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That Pelosi was following the letter of the rules.

Ok, I maintain she misread the letter of the rules and assumed more authority than was granted to her.

Now it's your turn. Show me the altered rules.

I will concede for the moment that you may be correct, since the prior Subcommittee rules that could be used for comparison don’t immediately pop up on my search of government archives.

Nonetheless, even if pre-Pelosi editions of the Rules contained similar language and there was no alteration by Pelosi as I claimed, it is clear to me she violated the letter, meaning and intent of the Rules used by her party for her Speakership. That is clear to many national observers and it is a shame (as you opine) that McCarthy left it simply as “an egregious abuse of power”.

Those rules gave her the authority to hire and fire at her pleasure. But the rules did obligate her to “consult with the Minority leader”. His role at the least was to nominate members from his party. She could fire them immediately (which may have been why he stopped nominating them) but nowhere did she have the right to select them.

Finally, she was obligated to strike a balance of majority and minority reps that approximately reflected the balance of power by each party in the House. With that obligation she was bound to accept at least some number of Minority members. She did, but only after she selected them as having a public record of being anti-Trump. (A more productive move for McCarthy to have taken her down to the last few R members who were the most notable Rino's making sure the American public was aware of her pettiness.)

Instead of using “altered”, I should have used “intentionally and patently misused”, but it was a busy weekend.

Most importantly, what I did use in the post you jumped in on arguably conveyed the same meaning.

Have a nice week.

An odd concession that I was correct, but I'll take it.

prior Subcommittee rules that could be used for comparison don’t immediately pop up on my search of government archives.

For your reference, here is a link to the H. Res. 8—Adopting rules for the 117th Congress (1/3/21 - 1/3/23).

Note that the first paragraph says:

Resolved,
SECTION 1. ADOPTION OF THE RULES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS.
The Rules of the House of Representatives of the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, including applicable provisions of law or concurrent resolution that constituted rules of the House at the end of the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, are adopted as the Rules of the House of Representatives of the One Hundred Seventeenth Congress, with amendments to the standing rules as provided in section 2, and with other orders as provided in this resolution.

Here is a link to House Rules for the 117th Congress. See Rule I Section 11 (Committee appointment).

Also, here is a link to an archive of historical House Rules. You can find the 116th (and earlier) House rules here.

Instead of using “altered”, I should have used “intentionally and patently misused”, but it was a busy weekend.

If you had said that, I wouldn't have called you out on it. Like I said, I hate to have been put in the position of defending Pelosi, but she didn't alter the rules -- she just ruthlessly used them to her advantage -- which is something that Republican Speakers never do. In fact, Pelosi, Hoyer, Jeffries, and all the rest are also experts at using the minority powers against Republicans when the roles are reversed -- another thing that Republicans don't know how to do.

-PJ