Twenty twenty-three is shaping up to be a year of political stalemate. We shouldn’t expect a lot of good to be accomplished, but there will still be plenty of opportunities for the Right to make things worse.

Thankfully, congressional Republicans seem fixated on Hunter Biden. The president’s son seems to have engaged in some trading on the family name to get cushy contracts, and may have skirted paying his taxes, which he has since repaid. This kind of petty sleaze is endemic to American politics, but Republicans are convinced the younger Biden’s influence peddling was much more nefarious than the norm. So far, they’ve been unable to produce little evidence to that effect — a situation they want to change now that they’ll have subpoena power in the House of Representatives.

Not to be outdone, Democrats — fresh off of running the midterm campaign about nothing — have signaled their desire to move investigations of Donald Trump and his family, among other targets, from the House to the Senate, where they will retain a nominal majority of a single vote.