January 11, 2024

Thursday, January 11, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

Invite at least one other person to subscribe today! https://buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

____________________________

Joe is always busy.

Trump rants and lies, says gas is $9/gallon.

____________________________

Kamala is always busy.

Always remember that the Divine 9, the nine historically Black Greek-letter sororities and fraternities, are a Biden-Harris ace in the hole.

____________________________

January 6 Editorial calls out Missouri Senator, Josh Hawley.

Editorial from St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Jan. 6 showed that, yes, it could happen here. The voters must not let it.

Three years ago Saturday, the uniquely American conceit that “it can’t happen here” was debunked once and for all: A sitting American president refused to accept his legitimate electoral defeat, using toxic lies and incitement to violence in an attempt to overturn a valid election so he could remain in power.

Nothing like the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had ever happened before. In the more than two centuries of the nation’s existence, no foreign assailant had ever managed to so grievously undermine America’s confidence in its democratic institutions as its own president, his congressional enablers and his thousands of violent followers did on that terrible day.

And yet, the ensuing 36 months have in some ways confronted the nation with even more disturbing realities about itself in the current political era — beginning with the surreal fact that Donald Trump remains a politically viable presidential candidate going into the 2024 election cycle, despite his unprecedented (and continuing) betrayal of our constitutional democracy.

So brazen has been the revisionism of Trump’s supporters regarding Jan. 6 that it’s important to review even the most basic, uncontroverted facts.

Trump had spent the preceding months softening the ground with his baseless but persistent big lie that the November 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. As dozens of court rulings (including by Trump-appointing judges) ultimately confirmed, there was never a molecule of evidence to suggest significant election fraud.

Trump’s gaseous lies might have merely dissipated into the atmosphere had it not been for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was the first senator to object to ballot results. That damnable, self-serving stunt is what made it necessary for Congress that day to debate the undebatable legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory — thus providing a time-and-place target for the MAGA madness of Jan. 6.

The rest is well-trodden history: Trump’s exhortation to his followers near the Capitol that day to “fight like hell.” His public vilification of Mike Pence for refusing to back his lies, literally endangering his own vice president’s life as the mob advanced. His refusal, for hours, to tamp down the violence as the Capitol was overrun, police were assaulted and several people died. His eventual, reluctant public statement telling the mob to go home — while praising their supposed patriotism.

No, the mob wasn’t engaged in “tourism,” as some Trump allies in Congress have pathetically suggested. No, the melee wasn’t instigated by the FBI, as an astonishing 3 in 10 Republican voters believe today, according to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

This was an attempt by thousands of Americans, acting at the behest of a sitting president, to thwart the certification of election results because they didn’t like the outcome. Period. The fact that this is anything other than permanently disqualifying to any political future for Trump is the ultimate measure of America’s blindly, stubbornly tribal politics today.

Trump’s culpability is clear, but he isn’t alone. Scores of Republicans in both houses of Congress — most of whom are still there — joined Hawley in his attempt to disenfranchise millions of Americans by blocking certification of valid election results. Later, most House Republicans refused to join the successful impeachment vote against Trump, then the Republican-controlled Senate refused to convict.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell assured the public that this didn’t mean Trump would “get away with” his actions, noting, “We have a criminal justice system in this country.”

But now that Trump is facing justified criminal charges under that system, Republican politicians around the country are (with zero evidence) accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department. Trump himself is arguing that he should have total immunity from prosecution because the Senate didn’t convict him after he was impeached. Arguments don’t get much more circular than this.

The story of Jan. 6 isn’t over. Trump’s anti-democracy rhetoric has only grown more corrosive since Jan. 6, including calls to jail his enemies, use the military against protesters and suspend the Constitution.

If Jan. 6 should have taught America anything, it’s that it almost did happen here — and that it still could.

The fact that, three years later, large swaths of the electorate either don’t understand that or are actively cheering the possibility should qualify, far and away, as the most urgent issue before the voters in the coming elections. (Editorial Board, St Louis Post-Dispatch).

____________________________

Trump update.

Vocal anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie is out of the Republican race.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mostly stood alone in this year's Republican primary contest as an uninhibited critic of the party's frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.

But he backed off that role Wednesday, just days before the first in the nation Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.

"It's clear to me tonight that there isn't a path to me to win the nomination which is why I'm suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States," Christie said at a town hall in Windham, N.H.

Christie ended his presidential campaign after his stance on Trump's leadership and role in the Republican Party proved to diverge too far from where the GOP currently stands. Numerous conservatives had additionally been calling on Christie to end his campaign for weeks, so that former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who's been surging in the polls, could have a stronger chance to beat Trump for the GOP nomination.

Christie did not endorse another candidate at the time of his announcement but he did pledge to ensure that "in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again. And that's more important than my own personal ambition."

His announcement was somewhat overshadowed by a hot mic moment ahead of the town hall. In a live feed on his campaign YouTube page, his mic went live around 5:10 p.m. E.T. and he was speaking about his presidential rivals. Of Haley, he praised her for "punching above her weight" but said "she's going to get smoked." On Ron DeSantis, he said the Florida governor "is petrified" before his mic was abruptly cut.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Haley commended Christie, who she called a "friend," for a "hard-fought campaign."

"Voters have a clear choice in this election: the chaos and drama of the past or a new generation of conservative leadership," she wrote. "I will fight to earn every vote, so together we can build a strong and proud America."

While Christie failed to distinguish himself in the 2016 race, the former U.S. attorney tried to set himself apart this time around by confronting Trump. Christie supported and advised Trump during his presidency, even helping Trump prepare for debates against then-candidate President Biden in 2020. But the former governor turned against Trump over the former president's handling of the 2020 election results and role in the Jan. 6 insurrection .

"No one was willing to take the case directly to Donald Trump as to why he — and, through his conduct, had disqualified himself for ever being president of the United States again," he said in an interview with the NPR Politics Podcast. "I want to make that case. I've been making that case. I think it's important not only for my party, but for our country."

Christie pressed other candidates to directly criticize Trump as well. In the fourth GOP debate in December, he said in reference to his fellow candidates Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, "Folks like these three guys on the stage make it seem like his conduct is acceptable. Let me make it clear: His conduct is unacceptable. He's unfit, and be careful of what you're going to get if you ever got another Donald Trump term."

Christie spent the last of his campaign throwing a Hail Mary in New Hampshire, where he launched his run months ago. He hoped that after an unmemorable performance in the first GOP debate, conservative voters in the first-in-the-nation primary would help him form a clearer path to the nomination.

But he failed to get the headway he so desperately needed. It didn't help that he didn't get the backing of the most influential politician in New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu, who endorsed Haley last December and called Christie's bid "an absolute dead end."

"I know he says he wants to stay in the race to speak the truth about Trump," Sununu said, "but that translating to votes in a primary is a very different thing, and he's hit a ceiling."

But Christie tried to stay in the race for as long as he can. In an ad that dropped on the last day of 2023, he posed this question: "Here's the choice: who do we want to be as a country?" Speaking directly to the camera, he continues: "Donald Trump — he will sell the soul of this country. I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes. ... But I will always tell you the truth."

By the time Christie bowed out, national polls had him in second to last place, polling at a meager 3.6%.

Trump, meanwhile, holds a dominating lead, polling at 61.3% nationally — a sign that the MAGA leader's pull with his base remains strong, despite four high-profile cases being litigated against him.

In concluding his suspension speech, Christie said he will continue to fight forces — presumably Trump — that threaten the country.

"Even though I am suspending this campaign, I am not going away and my voice is not going away," he said. "I am not going be a part of a generation who willingly stands by and says, 'It's too hard. He's too loud, he's too strong,'" Christie said in reference to Trump.

"That's what defeat looks and sounds like," Christie continued. "And the only country that can defeat America, is America. And the only people that can stop it, are us." (NPR).

More reminders of why Biden must win in 2024.

Trump vowed he’d ‘never’ help Europe if it’s attacked, top EU official says.

‘By the way NATO is dead,’ the former (and potential future) US president added in private meeting.

BRUSSELS — One of Europe's most senior politicians recounted how former U.S. President Donald Trump privately warned that America would not come to the EU's aid if it was attacked militarily.

"You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you," Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was also present at a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO," Trump also said, according to Breton. "And he added, ‘and by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,'" Breton said about the tense meeting, where the EU's then-trade chief Phil Hogan was also present.

Breton told the anecdote at an event in the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday, just days before the Republican Party holds its January 15 caucus in Iowa, the opening contest in Trump's bid to win the Republican nomination for a run at returning to the White House. Party members will cast their votes for candidates including Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who both trail way behind the ex-president in opinion polls.

Brussels is rife with fear about the possibility Trump will return to the U.S. presidency.

As the commissioner in charge of the EU's industrial policy and defense agenda, Breton has pushed for the EU to boost its own self-defense capabilities amid Russia's war in Ukraine, and on Tuesday floated a €100 billion fund to ramp up arms production in the bloc.

"That was a big wake-up call and he may come back," Breton said about Trump. "So now more than ever, we know that we are on our own, of course. We are a member of NATO, almost all of us, of course we have allies, but we have no other options but to increase drastically this pillar in order to be ready [for] whatever happens.”  (Politico)

Trump rhetoric, Republican candidates’ ads frighten immigrants in Iowa

Norah Innis, an immigrant from Liberia, working at Celebrity International Store, her West African grocery in Des Moines.

DES MOINES — The grocery store had been her American Dream, but now Norah Innis wondered if she’d be better off bolting the doors and moving back to Liberia.

Sales were down. Rent was harder to pay. And campaign ads dominating Iowa’s screens and airwaves ahead of the first Republican showdown of 2024 seemed to paint immigrants like her as the enemy.

She worried the rhetoric could fuel violence.

“It scares me,” said Innis, 60, tying plastic bags of peanuts in her shop catering to West African transplants, the Celebrity International Store. “It scares me a lot.”

As the race for the White House officially kicks off and GOP contenders jostle for votes before next week’s Iowa caucuses, people who’ve settled here from all over the world say the intensifying spotlight on border security and caustic language lobbed by Republican candidates has filled them with dread.

The fire hose of campaign vitriol targeting “undocumented” or “illegal” migrants crushes room for nuanced debate, some say, threatening to demonize anyone who looks foreign. Naturalized citizens fear their neighbors might lump them in the same category as “criminals” and “terrorists,” and even those who agree with cracking down on unauthorized entry are disturbed by the relentless condemnation of people they see as fleeing danger or seeking a better life.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Republican front-runner Donald Trump said at an event in New Hampshire last month, doubling down on phrasing his critics have slammed as strikingly similar to Adolf Hitler’s talking points.

“They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world,” the former president continued. “Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia.”

His competitors, aiming to lure voters in a Trump-loving party, have largely shied away from addressing his word choice.

Since the start of December, the three leading Republican candidates and groups backing them have spent nearly $5 million on ads in Iowa bashing what they call too-lax immigration policies, with Trump and his allies hammering the topic hardest by far, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending. The spots feature footage of people crowding at the southern border while voice-overs warn of bloodthirsty assailants, fentanyl dealers and, as one Trump spot put it, “the possibility of a Hamas attack.”

A super PAC supporting Nikki Haley declared the former governor of South Carolina would seal the border “before it’s too late.” Another group favoring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis aired a clip of the candidate pledging to protect the southern border with lethal force, saying, “We’re going to leave them stone-cold dead.”

The doomsday imagery has irked some leaders in Des Moines, who point out that Iowa’s capital is home to one of the fastest-growingimmigrant populations in the nation. That pool of talent fills critical jobs that would otherwise sit open, said Robert Brownell, a Republican serving his sixth term on the Polk County Board of Supervisors, yet such context is lost in the political cacophony.

“You can’t call for a moderate policy,” he said — like streamlining work visas for asylum seekers — “without being accused of favoring ‘unfettered immigration’ or ‘letting every criminal come in.’”

Innis, the Liberian shopkeeper, had been trying to ignore what she viewed as political negativity, focusing more on her customers looking for homemade pepper sauce or a wax-print dress imported from Ghana.

“It’s too stressful,” she said.

Her son, however, followed the media blitz with apprehension. Melvin Paye, 45, had been offended when Trump referred to African nations as “s---hole countries” back in 2018. But “poisoning the blood of our country”?

“That turns us against each other,” he said, visiting his mother one early January afternoon as she packaged produce.

People were already angry about inflation, which had shrunk Innis’s profits and stung her son, too, when the cost of rubber jumped and the tire plant where he works slashed his hours. Paye had blamed the war in Ukraine for scrambling supply chains, but he worried Trump’s words were giving people another scapegoat.

“There could be more fighting,” he said. “More situations like January 6th.”

Their family had fled Liberia in 2002 as civil war raged, landing in Des Moines after spending three years in an Ivory Coast refugee camp. Paye sympathized with the migrants in the campaign ads.

“If Liberia bordered the United States,” he said, “we would have done the same thing.”

Now Liberia has a new president-elect, a former school janitor popular among Paye’s friends for his steady demeanor and scandal-free record. Optimism about the future there is contagious.

“That’s why everyone wants to go back,” Innis said.

Not her son, though. He’d pledged allegiance to the United States on the day he became a citizen in 2010. If trouble reached his doorstep, he had a pistol in his safe.

“I’ll stay,” he said, “and defend myself if I have to.”

Gloria Henriquez working at Tullpa, the Peruvian restaurant she owns in Des Moines.

At home, Gloria Henriquez could switch off the TV.

But at Planet Fitness in suburban Urbandale, sweating off calories on the elliptical, she couldn’t avoid the screens replaying footage of people at the southern border.

“I shake my head every time,” said the 47-year-old owner of Tullpa, a Peruvian restaurant, who was born in El Salvador.

After seeing those campaign spots, she said, she needs to calm down in one of the gym’s massage chairs.

The advertising spree leading up to the Republican caucuses reminded her of a co-worker she’d met shortly after relocating from New York to central Iowa five years ago to care for her sick mother. The man spoke often of his love for Trump and disdain for immigrants. He boasted about traveling to Arizona to volunteer for a vigilante group “guarding” the southern border.

“It was so scary because he looked very inoffensive,” she recalled. Nothing about his appearance suggested he enjoyed hunting for people he viewed as intruders. Those migrants, she thought, were probably looking for what she had sought: peace and opportunity.

Now Henriquez worried that Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments would inspire more suspicion of outsiders.

“I will use Trump’s own words: He will poison Americans’ mind-sets,” Henriquez said. “They will see an immigrant and say, ‘Oh, they ruin us.’”

Iowa, she said, is her “forever home.” She’ll be voting for the first time in November.

The pastor didn’t talk about politics — not directly.

His congregation of mostly refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of whom have become U.S. citizens in the last decade, voted right and left. Eugene Kiruhura, 37, wanted to create a haven for everyone at their church in Urbandale.

Lately, though, some worshipers had confided to him that they were stressed about the campaign noise — who could forget the stakes of 2024 when even C-SPAN occupied a nearby billboard? — so Kiruhura had been turning to one of his favorite Bible verses from the Book of Matthew.

“I was a stranger and you invited me in,” he recited as one of those worshipers joined him in his office with a toy basketball hoop on the door.

Samson Irakiza, 31, nodded along. He knew the next lines:

I needed clothes and you clothed me.

I was sick and you looked after me.

The verse guided Irakiza at work for a home health company, where he’d climbed from caring for elderly folks, who were almost always White, to supervising the staffers, who are almost entirely Black immigrants.

Trump’s “poisoning the blood” speeches had startled him. Rebels in his central African home country had tried to kill off his Tutsi ethnic group, deriding them as “cockroaches.” Both Irakiza and the pastor had fled to tent camps across the border in Burundi before making it to Iowa, where hostility flared in other ways.

Recently, Irakiza shared, one of his friends, an UberEats delivery driver, had walked by the house of a White man who shouted: What is that Black guy doing here?

“We all have the same blood,” Irakiza said. “We aren’t poisoning anything.”

“Those words create conflict,” Kiruhura agreed, so they must respond peacefully, he counseled, through their actions.

The church regularly organized opportunities for community service. When the next snowstorm hit, the Congolese immigrants would trek out with shovels, offering to clear the driveways of their aging neighbors.

These good deeds, the pastor hoped, could help eclipse what Iowans were seeing on television. (Washington Post).

Trump’s bid to argue in court gets nixed after he won’t agree to judge’s rules.

“He may not deliver a campaign speech,” the judge wrote after Trump asked to personally give closing arguments in his civil fraud trial.

NEW YORK — Donald Trump wants to personally deliver a closing argument during his civil fraud trial on Thursday, but his lawyer balked when presented with a lengthy set of preconditions on what the former president could say.

The surprise last-minute request from Trump appeared to be dead Wednesday afternoon after the judge told Trump’s lawyer that the former president would have to abide by various restrictions if he wanted to speak in court — backed by a threat that the judge would fine him and remove him from the courtroom if he broke the rules.

The judge’s deadline passed without Trump’s legal team agreeing to the terms.

In an email exchange posted on the court’s docket, Justice Arthur Engoron told Trump’s lawyer, Chris Kise, that Trump could speak during closing arguments if Trump agreed to limit his speech to commentary on the evidence and on the application of the law to that evidence.

“He may not seek to introduce new evidence. He may not ‘testify.’ He may not comment on irrelevant matters,” Engoron wrote. “In particular, and without limitation, he may not deliver a campaign speech, and he may not impugn myself, my staff, plaintiff, plaintiff’s staff, or the New York State Court System.”

The judge wrote that if Trump were to violate the rules, “I will not hesitate to cut him off in mid-sentence and admonish him.” If Trump were to continue to violate the rules, “I will end his closing argument and prevent him from making any further statements in the courtroom,” the judge wrote.

And if Trump were to violate a gag order that bars him from commenting on Engoron’s staff, “I will immediately direct court officers to remove him from the courtroom forthwith and will fine him not less than $50,000,” the judge wrote.

Engoron said all of his conditions needed to be accepted by Kise in writing, as well as by Trump himself “personally, on the record, just before he speaks.”

Kise responded in an email that Trump “cannot agree (nor would i recommend he do so) to the proposed preconditions and prior restraints,” adding that they were “fraught with ambiguities.”

The closing arguments scheduled for Thursday are the final phase in a civil trial that began in October against Trump, his adult sons and various business associates. New York Attorney General Tish James has accused Trump and the other defendants of exaggerating the value of Trump real estate properties to receive favorable terms from banks and insurers. James is asking the judge to impose $370 million in penalties.

It is extremely unusual for a defendant with legal counsel to personally deliver any part of a closing argument of a trial. But Trump has consistently sought to use the fraud trial as a makeshift soapbox. When he took the witness stand in November, he repeatedly lashed out at both Engoron and James while giving rambling answers that sometimes echoed his speeches at his political rallies. And he has often paused while entering and exiting the courtroom to gripe about the case and deliver campaign rhetoric to a bank of TV cameras stationed in the hallway of the Manhattan courthouse.

Engoron imposed the gag order in October after Trump publicly vilified the judge’s law clerk. The judge later fined Trump twice for violating the order.

In the email exchange Wednesday, Kise asked that Trump be allowed to speak during the closing arguments without Engoron’s limitations, to which the judge wrote: “Your and your client’s rejection of the reasonable, normal limits I am imposing on any argument by Mr. Trump, which are the same limits that the law imposes on any person making a closing argument, completely justifies the need to impose them.”

After several extensions of a deadline to accept the conditions, Engoron wrote to Kise, “I WILL NOT GRANT ANY FURTHER EXTENSIONS,” and followed up by writing that because Kise hadn’t agreed to the terms Engoron set out, the judge assumed the former president won’t deliver a closing argument.

Trump is not required to attend the arguments at all, but he is expected to appear at Thursday’s session even if he is not permitted to argue personally. It will be his second courtroom appearance in three days: On Tuesday, he sat in a courtroom in Washington during an oral argument over his claims of immunity from federal criminal charges for election interference.

That argument lasted over an hour. Trump remained silent the whole time. (Politico).

____________________________

Another reminder why you are not a Republican.

GOP governors, including the governors from Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming are choosing not to provide lunches to poor children in their states this summer.

4 states—Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Wyoming—have not extended Medicaid eligibility to low-income individuals.

____________________________

The Battle of the Subpoenas.

Hunter Biden’s Capitol Visit Surprised Republicans, and His Father’s Advisers.

The White House is trying to keep its distance as the president’s son deploys an aggressive new strategy.

Hunter Biden … [made a surprise visit to ] a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday. He has been eager to fight back against attacks and to try to wrest back control of his life story

When Hunter Biden interrupted a House Oversight Committee vote over holding him in contempt of Congress on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers were not the only ones caught off guard. President Biden’s advisers were surprised to see him there, too.

According to several people with knowledge of the younger Mr. Biden’s legal strategy, he and his legal team, which includes the Washington scandal lawyer Abbe Lowell and the Los Angeles-based lawyer Kevin Morris, saw no reason to give the White House a heads-up.

Hunter Biden and his team had wanted the response they got: shock, surprise and, ultimately, unwillingness by Republicans to swear him in on the spot so he could testify in public, rather than in the closed-door deposition that the G.O.P. had demanded.

The chaotic scene on Capitol Hill came as the White House has been trying to keep its distance while the president’s son deploys an aggressive new legal strategy to hit back against the various political and legal battles he is facing. (New York Times).

Jamie Raskin made it clear at the House yesterday why he is not a Republican.

Jared Moskowitz, Democrat from Florida, joined Raskin in the battle, listing all the Republicans who didn’t comply with House subpoenas when Democrats were the majority.

Moskowitz: Here is the subpoena to representative Scott Perry, who did not comply. Here is the subpoena to mark meadows who did not comply. Here is the subpoena to Jim Jordan who did not comply with a lawful subpoena.

Touch to watch. 👇

He also made it clear why no one should be GOP. when he taunted House Republicans with a large blow-up photo.

One more thing.

Though the numbers are close, it is looking more and more likely Democrats will win back the House this year, as more and more House Republicans withdraw from running.

House GOP faces sudden flood of retirements after holiday break.

Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer and Larry Bucshon.

In an election cycle marked by an unusually high number of congressional retirements, House Republicans are facing a burst of new retirement announcements as they return from the holiday recess.

Why it matters: Members have complained that the chaos of last year and the overarching decline in legislative productivity makes Congress a less fruitful place to work, especially for less publicity-hungry lawmakers.

• Some have also lamented the increasingly partisan, aggressive and event violent nature of contemporary national political life.

Driving the news: Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) became the latest to announce his retirement, saying in a statement on Monday that "it became clear to me over the Christmas holiday ... that the time has come to bring my season in public service to a conclusion."

• That follows announcements from Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.). All three are senior members of their respective committees who have been in Congress more than a decade.

• Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) also announced that he's jumping into the race for retiring Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-Utah) seat after initially passing on a run.

• And Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) announced that his resignation to become president of Youngstown State University will take effect on Jan. 21, more than a month and a half earlier than expected.

Zoom in: All five of those members are considered institutionalists, but they represent safely Republican seats that may very well elevate more ideologically extreme members in their place.

• The concern among many of the members opting to remain in Congress is that these retirements could serve to exacerbate congressional gridlock and partisanship.

What we're hearing: One House Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about internal conference dynamics, cited two factors that likely led to the sudden rush of retirements.

1. A long recess reminding members of the comforts of home and family life, away from the often back-biting atmosphere of Washington, D.C.

2. The desire to wait until close to their state's federal candidacy filing deadlines in order to "orchestrate succession" for their seat.

By the numbers: House Republicans and Democrats each have around a dozen members retiring or resigning by the end of the year.

That includes very senior members such as Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Democratic Steering and Policy Committee co-chair Dan Kildee (D-Mich.).

• Another dozen Democrats and four Republicans are running for higher office – mostly Senate seats.

What we're watching: The vast majority of states have deadlines between now and mid-July, meaning most members still have plenty of time to deliberate on their next steps.

• The House Republican who spoke to Axios predicted more retirement announcements are likely on the way. (Axios).

[ Greg Pence, Incumbent Republican from Indiana and brother of the former Vice President, also announced he would not stand for re-election]

____________________________

Sometimes, change happens.

Back row from left. Nelsie Yang, Rebecca Noecker, Cheniqua Johnson and Hwa Jeong Kim.

Seated from left. Saura Jost, Anika Bowie and Mitra Jalali.

St. Paul, Minnesota, witnessed a historic moment when it welcomed its new city council composed entirely of women. Among the seven council members, six are women of color and all are under the age of 40.

____________________________