Middleboro Review 2: POLITICO NIGHTLY: The thin House and Senate margins don’t lie

Saturday, February 18, 2023

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The thin House and Senate margins don’t lie

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

BRICK CITY — There’s a saying often linked to former NBA player Rasheed Wallace — who once got bounced from a game by the referees for hollering it — that suggests a karmic law in the game of basketball: “Ball don’t lie.”

The three-word phrase is typically cited when, after a referee calls a foul that one team may view as questionable or undeserved, a player from the opposing team goes to the line for free throws and bricks them. It’s effectively a punishment for an unfairly called penalty — the ball doesn’t lie, the thinking goes. In fact, it exerts its own pull over the outcome.

There’s a version of the same principle that’s almost always operative in Congress: Margin don’t lie. In other words, the margin of control that any majority party wields in a chamber of the legislative branch imposes its own type of political will on what can pass.

The more divisive (and potentially questionable) the measure that a party leader brings to the House or Senate floor, the more likely it is to fall apart without the votes to pass. And when the margins are as slim as they are right now, for both the 51-vote Senate Democratic majority and the 222-vote House GOP majority, there’s precious little room to muscle through any borderline decisions.

House Republicans are experiencing “margin don’t lie” in action right now on an immigration bill that’s splitting two of their own from Texas, Reps. Tony Gonzales and Chip Roy. Party leaders had hoped to bring the legislation to the floor during the first two weeks of the year. But with Gonzales and Roy at odds, as the former contends the latter’s draconian plan would essentially restrict all asylum claims, the bill will have to go through committee instead — which could keep it from the floor for an extended period.

Margin don’t lie.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are going through their own “margin don’t lie” moment on a House-passed proposal that would roll back a progressive criminal justice law recently advanced by the D.C. city council.

The reversal of D.C.’s crime plan can’t be filibustered, and Republicans are increasingly unified against it after 31 House Democrats sided with them on the matter earlier this month. That means Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s caucus will have to stay almost totally unified to avoid an intrusion into the capital city’s ability to govern itself — and if they can’t, President Joe Biden will be forced into a politically awkward decision on issuing his first veto.

Margin don’t lie.

Now, at other moments the karmic power of the congressional margin illustrates specific truths. Take the House GOP’s successful eviction of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee. At first it appeared that the slim margin would enforce its will by making the vote a bigger lift for Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s majority. But in the end, he turned the members he needed to. The Republican conference overcame its internal misgivings about punishing Omar for what many of its members saw as an improper shot by Democrats against two of their own during the last Congress.

Think of the Omar vote, then, as the reverse version of Wallace’s “ball don’t lie” cry. The foul shots rattled around the rim, but ultimately sank.

But more often than not, “margin don’t lie” comes back to bite majorities during times of slim control. So perhaps House GOP and Senate Democratic leaders should start reviewing some Rasheed Wallace tapes.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com or on Twitter at @eschor . Programming note: Nightly will not publish on Monday, Feb. 20 for Presidents Day. We will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday, Feb. 21.

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today .

WHAT'D I MISS?

F-16 fighter jets. | Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images

— Democrats, Republicans join up to urge Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine: A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing Biden directly to send F-16 warplanes to Ukraine as the fight against Russia’s invasion enters its second year . Five House members argued modern jets — which Kyiv has sought, but the administration has so far not agreed to — “could prove decisive for control of Ukrainian airspace this year” in a Thursday letter to Biden obtained by POLITICO. The letter was organized by Maine Democrat Jared Golden and signed by Democrats Jason Crow of Colorado and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Republicans Tony Gonzales of Texas and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.

— Hobbyist says downed object may belong to amateur club: It’s possible that the object shot down by American forces over the Yukon last weekend “could have been our balloon,” a member of an Illinois hobbyist group said earlier today . On Thursday, news surfaced that an amateur group in Illinois said one of its balloons had gone missing near Alaska on Saturday, the same day an F-22 shot down an object over the Yukon in Canada. In a blog post on the group’s website on Tuesday, it said the balloon had gone “missing in action” but avoided making any connection with the military shoot-down.

THIS MEMPHIS GOON SQUAD COST $28 MILLION PER YEAR & THERE WAS NO OVERSIGHT! NO ONE REVIEWED THEIR BOGUS TRAFFIC STOPS OR THEIR ABUSE!

— Five Memphis officers plead not guilty in death of Tyre Nichols: Five former Memphis police officers pleaded not guilty today to second-degree murder and other charges in the violent arrest and death of Tyre Nichols. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith made their first court appearances before a judge in Shelby County Criminal Court. The officers were fired after an internal police investigation into the Jan. 7 arrest of Nichols, who died in a hospital three days later. His beating was caught on video.

AROUND THE WORLD

TICK TOCK, TIKTOK — TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have now confirmed they will face the strictest rules under the European Union’s content-moderation law , the Digital Services Act (DSA), writes Clothilde Goujard .

Online platforms have until midnight to reveal how many Europeans use their services under the DSA. Platforms and search engines with over 45 million EU users will have to adhere to sweeping requirements starting in the summer of 2023 including swiftly taking down illegal content, limiting disinformation and better protecting kids and teenagers under the supervision of the European Commission.

The European Commission could slap fines of up to 6 percent of companies’ annual global revenue if its investigations find such very large online platforms (VLOPs) at fault. Large companies will also be audited by external companies to check they are doing enough to ensure their algorithms and platforms don’t pose major risks to society, and researchers will have access to some crucial internal data.

Several big social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok have been under scrutiny for spreading disinformation and pushing users down rabbit holes of increasingly extreme content. Instagram has also faced widespread criticism for reportedly harming teenage girls’ mental health.

If some internet players don’t open up by the deadline, a commission spokesperson said that the EU would contact and ask such companies to do so “without undue delay.” Two other commission officials said that it could be possible to designate companies withholding information as very large online platforms by finding their number of EU users in, for example, information disclosed to investors or external estimates.

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NIGHTLY NUMBER

$97.91 million

The amount of money that has already been spent on advertisements in the 2024 election cycle, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. The most money spent on ads in one race in 2022 was the Georgia Senate election at $385 million, followed by the Pennsylvania Senate election at $312 million. In total, 15 races cracked $100 million in ad spending.

RADAR SWEEP

THE HOUSE OF ESPORTS — Savvy Games Group, a corporation owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, unveiled a $37.8 billion initiative last week to transform the Arab Kingdom into a global gaming hub . The initiative “is one part of our ambitious strategy aiming to make Saudi Arabia the ultimate global hub for the games and esports sector by 2030,” said crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. He added that the initiative includes plans to take several minority stakes in companies around the world and acquire a leading game publisher to become a strategic development partner. Other funds will be targeted to support early-stage games and esports companies. The Kingdom expects to create 39,000 jobs and raise the sector’s contribution to the Kingdom’s economy by 13.3 billion USD by 2030. Read Rawan Radwan ’s deep dive into how the gaming industry could help the oil-rich nation diversify, for Arab News.

PARTING WORDS

Illustrations by Fernando Cobelo for POLITICO

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT — For a town with nearly 700,000 residents (not even counting the surrounding areas in Virginia and Maryland where many people who work in D.C. live), Washington can feel positively tiny.

If you work in the major industry of the town — government and politics — the claustrophobia is even worse; the potential social landmines don’t stop after you leave work. At events, on dates, in bars or restaurants, if there’s not someone with you who works in the industry, there is someone at the next table who does so.

For Nightly readers in other parts of the country asking “why put yourself through this,” well … it’s a fair question that we’ve been known to ask ourselves from time to time. But if you decide to choose this life, it’s useful to have some rules to live by. For just that reason, POLITICO Magazine put together a D.C. etiquette handbook . The Nightly team picked a few that we think are the most essential for navigating the nation’s capital:

Someone peers over your shoulder in search of a more important person? Two can play that game.

This phenomenon might be rude in other cities. Here, it’s still rude, though it’s also to be expected. The right response is to follow your conversation partner’s gaze and then ask them: “Oh my god, is that Ron Klain? I’ve been meaning to talk with him.” Then make a beeline to him. If you want to make this exit especially graceful, you can pair up the person you were talking to with someone else you know nearby.

Before trashing someone to a stranger, make sure the two aren’t married to each other.

Tons of D.C. couples are married, but they have different last names. It can get awkward if you unknowingly bad mouth someone in front of their spouse.

You don’t have to read your colleague’s book.

But you do have to tweet something nice suggesting you did, or have plans to.

But you do have to buy it at the party.

They didn’t ask you to come for your witty banter.

Don’t tell a reporter on a date that you’re off the record.

They know that already, and besides, no one cares about the consulting you do for Deloitte.

Learn the polite way to dodge people — and don’t take it personally when someone blows you off.

“Let’s get lunch” or “Let’s get drinks over recess” is how people sign off here. They likely don’t mean it. If they do, they’ll follow up with a date and time.