Photo: Science Photo Library RF
1 House Votes Overwhelmingly To Save Speaker Mike Johnson's Position
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene finally pulled the trigger on her motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives yesterday…or at least, she tried to. After introducing the motion to remove Rep. Mike Johnson, there was a motion to table Greene’s motion instead, and the vote to table was 359-43 with just 10 Republicans voting against. Greene, who helped lead the successful movement to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was greeted with boos from her fellow representatives when she announced she was filing the motion to vacate. After the overwhelming vote to dispense with the idea of kicking Johnson out of the Speaker’s chair, both Greene and Johnson addressed reporters. Johnson said that he appreciated “the show of confidence from my colleagues,” and added, “Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress.” Rep. Greene said the successful vote to table was “the ‘uniparty’ for the American people watching.”
2 White House Pauses Weapons Shipments To Israel
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified to Congress yesterday, and confirmed a rumored action the White House took last week. Austin confirmed that the US “paused one shipment of high-payload munitions” to Israel over concerns that they could be used against Hamas and could put civilians in harm’s way. The 2,000-pound bombs that were held back are what’s called “dumb bombs,” but President Biden told CNN yesterday that he would halt further weapons shipments if Israel launches a ground invasion of the city of Rafah, and mentioned artillery shells as one of the items that could be halted. The confirmation was met with angry reactions from some senators, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called the move to block weapons shipments “obscene” and “absurd.” Biden did say that the US would continue to support the Iron Dome defense system that protects Israel from rocket attacks no matter what, but also said “I’ve made it clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ware cabinet, they’re not going to get our support if in fact they go in these population centers.”
3 Tesla Quietly Removes All Its US Job Postings
There have been layoffs at Tesla over the last month, and now it looks like the automaker is approaching staffing from the other end. As of yesterday afternoon, only three job listings were on Tesla’s job board; for comparison, on May 1st there were over 3,400 open positions on the board. The company does still have 326 jobs listed on LinkedIn, but most of those are located in China…only one was listed for the US.