Where things stand

The extremist wing of the Republican Party has lived to fight another day. But G.O.P. leaders are in knots trying to prove that the party’s factions can all live in harmony.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, refused to strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee appointments yesterday, instead issuing a long statement that condemned her history of making extreme and violent statements but also threw a jab back at Democrats, accusing them of a “partisan power grab.”
But at a closed-door meeting yesterday, the party’s House delegation also voted overwhelmingly to keep Representative Liz Cheney — an anti-Trump, establishment figure who has drawn fire from the party’s right wing — in her spot as the No. 3 Republican in the chamber.
At the meeting, many House Republicans expressed dismay with Cheney for her vote to impeach Trump and her condemnation of his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Members of the far-right Freedom Caucus accused Cheney of “aiding the enemy” when she joined just nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump, according to people familiar with the discussion. But ultimately she held on to her leadership role easily.
McCarthy’s unwillingness to strip Greene of her appointments, as Democrats and many Republicans have called on him to do, indicates that the G.O.P. plans to address the division in its ranks through messaging more than disciplinary action, at least for now.

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In his statement, McCarthy used strong and direct language to reject the conspiracy-minded views promulgated by Greene, but he effectively defended her right to have held them.
“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” McCarthy said. “I condemn those comments unequivocally.”
He said that he had met with her privately and explained “that as a member of Congress,” she would be held “to a higher standard than how she presented herself as a private citizen.”
Democratic leaders are pouncing. They plan to move ahead today with a vote to strip Greene of her committee appointments, and they are releasing advertisements and public statements tying Republican leadership to the QAnon conspiracy theory through Greene.
The House’s vote today on Greene will be the first on-the-record test of where Republicans stand on the fitness for office of a right-wing darling who has endorsed the killing of top Democrats, suggested that school shootings were staged and said that a space laser controlled by Jewish financiers had started a wildfire.
So far, senators in the G.O.P. establishment have been far more willing to come out against Greene than have Republicans in the House. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who won re-election in a hard-fought race in November, wrote on Twitter that Greene’s support for QAnon theories was “not conservative, it’s insane.” (He did not, however, mention her by name.)

The Pentagon is stepping up its effort to fight racism and white supremacy within the ranks of the military. Lloyd Austin, the new secretary of defense, convened the top military officials and civilian secretaries yesterday to outline the scope of a new push.
He ordered all military commands to “stand down” at some point in the next 60 days, pausing operations to address issues related to bigotry and extremism in their ranks. He also told the officials to canvass troops for their views on these issues, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package took another step toward becoming law yesterday, even as the president continues to entertain negotiations with Republican senators who are pushing for a smaller bill.
The House voted to approve a budget blueprint that would allow the Senate to pass the full $1.9 trillion bill without any Republican votes, delivering $1,400 checks to a large number of Americans, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and sending hundreds of billions to state and local governments.
The vote fell along party lines, with the blueprint passing narrowly. It clears the path for Democrats to pass the relief package through the budget reconciliation process, which would shield the bill from a filibuster in the Senate.
As the bill moves forward, Biden indicated that he was open to limiting who would receive the $1,400 payments, though he refused to break what he called an essential “promise” he had made to voters. The comments amounted to a nod to complaints from Republicans and centrist Democrats — who have argued that the checks should be targeted at the poorest Americans — as well as to critics on the left, who have pressured him not to back off the commitment.
“We can’t walk away from an additional $1,400 in direct checks, because people need it,” Biden told Democratic leaders in the House, according to people who participated. “I’m not going to start my administration by breaking a promise to people.”
The New York Times