A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
CNN
—
Governing is not, or at least it shouldn’t be, some kind of game.
But this week it feels like powerful people are treating it like one, running trick plays to score points, trash talking and making threats, and exploiting rules to bring things to a halt.
In Florida, a brewing grudge match pits Disney, one of the state’s largest employers, against its governor, the ambitious Republican Ron DeSantis who is eyeing a presidential run.
How the state government’s relationship with its notable corporate citizen turned petty is getting hard to follow.
The basic storyline, as laid out by CNN’s Steve Contorno, is that Disney spoke out against a law DeSantis pushed to limit what teachers can say in the classroom. Faulting its “woke” corporate behavior, DeSantis and Republicans in the state moved to install their political allies onto a quasi-government board that oversees the area that includes Disney World. But the company moved to defang the board before the new appointees took on their roles.
Rather than sending a message to Disney, DeSantis now looks outmaneuvered and is threatening more action against the company.
It’s not clear if he’s serious or not, but the most bizarre idea he suggested is building a state prison on public land next to the Magic Kingdom. Watch him here.
The appearance of a Republican potentially trying to sabotage a massive employer is the kind of play DeSantis’ potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination are happy to point out.
“I think it rightfully makes a lot of people question his judgment and his maturity,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday in a conversation with the website Semafor.
Christie said if DeSantis “can’t see around a corner that (Disney CEO) Bob Iger created for you,” then “that’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China.”
In Washington, where the Senate rulebook has been befuddling people for centuries, Republicans are citing the Senate rules and making clear they won’t let Democrats replace, even temporarily, the ailing Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Feinstein, 89, has been out of the office since early March while dealing with a case of the shingles. But since Democrats only have a one-seat majority on the panel, her absence has ground judicial nominations to a halt.
For a rules-minded guy like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, another octogenarian just returning from his own month-plus convalescence after a fall, there’s no need to let Democrats get another vote on the committee and push through scores of nominations caught in limbo. McConnell suggested if Democrats culled the herd of nominees, they might get some confirmed.
“They could move a number of less controversial nominees right now. Right now,” he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “They want to sideline Senator Feinstein, so they can ram through the worst four as well.”
Various Senate rules have been confusing people for centuries. Even if Feinstein were to resign, Sen. Mitt Romney suggested Tuesday that Republicans could block changes to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I don’t think Republicans are going to lift a finger in any way to get more liberal judges appointed, so whether she’s resigned or leaves temporarily from the judiciary committee, I think we will slow walk any process that makes it easier to appoint more liberal judges,” Romney said.
Feinstein’s absence isn’t the only problem, as CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Lauren Fox have pointed out, since Republican senators can also use the “blue slip” tradition to veto judicial nominees the Biden administration has put forward for their states.
If the importance of judicial nominees is still in question, look no further than the furor that a Trump-appointed federal judge has caused by ruling to suspend the 23-year-old FDA authorization for mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion.
The decision by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk out of the federal court in Amarillo, Texas, has sent the abortion issue straight back to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by Wednesday in a case that could remove nationwide access to a medication that American women have been using for decades, even in states that have sought to protect abortion rights.
Kacsmaryk was all but selected by opponents of the drug to hear the case since he is the only federal district judge in Amarillo.
It’s not the rulebook, but rather the teamwork making House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s life difficult. He wanted to send a message of unity to Wall Street with a speech there Monday. His goal was to calm nerves about the looming debt ceiling showdown and project that Republicans have a plan to raise the debt ceiling and impose spending cuts. Their plan probably won’t get any support from Democrats.
But almost on cue Tuesday, conservative Republicans began to poke holes in McCarthy’s plan, calling it into question as the US hurtles toward a potential default if there is no debt ceiling agreement by June. McCarthy, at least for now, seems disinclined to allow a vote on any proposal that could get support from Democrats in the House. And he seems unable to find a proposal that can get all Republicans on board. Those Senate rules make it impossible for anything to pass through that chamber without support from ten Republicans, so long as Feinstein is not voting. Read more from CNN’s Stephen Collinson.
Suffice it to say the debt ceiling, the abortion medication and Disney’s status in Florida are issues where there’s not a winner and a loser, even if they’re being treated that way by the powerful people who are supposed to be in charge.