++Meat production is making lifesaving drugs less effective. Where’s the FDA? +
+ ++The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew that America’s meat industry had a drug problem. +
++For decades, evidence had amassed that the widespread use of antibiotics to help chickens, pigs, and cattle grow faster — and survive the crowded conditions of factory farms — was causing bacteria to mutate and develop resistance to antibiotics. By 2009, US agriculture companies were buying up two-thirds of what are termed medically important antibiotics — those used in human medicine. This in turn has made those precious, lifesaving drugs less effective for people. +
++Over time, once easily treatable human infections, like sepsis, urinary tract infections, and tuberculosis, became harder or sometimes impossible to treat. A foundational component of modern medicine was starting to crumble. But it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that the FDA finally took the basic steps of requiring farmers to get veterinary prescriptions for antibiotics and banning the use of antibiotics to make animals grow faster — steps that some European regulators had taken a decade or more prior. +
++Thanks to those two actions alone, sales of medically important antibiotics for livestock plummeted 42 percent from 2015 to 2017. But according to Matthew Wellington of the Public Interest Research Group, the FDA’s reforms went after the low-hanging fruit, and they didn’t go nearly far enough. Now, in a concerning course reversal, antibiotic sales for use in livestock ticked back up 7 percent from 2017 to 2021, per a new FDA report. The chicken industry, which had led the pack in reducing antibiotic use on farms, bought 12 percent more antibiotics in 2021 than in 2020. +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/KmRHP_antibiotic_sales_for_livestock_plummeted_then_ticked_back_up__1_.png)
++It’s a sobering turn of events with life-and-death implications. In 2019, antibiotic-resistant bacteria directly killed over 1.2 million people, including 35,000 Americans, and more than 3 million others died from diseases where antibiotic resistance played a role — far more than the global toll of HIV/AIDS or malaria, leading the World Health Organization to call antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today.” +
++Public health advocates want to see the FDA take the threat much more seriously, and often point to Europe as a role model. From 2011 to 2021, antibiotic sales for use in livestock fell by almost half across the European Union, and use per animal is now around half that of the US. Last year, the EU implemented perhaps its most significant reform yet: banning the routine use of antibiotics to prevent disease, reserving their use for only when animals are actually sick. That critical step is expected to slash the continent’s antibiotic use further. +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341538/GettyImages_822219892.jpg)
John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images
++It’s unlikely the FDA will follow in Europe’s footsteps any time soon. Asked about an EU-style ban on preventive use of antibiotics, an FDA spokesperson responded, “The laws in the US and our livestock population are not the same as that of the EU or other countries. The FDA’s initiatives to promote judicious use and reduce AMR [antimicrobial resistance] were devised specifically for the US and the conditions we face with the aim of maximizing effectiveness and cooperation of drug sponsors, veterinarians, and animal producers.” +
++The FDA and the US food industry have proven that they can make progress on the issue — but to keep antibiotics working, they need to do a lot more. That will require them to tackle beef and pork, two of the more stubborn and complex sectors of America’s meat system that just can’t seem to quit antibiotics, since doing so could demand substantive changes to how animals are farmed for food. +
++The American antibiotic-free revolution that wasn’t +
++It wasn’t just the FDA’s new rules that caused antibiotic sales for livestock to plunge in a two-year period — Big Chicken played a part too. +
++In the early 2000s, the nation’s fourth-largest chicken producer Perdue Farms began efforts to wean its birds off antibiotics, which it achieved in 2016 by changing chickens’ diets and replacing antibiotics with vaccines and probiotics. At first, chicken raised without antibiotics cost 50 percent more, but the company says it has since been able to all but close the cost differential. +
++In the mid-2010s, while Perdue was making progress, activists leveraged the momentum and successfully convinced McDonald’s to source chicken raised without medically important antibiotics. Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest poultry producer, then committed to reducing antibiotic use, contributing to a “domino effect” in which producers and restaurants made further pledges to reduce antibiotics in poultry, said Wellington. +
++By 2020, a little over half of America’s 9 billion chickens farmed for meat were raised without antibiotics, according to an industry survey. +
++The sea change in chicken production demonstrated it was possible to quickly scale down antibiotics in farming, but it didn’t do much to reduce overall use, as the chicken industry only used 6 percent of antibiotics in agriculture in 2016. And the momentum didn’t spread to other parts of the meat business, like beef and pork, which together account for over 80 percent of medically important antibiotics fed to farmed animals. +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341608/uDHTB_about_5_million_kilograms_of_antibiotics_were_sold_for_use_in_pork_and_beef_in_2021.png)
++Some of the lack of progress in beef and pork comes down to the simple fact that pigs and cattle are raised differently than chickens. Chickens are slaughtered at just six or seven weeks old, so the chance they’ll get sick is lower than pigs, who are slaughtered at six months old, or cattle, slaughtered at around three years of age. +
++The chicken industry is also vertically integrated, meaning a company like Tyson or Perdue controls virtually every link in the supply chain, so making big changes like cutting out antibiotics is easier than in the more decentralized supply chain of beef. For example, the typical steer will change hands several times before slaughter, going from a breeder to pasture grazing to a feedlot, all of which make it harder to coordinate an antibiotic-free regimen. In the last few months of their life cattle are also fed a high-grain diet that they aren’t adapted to digest, which increases the chance they’ll develop a liver abscess, a condition that’s prevented with — you guessed it — antibiotics. +
++The pork sector, like poultry, is also vertically integrated, but the industry has largely opposed animal welfare, environmental, and antibiotic reforms. Antibiotics in pig production shot up 25 percent from 2017 to 2021. +
++There’s also no pork or beef giant that’s taken the antibiotic-free leap like Perdue did for chicken. That could change in the years ahead: McDonald’s, the world’s largest beef purchaser, announced at the end of 2022 that it plans to reduce antibiotic use in its beef supply chain. However, the announcement didn’t come with a timeline, which worries advocates like Wellington, and the company has failed to make good on other pledges. +
++Although voluntary change can move the needle, without regulation, industry has little incentive to make the dramatic reductions needed to safeguard antibiotics. While the FDA has prohibited meat producers from using antibiotics to speed up growth— their original purpose in agriculture — some of the antibiotics that promote growth, like tylosin, are still allowed for disease prevention, a loophole that disincentivizes producers from reducing antibiotics, Wellington said: “Our concern has always been that they’re just putting a different name on the same kind of use, which is a problem.” +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341566/GettyImages_957346800.jpg)
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
++In response to this concern, an FDA spokesperson said, “Veterinarians are on the front lines and as prescribers, they’re in the best position to ensure that both medically important and non-medically important antimicrobials are being used appropriately.” +
++Aside from outright banning the routine use of medically important antibiotics to prevent disease, Wellington said he’d like to see the FDA take three actions: set a target of reducing antibiotic use by 50 percent by the end of 2025 (based on 2010 levels); publish data on antibiotic use, not just sales; and limit the duration of antibiotic courses for farmed animals. +
++An FDA spokesperson said specific reduction targets weren’t possible because the agency doesn’t know how many antibiotics farmers are using: “We cannot effectively monitor antimicrobial use without first putting a system in place for determining [a] baseline and assessing trends over time.” The agency right now only collects sales data, and it’s been exploring a voluntary public-private approach to collect and report real-world use data. +
++Some states haven’t waited on federal regulators: Maryland and California have both restricted the use of antibiotics on farms. +
++How the Europeans — and some Americans — are quitting antibiotics on the farm +
++Just because it’s difficult to reduce antibiotics in beef and pork production doesn’t mean it’s impossible, as the story of Iowa pig farmers Tim and Deleana Roseland demonstrates. +
++In 2005, they switched from raising pigs in the conventional manner — tightly cramped and fed a steady diet of antibiotics — to raising pigs for Niman Ranch, a higher-welfare meat company now owned by Perdue. That required the Roselands to ditch the routine use of antibiotics. +
++“I was nervous about it at first but as it turned out, it was no big deal whatsoever,” Tim Roseland said. But he added that it wouldn’t have been possible with his old setup: “There’s too much overcrowding, small pens, too many pigs crammed into a little area.” +
++Their newer system gives each pig more space in larger pens, and bedding that they root through and chew on, instead of, when they’re packed into factory farms, chewing on each other. They also give the pigs more vaccines and feed them probiotics. +
++And there’s a lot to learn from the Europeans: Denmark, the continent’s second-largest pork producer, has become the de facto case study in how to wean Big Meat off antibiotics. In the early 1990s, it started phasing out antibiotics in pigs with little impact on the industry. From 1992 to 2008, antibiotic use per pig fell by over 50 percent, and while pig mortality went up in the short term, by 2008 it had dropped back to near-1992 levels. +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341595/GettyImages_96838599.jpg)
Tom Stoddart/Getty Images
++The small country’s transformation wasn’t a matter of rocket science, but a suite of smart management practices: more frequent barn cleaning, better ventilation, later piglet weaning, more space per pig, extra vaccines, and experimenting with feed and additives. +
++All this comes with difficult tradeoffs: antibiotic-free pork costs more and requires more land, which increases its carbon footprint. But we can’t expect to have cheap meat forever without a cost to public health, an uncomfortable truth that’s led many environmental and public health groups to champion a message of “less but better” meat. +
++“I think the fact that Denmark, despite very low antibiotic use since 1995, is still one of the biggest pork exporters in the world, already speaks for itself,” said Francesca Chiara, a director at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. +
++Given the projected rise of global antibiotic sales for agriculture, Denmark’s example may not be speaking loudly enough. But it’s time we listen — nothing less than the future of human medicine is at stake. +
++
++
++Kim Jong Un’s military plans are raising tensions with the South to new heights. +
++Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at the highest in years after an unprecedented year of missile launches on the part of North Korea — and a more bellicose posturing from the South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol. +
++In 2022, North Korea launched at least 95 missiles — more than in any previous year — and shot off another short-range missile New Year’s Day of this year, according to the New York Times. The tests are the product of several factors, including domestic North Korean politics, as well as the rapid and extreme deterioration of diplomatic relations between Kim Jong Un’s regime and the US-South Korea alliance since 2019’s failed summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, between Kim and former President Donald Trump. +
++Since Yoon’s inauguration in May 2022, the South and the US have pursued a tit-for-tat strategy in dealing with the North, pursuing joint military exercises which the North sees as provocative, and even sending unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Pyongyang after one of the North’s own drones buzzed Seoul, South Korea’s capital. +
++Despite a 2018 resolution between the North and the South prohibiting military hostilities between the two nations, both sides have engaged in increasingly dramatic shows of force over the past several months which, given the lack of diplomatic efforts, could increase the possibility of grave miscalculation and outright conflict on the part of either party. +
++The explicit threats on Kim’s part, as well as the increase in missile tests, point to a North Korea that’s interested in projecting a credible deterrent capacity and to try and manage instability internally. And the South is taking a hard line and projecting its own force — sometimes at odds with the interests of the US, its primary military ally. +
++Given both nations’ vows to increase their military capacity, the possibility of peace on the peninsula seems to be deteriorating by the day. Furthermore, the US — which maintains a force presence in the South — isn’t doing enough to prevent conflict and encourage diplomacy to prevent miscommunication, according to Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. +
++“The United States should be doing more to express concerns about possible allied defensive plans and postures that might actually increase escalation risks,” which would inevitably implicate the US. +
++What exactly is North Korea planning? +
++Kim announced last week his intention to build “overwhelming military power,” including a focus on producing shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons to target the South, as well as long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, capable of reaching the US mainland, among other innovations. Kim’s announcement, and Yoon’s suggestion that the South and the US would hold joint nuclear weapons exercises, have brought the nuclear threat into sharp focus. +
++As Panda told Vox via email, Kim’s policy announcement isn’t exactly new, “but more of a fleshing-out of a fairly well-articulated and constant nuclear strategy.” Kim and his predecessors have always seen the South and the US as their existential adversaries; the new policy announcements and missile testing simply make the North’s nuclear threats more realistic and achievable. “Their intentions haven’t changed: They’re still reserving the right to use nuclear weapons first to deter an attack on their territory,” Panda said. +
++Rather than an ambiguous threat of nuclear firepower, the North is now putting increased energy into tactical nuclear weapons which could be used in a battlefield scenario, or to repel a perceived attack from the South. +
++Increased focus on solid-fuel missiles also indicate the intention to deploy missiles rapidly, since they come pre-fueled and are highly mobile. Developing solid-fuel missiles has been a priority for Kim at least since the the Party’s plenary meeting in January 2021. Kim held a successful ground launch of a solid-fuel rocket motor — which could be used either on an ICBM or a missile launched from a submarine — in December. +
++“They’ve identified solid-propellant ICBMs as a particular focus for this year,” Panda said, specifying that, “we should expect to see flight-testing of large-diameter solid propellant missiles and perhaps even solid propellant ICBMs this year.” +
++Missiles are just the delivery vehicle — and just one aspect of the nuclear threat. The North’s nuclear arsenal also depends on its ability to develop warheads — the missile’s payload. +
++Nuclear weapons development in the North is difficult to track due to the extremely secretive (and illegal) nature of that work, but the missile tests, Kim’s announcements, and satellite imagery help analysts understand how far along the Kim regime is in creating weapons of mass destruction. +
++The North has not staged a nuclear test since September 2017, but experts have told Vox that all signs point to a seventh at any time — and even an eighth soon after, Panda said. +
++Two of the North’s main nuclear sites are Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, which has a uranium enrichment facility, and Punggye-ri, the country’s only nuclear test site. +
++Yongbyon continues to be operational, Joseph Bermudez, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Vox. “We see rail cars coming in and out, we see the razing of several buildings and work on updating other buildings, we see activity in and around the reactors and also in and around the centrifuge plant,” he said, but without thermal imagery, it’s impossible to tell what that activity means. +
++As for Punggye-ri, the testing site, “it’s been basically quiet for the last couple of months,” Bermudez said. However, the US and South Korean governments have indicated they believe a nuclear test could take place “at any time that Kim Jong Un decides to do so,” he said, adding that imagery from earlier in the week “shows tracks in the snow indicating the movement of vehicles.” +
++“We believe that someone is checking on it,” although given the positioning of the facility — one of the entrances is shielded by a steep mountain slope and the angle of the sun — it’s hard to tell who and what’s coming in and out. The North also tends to move equipment and vehicles under cloud cover and in the dark, further obscuring those movements to outside observers. +
++Bermudez assessed that the North is “not only validating missile designs, but probably refining them,” and repeated missile tests indicate “new systems coming online and being distributed to units.” +
++Still, for Kim to use a nuclear missile or stage an invasion of the South would be a death sentence, both for his military and his regime. And the increased missile tests and activity around nuclear facilities can provide only limited information about the North’s actual capabilities. +
++But the fear that a nuclear-capable North Korea instills in its adversaries also serves a purpose; for all the testing and parades, Kim’s nuclear arsenal is further along than it’s ever been, but it’s far from complete. What Kim is showing off may not yet work militarily, “but it certainly has the potential work coercively” Bennett said. +
++Nuclear escalation on the peninsula has as much to do with internal politics as foreign affairs +
++Kim likely feels wary of engaging in diplomacy with the US or South Korea because of the spectacular breakdown of peace talks with former President Donald Trump, according to Toby Dalton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie endowment for International Peace told Vox in a previous interview. That process ended in a humiliating failure in Hanoi, Vietnam, when Trump tried to push for full denuclearization in return for an end to the punishing sanctions regime the US has built up over the decades. +
++“[Kim] took some risks in terms of his domestic constituency in terms of pursuing that diplomacy — and then it fell apart and I think he was embarrassed by that,” Dalton said. From the North’s perspective, “they’re not willing to trust South Korea or the US to engage in diplomacy,” he told Vox, and the parties involved aren’t even in agreement about what the outcome of that diplomacy would be. +
++“It’s unsurprising that inter-Korean dynamics are as tense as they are right now,” Panda said. “We’ve seen this pattern play out under previous conservative-led governments in Seoul. That said, the [North’s] weapons development plans would likely have proceeded as they have regardless of the outcome of the 2022 South Korean election.” +
++Internal politics, especially in the North, favor a muscular response — at least in the eyes of Kim and Yoon. +
++In the North, for example, “even the elites are having trouble,” according to Bruce Bennett, a researcher at the RAND Corporation. Some members of leadership and Kim’s inner circle have reportedly been purged; “[Kim’s] been pretty brutal, and it hasn’t just been with the common people — it’s been with the elites, too.” Internal struggles, like consistent fuel and food shortages, pose a serious threat to Kim’s leadership, and in an authoritarian government, the only way to deal with internal struggle is to blame an external enemy. +
++“What does Kim need to manage his internal instability? What he needs is to look powerful,” hence the escalated rhetoric from both him and his sister and advisor, Kim Yo Jong. Testing, threats, and military parades help the elite feel like, “Wow, we’re powerful, [Kim] is a good leader, he’s making us powerful,” Bennett said, easing the pressure on Kim himself. +
++South Korea isn’t facing the same internal issues; it has the backing of the US and a strong military and economy. Public opinion polling indicates that South Koreans may be looking at China — not the North — as their major adversary in the future. Still, Yoon has pursued a “strength for strength” tactic, as opposed to former President Moon Jae-in’s pursuit of concessions and conciliation to reach a negotiated outcome. Though Yoon’s response may assure South Koreans that they’re defended from the North, it doesn’t do much to deter Kim, Bennett said. +
++“[Kim] appears to be trying to divide the US-ROK alliance” in order to isolate the South and demonstrate some form of dominance on the peninsula by explicitly focusing on shorter-range weapons that can only reach the South and ICBMs which would only be useful against the US, Bennett said. +
++Yoon’s claims that the US and the South were discussing joint nuclear exercises are a “good example of where an ally might be getting ahead of where the United States is ready to go,” Panda said. The Biden administration is focused on repairing its relationships with allies after “the atrocious treatment that US allies endured at the hands of the Trump administration,” Panda said — but that approach could backfire. +
++Rather, Biden should be more explicit with regional allies — including Japan, which is pursuing remilitarization after decades of minimal defense spending — about what the US’s limits and intentions are regarding the North. Just as crucially, the US and allies must pursue diplomatic channels to try and reduce the risk of miscommunication and miscalculation while that’s still feasible. +
++“I want to say there’s always room for diplomacy,” Bermudez said, but given the situation, “it seems like that room is very narrow.” +
++A fractured GOP could be good news for Democrats. +
++Rep. Kevin McCarthy has become speaker of the House, but only did so by offering offered a series of concessions that effectively mean his speakership will consistently be under threat from his own caucus. +
++McCarthy’s agreement to weaken the role of the speaker is likely to lead to extreme gridlock within the ranks of the GOP. But it could also present an opening for Democrats. If far-right lawmakers in the GOP follow through on their promises to hold up pivotal spending and debt ceiling legislation, Republicans may well have to rely on Democrats’ help to get any bills across the finish line — a dynamic Democrats could capitalize on. +
++“The deal is, if they want to get stuff done, they’re going to have to work with us,” says Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee. “And we’re not going to be a cheap date.” +
++Given Republicans’ narrow 222-person majority, they can’t really pass much if they lose any more than five votes in their own conference. Since conservatives have been vocal about their commitment to blocking key bills, like an increase to the debt ceiling, in order to get the spending cuts they want, Republicans will likely need Democratic votes to keep essential government functions and services running if they want to do so. +
++Additionally, given the number of Freedom Caucus members added to the House Rules Committee, Democrats could theoretically join with the conservatives on the panel to block or slow bills favored by House GOP Leadership. +
++The situation gives Democrats more leverage to put forth their own demands, if Republican leadership is actually interested in getting anything done. Of course, there’s a high chance that they aren’t, a reality Democrats are preparing to confront as well. +
++“I think there is an opportunity,” says Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), a member of the Rules Committee. “But it’s just such an unusual time — and it’s so hard for so many of them to reach across the aisle.” +
++The GOP may well need Democratic help on key bills +
++Republicans can only lose a handful of votes before any bill falls short of the simple majority it needs to advance, which gives Democrats an opening. +
++In the last decade or so, there have been times when House Republicans have relied on Democratic support when their conference has similarly fractured. In 2011 and 2014, Republican House Speaker John Boehner needed Democratic votes to approve spending bills to fund the government, for example. +
++That same dynamic could play out this term, with Republicans relying on Democratic help to make up for the support they’re missing in their own caucus. “These people who are causing all this nonsense right now — you can’t work with them. They can’t ever get to yes,” said McGovern. +
++Ultimately, House Republicans will need to get a majority to pass bills including an increase to the debt ceiling, spending legislation, the farm bill — which authorizes many Agriculture Department programs — and a defense bill that lays out funding for the military. Were conservative members to withhold their support for such policies, the GOP wouldn’t be able to pass the bills on their own. If they aren’t able to, they risk scenarios like the country defaulting on the national debt and causing an economic crisis, as well as a potentially interminable government shutdown. +
++As Republicans have shown in the past, after the US nearly defaulted on its debt in 2011, and when it went into a shutdown in 2013, members of the party could well be okay with those scenarios playing out. In both those cases, however, House Republicans also garnered significant public backlash for their role in causing these debacles, and eventually passed agreements that were reached with Democratic support. +
++As Vox’s Andrew Prokop noted, however, any Republican attempts to reach across the aisle this term could also prompt blowback from the conservative wing, who may threaten the speaker as a result. As part of his bid to become speaker, McCarthy reportedly offered a rules change that will allow any one Republican to force a vote of “no confidence.” +
++Known as the motion to vacate, this would allow a single member to call a vote on the speaker’s ousting if they weren’t happy with how he was handling a particular bill or issue. Theoretically, a single far-right member could punish any collaboration with Democrats by submitting a motion to vacate, forcing a vote against the speakership. A majority of members would still have to agree to remove him, though. Some Democrats warned that the rule changes McCarthy agreed to in order to become speaker could blunt collaboration for fear of reprisals. +
++“It does feel like they may need to get in the middle more to get anything done. But I’m not sure that giving more weapons to the most extreme folks is going to promote that goal,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), a member of the Rules Committee, told Vox. +
++Republican concessions could mean complete dysfunction +
++The best case for Democrats is that they’re able to slip a few of their priorities into must-pass legislation. But, as Scanlon alluded to, there’s a worst-case scenario as well: utter gridlock. +
++In addition to the change on the motion to vacate, which could cause GOP leadership to shy away from bipartisan dealmaking, McCarthy’s concessions included adding multiple members of the Freedom Caucus to the Rules Committee, which plays a key role in deciding what bills make it to the floor and what amendments get considered. Should three ultraconservative Republicans be added to that committee, something McCarthy agreed to, they’d be able to delay bills and push more extreme versions of policies. +
++That’s led some Democrats to worry these changes will empower Republicans’ conservative flank to use the panel for obstruction. “We have a small faction basically holding Congress hostage,” Scanlon says. “Many of the rules changes that are being proposed by this kind of extreme faction have the same goal.” +
++Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA), a member of the Rules Committee, notes that conservatives could gum up the process on bills by forcing debate on amendments, whether or not they are germane to the legislation at hand. “It’s impossible to legislate from that perspective,” she said. +
++Interestingly, Democrats could use potential rules changes to their advantage, too, argues Daniel Schuman, a policy expert at the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress. Although Democrats aren’t able to use the motion to vacate in the same way as Republicans, they would be able to offer their own amendments to bills like appropriations legislation if those changes came to fruition. +
++“They’re creating a lot of veto points for legislation, and more opportunities to amend that legislation,” says Schuman. “And those opportunities, in many circumstances, will be available to all members, not just to Republican members.” +
++Additionally, as Prokop explained, the appointments of Freedom Caucus members to the Rules Committee could give Democrats the ability to form unexpected coalitions and throw their weight around. Previously, the Rules Committee had 13 members, nine in the majority and four in the minority. Were McCarthy to use that same breakdown, and give three seats to Freedom Caucus members, there would be nine Republicans, three of whom would be hardline conservatives, along with four Democrats. In that instance, the Democrats and hardline conservatives could theoretically work together to form a seven-person majority. +
++It remains to be seen how likely any kind of bipartisan collaboration would be given how polarized the two parties are. Republicans’ narrow margins, however, could lead to Democrats using their numbers in interesting ways. +
++“The Freedom Caucus could build an alliance with some or all the Democrats, the McCarthy faction could build an alliance with some or all the Democrats, or the McCarthy faction and the Freedom Caucus could build an alliance with each other,” says Schuman. +
++
++
++
++