US House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy embraces Rep.-elect Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections forSpeaker of the House at the US Capitol Building on January 06, 2023 in Washington, DC.

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• Marjorie Taylor Greene backed Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House Speaker. 
• MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said Greene broke her promise by doing so. 
• Lindell told the Daily Beast that the GOP should back Trump for speaker. 

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said GOP Rep-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene “broke her promise” by supporting US House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. 

“I’m very surprised that the one — I won’t name her name but it’s Marjorie Taylor Greene — broke her promise,” Lindell said on the far-right Be Reasonable podcast on Thursday. 

Both are staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump. Lindell also told The Daily Beast that House Republicans should back former Trump for Speaker of the House, a position that does not require the occupant to be a sitting member of Congress. 

“It’s disappointing anyone that went for McCarthy because we need a different input to get a different output,” Lindell told The Daily Beast. “And that includes Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives went through a historic 15 rounds of voting to elect McCarthy to the House speaker position.

Greene has recently lashed out against other prominent GOP members in the hard-right Republican Freedom Caucus for not supporting McCarthy.

Insider previously reported that Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments last year, worked out a deal with McCarthy to be placed back on prominent committees if he wins. 

Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

• On Thursday, Bed Bath & Beyond announced it was considering filing for bankruptcy.
• A Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing would mean the company’s famous “Big Blue” coupons would be useless.
• The retailer could choose to honor the iconic coupons for a 30-day period, experts say.

Bed Bath & Beyond coupons could soon be useless if the company files for bankruptcy, so shoppers should cash in the well-known big blue coupons as soon as possible.

On Thursday, the New Jersey-based home goods retailer announced it was considering filing for bankruptcy amid recent struggles, according to a report from Insider. If the company chooses to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you won’t have much time to use your 20% off coupons before liquidation sales start.

If Bed Bath & Beyond moves forward, iconic big blue coupon program would come to an end, but there’s still a chance to shop for deals. The company may honor its famous oversized coupons for 30 days, a retail expert told CNN. 

“If Bed Bath & Beyond files for bankruptcy, the retailer might honor the 20% coupons for a 30-day period. After that, and especially if it starts closing stores and sets liquidation sales, creditors wouldn’t want to allow shoppers to tack on those 20% off coupons on top of 70% off liquidation prices,” Burt Flickinger of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group told CNN.

The “Big Blue” coupons became recognizable for their uniquely huge sizes, but the retailer scaled back its savings program after business slowed in 2020, The New York Times reported.

If you’re planning one last use out of your coupons, supplies may not last at your local Bed Bath & Beyond. 

According to a report from Insider’s Ben Tobin, the company was out of nearly half of its inventory in December 2022 – almost 20% less than its availability rate in January the same year. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California is pictured at the Capitol on January 7, 2023.

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

• Kevin McCarthy on Friday brushed off any concerns about fallout from the GOP leadership battle.
• “Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern,” the California Republican said.
• McCarthy clinched the House speakership early Saturday morning after a 15th ballot.

Shortly before the final roll call vote where Kevin McCarthy clinched the House speakership, the California Republican said that because of the protracted leadership battle, the GOP had “learned how to govern.”

While speaking with reporters at the Capitol on Friday evening, McCarthy dismissed any notion that the lengthy balloting process to secure his speakership was a prediction of GOP dysfunction in the 118th Congress.

“I think getting together and just finding the ability to — how we’re going to work together is new for us,” he said. “I think at the end of the day, we’re going to be more effective, more efficient, and definitely government is going to be more accountable.”

When McCarthy was asked about his outlook on leading the slim 222-member GOP majority, especially one with a deeply influential conservative bloc, the lawmaker said that the experience had been helpful to the party — despite a caucus size that will leave little room for error in the next two years.

“This is the great part,” he replied. “Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern. So now we’ll be able to get the job done.”

—Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 6, 2023

McCarthy was slated to claim the speaker’s gavel on Tuesday, Jan. 3.

However, the first few roll call votes shined a light on the lingering divisions within a party still reeling from their lackluster midterm results while also looking to 2024 — when President Joe Biden is expected to seek reelection and former President Donald Trump may once again be the GOP presidential nominee.

McCarthy on early Saturday morning eventually won the speakership over House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York after 15 ballots and a 216-212 vote.

(NewsNation) — Now that the drama of electing a new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is behind us, the question many Americans are asking is, what’s next?

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., secured the House speakership late Friday night in a 15th round of balloting, but not before tensions boiled over on the floor of the U.S. House.

“We have to focus on the economy, we have to focus, make our border secure,” McCarthy said after winning the vote. “We have much work to do.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R- S.D., said Republicans now have to act together.

“They want a Republican Party, a Republican House, that has its act together,” Johnson said. “We need to show them in the next few days we have our act together.”

Congress will soon be on to the business of legislating, but the prolonged fight around the speaker’s election raises questions.

Is this Republican-led house capable of governing?

It’s a concern even some Republicans themselves share.

“When you’ve got a five-seat margin, it’s not going to be easy,” Johnson said.

It took 15 rounds of voting for the party to unite behind a speaker this time around.

Tensions rose and last-minute fireworks ensued amid the House voting process, during which members literally had to be restrained on the House floor.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., got heated toward fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on Friday.

It was an episode that McCarthy said will only make his party more ready to govern.

“I really think by having the disruption now, I really built the trust with one another and learned how to work together,” McCarthy said.

On Monday, the new House will be sworn in and will have to vote on the rules that dictate how the chamber is run.

In order to win their vote for speaker, McCarthy agreed to the demands of a small group of ultraconservative Freedom Caucus Republicans, demands that are widely expected to weaken his speakership.

McCarthy’s rules concessions:

• One member can force a vote to remove the speaker
• Bills limiting government spending will be prioritized
• Bills will be posted publicly 72 hours before a vote
• More hardline conservatives will be on key committees

For important bills that have even wide, bipartisan support, McCarthy acknowledged, getting all his members to buy in will be a challenge.

“We have to think about and work on the bills with a microcosm of the conference before we start writing it,” McCarthy said. “That’s what we learned here.”

KYIV (Reuters) – Tears of joy streamed down worshippers’ faces as Ukraine’s main church celebrated a “return” to Kyiv’s Cathedral of the Assumption on Orthodox Christmas day, shortly after taking control of it from a rival church with alleged ties to Russia.

The golden-domed cathedral, of huge cultural and religious significance, sits on a high hill in the centre of Kyiv by the river Dnipro, and forms part of the 980-year-old Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, also containing chapels and administrative buildings.

It has become a focus of a bitter conflict between Ukraine’s Orthodox communities, triggered by Russia’s invasion.

Members of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Ukraine’s largest, piled into the cathedral’s ornate interior on Saturday, to hear the first ever Ukrainian-language service in the cathedral.

“During these days of festivities, with strong feelings we ask God: help us to defeat the enemy, who brought grief into our home. Help us to finally drive out the foreign invasion from the Ukrainian land,” said the OCU’s Patriarch Epifaniy I.

Vadym Storozhyk, a 50-year-old Kyiv city councillor, said the Christmas service meant to him a ‘return’ of a holy site under Ukraine’s control.

“30 years after renewing our history and gaining our independence — we return to our holy places, to our (spiritual) sources,” he said.

Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko, who attended the service with the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, posted a message on Facebook celebrating what he said was the end of three and a half centuries of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’s “capture” by Moscow.

Ukraine’s Orthodox Church, in its various iterations, has been subordinate to Moscow since the 17th century.

Ukraine has about 30 million Orthodox believers, divided between different church communities. The war, now in its eleventh month, has led many Ukrainians to rally round the OCU, which they see as more pro-Ukrainian than its rival, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

The UOC was officially under the wing of Russia’s Orthodox Church until May 2022 but announced a severing of ties due to the Moscow church’s support for the war.

President Vladimir Putin on Saturday praised the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting Moscow’s forces fighting in Ukraine in an Orthodox Christmas message and called it an important stabilising force in society.

Despite cutting ties, the UOC still faces allegations of pro-Russian views and direct collaboration with Moscow, which it denies, from Ukraine’s government and from much of Ukraine’s press and civil society. The UOC says it is the victim of a political witch-hunt by its enemies in government.

The UOC was evicted from the cathedral after its lease from the government expired.

The handover of the cathedral took many by surprise – an OCU priest, Vasyl Rudnytskyi, looked stunned as he walked towards the building’s gates amid the deafening pealing of bells.

“I didn’t even consider the possibility of this two weeks ago, or the fact that we would celebrate Jesus’ birth in such a meaningful place for the Ukrainian people,” he said.

The OCU was established in 2019 and recognised as Ukraine’s official branch of Orthodoxy by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul, the global head of the Orthodox Church.

That decision infuriated Russia’s Orthodox Church, as Istanbul had previously recognised the UOC, then under Moscow’s rule, as the legitimate Ukrainian church.

Some of the UOC’s clergy and many of its worshippers moved to the OCU, to the former organisation’s dismay. Both churches say the other is canonically illegitimate. Although the OCU soon had more worshippers than the old church, the UOC maintained control of over 12,000 churches, including the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra complex.

Ukraine’s government institutions and local press often refer to the UOC as the “Moscow Patriarchate”, a label the church rejects. A poll last August showed the UOC only retaining 20% of its worshippers from 2021, suggesting many had left it since the invasion, but the church told Reuters this data didn’t correspond to reality.

In a chapel on the monastery’s grounds, the UOC’s spokesman, Metropolitan Kliment, told Reuters the government’s actions were a “provocation intended to upset and humiliate millions of UOC worshippers.”

Lyudmyla, a 69-year-old worshipper, said she feared the government was biased against the UOC.

“I don’t like this. We need to be united not divided, right now. And this could lead to some kind of religious split (in our society),” she said.

The UOC’s monasteries and churches, including the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, faced a wave of searches by Ukrainian security forces and the police have announced a string of investigations.

Authorities said they found pro-Russian literature and Russian citizens being harboured on church premises, something the UOC denied.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Saturday in an open letter to National Football League (NFL) fans that he is “grateful for and humbled by” all who played a role in Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s ongoing recovery from cardiac arrest.

Hamlin collapsed on the field during a Monday night game in Cincinnati and had to have his heartbeat restored but began to wake up two days later and has had his breathing tube removed.

The 24-year-old Hamlin also surprised his team mates on Friday when he appeared on a video call during which he said “love you, boys,” flexed his biceps and flashed a heart symbol with his hands.

“Damar Hamlin’s inspiring progress over the past few days has lifted the spirits of the entire NFL and football fans across the country,” Goodell wrote in the open letter that was posted on the league’s website.

“While his recovery is just beginning, we thank the NFL medical personnel and the medical staffs from both teams whose emergency action quite likely saved his life.

“We are also grateful to the professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who tended to Damar and continue to oversee his care.”

Goodell also said players and coaches from all 32 NFL teams will wear “Love for Damar 3” T-shirts during pregame warmups in a show of support for Hamlin this weekend as the league’s regular season comes to a close.

Buffalo could still secure the top seed in the American Football Conference and coveted first-round bye if the Kansas City Chiefs lose to the Las Vegas Raiders later on Saturday and the Bills beat the New England Patriots on Sunday.

“I’m deeply hopeful that with his continued progress, there is a good chance Damar himself will be watching his teammates,” wrote Goodell. “We are grateful for and humbled by all who played a role as he continues on his road to recovery.”

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Elon Musk

Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Getty Images

• After two months of waiting, laid off Twitter employees got severance agreements from Elon Musk.
• The process for accessing the agreements was so odd, many workers fear a phishing attempt.
• Although the agreements are said to be legitimate, some affected workers say they will not sign.

Hundreds of Twitter employees who were part of Elon Musk‘s first round of layoffs just got severance paperwork after waiting for two months. Now they must decide whether to sign or join lawsuits against the company and its billionaire owner.

In the early hours of Saturday, the former Twitter employees laid off on Nov. 4 received a message from “twitterseparation@cptgroup.com,” an email not associated with any internal department at the company, several people familiar with the situation told Insider.

The email was designated as “spam” for most people who received it. After digging it out of spam folders, the message directed people to a website operated by CPT Group for access to the full separation agreement.

“As you know, we’ve had to reduce our global workforce to ensure the company’s success moving forward, and your employment has been impacted,” the website stated. “Since we notified you of your status, you’ve remained in non-working notice, employed and on payroll, and this will continue through your separation date. You are also eligible to receive additional severance if you sign a separation agreement and release.”

‘Imagine waiting so long and then getting this’

Even before laid off workers received their agreements, many were discussing whether or not to sign away their rights in return for one month of severance. By comparison, laid off workers at Facebook received six months of severance when that company enacted mass layoffs in November. Snap offered its workers four months of severance in its late August layoffs.

One person who received an agreement said they’d decided not to sign, and instead will participate in one of the several lawsuits already filed or in the works related to Musk’s alleged violations of the merger agreement regarding employee benefits and severance. Scores of other affected employees have already signed on to participate in legal actions. The person noted that, had the agreements come sooner, perhaps they and other people would have been more inclined to sign.

“Imagine waiting so long and then getting this,” the person said. This person, and others who spoke with Insider, asked not to be identified discussing private matters. A representative of Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

‘This is sketchy AF’

Everything from the text spacing of the email to it redirecting to a website no one was familiar with put former employees on guard. “This is sketchy AF,” one person wrote in a message. Another person noted that the long wait for severance paperwork has left many people  “prime targets” for phishing attempts.

Still, two people familiar with Twitter’s actions said the site is legitimate and noted that this will be the way all severance or separation agreements will be distributed by Twitter. The website also uses Twitter’s official blue and white bird logo and the official separation agreements are said to show Musk’s signature. 

Workers who were either laid off or resigned around November 4 are expecting to receive separation agreements, two people familiar with the company said. However, those who resigned a few weeks later over Musk’s “hardcore Twitter 2.0” email have not received an agreement to sign so far, the sources said.

As for the separation agreements, they appear to be mostly boilerplate, offering one month of pay to laid off employees as severance. On November 4, Musk tweeted that “everyone exited” was offered 3 months of severance, saying that was 50% more than legally required. The tech billionaire may have been conflating periods of “non-working” employment that later saw thousands of workers continue to be paid since November, while they waited for severance. State labor laws require companies to give certain notice periods for mass layoffs. 

In order to receive the one month of additional pay, laid off workers must sign the contract being offered, which prohibits them from participating in any lawsuit against the company, or speaking publicly or to the press about Twitter. Such clauses are typical for severance agreements. 

Are you a tech employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, left, Matt Gaetz of Florida, center, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado listen during the 15th round of votes in the House chamber as the chamber entered the fifth day trying to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress in Washington, DC, on Saturday, January 7, 2023.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

• Matt Gaetz was one of the last holdouts in backing challengers to Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid.
• In the 14th and 15th ballots, Gaetz chose not to back a challenger and instead voted “present.”
• Gaetz told CNN that he “ran out of things” to ask for by the end of the public leadership fight.

During Kevin McCarthy’s protracted battle to secure the speakership in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida — known for his close alliance with former President Donald Trump — was one of the California Republican’s most prominent intraparty detractors.

Gaetz came into the original January 3 vote seeking new leadership, which he expressed through a succession of speaker votes cast for Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, and Jim Jordan of Ohio — along with a vote cast for Trump — from the first through the 13th speaker ballots.

For most of the past week, Gaetz continually lit into McCarthy, at one point calling him “the LeBron James of special interest fundraising” in Washington, while also questioning why he was putting the House through so many rounds of votes only to come up short in the tallies.

However, by the 14th ballot — when the vast majority of the conservative holdouts had finally moved behind McCarthy — Gaetz shifted his vote from Jordan and instead recorded himself as “present.”

While the move represented a breakthrough for Gaetz, it generated anger from many members within the larger caucus as McCarthy remained one vote shy of winning the speaker’s gavel. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama after the 14th round of voting then confronted Gaetz and appeared to lunge at the Floridian over the vote.

By voting “present” in the 15th and final roll call vote, Gaetz and other Republicans still critical of McCarthy — including Biggs, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, and Matt Rosendale of Montana — lowered the numerical threshold for victory and allowed the Californian to win the speakership 216-212 over House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

When Gaetz was asked by CNN what prompted him to change his strategy of backing conservative challengers to McCarthy, the Florida lawmaker said he “ran out” of additional concessions to ask of leadership.

“I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for,” he told the news outlet.

CNN reported that Gaetz on Monday had asked McCarthy to chair a House Armed Services subcommittee, but the GOP leader had declined the request.

In the earliest stages of the voting process to select a new speaker, McCarthy struggled to consolidate the support of roughly 20 conservatives and earned fewer votes than Jeffries.

With the Republican Party’s razor-thin 222-212 edge over the Democrats, McCarthy couldn’t afford to lose more than a few members, a predicament that gave the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus enormous leverage with leadership as they sought to agree on terms that would guide the new majority.

The proposed GOP rules package would afford one member the ability to force a “motion to vacate” the speaker, while also making it tougher for the House to raise taxes or the debt limit. And the new rules would also empower conservatives in the lower chamber, giving them more representation on critical congressional committees.