Hakeem Jeffries: Nancy Pelosi’s likely successor formally declares Democratic leadership bid

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is calling for a criminal investigation into “widepspread problems” and “allegations of improprieties” over elections in Harris County, the third-largest county in the US and largest in the state, after polling precincts faced issues with understaffing, voting machines and paper ballot shortages.

Harris County’s Democratic District Attorney Kim Ogg is performing a probe and has requested assistance from the Texas Rangers, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Civil rights groups argued that the governor’s criminal probe is “clearly a targeted attack” against a district that leans Democratic and is “the most diverse county” in the state. Advocates have called on the governor to stop the investigation and allow election officials, administrators and agencies responsible for those issues to do their jobs.

“This announcement is exactly what we were worried about when we called for the [Department of Justice] to send federal monitors to Harris County,” according to a statement from the Texas Civil Rights Project.

“The state has proven ... that a bad-faith actor when it comes to protecting voters,” according to the group’s voting rights director Hani Mirza.

“The allegations of election improprieties in our state’s largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” the governor said in a statement Monday. “Voters in Harris County deserve to know what happened. Integrity in the election process is essential. To achieve that standard, a thorough investigation is warranted.”

The Harris County GOP has also filed a lawsuit.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said would-be Republican voters saw “too much chaos” and “too much negativity” in GOP candidates in midterm elections, which saw Republicans gain a slim majority in the House while Democrats flipped a critical Senate seat and retained their majority in the upper chamber.

“We underperformed among voters who did not like President Biden’s performance, among independents and among moderate Republicans who looked at us and concluded too much chaos, too much negativity,” he said during a news conference on Wednesday.

“We turned off a lot of these centrist voters, which is why I never predicted a red wave to begin with,” he added.

The Kentucky senator spoke moments after his members voted to re-elect him to lead the caucus by a vote of 37-10. One member voted present.

“I’m pretty proud of 37 to 10,” he said. “I don’t own this job.”

Top Democrats are coalescing their support behind longtime Democratic caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries to be the head of a new-look team that will lead Democrats after two decades under the trio of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn.

Mr Jeffries, an attorney who has represented New York’s Eighth District since 2013, has served as the Democratic caucus chair since the start of the 116th Congress in 2019.

At 52 years old, he is a full three decades younger than Ms Pelosi, Mr Hoyer, and Mr Clyburn; and if Democrats retake the House majority in 2024 he would become the first Black speaker of the House.

Andrew Feinberg has more:

As part of the plan to make a smooth transition between one leadership triad and the next, Democratic Congresswoman Katherine Clark has made it official that she will be running for House minority whip, the number two spot in the party hierarchy.

Ms Clark has represented her Massachusetts district since 2013. If elected, she will succeed Steny Hoyer as second-in-command.

Extremist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Kevin McCarthy has said will be allowed to sit on House committees despite having previously called for violence against her colleagues, told a press conference yesterday that she is still pressuring the GOP leadership into investigating the alleged mistreatment of people detained awaiting trial for their alleged part in the January 6 insurrection.

Flanked by other hardcore members including Matt Gaetz, here’s what she had to say:

The Republican leadership is widely expected to either disband the January 6 select committee or at least radically curtail its remit to focus on the security failures that left the Capitol vulnerable on the day of the riot, a topic that Trump allies have focused on relentlessly to divert attention from the causes and events of the riot itself.

Writing for The Independent, Ahmed Baba warns that the upcoming era of Republican rule in the House of Representatives is going to be dark and disturbing – and more than a little odd:

Read the full piece below.

Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark is out of the gate in her bid to become Minority Whip, the second-most-senior job in the Democratic caucus. Here’s her letter to colleagues making her pitch:

Representative Katie Porter of California, who has become a progressive hero for her aggressive questioning during hearings, has won her re-election race in California’s 47th District.

A former law professor and graduate of Harvard Law School, Ms Porter studied under Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts when the latter was a professor at Harvard. Ms Porter first ran in 2018 and defeated Republican Representative Mimi Walters in California’s 45th District, which had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Ms Porter won her race against Republican Scott Baugh 51.6 per cent to 48.4 per cent.

Eric Garcia reports:

Top Democrats are coalescing their support behind longtime Democratic caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries to be the head of a new-look team that will lead Democrats after two decades under the trio of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn.

Mr Jeffries, an attorney who has represented New York’s Eighth District since 2013, has served as the Democratic caucus chair since the start of the 116th Congress in 2019.

At 52 years old, he is a full three decades younger than Ms Pelosi, Mr Hoyer, and Mr Clyburn; and if Democrats retake the House majority in 2024 he would become the first Black speaker of the House.

Read more from Andrew Feinberg.

Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries has formally declared he is running to succeed Nancy Pelosi as the top house Democrat, writing in a letter to colleagues that “It has sometimes been said that the job of the majority is to govern, while the job of the minority is to get back into the majority. Given the dangerous and dysfunctional nature of the Extreme MAGA Republicans who dominate the ranks of the other side of the aisle in the 118th Congress, we must do both.”

Andrew Feinberg reports.