Principals

☞ White House: President Biden was quick to offer a congratulatory message to Kevin McCarthy after networks projected Republicans would hold the next Congress. He reiterated a willingness to work across the aisle, while warning that “the future is too promising to be trapped in political warfare.”

☞ Chuck Schumer: The New York Democrat told reporters he hopes that the marriage equality bill passes the Senate before Thanksgiving break. “The long trek to equality in America is bumpy. But it’s a good thing to bet on the side of equality in the long run,” he told reporters.

☞ Mitch McConnell: Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. handily beat back a leadership challenge from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. on Tuesday, cementing his leadership of the Senate GOP caucus for at least another two years. “I’m not in any way offended by having an opponent or having a few votes in the opposition,” McConnell told reporters after the vote.

☞ Nancy Pelosi: The Speaker plans to address her political future today, per longtime spokesperson Drew Hammill. Will she go for another leadership bid after a stronger-than-expected election?

☞ Kevin McCarthy: Republicans are officially projected to win the House and the conference had their first hours-long meeting to vote on rules for the 118th Congress. Here’s an excellent thread on what passed and failed.

It only took a week and a day. Republicans were finally projected to win the House of Representatives Wednesday night, albeit with a much slimmer majority than they initially expected. Their victory will nevertheless reshape power in Washington after two years of Democratic control, giving Republicans far more sway over Biden’s policy agenda. The divided government promises plenty of gridlock, as well as investigations into everything from Afghanistan to Hunter Biden’s business dealings. A handful of House contests remain uncalled. The member that pushed Republicans to 218 was Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., who won a competitive reelection battle in the Los Angeles area.

Sen. Rick Scott’s rebellion against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell drew a limited number of conservative supporters, including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Perhaps the biggest surprise Scott backer was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., typically a leadership ally, who said he “voted for change.” Nonetheless, the final count was a lopsided 37-10 in favor of McConnell. “You always think you could win,” Scott told Semafor after the vote. “They told me when I ran for governor that I couldn’t win that race either.”

A wider confrontation in Europe has been avoided for now, after U.S. officials backed up an assessment from Poland that the blast that killed two people in Polish territory this week likely came from a defense missile fired by Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied that it was a Ukrainian missile. “That’s not the evidence,” Biden said upon returning to the White House early Thursday morning. The carnage has renewed conversations about how to bolster air defense and some in Ukraine have renewed calls for NATO to impose a no-fly zone. “I’m not sure a no-fly zone would’ve prevented it but I wonder whether a Patriot system or some other better air defense system might have prevented it,” Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute and a former Pentagon official, told Semafor.

Former Democratic Rep. Karen Bass defeated real estate developer Rick Caruso to become the first female mayor of Los Angeles.

Michael Gerson, a columnist for the Washington Post who served as a speechwriter to President George W. Bush, is dead at 58. He helped pen many of Bush’s speeches in the aftermath of 9/11 and memorable phrases like “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in low-income schools.

— Morgan Chalfant and Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Punchbowl News: The “general consensus” among Democrats and Pelosi allies is that the Speaker will likely announce plans to leave leadership later today.

Playbook: But Pelosi took home two different speeches on Wednesday night, and some senior members predicted she would run for another term in leadership.

The Early 202: “If someone tells you they know what [Pelosi] will do, they’re wrong,” one Democratic member told the Washington Post.

The Senate is on the verge of making same-sex marriage SCOTUS-proof

THE NEWS

The Senate took a huge step towards codifying same-sex marriage rights on Wednesday with a bipartisan procedural vote that paves the way for final passage of the Respect For Marriage Act before the end of the year.

Twelve Republicans joined all Democrats in a 62 to 37 vote in favor of advancing the measure. Opposition to the bill was muted and supporters ranged from moderate co-sponsor Susan Collins, R-Me. to conservative Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.

“The vote went great!” co-sponsor Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. told reporters afterwards.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., who spearheaded bipartisan talks on the bill, said on the Senate floor she was thinking of a family whose wedding she presided over ahead of the vote.

“Passing this legislation will remove the weight of the world from their backs,” she said.

The House passed their version of the bill this summer with 47 Republicans voting with all Democrats. They will have to vote later on the Senate’s version, which includes additional religious liberty clauses and clarifies polygamy is not protected by the bill, which some Republican members raised as an issue.

“While I believe in traditional marriage, Obergefell is and has been the law of the land upon which LGBTQ individuals have relied,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in a statement explaining his “yes” vote. “This legislation provides certainty to many LGBTQ Americans, and it signals that Congress — and I — esteem and love all of our fellow Americans equally.”

The most notable “no” vote: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who twice held press conferences this week excoriating Republicans for alienating moderate voters in the midterm elections.

KADIA’S VIEW

Republicans and Democrats joining hands to pass a bill like this would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago. But over 70% of Americans support marriage equality, according to Gallup, and there are few elected Republicans anywhere eager to actively campaign on undoing protections for couples legally married today.

Even the “no” votes were careful not to be seen as bullying or belittling LGBTQ constituents. Several, like Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Bill Cassidy, R-La., claimed to be opposed based on disagreements over amendments, with statements that made no mention of once-common arguments against same-sex marriage. Many more claimed the bill was unnecessary and that the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court was unlikely to overturn marriage equality, despite a call from Justice Clarence Thomas to revisit the issue.

“Gay marriage is legal my state. It’s legal here in the District of Columbia. It’s legal in your state. So why are we doing this?” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. said to reporters.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

While most Republicans seem eager to move on, the marriage equality argument could be a topic during the 2024 presidential race. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is carving out a lane with social conservative voters ahead of a potential run, indicated to radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday he would oppose its passage. “I would vote my values if I was in the Congress of the United States, and that is I believe marriage is between one man and one woman,” Pence said.

After FTX’s meltdown, Congress might finally try to regulate crypto

What should Washington do about crypto? Thanks to the epic, multi-billion-dollar collapse of the digital currency exchange FTX, that’s suddenly become one of the hottest questions on Capitol Hill.

The House Financial Services Committee announced Wednesday that it planned to hold a hearing next month on the fall of FTX, which was forced into bankruptcy after suffering the digital equivalent of a 20th-century bank run. The panel expects its founder Sam Bankman-Fried to testify (Bankman-Fried is an investor in Semafor).

“It’s imperative that Congress establish a framework that ensures Americans have adequate protections while also allowing innovation to thrive here in the U.S.,” Patrick McHenry R-N.C., the ranking member on the financial services committee, said in a statement this week.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement on Wednesday that, without naming the firm directly, suggested it “demonstrates the need for more effective oversight of cryptocurrency markets.“

FTX is now under federal investigation for improper use of customer funds. It’s a stunning fall for a one-time billionaire who spent $40 million in the 2022 midterms, most of it benefiting Democrats. FTX’s co-CEO Ryan Salame spent roughly $23 million and much of it was channeled to Republicans, underscoring the sector’s growing political influence.

Before this week, Bankman-Fried had said he supported some new regulations on the crypto industry. In particular, he was a strong advocate of a bill assembled by Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. and John Boozman, R-Ark. that would empower the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to oversee crypto broker-dealers like Binance and Coinbase.

The legislation had notable detractors. Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, called it “too light-touch.” It may face new questions after Vox published an unexpectedly frank interview with Bankman-Fried on Wednesday, in which he said his pro-regulatory comments were mostly just a “PR” move. “Fuck regulators,” he told the news site.

Spokespeople for the Senate Agriculture Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment on the fate of that bill. However, Boozman said in a Nov. 10 statement that he and Stabenow “remain committed” to getting crypto regulation over the finish line.

But some key Democrats may be cautious about passing regulations that give the industry greater legitimacy without significantly curtailing the way it does business. During a hearing on Tuesday, Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, a vocal crypto critic, pointedly said that “private cryptocurrencies are not backed or protected by the government, and they shouldn’t be,” and noted their use in “fraud and scams, sanctions evasion, and outright theft.”

Read the full story here.

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig

One Good Text With... Hogan Gidley

• A key thread of the conventional wisdom about why Trump launched his 2024 campaign so early is that it complicates life for prosecutors who may have him their sights. Not really, Renato Mariotti writes for Politico Magazine. He thinks Trump’s announcement will have little impact on the various investigations swirling around him — or on subsequent trials should the former president be indicted.
• Pity the poor Never Trumpers — long maligned as having little-to-no political clout. Except this cycle was different, Liam Kerr writes for The Bulwark, as the loyal resistance on the right made a small but crucial difference in a number of marquee races. “The big question for the GOP is whether or not the party can course correct before some percentage of these Never Trump Republican voters become plain old, moderate Democrats.”
• The world breathed a sigh of relief over the last 24 hours as chances of a NATO-Russia confrontation dimmed. But Anne Applebaum writes in the Atlantic that the forensic debate over how a Russian-made missile ended up landing in Poland obscures a bigger trend — Moscow’s increasingly relentless attacks on Ukraine, which Applebaum calls “an advanced form of state terrorism.”

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: A group of referees sued the NBA, claiming they were improperly fired after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine because of religious objections.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: The House held a hearing to consider seating a delegate from the Cherokee Nation for the first time.

— with our partners at Ground News

Join me in Washington DC or online Nov. 18 for our third event on the future of news.

Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith will be speaking with the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, author of “Confidence Man,” the definitive new portrait of former President Trump. I will be chatting with former presidential spokesfolk Symone Sanders, Jason Miller, Joe Lockhart and Anthony Scaramucci as well as Senator Amy Klobuchar. Semafor Executive Editor Gina Chua will be sitting down with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

RSVP here to join us virtually — or to join us in person for the event and the happy hour that follows.

— Steve Clemons

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