Good day,

Let’s all spend the day holding our breath waiting for Kevin McCarthy to strip Paul Gosar of his committee assignments. Gosar, the Arizona congressman who literally lost the support of his own family, posted an animated video of himself trying to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A colleague. Oh, and also thrusting a sword in Joe Biden’s direction. You’d think that might be enough for the House GOP leader to reprimand him in some way. Right? Right?

Uh, no. In fact, while Gosar is probably safe, there are some House Republicans who look like they will lose their committee assignments. What’s their crime? Voting for the infrastructure bill, of course. Punchbowl News (subscription) reports: “The GOP leadership is bracing for rank-and-file lawmakers to attempt to strip committee assignments from the 13 Republican lawmakers who voted for the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. Several of these lawmakers are also ranking members—top Republicans on committees—and those could be at risk, too.” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted the phone numbers of the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill. How anyone can still think this is a normal political party is mind-boggling.

From this New York Times report, it’s sounding like the prosecution’s star witness in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial made a pretty good case—for the defense. Gaige Grosskreutz, the only person shot by Rittenhouse to survive, testified that he showed up at the scene to provide medical assistance. Good. But he showed up with a gun that wasn’t permitted. Not so good. And he aimed it at Rittenhouse. Really not so good. Rittenhouse, already a hero to the Proud Boys and their sort, will really be a right-wing celebrity if he’s acquitted.

A Twitter thread by a Democratic operative who just conducted some postelection focus groups in Virginia is making the rounds. Danny Barefoot gathered women of all races from across the state who had voted for Northam, Biden, Youngkin. Here’s what they think: Inflation has them angry; the schools were closed for too long, and they blame the unions and to some extent Democrats; Terry McAuliffe’s Youngkin-Trump attacks fell totally flat; and yes, they (emphatically including the Black women) want their kids to learn the bad parts of American history but want the emphasis on the good. One of the African American women said: “Our kids should be taught about slavery and all of that awfulness, but America is also a good country, and that’s what I want my kids to learn.”

At NewRepublic.com, Natalie Shure advises that one path to Democratic recovery from last week is through better local organizing. Alex Shephard sizes up the new anti-woke University of Austin. And Raina Lipsitz describes how establishment Democrats teamed with Republicans to block India Walton from winning the Buffalo mayoralty.   

Hang in there,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Yesterday’s political history question: Since I mentioned the Cultural Revolution.… Despite the general agreement on the idea that Hitler and Stalin are history’s two biggest monsters, it’s actually Chairman Mao who holds the record for most humans killed. Within five million, how many deaths is Mao responsible for?

Answer: The number I’ve most often seen is around 45 million, as you can see in this article. Most of this was due to famine, during the Great Leap Forward. 

Today’s pop culture question: Rapper Travis Scott is under scrutiny for not stopping that concert the other night where eight people were killed in crowd mayhem. But that’s only the second-worst tragedy along these lines that I can think of. In a 1979 concert, more people were killed in a festival-seating stampede at a rock show. Who was the band, what was the city, and how many died?