None of the hard-right members of Congress preventing Speaker McCarthy from governing have done so in such personal terms as Congressman Florida Man. No matter what plan McCarthy comes up with to fund the government in the short term, and no matter how far McCarthy pushes the plan to the right, Matt Gaetz is there to lead the opposition. But none of the other immovably stubborn members seem to revel in prodding McCarthy quite so much. Gaetz this week called McCarthy “unhinged,” accused him of holding votes “for SHOW,” described his “blind lust for the Speakership,” and “imagined” if McCarthy “fought as hard for a balanced budget as he fights to cling to power.” There are some quite conservative critics of McCarthy’s government-funding strategy, like Reps. Scott Perry and Chip Roy, who want to push the speaker in a more conservative direction but are willing to compromise to keep things running. Gaetz, however, won’t stomach any short-term bill on the grounds that it’s a short-term bill. He even has a resolution to remove McCarthy as speaker drafted and ready to go should McCarthy attempt to pass such a bill. We know that because reporter Matt Laslo discovered a copy of it this week laying on a changing table in a bathroom on the House side of the Capitol. Did Gaetz himself leave it there? We can’t be sure. It’s been a colicky week on the Hill, and that table has likely seen a lot of action.

The House of Representatives was at its most ungovernable for McCarthy this week. Gaetz, and those who would never vote for a short-term spending bill, was only half of his problem. McCarthy also, twice, tried and failed to advance what should have been the easiest of the 12 full-year spending bills: A Defense Department spending bill loaded up with anti-“woke” policy riders—fundin’ the troops and keepin’ ’em from gay abortion stuff! Gaetz, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, voted to advance this twice. It was a separate, quasi-overlapping group of hard-liners that blocked this. After it failed on Thursday, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (McCarthy’s supposed friend) was among its obstructors, making clear that she wanted it rid of any scintilla of aid for Ukraine. (This all went down when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was at the Capitol.) That second failed vote was when McCarthy threw up his hands. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” he said. “It doesn’t work.” After originally planning to keep members through the weekend, he sent them home.

Now that we’ve all had a good cry: What are the options for funding the government going forward? In the Gaetz mindset, the process would be for the government to be funded piece by piece as the House and Senate pass and iron out their differences over 12 individual appropriations bills and President Biden signs them into law. This might technically keep McCarthy’s speakership safe, but since it could take 45 years to complete, McCarthy would not be alive to see the full funding of the 2024 fiscal year. McCarthy could also wait for the Senate to pass its own short-term funding bill, then put it up for a House vote, where it would pass with a comfortable bipartisan majority. (The Senate, by the way, is moving quickly into this jam-the-House formation.) That would lead to a direct challenge to his speakership from Gaetz et al., which, hey, why not just have it out at this point? But what if we told you there was … another option? You may recall, from the debt ceiling fight earlier this year, some discussion around a so-called discharge petition, which a majority of the House can sign to force a vote on a certain bill. Well, that petition is still alive, and it still needs just five Republican signatures for a majority; it can then be filled with whatever legislation its signees so desire. In this case, moderate Republicans and all Democrats could use it to pass a bill to fund the government on a short-term basis—and McCarthy’s fingerprints wouldn’t be on it in the slightest. This option sounds a little too West Wing–y to come to fruition, but it’s on both McCarthy’s and Gaetz’s radars. Gaetz, on Thursday, called this the “threat” he’s keeping his eye on, while McCarthy noted that it may be inevitable as frustrations among moderates toward their ultraconservative colleagues build. Such a bounty of options! The feddy gov runs out of cash next Saturday night.

Each presidential cycle, just before the New Hampshire primary, Saint Anselm College in Manchester hosts what is known as the Lesser-Known Candidates Forum, in which a bunch of yahoos who technically qualified for the ballot are given the opportunity to express their views, which are almost entirely conspiracy theories. It’s good for a laugh. We’re recalling this now as we look ahead to next week’s second presidential debate, in which the far-and-away front-runner, Donald Trump, will (again) not participate. Why is this lesser-known candidates debate even happening? In FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average of the GOP primary, Trump is earning 55 percent of the vote, 41 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But is DeSantis really Trump’s “nearest competitor” anymore? Consider some recent state polling. A New Hampshire poll this week found DeSantis in fifth place behind Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie. A South Carolina poll last week showed him in fourth. Stinky stuff. What is the DeSantis campaign’s plan, then? According to a “top DeSantis campaign official” who spoke to Politico, the campaign is hoping for a “strong second-place showing” in Iowa, which “gives us an opportunity to go in[to] New Hampshire and show success.” Oy. The lowering of expectations at this stage is already quite grim. Next Wednesday night, we’ll probably be hearing the DeSantis team crow about his strong second-place showing in the debate among the lesser-known candidates.

Rarely before have the House and Senate played their stereotypical roles better than they have this week. While the House fell apart in 24/7 screeching-banshee chaos, the Senate clutched its pearls over proper work attire. As Axios first reported, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer directed the Senate sergeant-at-arms to no longer enforce the chamber’s informal dress code of business attire. Although it wasn’t said explicitly, this appeared to be an accommodation for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who wears shorts, hoodies, and sneakers in the chamber most days. This move did not go over well. “I plan to wear a bikini tomorrow to the Senate floor,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins said to reporters on Monday, before clarifying that she was joking and adding, sternly, that the change “debases the institution.” Nearly the entire Republican conference, led by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, wrote a letter to Schumer “to express our supreme disappointment and resolute disapproval” of the move and urged him to “immediately reverse this misguided action.” It wasn’t just Republicans, though. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin confronted Fetterman and told him he “will do everything I can to try to hold the decorum of the Senate.” Sure enough, Manchin is putting together a resolution to restore the dress code. The most notable dissenter among Democrats, though, was Schumer’s deputy, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who said in an interview, “We need to have standards when it comes to what we’re wearing on the floor of the Senate, and we’re in the process of discussing that right now as to what those standards will be.” The Surge’s long-standing opinion is that, to protect the dignity of this august institution, all senators—both men and women—must wear tuxedos with tails when in session and while at home. We don’t insist on top hats or silver-handled canes, though, making this a reasonable compromise that Schumer should quickly adopt.

Six years after a hung jury saved New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez from bribery conviction, he’s been indicted, again, for bribery. The indictment charges Menendez and his wife with accepting bribes that include “cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value.” During a search of the couple’s house, agents found stacks of cash inside jackets in Menendez’s closet. Agents also found gold bars and noted that Menendez did a search for “how much is one kilo of gold worth” the day after they suspect he received them. It’s bad. This is more than a problem for Menendez—it’s a problem for Senate Democrats’ already challenging 2024 map. Even after Menendez escaped conviction in 2017, the scent of corruption forced Democrats to spend money in a comfortably blue state in order to shore up his 2018 reelection. Menendez has already announced he’s running again in 2024. Given this indictment, he should obviously change course and retire, but good luck persuading this impossibly stubborn man to do so. Menendez’s statement following the indictment was little more than a syntactically improved Trump rant, suggesting that “forces behind the scenes” were trying to “dig my political grave.” Those sinister forces, he said, “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator and serve with honor and distinction.” And gold bars.

One of the more fascinating figures this month, as the House struggles to fund the government while ramping up its impeachment inquiry into the Biden family, is Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a card-carrying member of the House Freedom Caucus. On spending matters, Buck is among the most obstinate impediments to Kevin McCarthy’s various failed plans to fund the government. When it comes to impeachment, though, or other base-pleasing subjects like the “weaponization of DOJ,” he’s crossing the line into heresy. Buck voted to certify Biden’s election and has consistently said that the 2020 election was fair and square. Buck has also been an outspoken impeachment skeptic and, last Friday, published a Washington Post op-ed picking apart his fellow Republicans’ case. This week, in a House hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland, during which most Republicans pummeled the guy, Buck went off script and defended the decisions Garland had made. His situation is reminiscent of that of former Rep. Liz Cheney, another impeccably credentialed conservative whose outspokenness against prevailing conspiracy theories made her a pariah within the House Republican Conference. (Buck even got in trouble with the base back then for defending Cheney.) The murmurs have begun on the right to remove Buck from his seat on the Judiciary Committee and the whip team, and primary challengers are beginning to line up. We’ll see if he runs for reelection or joins his friend Cheney on the cable news contributor circuit.