Politics and views in the United States.

Working-class Americans are underrepresented in state legislatures, the hard right threatens to remove Speaker Johnson, and Washington, D.C.'s law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections survives another legal challenge.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2024 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

There's this real sense that government and elected officials are really out of touch with the population.

And one of the reasons for that is because our elected officials don't really come from the same set of backgrounds that most Americans come from.

Loyola political science professor Eric Hansen says surveys find less than 2 percent of state legislators previously held working-class jobs, confirming the gap between the labor force and public servants.

Alaska led the nation with 5 percent, but at least 10 states had none.

Congress passed a trillion-dollar spending package and avoided a government shutdown.

President Joe Biden's signature capped a budget process extended by six months and requiring four stopgaps.

But more than half of House Republicans voted no.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Speaker Mike Johnson for working with Democrats to pass it.

This is basically a warning, and it's time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new Speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher says he'll retire in less than a month rather than serve out his term.

That'll leave Johnson with a one-vote margin.

Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski tells CNN she hasn't ruled out leaving the GOP or registering as an Independent over the party's presidential nominee.

I wish that as Republicans we had a nominee that I could get behind.

I certainly can't get behind Donald Trump.

Murkowski is one of seven Republicans who voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.

After losing the primary in 2010, she won re-election as a write-in, the first senator to do that in 50 years.

Trump has to pay a half-billion-dollar civil fraud bond today or face seizure of his assets.

Former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel says, in spite of a promise from Trump, the party is funneling money from donors to a group paying his legal fees.

If they feel strongly to support his legal bills, then they have every right to do so, and I think he's being very open that they're helping with his legal bill.

NBC News has hired McDaniel as a political analyst, sparking criticism by some at the network who doubt her devotion to the truth.

A federal judge has dismissed a challenge to a Washington, D.C. law that lets non-citizens vote in local elections.

Washington Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton points to a sore point locally, the district's ability to run its own affairs.

D.C. residents, a majority of whom are black and brown, are worthy and capable of governing themselves.

D.C. lets non-citizens over 18 run for local office and vote in local elections after they've lived in the district for a month.

A right-wing legal group sued after repeated attempts to overturn the law in Congress.

I'm Katherine Carley for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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