I’ve been worrying about the midterm elections lately. I don’t trust that guy in the White House. He seems too relaxed about things. Almost as if he knows they’re rigged.
Then Judge J. Michael Luttig – a George H.W. Bush appointee and Supreme Court finalist – wrote that he knew about a coup.
First came an article for The New Republic, a media outlet I trust.
Titled “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy,” the piece spells out the most dangerous day for our grand experiment: January 3, 2027.
That’s the day when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson could fire the clerk of the House before the names of incoming members of Congress can be read aloud. A regime loyalist would be placed in that position and could refuse to read the names of Democratic Party candidates who won their elections.
In a quirk of House Rules, the Speaker may replace any officer of the House at any time with no questions from anyone else. It seems like a flaw that someone like the current president would like to exploit.
Then I read a Substack post by Judge Luttig that made the same argument.
The House Clerk could be the key to the next coup.
The excellent and in-depth National Security Desk newsletter called Civil War II on Substack followed the story with further analysis.
NSD spelled out the problem in great detail, including the day and time.
The post reminds us that some of us knew that something was going to happen on January 6, 2021, but nobody knew exactly what. If they had, numerous injuries and some deaths may have been avoided.
Some also thought that something was happening in the summer of 2001, because Saudi nationals were in flight school learning how to take off and fly. They weren’t all that interested in landing. That should have been a red flag.
But Judge Luttig and NSD both focus on the day when the Speaker can fire the Clerk of the House and replace him with a stooge who will do the bidding of the president.
I wondered what would happen if Thomas Massie of another Republican (preferably) were to file a privileged motion during the Lame Duck session (November 4, 2026-January 3, 2027) to Vacate the Chair – that is, to fire Speaker Johnson.
No lead conspirator, no successful conspiracy was my thought.
NSD responded quickly and with a favorable take on the idea. If Johnson is out, the firing of the Clerk may not occur and an honest reading of the names of incoming Members of Congress would go forward as it has for over two centuries.
The Civil War II newsletter added another idea: a House Rules change to remove the unilateral ability of one person to fire someone without review. Changing Rule II would take a simple majority to pass, requiring fewer than a dozen brave and patriotic Republicans to vote with the Democratic Party caucus to rescind that power. This second approach avoids major power struggles to become Speaker and sidesteps the accusation of political shenanigans.
The National Security Desk author wrote a follow-up analysis, which included our proposed remedies (see part 6.1).
NSD put the piece through Claude (Anthropic’s large language model AI tool) for an objective opinion. See part 7 in the above piece for step-by-step judgment from Claude.
I held my breath when computer-based analysis got to the section on remedy, but the decision was firm: it holds.
The argument holds, because it’s simple, clean, almost non-political but devastatingly effective. One or both of these approaches will kill the greatest threat to our democracy this century, at least. It holds.
So now there is only one question that remains: which Republicans in the current House are patriotic enough to step forward and help save our Democracy from a clear and present conspiracy to extinguish it?
I’d say Thomas Massie would be one Republican on that list. Are there 8 more?