Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.

5. It's hard to overstate the degree to which Trump's policies are specifically hurting the white, rural, lower income communities that are his base. But there's a direct line to that pain in Murphysboro. /fin

4. And then I see @charlesgaba.com has singled out Murphysboro - home of 17th St BBQ - as perhaps the biggest spike in healthcare costs as a result of GOP healthcare policies / letting the ACA subsidies expire. acasignups.net/25/12/01/mur...

3. Specifically, they wanted to make sure I knew how much (a) soy tariffs would hurt that corn/soy heavy farming community and (b) how much the attacks on our healthcare system would hurt their rural community.

2. But this story sadly isn't about great BBQ. It's about my townhall - which was in Mike Bost's district. A number of folks showed up in full MAGA regalia, but were very polite. They were also very concerned because of how Trump's policies were hurting them.

TL;DR: McCarthy agreed to a self-destruct button so he could be speaker, they hit the self destruct button and subsequently decided the self-destruct button was a bad idea. Give an idiot a toy, and they will break it. And so the toy is now gone.

It is worth noting that historically the MTV has always required greater thresholds to prevent that kind of nonsense. The only reason the 1 vote threshold existed in the 118th was because McCarthy agreed to make that rules change during the 15-round vote-a-palooza that "earned" him that job.

That was a change made to the rules in this Congress after the ejection of McCarthy under the rules of the 118th Congress proved the folly of allowing only one member to introduce an MTV when your party is full of wing nuts.

Under current House rules a motion to vacate the chair is only privileged (and therefore, subject to mandatory floor vote) if it is (a) sponsored by a member of the majority party and (b) cosponsored by at least 8 other members of the majority party.