heir apparent to Tricky Dick.

But less than two years after their electoral apotheosis, both Agnew and Nixon had resigned in disgrace, leaving Democrats on the brink of a midterm landslide and then a presidential victory.

Its true that Democrats are prone to self-doubt and pessimism, just as Republicans are prone to triumphalism and spin. But history shows you often dont know whats right around the bend.

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Cheer Up, Democrats! Youve Had It Worse Than This. - New York Magazine

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Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the 85-year-old Texas Democrat, who recently announced that she will not seek reelection, said in an interview that party infighting over President Bidens social spending bill contributed to her decision.

Johnson told CBS DFW on Tuesday that the decision was not easy and some leaders were asking that she reconsider. But she told the station that she is getting older, and also pointed to the fight over Bidens social spending bill.

"You begin to question the why when you get to a point where our party is not as together as youd like it to be, like youve experienced," she said. Her office did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News.

CHAD PERGRAM: BIDEN'S SPENDING BILL IS A DRAMA IN 4 ACTS

Her decision not to run for reelection prompted representatives from both sides of the aisle to praise her service. Rep. Frank D. Lucas, R-Okla., served with her on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

The Washington Post reported that he issued a statement that said there is no one hed "rather have as my counterpart across the aisle."

He called her a "true public servant" who cares deeply about supporting science in the U.S.

"Shes an old-school legislator who cares more about results than headlines, and I respect that deeply," he said.

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson delivers remarks during an event honoring NASA's "Hidden Figures," African American women mathematicians who helped the United States' space program in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Getty)

Johnson is a political fixture in her hometown of Dallas, where early in her career she became the first Black woman to serve the city in the state Senate since Reconstruction.

Johnson on Wednesday endorsed Democratic state Rep. Jasmine Crockett to take her seat just days after announcing her intentions to retire.

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Crockett, a first-term state representative, made headlines in July as part of the group of Texas lawmakerswho fled to Washington, D.C., in an attempt to block a vote on the state Republicans elections integrity bill, which eventually passed and was signed into law in September.

Fox News' Jessica Chasmar and the Associated Press contributed to this report

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Democrat infighting over spending bill contributed to decision to retire, Texas Dem says - Fox News