I spoke to Jake Lahut of the Daily Beast about the impact of Speaker McCarthy’s ouster on GOP prospects in light of his vaunted political and fundraising operation.

With McCarthy now relegated to the House Republican rank and file after his historic ousterfrom the speakership this week, the campaign cash void he leaves behind might be as concerning to Republicans as the literal power vacuum in the House.

Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former GOP campaign strategist, succinctly described the impact of McCarthy’s removal: “obviously huge shoes to fill, wildly disruptive, terrible timing.”

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“Scalise is best positioned to hit the ground running and scale up what already exists,” Donovan said.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to The Economist‘s Adam O’Neal for his piece on Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as Speaker and the implications for the House broadly and Ukraine funding specifically.

The immediate task will be funding the government. The deal to avert a shutdown keeps the government going with a “continuing resolution” (cR) only until November 17th. A Republican strategist, Liam Donovan, reckons Mr Gaetz might be satisfied with Mr McCarthy gone, but other hardliners will not easily accept a long-term funding solution simply because a fresh face is running the House. Government will have to be funded “in a way that is even more anathema to these Republicans than the CR,” Mr Donovan says. Mr McCarthy’s replacement could soon be overseeing a shutdown. Averting a closure could potentially cost the new speaker his job.

Read the full piece ($) here.

I spoke to Aaron Blake for his Washington Post piece on the complicated dynamic between Speaker McCarthy’s fate, Matt Gaetz’s gambit, and the House Democrats who face a choice between the two.

Republican strategist Liam Donovan said significant concessions are so unlikely that seeking them would essentially just serve to build the rationale for Democrats to join with the likes of Gaetz in ousting McCarthy. He said the real question is whether Gaetz can marshal the support to oust McCarthy, and the choice for Democrats is between taking McCarthy out and letting Republicans continue to turn on one another.

“Any quid pro quo is a non-starter,” Donovan said. “It’s simply not tenable for McCarthy to be seen as bargaining with Democrats to secure his job. Gaetz knows this, which is precisely why he engineered this situation.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman for her piece with Shane Goldmacher on the politics surrounding former President Donald Trump’s New York fraud case.

“Trump seems to be approaching his legal troubles like a hand of hearts — one or two indictments hurt you politically, but if you collect them all, you might shoot the moon,” Liam Donovan, a Republican operative, said. “The sheer volume and variety obscures the individual cases and their fact patterns, and plays into Trump’s argument that his opponents are trying to take him down by whatever means they can.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Ben Jacobs last week for his Vox piece on the shutdown that wasn’t, and where we might go from here.

Earlier this week, Liam Donovan, a longtime Republican operative and Washington lobbyist, told me that the goal of Republican dissidents was to force a showdown and have McCarthy face a reckoning within his conference. After all, regardless of whether it happened without a shutdown or with one, McCarthy’s exit strategy was always to work with Democrats to pass legislation that would fund the government. It was simply a question of which parliamentary approach he would take and what the collateral damage would be. As of late Saturday night, the showdown had happened and the government would remain open. But, at least for a day, the reckoning would wait.

Read the full piece here.