Your Evening Briefing: McCarthy Makes a Deal With GOP Rebels

On the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, a group of Republicans including lawmakers who backed Donald Trump in his attempt to stay in power, defended insurrectionists who ransacked the Capitol, and promoted falsehoods about the 2020 election have become kingmakers. California Representative Kevin McCarthy, with a paper-thin majority and after losing 13 votes, bent to the demands of 20 far-right representatives in his desperate bid to become Speaker of the House. The deal, which could go through as early as Friday night, may include limits on his power and defense spending while guaranteeing a series of structural and procedural changes that may further empower the GOP rebels.

Euro-area inflation returned to single digits for the first time since August, fueling hopes that the bloc’s worst-ever spike in consumer prices has peaked. There was positive economic news across the Atlantic as well, where more jobs and wage data seemed to show the Federal Reserve may in fact be threading the needle. Robert Burgess observes in Bloomberg Opinion how 10 months ago, when the Fed began its inflation campaign, the chances of a “soft landing” where the economy avoids a recession were seen as laughable. “Now,” Burgess writes, “nobody should be laughing.”