A lot of media outlets reported the unexpected defeat of the Farm Bill in the House this week. But there’s quite a significant backstory, which I wrote up at New York.

Back in the day, the Farm Bills enacted every five years to reauthorize major agriculture and nutrition programs were the model of bipartisanship. Indeed, the food stamp program (now called “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”) was first devised in part as a way to extend support for Farm Bills to include urban legislators who didn’t know a combine from a snowplow.

The defeat of the latest Farm Bill on the House floor shows how far the old formula has unraveled.

In more recent and ideologically driven Congresses, the bills have sometimes attracted heat from the right, involving both libertarian-ish objections to crop subsidies and hostility toward food stamps as “welfare” programs for those people. Indeed, in 2013 the whole enterprise nearly went down (and wasn’t finished until 2014) over SNAP funding, with House conservatives not thinking cuts went far enough and Senate Democrats thinking they went too far.

With Republicans now controlling both Houses, the big initial Farm Bill controversy has been over the GOP’s desire (lashed along by the Trump administration) to toughen SNAP’s already significant work requirements. Indeed, this became a signature cause for lame-duck Speaker Paul Ryan, and a sort of shriveled booby prize for his frustrated plans to clobber entitlement programs and “welfare” before leaving Congress.

The SNAP provisions of the current Farm Bill guaranteed united House Democratic opposition, and also cost the votes of a few GOP “moderates.” But the bigger problem emerged when conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus looked at the overall dynamics and decided to take the bill hostage to their demands for an immediate House vote on the Goodlatte immigration bill — a measure more conservative than the president’s own in that it offers no permanent succor to Dreamers in exchange for the reductions in legal immigration and border wall funding. This in turn was a response to a very different maneuver by a group of endangered Republican moderates in blue- or heavily Latino districts to join with Democrats and force a vote on a bill that is significantly friendlier to Dreamers without all the nativist filler in the Goodlatte and presidential proposals.

In the end, all these problems were too much of a lift, and the bill went down decisively by a 198–213 margin, with 30 Republicans (actually 29, plus Ryan, who voted no to preserve the right to make a later motion for reconsideration) opposing it. As the GOP defectors keep pointing out, the program authorizations covered by the Farm Bill don’t run out until the end of September, so there’s time to work something out on both immigration and SNAP in time to avoid the mess that occurred last time around. But with so little else of substance on the House agenda this year (at least the Senate has confirmations to absorb its time), it’s entirely possible the Farm Bill will continue to attract hostage-takers until the end of the session….

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan’s desire for a little trophy he can take home to Wisconsin representing his desire to liberate poor people from the government’s help in making ends meet will be delayed one more time.

Often things in Washington are not at all as they seem, which is the case with a new maneuver by Senate Republicans. I explained at New York.

The election-year August recess is a sacred institution in Congress, instituted initially because of the capital city’s unbearable summer weather, and maintained in the air-conditioning era to let members of Congress go home and pound the pavement in pursuit of reelection. On rare occasions it is canceled or curtailed because accomplishing some particular legislative goal or at least looking busy is considered as valuable politically as time back home.

At first blush this might seem to be the reason 16 Republican senators are urging Mitch McConnell to cancel this year’s August recess. And indeed, that’s what they are saying in a letter to their leader, as the Washington Post reports:

“Senate Republicans note that there are just 67 working days left before the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30, although that counts Fridays, when the chamber is rarely in session.

“This leaves only 12 weeks to get 12 appropriations bills out of committee and consider them on the floor,” they wrote. “That alone is an impossible task. When combined with the crucial need to confirm more nominees, it is clear we do not have enough time.”

Appropriations, or at least some of them, are almost always rolled into omnibus measures enacted just prior to the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, if not later (after a stopgap bill is enacted to keep the government operating). So the demand for 12 spending bills is a bit specious. It is true that the president has been pounding the Senate off and on for most of his presidency for not confirming his Judicial and Executive-branch nominees at the breakneck pace he would prefer. But like appropriations, that’s something the majority of the Senate typically works out by negotiating with the minority that invariably insists on the leisurely pace the chamber’s rules allow. It’s all part of standard politics.

There’s a different reason Republicans might want, and that McConnell might strongly consider, a recess cancellation: there are ten Democratic senators up this year from states carried by Donald Trump in 2016. There is just one Republican incumbent up this year from a state carried by Hillary Clinton. Yes, there are two other highly vulnerable GOP-held Senate seats at stake this fall, in Arizona and Tennessee. But they are held by lame ducks Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, respectively.

Keeping these Democratic senators off the campaign trail in August is a bankable asset for the GOP. And even if it doesn’t happen, the threat of making it happen will have value in negotiations with Democrats over items like appropriations and confirmations. As Slate’s Jim Newell observes:

“The threat of canceling an August recess, even in a non-election year, can move mountains. Though any individual senator can slow the Senate — an institution built on consent — to a crawl if he or she so desires, the Senate can move quite quickly when the consent is there. That’s what happened after McConnell announced he would cancel the first two weeks of August recess last year. The Senate only ended up staying one additional week, and confirmed a host of additional nominees en bloc at the snap of the leader’s fingers.”

Senators facing possible defeat can discover reservoirs of sweet reason in abundance if the alternative is being stuck in Washington — particularly if they aren’t getting much visible work done — as opponents savage them back home. McConnell knows this. He will probably count on its powerful effect as he mulls the August recess.

Looking at two entirely different phenomena that happen to be converging at the gas pumps in the nation’s largest state, I wrote up an analysis for New York:

In most of the country, the likelihood that the president’s new fight with Iran will boost gas prices just as voters start thinking about the November midterm elections is some additional grief already embattled Republican candidates could really do without. It could be a real pocketbook problem, as CNN reports:

“Dan Eberhart, CEO of oilfield services company Canary LLC, drew a direct connection: ‘Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal will support higher oil prices.'”

“Crude topped $70 a barrel this week for the first time in nearly four years. Hours before Trump’s announcement, federal government forecasters raised their estimate for 2018 oil prices by 10.5% to an average of $65.58 a barrel….

“Gasoline prices, which generally follow oil prices, have jumped to a national average of $2.81 a gallon, according to AAA. A gallon of gas went for $2.34 a year ago. The typical family will spend about $200 more this summer driving season, according to the Oil Price Information Service.”

But there’s a wrinkle in the potential fallout from higher gas taxes in California, where prices are already topping $4 per gallon in some locales. Prices were already rising significantly in the state thanks to a gas tax increase imposed by the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2017. The biggest increase took effect last November, but it coincided with a point in which gas stations in the state switch to a less expensive “winter blend” of fuels as smog abates. So the full weight of the tax increase is just now being felt, even as world oil and domestic gas prices are going up for various reasons, including Trump playing with fire in the Middle East.

As it happens, California voters are going to be dealing with a November ballot initiative avidly backed by the state’s Republicans, which would repeal the gas tax increase and require voter approval of future fuel tax hikes. Indeed, the struggling California GOP is hoping this measure will goose “base” turnout while convincing some swing voters that Democratic control of Sacramento is too expensive.

So that sets up an interesting situation for voters inclined to lash out at politicians for making a tank of gas cost significantly more: Do they blame Democrats for the gas tax increase or Republicans for being the party of a president who’s fecklessly throwing his weight around in the world’s most dangerous region?

You’d have to guess that if supporters of the gas tax repeal kick out the jams on advertising the easier connection between higher gas prices and higher taxes would be the easier sell. On the other hand, Democrats (and the business groups that supported the gas tax increase) will run ads making it clear that without the higher gas tax the long-overdue road and bridge repairs that are finally under way around the state will come to an abrupt halt. So easing gas prices by repealing the new taxes will come at its own price, particularly for motorists sick of potholes and traffic congestion. But punishing the GOP for Trump’s dumb foreign policies is what California’s Democratic-leaning electorate is inclined to do anyway.

In the wake of the sudden, shocking, self-immolation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s political career, I thought a bit about the broader implications and wrote it all up for New York:

[P]erhaps we should no longer be shocked by incidents like this. Here’s Esquire’s Charles Pierce [on the subject]:

“The downfall of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman completes the unholy trinity of prominent liberal New York politicians whose careers went into the acid bath because, at one level or another, they failed to see women as actual human beings. Eliot Spitzer got involved with a prostitution ring. Anthony Weiner used women as sounding boards for his own pleasure. And Schneiderman, allegedly, physically assaulted his romantic partners. And, in this, again, political pundits learn the lesson that gets drummed into every sportswriter over and over: none of us really know these guys.”

It’s not like you could see Schneiderman’s disgrace coming via some misogynistic political impulse. As David Freedlander notes, he was a progressive role model:

“Schneiderman was the scion of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer who donated generously to causes like Planned Parenthood and public radio. He came up through the world of public interest law, one of those do-good types who keep protesters away from abortion clinics and government running with a minimum of corruption.”

But even if he is a lefty “golden boy” rather than a right-wing “good old boy,” Schneiderman is, after all, a boy. And at some point, people should begin to wonder if placing big bets on male politicians at this particular juncture of history is a mite risky, all else being equal. Indeed, if equity or fair representation isn’t a good enough reason for 2018 to be a “Year of the Woman,” the significantly lower likelihood of female candidates turning out to be abusive could be the clincher, at least until pre-#MeToo-movement generations have passed from the scene. I’m not talking about any sort of ban or crusade against members of my own gender, but just a long look at the growing number of celebrities facing a reckoning and a realistic assessment of the odds of a random politician conflating power with opportunities for coercive sex.

This is true even at the highest levels of politics and government. This isn’t the sort of thing that tends to make it into print, but I cannot tell you how many times progressive friends and acquaintances (including serious feminists) have told me that after what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Democrats would be foolish to run another woman against Donald Trump in 2020, encouraging the same kind of sexist voter reactions and media coverage that beset HRC. From that perspective, the ontological necessity of denying Trump a second term outweighs another assault on the country’s most important glass ceiling; let Nikki Haley or (shudder) Joni Ernst become the first woman to serve as president and defang electoral sexism once and for all.

The reckoning, though, ought to make Democrats think less about the perils of a female nominee and a more about the potentially serious consequences of a male nominee who may, like Schneiderman, have a hidden habit of treating his success as a license to act in a beastly manner out of the public eye. Yes, all human beings, and certainly all politicians, are in some respects weak and fallible. But let’s face it: the kind of sins that tend to lose elections are not equally distributed between the sexes.

I’ve been following this sage for a while, so I was happy to write up its conclusion for New York:

House Speaker Paul Ryan attended Catholic schools as a child, so this may not be the first time he’s had his knuckles rapped by a representative of his Church. Still, his retreat in the face of an un-resignation by House Chaplain Patrick Conroy, SJ, must have been humiliating to him — not as bad as, say, if Ayn Rand had arisen from the dead to call him a “collectivist,” but close.

In case you missed the beginning of the saga, Conroy announced he was stepping down as Chaplain not long ago, and then last week it came out that he had been pushed to resign by Ryan and/or his staff. Some Democrats speculated (an impression Conroy reinforced) that a “political” prayer that might have been construed as disrespecting that great golden calf of tax cuts had gotten him cashiered. But there were mixed messages, some of them highly unfortunate, like that of U.S. Representative Mark Walker, a member of the search committee for a new chaplain, who allowed as to how the House needed someone who personally knew what it was like to deal with a complaining wife and a misbehaving kid — a job description that would exclude, of course, Catholics and probably women.

Apparently realizing that his critics were not exactly standing on high or solid ground, Conroy has now sent a strongly worded letter (on official House stationary) to Ryan rescinding his resignation, confirming that Ryan’s staff wanted him gone for previously undiscussed shortcomings in his pastoral abilities (similar to those expressed publicly by Walker), and making it clear he’d respond to specific constructive advice but nothing else. There was one particularly damaging charge he made:

“While you never spoke with me in person, nor did you send me any correspondence, on Friday, April 13th, 2018, your Chief of Staff, Jonathan Burks, came to me and informed me that you were asking for my letter of resignation. I inquired as to whether or not it was ‘for cause,’ and Mr. Burks mentioned dismissively something like ‘maybe it’s time that we had a Chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.'”

Conroy dropped a hint or two about lawyering up, and concluded with the kind of rigorous logic for which Jesuits are known:

“Had I known of any failure in providing my ministry to the House, I would have attempted to make the appropriate adjustments, but in no case would I have agreed to submit a letter of resignation without being given that opportunity. Therefore, I wish to serve the remainder of my term as House Chaplain, unless terminated ‘for cause.'”

Ryan immediately caved like an acolyte who had been caught breaking into the communion wine supply:

“I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as Chaplain of the House.”

He went on to whine a bit about his impeccable intentions, and said he’d “sit down with Father Conroy early next week so that we can move forward for the good of the whole House.” You’d almost think it was Conroy who would have to make a good confession with a firm purpose of amendment. But it’s almost certainly Paul Ryan who will be doing penance.