Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign reportedly asked the Republican National Committee to significantly limit the number of GOP presidential candidates on stage for the party’s next presidential primary debate. 

In a letter to RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Committee on Arrangements co-Chairs David Bossie and Anne Hathaway, Vivek 2024 CEO Ben Yoho requested that the RNC restrict the next debate stage to the four Republican candidates polling the highest nationally, after former President Donald Trump, according to The Hill. 

The campaign also asked the RNC to increase the donor threshold to 100,000. 

‘[A]gainst the backdrop of a chaotic second debate and the reality of a frontrunner who has declined to participate, we respectfully call on the RNC to revise its approach so that Republican voters can focus on serious candidates who have a viable path to beating Joe Biden – or whomever the Democrats put up to replace him,’ Yoho wrote. 

‘Time is running out. Early-state voting is rapidly approaching in January,’ he continued, according to the letter obtained by The Hill. ‘Another unhelpful debate in November is not an option: voters deserve a real choice for who will best serve as our party’s nominee. Voters are not well-served when a cacophony of candidates with minimal chance of success talk over each other from the edge of the stage, while the overwhelming frontrunner is absent from the center of that same stage.’ 

The RNC has already raised the threshold to qualify for the third presidential debate of the 2024 cycle. 

To participate in the Nov. 6 event, GOP candidates are required to have two national polls that show them at 4% or higher, or they must receive 4% support in one national poll and two different early state polls. White House hopefuls are also required to meet a donor threshold of at least 70,000 unique donors, including at least 200 from 20 or more states each. That compares to the 3% polling threshold with a minimum of 50,000 unique donors required to participate in the Sept. 27 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., says he will file a ‘motion to vacate the chair’ this week. 

This is an effort to force a vote of no confidence on the floor for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and potentially prompt a new vote for speaker. 

Gaetz doesn’t believe McCarthy has held up his end of the bargain after the lengthy speaker vote in January. The Florida Republican threatened to use this motion if McCarthy relied on Democrats to advance spending bills. McCarthy turned to Democrats on Saturday to avert a government shutdown. 

Such a gambit to try to bounce a speaker in the middle of a Congress is rare. 

Former Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., threatened to use the tactic on former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in the summer of 2015. Boehner saw the writing on the wall and resigned that October. 

The House last saw a formal effort to remove a speaker in 1910. A number of members were displeased with House Speaker Joe Cannon, R-Ill., and found him to be too dictatorial. Cannon got in front of his adversaries, who also wanted to call for a new speaker, by offering the motion to vacate himself. Cannon survived – but with the help of the minority party. 

He then became a very weak speaker. 

It’s unclear if Democrats could bail out McCarthy in this scenario. 

Keep in mind that McCarthy ally Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., has also filed a motion to vacate the chair. This is a protective measure that Graves could use to supersede Gaetz’s gambit. It was thought that McCarthy loyalists could try to call the bluff of Gaetz by filing their own motion first or daring Gaetz to follow through. 

By rule, Gaetz’s resolution is ‘privileged.’ That means that when Gaetz offers his resolution, the House must consider it immediately or within two legislative days. 

However, the vote will not immediately be on the motion to vacate the chair. It is highly probable that one of McCarthy’s lieutenants will then move to table (kill) Gaetz’s motion or make a motion to refer the effort to the Rules or House Administration Committee. So, the first vote is NOT actually on Gaetz’s motion, let alone an election of a new speaker. The vote is on the secondary motion to table or refer Gaetz’s measure to committee, not on the primary motion. 

If the House approves the secondary motion to table or refer, then Gaetz’s gambit is euthanized. The gig is up. 

But if the secondary motion fails, then the House votes on the primary motion. That would be Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair. If the secondary motion loses, the primary motion likely prevails. If the primary motion (the motion to vacate) is successful, we are back to Jan. 3, the start of the Congress. The House must take a vote – or votes – to elect a speaker. 

Everything on the House floor would come to a screeching halt. The House can do nothing on the floor without electing a speaker. No legislation on the floor. However, committees can continue to meet, et al. 

It took 15 rounds spread over five days to elect McCarthy the first time. It was the longest speaker election since 1859. Consider how long it could take the House to re-elect McCarthy or tap someone else as speaker.

The House must continue to vote and vote and vote until it elects a speaker. The House consumed two months in late 1855 and early 1856 before finally electing Speaker Nathaniel Banks, R-Mass., on the 163rd ballot. 

The successful candidate must receive an outright majority of all members casting ballots for someone by name. ‘Present’ votes do not count. Members who do not vote don’t count against the vote total. 

The person with the ‘most votes’ does not win. That’s why electing the speaker can be a rather complex piece of parliamentary algebra. 

The House currently has 433 members. If all members vote for someone by name in a speaker’s race, the successful candidate must receive 217 votes. 

It’s uncertain if it will get to this stage. But this entire process is about the math. 

It’s unclear how many Republicans may vote against that secondary motion to table or refer. McCarthy’s move on government funding has inflamed many on the hard right. 

And it’s unclear if Democrats could potentially assist McCarthy. 

Some McCarthy opponents on the Democratic side of the aisle may vote with Republicans wanting to bounce the speaker. Others may not participate in the vote at all. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has said that Republicans must solve this civil war on their own. 

If Democrats don’t cast a ballot on the secondary motion, that drives down the total number of ballots cast. This is where things get very dangerous for McCarthy. McCarthy allies may not have enough votes to kill the motion to vacate, thus putting that motion in play on the next roll call. 

Again, if the second motion fails, the House then votes on the initial motion – the motion to vacate. If the House defeats the second motion, it probably adopts the primary Gaetz motion. And that scenario triggers an automatic revote for speaker of the House. 

With the thresholds to qualify for the next Republican presidential nomination debate rising, and crucial fundraising reports from the campaigns due in the coming days, the still relatively-large field of GOP White House hopefuls may be slashed in the weeks to come.

Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who flirted with a 2024 run before deciding against it, has been saying for months that the field in the Republican presidential nomination race needs to shrink.

‘If you don’t make the first couple of debates, then you probably have to have a tough conversation and get out of the race,’ Sununu said.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who made the stage at the first two Republican showdowns, told Fox News in August that for his rivals who ‘haven’t made the stage’ at the debates, ‘it’s time to go.’

So far, only one White House hopeful has called it quits.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez suspended his campaign after failing to make the stage at the first Republican presidential nomination debate, a Fox News-hosted August 23 showdown in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the only one of the eight candidates on the stage at the first debate who failed to qualify for Wednesday’s second debate – a Fox Business co-hosted event held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California – says if he fails to make the stage at the third GOP presidential nomination debate, he’ll consider dropping out.

‘If I don’t make that, we’ll re-evaluate where we are,’ Hutchinson told reporters this week as he referred to the third debate, which will be held Nov. 8 in Miami, Florida.

When asked for clarification if his response meant he would consider dropping out, Hutchinson answered, ‘Sure.’

Michigan businessman and quality control industry expert Perry Johnson, who failed to qualify for the first two debates, is now mulling a pivot to run for the open Senate seat in his home state.

‘Obviously, it’s no secret that I’ve had a lot of calls to run for this seat because they do want to win this seat. But at this point in time, my focus is right on the presidential [race], and, believe me, that’s taking all my time and energy at this point,’ Johnson told Fox News on Thursday.

Former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who previously served as an undercover agent in the CIA, also didn’t make the stage at the first two debates.

‘My team and I are constantly evaluating whether we have the resources to chart a path to victory,’ he wrote in a statement Wednesday. ‘I’m headed to New Hampshire to spread my message to the Granite State ahead of the First In the Nation primary. Educating voters on how to solve these existential issues is important, and hopefully other candidates will follow my lead.’

GOP contender Larry Elder, a former nationally syndicated radio host and 2021 California gubernatorial recall election candidate, also failed to qualify for the first two debates.

Former President Donald Trump skipped the first two debates as he pointed to his commanding lead in the GOP presidential nomination race and said this past week that he won’t attend the third debate. 

Sununu, a vocal Trump critic, envisions a smaller field by the end of the year, just ahead of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — the first two contests in the Republican nominating calendar.

‘I think by the time you get to the end of December, you’ll have five or six different candidates going into Iowa, maybe three or four coming into New Hampshire,’ Sununu predicted. ‘If that’s the case, a huge opportunity for the Republican Party.’

The July-September third quarter of fundraising came to a close on Saturday, with the campaigns required to post their figures in the next two weeks. 

A lackluster fundraising report could be the death knell for some of the candidates struggling to make the debate stage.

‘I think a lot of these candidates are going to run out of gas as they try to drive to the next debate in Miami,’ longtime Republican consultant Alex Castellanos told Fox News.

Castellanos, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns, said that some of the candidates will ‘soon have to take their ball and go home.’

‘The time is coming soon for the smaller contenders to drop out so the field can begin to coalesce. Donald Trump can beat everybody, but he may not be able to beat somebody. That’s the test,’ Castellanos emphasized.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

As Americans look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, the Supreme Court is reaching back to past constitutional conflicts, just in time to have major political implications for voters to consider.

This judicial déjà vu will include not only the court’s hot-button caseload, but the nine members’ own conduct and accountability.

‘The Supreme Court is going to be tackling so many of the issues that have divided America on political grounds. They’re not shying away from the controversial cases,’ said Thomas Dupree, a former top Justice Department official who frequently litigates before the high court. ‘And any time the Supreme Court starts wading into these political issues, people react strongly. It’s already shaping up to be a blockbuster term.’

The term kicks off next week — the so-called ‘First Monday in October’— when public courtroom sessions will begin anew.

The argument docket includes: 

Gun rights and whether those under domestic violence restraining orders can possess guns.The administrative state and separate appeals over curbing the power of the executive branch to interpret and enforce federal rules; and whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be effectively dismantled over its funding mechanismElection redistricting and a challenge to congressional seat boundaries in South Carolina, which could be a prelude to more voting fights, some possibly involving Donald TrumpA free speech dispute over state laws that would force social media platforms to host third-party communications and prevent them from blocking or removing users’ posts based on political viewpoints

And another high-profile appeal could soon be accepted for final review, dealing with Food and Drug Administration approval authority over the abortion pill mifepristone.

All of these petitions could be decided by mid-2024.

BENCH PRESSURE

But when it comes to public scrutiny of the court, the docket has become a benchwarmer of sorts to the justices themselves. A summer of revelations over questionable personal travel and growing calls for ethics reform have further divided them and lawmakers over whether anything can be done to police the highest court in the land, besides its nine members.

Some justices think it is time. New ethics rules would ‘go far in persuading other people that we were adhering to the highest standards of conduct,’ Justice Elena Kagan said last week at a Notre Dame Law School event. ‘I hope we can make progress.’

Justice Brett Kavanaugh a few weeks ago suggested his colleagues may take ‘concrete steps soon’ to deal with the rising calls for reform. 

‘We can increase confidence. We’re working on that,’ he added.

In May, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was an ‘issue of concern.’

‘There’s really no reason why members of the Supreme Court should not also have a binding ethical code that applies to other federal judges,’ said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center. ‘But if they don’t act soon, I think it would be entirely reasonable for Congress to consider whether it’s appropriate for them to take some action to ensure that the court is being held to the highest ethical standards.’

But other members of the court have pushed back recently over calls for greater transparency.

Justice Samuel Alito in a recent interview resisted such suggestions.

‘No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period,’ he said.

In a separate court filing this month, Alito also rejected calls for him to recuse himself in an upcoming tax case as ‘unsound’ and that there was ‘no valid reason’ for him not to participate. 

‘Recusal is a personal decision for each justice,’ he added.

David Rivkin, one of the lawyers in the appeal, co-authored recent articles published in The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section, which included exclusive interviews with the 73-year-old justice, including his comments on ethics. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had urged Alito to step aside, citing the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The Democrats’ effort comes after the nonprofit news organization ProPublica began reporting on the activity of Supreme Court justices, including revelations Alito had taken a luxury vacation in Alaska with a Republican donor who had business interests before the court.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas have been embroiled over media reports about their book deals, travel and financial dealings.

The Senate Judiciary Committee in July advanced the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act to the full Senate.  The bill would require Supreme Court justices to adopt a code of conduct and create a mechanism to investigate any such alleged violations.

‘There’s definitely been a lot of internal debate in recent years among the justices themselves about whether they should adopt a binding ethics code,’ already applicable to other federal judges, says Dupree. ‘If so, what should be in that ethics code? And it wouldn’t surprise me if, in the next year or two, the Supreme Court does voluntarily adopt some sort of code along those lines.’

‘LEGITIMATE’ CONCERNS

Calls for greater openness also extend to the court caseload itself, especially its so-called ‘shadow’ or emergency docket, an abbreviated decision-making process that has accelerated in recent years. These are cases that are presented to the justices on a time-sensitive basis in its earliest stages, lacking the transparency and deliberation of a typical appeal.

While designed to be temporary in nature, they can have an immediate effect by blocking nationwide enforcement of a challenged law or policy on issues like immigration,  pandemic restrictions and abortion access. These legal ‘applications’ typically lack full briefing, oral arguments or written opinion.

Just this week, the high court is being asked to decide whether the Biden administration can continue working with social media companies to block digital disinformation amid claims conservative viewpoints were being suppressed. An enforcement injunction would remain in place until the case is fully litigated, a process that could take years to resolve.

While some justices have criticized the increasing use of the shadow docket on high-profile disputes, Alito has said critics have mistakenly labeled its use as ‘sneaky,’ ‘sinister’ and ‘dangerous.’

‘And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution,’ added Alito, who joined the court in 2006.

A Fox News poll from late June found just 48% had confidence in the Supreme Court as an institution. It is the first time that number has dropped below 50% since the question was originally asked in 2014. Three years ago, 68% had confidence in the court, 83% in 2017. This erosion crumbles across the political spectrum, down 48 points among Democrats, 21 among Republicans and 37 among independents since 2017.

‘Confidence in major institutions has been diminishing for a decade or more, but the loss of confidence in the Supreme Court is striking,’ says Democratic Pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican Daron Shaw. ‘With less than half of Americans confident in the court, and Democrats half as likely as Republicans to feel so, there is a clear perception the country lacks a non-political arbitrator of the laws of the land.’

Some progressives say that may be because the 6-3 conservative court seems overly eager to wade into controversial issues and overturn its own prior rulings.

The court last term prohibited affirmative action in college admissions; the term before, abortion rights from Roe v. Wade, concealed carry gun restrictions and clean-air standards were all tossed out, upsetting decades of Supreme Court precedent.

‘There have been times recently where there have been ideological divides with one side overturning precedent,’ Kagan said last week. ‘I’m hopeful that it won’t have that year after year, case after case — at least it shouldn’t.’

‘There is a real concern today that the Supreme Court is suffering from a legitimacy crisis because there is this sense that the decisions that the court reaches depend on the composition of the court rather than what the law is and what the law requires,’ said Gorod of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center. 

‘And with new ethical questions popping up every day, new stories about potential conflicts of interest involving the justices, I think, undermine the court’s credibility in the eyes of the American people. And that’s a really, really troubling thing.’

WHO DECIDES?

The wild cards for the Supreme Court heading into 2024 are possible last-minute challenges to election laws: redistricting, voter registration requirements, provisional ballots, early voting and more.

Some court watchers see the potential of another Bush v. Gore, the 2000 presidential election case in which the Supreme Court effectively settled who would sit in the White House.  

And the wildest of wild cards — what is now just legal debate could soon turn into a monumental judicial debate over a provision in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, disqualifying anyone from the presidency who ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion.’ 

A lawsuit from Colorado voters seeks to keep Donald Trump off that state’s primary ballot over his role in the 2020 election interference.

For now, the Supreme Court appears content to do its job quietly, free as much as possible from outside interference. It may be wishful thinking. 

‘There’s a storm around us in the political world and the world at large in America,’ Kavanaugh said this month. ‘We, as judges and the legal system, need to try to be a little more, I think, of the calm in the storm.’

China’s speech at the United Nations has caused friction with critics who allege that countries have grown quiet on Beijing’s hypocritical stances with respect to a number of issues, ranging from human rights to the energy crisis.

‘We saw this with a number of Beijing Olympics sponsors who preach social justice in the U.S. and turn a blind eye towards mass torture, rape and forced labor in China,’ Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness, told Fox News Digital.

‘The appeal of the Chinese market is just too tempting despite their long history of stealing IP, subsidizing competitors and using slave labor,’ he added.

Chinese Vice President Han Zheng focused his speech at the U.N. General Assembly during its annual high-level week on a number of issues related to equity, justice and international peace, saying that ‘diversity is a defining feature of human civilization … civilizations should prosper together by respecting each other, advance together by drawing on each other’s strengths and seek win-win outcomes by pursuing common ground.’

Zheng also said nations should advance human rights through cooperation and oppose double standards; in particular, the use of human rights and democracy as a political tool to interfere in the affairs of other countries.

Many countries at the United Nation’s high-level week found it easy to hit upon Russia and the continued invasion of Ukraine, but few, if any, took China to task for the hypocrisy of espousing the need to advance human rights while committing what a U.N. report called ‘serious human rights violations’ toward its Muslim population, the Uyghur people.

‘People have given up trying to change China. Exhaustion has set in,’ Gordon Chang, senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and author of ‘The Coming Collapse of China,’ told Fox News Digital.

‘At least in the past, people were hopeful about making money in the China market,’ he explained. ‘They thought – correctly – that criticism of China’s rights record would mean Beijing would block them from business opportunities.’

He suggested that the world has not maintained interest in the Uyghur crisis because ‘they cannot see’ the crimes China commits, making it difficult to hold China accountable even as reports from global bodies find continued evidence of human rights abuses.

Chang lambasted China for the fact that ‘virtually all’ of its policies ‘are hypocritical,’ pointing to ‘Beijing’s pronouncements on world peace.’

‘While saying that China has never attacked any other society, China is fueling the Ukraine war with lethal and other aid to Russia, is supporting insurgencies that look like wars in North Africa, and is threatening in East Asia to break apart neighbors as well as annex Taiwan,’ Chang said.

He added that ‘climate activists are not willing to call out Beijing because they think by doing so Chinese leaders will be offended and will not cooperate on an enhanced climate deal,’ but he said the activists ‘have got it backwards.’

Waltz pointed to China’s stance on energy and its urging of the rest of the world to engage new energy policies while continuing to open ‘more coal-fired plants than the rest of the world combined.’ BloombergNEF released a report at the beginning of 2023 that found China had spent more than $500 billion on low-carbon energy production – accounting for half of the total spent around the world in 2022 – but the country still possesses an almost unquenchable thirst for coal and oil energy consumption, according to energy watchdogs.

The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a nonprofit think tank in Helsinki, published a report this year that detailed how China’s coal power plant permitting, construction and project announcement ‘accelerated dramatically’ in 2022 – the highest level since 2015 and exceeding that previous peak.

The only point on which nations continue to find common ground to try and hold China accountable is the issue of Taiwan, but even then the support is checked by the fact that nations continue to affirm the One China policy – part of what the White House has called ‘strategic ambiguity’ about its defense of the island.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June said that the Biden administration does not support Taiwan independence but remains committed to making sure Taiwan has the ability to defend itself – mainly due to the fact that ‘50% of commercial container traffic goes through the Taiwan Strait every day’ and that ‘70% percent of semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan.’

Waltz called the Biden administration ‘the softest administration on China since the end of the Cold War,’ alleging that the White House has ‘pursued dialogue with China above all else, even at the expense of action on issues,’ such as Taiwan’s backlogged weapons delivery, illegal Iranian oil sales and the Uyghurs.

‘There is a narrative that engaging with China and refraining from consequences will somehow moderate its policy or its desire to dominate Asia,’ Waltz said. ‘Under President Xi, the opposite has been true.’

‘China must face consequences for its behavior – that is the only way it will learn,’ he added.

The White House did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by time of publication.

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.