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Pre-sales for flagship iwi housing development in New Plymouth to begin

by i.stuff.co.nz Leave a Comment

Pre-sales for the first of a series of iwi-led residential developments in New Plymouth begin next month.

Te Kotahitanga o Te Atiawa, through its commercial arm, first announced its flagship Pukekura – The Parade project in 2021.

It will see 35 homes built on New Plymouth’s Liardet St on a section of prime real estate known as the ‘dress circle’.

The site is about 450 metres from the central city, and 350m metres from the entrance to popular Pukekura Park.

READ MORE: Te Atiawa reveal new name, facade for its New Plymouth business hub E tinga ana tētahi mahere mō te ‘wāhi hirahira ki te motu’ hei te 2024 New Plymouth Barrett St hospital site demolition resumes

Livingstone Building has won the contract to build the houses, with a final completion date of mid-2025 mooted.

The houses will be sold at market prices.

Te Atiawa uri (descendants) can apply for pre-sales for the multimillion-dollar development between April 14 and May 5, before the offer hits the open market.

Other residential developments in the pipeline include Papā Pounamu, which will see a total of eight townhouses built on a currently vacant Barrett St section in Westown by late 2024.

Twenty homes are planned as part of the Tūkāpō development, with a completion date of early 2025.

Tūkāpō is the original name of Tukapa St, in Westown, where the houses will be built.

Rungapiko, on New Plymouth’s Weymouth St, is another project on the books, which will see eight one-bedroom kaumatua flats and six town houses constructed by 2025.

Te Kotahitanga o Te Atiawa chief executive Dion Tuuta said about $25-30 million of its $130m asset base applied to its commercial and residential property interests.

The iwi property strategy was designed to be “slow” as the idea was for it to be sustainable and self-financing over time.

Tuuta said the iwi entity was essentially still in “start-up” mode and the last two years had been about building up its administration systems and staff.

He said all the work the iwi entity was involved in was focussed on growing Te Atiawa identity, and providing pathways to ensure the needs of current and future generations of its people could be met.

“Property is a means for people development.”

It is understood the iwi still hopes to develop the former Barrett St hospital site , known as Ōtumaikuku, but discussions were ongoing about the need to ensure the 7.6 hectare property was clear of contamination first.

A 13.5 hectare site, known as Okoare on Tukapa St, is another on the radar for potential development, while plans to develop a 60-section subdivision on Waitara’s Bayly St , which would see 25 homes built, had been previously announced.

Recently, the iwi confirmed the new name for the former Atkinson Building, on Devon St West, along with what its facade will look like once the construction wrap comes off in June.

The renovated business hub is now called Ngāmotu House.

Last year, the iwi also pushed ahead with the demolition of the old Education House building , on the corner of Eliot and Courtenay Sts, which will be leased out as car parks in the interim.

I’m a pest expert – how to stop annoying ants getting into your home, and the best ways to get rid of them if they do

by www.thesun.co.uk Leave a Comment

A PEST EXPERT has shared their handy tips on how to stop ants from attacking your home and laying eggs.

PestXpert , an Australian -owned pest control company that sells products to get rid of anything from ants to cockroaches , has dedicated an entire section of their website for tips and tricks of the trade.

From prevention to damage control, this expert has got you covered.

“Ants can certainly be annoying… and as many have found out, ant control is not always easy!” they started, admitting that it can be a continuous battle to get rid of them.

There are three species that are commonly seen nesting in houses: black house ant, pharaoh ant, and the white-footed house ant.

Then there are the pavement ants, big-headed ants and Argentine ants that are usually seen around the house, while there are loads more that can be found in the yard.

While signs of an infestation are “pretty obvious”, it’s not always easy to rid the house of them.

The easiest thing to do is take measures to stop ants from nesting inside the home from the get-go.

Listing a set of tips, they said that good hygiene is critical, adding that you should always clean away spilled food and dirty dishes straight away.

Ensure the rubbish is put in secure containers and don’t leave pet food in bowls on the ground. However, if you do, “place the bowl in a large bowl of water to create a “moat” which the ants can’t cross”.

You should also keep leftovers in sealed containers and seal any small holes in the walls or around the windows and doors.

But if everything fails and the ants have managed to find their way inside, finding the nest is your best bet at eradicating them.

“To get lasting control of an ant problem you will need to kill all the ants in the nest, especially the queen,” the pest expert said. “If the queen survives, she can start laying eggs again and ants will return.

However, many ant species have more than one queen and have multiple sites of infestation, despite being part of the same colony.

The advice continued: ““Flooding” [the nest] with insecticide using a ready to use pump pack product will deliver the best results.”

Meanwhile, you can also use ant baits to gain control of the problem.

“By applying bait where ants are active, they do the hard work for you, taking the bait (containing controlled release insecticide) back to the next, where it is fed to the rest of the colony, leading to its destruction,” they said.

They also suggest spraying insecticide around entry points as well as the perimeter of the property as part of a control program.

The cheapest Google Home sales for March 2023: the best Home Mini, Hub, and Max deals

by www.techradar.com Leave a Comment

Google Home sales can be a lifesaver for anyone kitting their home out with a virtual assistant. Whether you’re after a series of smart displays or more discrete speaker systems, you’ll be glad to know that we regularly see Google Home deals across a range of devices. Knowing where to find these offers is often the hardest part, which is why we’re rounding up all the best prices across the full range right here.

The Google Home family of smart speakers are amongst the most popular smart speakers on the market that tap into the convenience of voice control. And don’t tell Alexa, but Google Assistant has proved to be considerably smarter at answering our requests. The Google Home and Google Home Mini are roughly on a par with the Amazon Echo range in terms of audio quality for music, but the newer Google Home Max frankly thrashes any of Amazon’s Echo speakers for music fans that want to feel every beat.

More features and apps are being added all the time, but right now, you can stream music from Google Play, Spotify, Tunein, or your phone. There are smart home tech features to pair it with too, so watch in awe as your smart lights and thermostats are told what to do. Even the basic features prove incredibly handy, such as adding items to shopping and to-do lists or setting alarms – finally, no more burnt pizza!

Google Nest Mini

Like the Home Mini, but a bit louder

Size: 1.65 x 3.85-inch | Microphones: 3 | Screen: No | Aux input: No | Colours: Chalk, Charcoal, Coral, Sky | Launch Price: $49 / £49 / AU$79

Google Assistant upgraded with machine learning
Bass boosted for bigger sound
Capacitive touch controls

There are some modest upgrades found in the Google Nest Mini – the long-awaited follow up to the Google Home Mini. As far as the visual design goes, nothing has changed though, which is a little disappointing in all honesty and certainly won’t have many people trading in their older model an immediate upgrade.

The Nest Mini has slightly improved capacitive control features for volume and playback, with sensor-activated LEDs guiding your hand to the correct control spots. While the Google Nest Mini is still powered by Google Assistant, it now utilizes onboard machine learning to fine-tune your queries and speed up response times over the Home Mini. There’s also a new slot on the underside of the device that will let you hang the speaker on a wall.

The speaker is supported by an improved bass, and an overall larger speaker system housed in the same chassis. We found the original version to be surprisingly loud for a cheap music player and the extra bass is appreciated here. The Nest Mini has the same starting price as the Home Mini but the older device is often on sale for much less and we expect the Nest Mini to follow suit to keep up the pace on Amazon’s Echo Dot series.

Google Home Mini

The best option for first-time smart speaker buyers

Size: 1.65 x 3.85-inch | Microphones: 2 | Screen: No | Aux input: No | Available colors: Grey, Black, Orange, Aqua | Launch price: $49 / £49

Discrete size
The cheapest option
Surprisingly loud sound

The Google Home Mini is a smaller cheaper version of Google Home, first unveiled in 2017. Instead of a pricey £129/$129, like its bigger older brother, you pay $49 in the US and £49 in the UK for the Home Mini but you can get it for much less at regular intervals throughout the year.

Naturally, the Google Home Mini comes with Google Assistant, meaning you ask it questions by simply starting with, “Ok, Google.” And with the power of Google search engine behind it and now a super low price to match, Alexa’s time may be up.

Color options include chalk (grey), charcoal (black) coral (pink) and the newest entry is mint (light green). At such a cheap price point, you may be tempted to get more than one, especially for family homes as a new Broadcast app allows you to talk to any Google Home device in the house.

Google Home Mini deals have been strong of late as Google is keen to catch up to the Amazon Echo Dot sales, so you’ll rarely have to pay the full RRP. Check out our full Google Home Mini review for the full rundown on the diminutive smart speaker.

Google Home

Like the Mini, but louder

Size: 6 x 4-inch | Microphones: 2 | Screen: No | Aux input: No | Available colors: Grey (other bases sold separately) | Launch price: $129 / £129

Google assistant is great
Louder sound than the Mini
Reasonably priced

The standard Google Home was the first smart speaker Google released. It costs a fair bit more than the Home Mini, but the more powerful speaker can be worth it if you want to play louder music. It’s a great middle option between the choice of three speakers and considerably cheaper than the high-end Google Home Max.

So, how much is the original Google Home? Prices started around the $129 / £129 mark, but retailers are slowly getting more competitive nowadays. We’re seeing more discounts to keep the price well below this. Need to know more? Then check out our full Google Home review .

Google Home Max

The best for room-dominating audio

Size: 13 x 7 x 6-inch | Microphones: 6 | Screen: No | Aux input: Yes | Available colors: Grey, Black | Launch price: $399 / £399

Massive sound
Auxiliary support
Hears voice commands over loud music
Very expensive

Ok, so you’re after some serious boom for the tunes? Then you’ll want to take a look at the monster-sized Google Home Max. This large-speaker houses two 4.5-inch woofers for high-fidelity music playback along with the Google Assistant tech that’s proved so popular in the Google Home range of smart speakers. Technically, this speaker is what we’d call super smart as it’ll adjust its music playback automatically depending on room-size and placement. The microphone has been improved too and is more than capable of picking up your requests from the other side of the room even with music blaring out at significant volume.

The Google Home Max prices tend to match the name to with a $399/£399 pricetag. That being said, prices have started to drop more recently, so you should be able to get a better deal as seen above. If you’d like to see the full rundown, be sure to take a quick look at our Google Home Max review.

Google Nest Hub

Google Assistant only gets better with a screen

Size: 4.5 x 7-inch | Microphones: 2 | Screen: 7-inch touchscreen | Aux input: no | Available colors: Grey, Black | Launch price: $149 / £139

Native YouTube support
Way cheaper than the Echo Show
Great for How To and other video content

The Google Home Hub has now been renamed Google Nest Hub. It’s taking a while for retailers to update their listings though. The two items are actually exactly the same, it’s just a name change. So don’t be alarmed if the retail box simply has a sticker over the old name.

We’ve been waiting a while for a screen on one of Google’s smart speakers and late in 2018 we finally got one with the Google Home Hub. With a RRP of just $149 / £139 / AU$219, the Nest Hub is much cheaper than the similarly-sized Amazon Echo Show.

The Google Nest Hub naturally supports a huge range of smart home products like Hue bulbs, Nest thermostats and so on. Unlike the Amazon Echo Show, you’re getting full YouTube support, which is great for watching music video, trailers, cooking videos, how-to content and so on – a huge advantage over the rival device. We frequently find the voice-activated Google Assistant outperforms Amazon’s Alexa at pretty much every turn too.

The Nest Hub doesn’t have a camera built-in, so you can’t use it for video calls. If that’s something you really want, we’ve rounded up the latest Amazon Echo Show prices for you too or take a look at the Google Home Hub Max below. For more details on this one though, take a look at our Google Nest Hub review.

Google Nest Hub Max

Video calls are an option on this larger screen too

Size: 9.85 x 7.19-inch | Microphones: 2 | Screen: 10-inch touchscreen | Aux input: no | Available colors: Grey, Black | Launch price: $229 / £219

Huge screen
Great for video calls
Reliable smart features from Google
Pricey

Want something a bit larger than the Google Nest Hub (aka Google Home Hub)? Then you might want to take a look at the newest member of Google smart speaker family as it comes with a 10-inch display.

Unlike the smaller version, there is a camera on this version too giving you the option of video calls via the free Google Duo app which is also available on smartphones and PCs. There’s also a switch on the device to turn the camera and mic off for added privacy.

A built-in Chromecast allows you to stream content directly to the screen too if you’re able to place the Nest Hub Max close enough to enjoy watching on its 10-inch screen as it’s not exactly designed to be held in your hands. The new gesture controls are a handy extra option for controlling media playback without raising your voice or touching the screen too.

If the camera features, gesture controls and larger display aren’t key points for you, then the smaller version is seriously cheaper than this one and might be your better option.

What are Google Home bases?

The bottom part of the original Google Home speaker can be swapped out for different ‘bases’ to replace the default grey one. They’re not cheap though and the official ones are only available from the Google Store (opens in new tab) at the time of writing.

Fabric bases are the cheapest at $20/£18 and come in Mango (orange), Marine (green) and Violet. Metal bases are $40/£36 and come in Carbon (black), Copper and Snow (slightly grey). We might just have to splash out for that Violet one though.

We’ve seen some third-party sales and knock-offs, mainly leather-style ones, at Amazon (opens in new tab) and eBay (opens in new tab) , but nothing particularly tempting so far and the prices aren’t that much cheaper either.

Comey Often Thought He Knew Best. That May Have Hurt the F.B.I.

by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — As deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, James B. Comey clashed repeatedly with the White House over its interrogation and warrantless wiretapping programs, earning a reputation of fighting for his view of what was right no matter whom he angered.

That same impulse — that he knew best, no matter the consequences — underpinned Mr. Comey’s decisions in 2016 to flout Justice Department norms and update the public on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information. Democrats have said he cost her the presidential election.

Mr. Comey was faulted for those decisions in a highly critical Justice Department report released on Thursday about the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton inquiry. By trying to protect the bureau, the department’s inspector general found, Mr. Comey instead damaged the F.B.I.’s reputation.

“Comey chose to deviate from the F.B.I.’s and the department’s established procedures and norms and instead engaged in his own subjective, ad hoc decision making,” the report said. It added, “The decisions negatively impacted the perception of the F.B.I. and the department as fair administrators of justice.”

An official condemnation of Mr. Comey’s go-it-alone approach, the report is bound to shape his legacy, providing grist for both Republicans and Democrats as well as F.B.I. agents who disagreed with how he ran the bureau at a politically perilous time.

Mr. Comey defended his decisions and said the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, had the benefit of hindsight. While Mr. Comey supported the review, he disagreed with its conclusions.

Read: Justice Dept. Report on the F.B.I.’s Handling of Clinton Inquiry

The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on Thursday detailing the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email investigation during the 2016 presidential election.

“If a future F.B.I. leadership team ever faces a similar situation — something I pray never happens — it will have the benefit of this important document,” he wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Times .

Fired abruptly by President Trump last year as the Russia investigation engulfed the young Trump administration, Mr. Comey has returned to the public spotlight, chastening the president on Twitter and writing a best-seller . Whether he has a third act in another administration or as a publicly elected official is an open question.

In his tour as F.B.I. director, Mr. Comey ultimately served as a major figure in the 2016 election, possibly shaping its outcome even as he sought to navigate the bureau away from the bitter political atmosphere of the campaign.

Mr. Horowitz determined that Mr. Comey should not have announced unilaterally in July of that year that he would not recommend charges against Mrs. Clinton, and he should not have called her “extremely careless” during a highly unusual news conference.

Mr. Comey was insubordinate, the inspector general said, and should have followed the chain of command and coordinated with his Justice Department bosses in holding a news conference. Mr. Comey told Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch that he intended to make an announcement regarding the investigation but provided no details.

Mr. Comey also should not have sent a pair of letters to Congress just days before the election saying the F.B.I. had reopened the investigation to examine new evidence and then closed it days later, the inspector general said.

The former director’s supreme confidence has exposed the F.B.I. to accusations of political bias and corruption, according to former and current agents, who predicted the F.B.I. would need years to regain the public’s trust. “For Comey, this is a stain that will not come out,” said Tim Weiner, author of “Enemies: A History of the F.B.I.”

Mr. Comey has refused to say he made a mistake but concedes he might have done “some things differently.” In his best-selling book published this spring, “ A Higher Loyalty ,” Mr. Comey wrote that perhaps he could have found a better way to describe Mrs. Clinton’s conduct but spent little time second-guessing himself.

Mr. Trump had praised Mr. Comey before and immediately after taking office. On the campaign trail he said that Mr. Comey had “a lot of guts” for taking on the Clinton investigation, and in a memorable White House meeting the president embraced Mr. Comey, saying, “He’s become more famous than me.”

But Mr. Trump quickly soured on him, and in firing Mr. Comey last year, the president initially cited Justice Department criticism over his handling of the Clinton investigation.

Mr. Trump later acknowledged that the Russia inquiry was on his mind during that time and has more recently begun a public campaign to discredit Mr. Comey, who is a key witness in the obstruction investigation of the president.

While the new report dented Mr. Comey’s standing, Mr. Weiner said the totality of Mr. Comey’s time in public service should not be overlooked.

Mr. Comey had a formidable law enforcement career beginning as a mob prosecutor in New York. Later, as an assistant United States attorney in Richmond, Va. , he cracked down on felons arrested with guns and brought charges in a major terrorism case. For his efforts, Mr. Comey landed on the front page of a weekly newspaper under the headline “One of Good Guys.” Mr. Comey had not told his boss about the article ahead of time.

In 2002, Mr. Comey returned to New York as the United States attorney in Manhattan. He embraced tough cases, prosecuting Martha Stewart on charges connected to a personal stock trade she made.

“Charging Martha Stewart was my first experience with getting a lot of hate and heat for a decision that had been carefully and thoughtfully made,” Mr. Comey recounted in his book. She was found guilty on all charges and served five months in federal prison.

Soon, Mr. Comey was tapped to be the deputy attorney general, trying to protect the country after the Sept. 11 attacks as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official.

He famously confronted Mr. Bush’s aides as they tried to get Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized with a pancreatic ailment, to reauthorize a National Security Agency surveillance program that Mr. Comey had found to be legally dubious. Mr. Comey, who threatened to resign along with Robert S. Mueller III, then the F.B.I. director, prevailed.

He also fought with the White House over Justice Department memos that authorized the C.I.A.’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Mr. Comey and others at the Justice Department believed that the agency might be violating laws against torture because of how the techniques were being applied.

Mr. Comey did not explicitly say he was thinking about his legacy and being on the right side of history, but, he wrote, a comment by his wife resonated with him. “Don’t be the torture guy,” she said, advising him to stand up against the program.

Mr. Comey’s pleas were ultimately ignored, and no policy changes were made. He left for the private sector in 2005, then took over the F.B.I. in 2013.

More than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover, Mr. Comey embraced the persona of national lawman. He saw himself as the principled leader of not only the F.B.I. but police officers everywhere. When Mr. Comey traveled, he mingled with agents in field offices and local police officers. He was something of a rock star, albeit a tall one at 6-foot-8.

In 2015, the Clinton investigation, with its vast political implications, began to consume the F.B.I.’s seventh-floor leadership. Mr. Comey knew the F.B.I. would be attacked no matter the outcome.

The inquiry wrapping up as the 2016 presidential primaries did, Mr. Comey began to debate whether and how to disclose it. Mr. Comey, who prides himself on being a great communicator, settled on a public announcement, a departure from the F.B.I.’s usual practice of silence on investigations.

He thought he could deliver the right message to the American people, balancing openness while protecting the bureau from accusations of favoritism.

Still, before briefing reporters, he later wrote, “It felt like I was about to damage my career.”

Indeed, many former F.B.I. agents thought Mr. Comey should have remained silent and let the Justice Department announce that no charges would be brought in the case. His overconfidence was his undoing, agents have said in interviews.

In the fall, when the F.B.I. discovered possible new evidence in the case, Mr. Comey confronted two “terrible options”: speak or conceal, as he titled a chapter in his book.

He ultimately decided to tell lawmakers, which he had promised to do. The disclosure upended the election in its final days, and Mr. Comey’s subsequent notification that the F.B.I. had closed the investigation again without finding new evidence earned him a new round of evisceration.

The inspector general characterized Mr. Comey’s dilemma as “a false dichotomy.” In reality, Mr. Horowitz wrote, Mr. Comey could either follow established practices or policies — or not. “Although we acknowledge that Comey faced a difficult situation with unattractive choices, in proceeding as he did, we concluded that Comey made a serious error of judgment,” the report said.

Mr. Comey disagreed. “The inspector general weighs it differently, and that’s O.K., even though I respectfully disagree,” he wrote in his Op-Ed.

Mr. Comey will probably forever be linked to Mrs. Clinton, said Douglas M. Charles, an F.B.I. historian. “People in history are remembered for one or two things,” he said. “He will likely be remembered for interfering in the 2016 election. I think it is potentially catastrophic to his legacy.”

House GOP off to slow start, at odds with early Republican majorities past

by www.chron.com Leave a Comment

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In its first three months in charge, Newt Gingrich’s House Republican majority had approved all 10 planks of the “Contract With America,” including a balanced-budget law, term limits on Congress, an overhaul of welfare laws and a huge tax-cut proposal.

John A. Boehner’s House GOP majority in its first three months forced President Barack Obama to the bargaining table and eventually to accept a nearly $40 billion cut in spending by federal agencies.

On Thursday, as they gathered to celebrate their first quarter in charge, Kevin McCarthy’s House Republicans had passed just two of their top 10 legislative priority items, and neither is expected to become law. Their biggest victories that will make it into law were blocking the implementation of a crime bill for the District of Columbia and forcing President Biden to end the pandemic emergency declaration a few weeks ahead of his original plan.

For Republicans across the country, this is not the revolutionary charge that Gingrich (R-Ga.) led in early 1995, trying to revamp almost every aspect of federal laws. Nor is it the fiscal police squad that Boehner (R-Ohio) led to two budget deals in 2011 that reined in federal spending for the next decade.

The new House Republican majority is taking a slow-and-steady approach to its confrontations with Biden and Senate Democrats, though often unsteadily because of the conference’s unruly factions. McCarthy (R-Calif.), who considers himself a Gingrich acolyte, does not possess the intellectual charisma that the former history professor used to keep the GOP caucus fairly unified in his first term.

More important, McCarthy lacks anything close to the 242-seat majority that Boehner had in his first term. That allowed Boehner to lose up to two dozen votes from his side of the aisle and still muscle party-line legislation across the finish line. And although the new majority is investigating the Biden administration, similar to the GOP’s oversight in 1995 and 2011, today’s Republicans have repeatedly been distracted by demands from ex-president Donald Trump to re-litigate past grievances, losing time and energy they need for their agenda and planned investigations.

McCarthy’s House Republicans spent their first three months in charge assembling their leadership team and committee ranks. The nearly five-day squabble over choosing McCarthy as speaker forced concessions that placed more hard-line conservatives on important committees, which created an early emphasis on getting ideological unity on key proposals long before those plans head to the full House floor.

Items that were once considered slam dunks – such as a strong border security bill, a key issue for winning the majority in the 2022 midterms – are still marinating in the House Homeland Security and Judiciary committees.

House Republicans have hit the pause button on the early-January agreement that set approving a budget resolution that brings deficits into balance as the first critical goal for their agenda. At the pep rally Thursday, McCarthy rebuffed a reporter’s question about the delayed release of the GOP budget and the looming battle over raising the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority at some point this summer.

“First of all, if we’re talking about the debt limit, if we’re talking about the budget, that’s two different things,” McCarthy said. “Just so everybody knows, a budget resolution doesn’t go over to the president, a budget resolution doesn’t raise the debt limit.”

It is now possible that when House Republicans return from the two-week Easter recess, they will first deal with proposals to raise the debt limit, trying to win conservative concessions in exchange, before they formally take up the 10-year budget proposal that would then allow them to begin processing the annual federal agency appropriations.

What is called the X date, the absolute deadline at which the United States would default on its debt, remains unknown until tax season wraps up this spring and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen can assess the balance, leading to a decision that will set in motion the first real struggle with Biden and a strict deadline for action.

Senior Republicans have sent dire warnings over the past days that, with no legislative action moving and no Biden-McCarthy talks on the horizon, Congress could sleepwalk into a potential default.

“I don’t see how we get there,” Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Financial Services Committee and a close McCarthy ally, said at a Punchbowl News forum Tuesday. “And this is a marked change from where I’ve been.”

On Thursday, McCarthy said his lieutenants were assembling a package of spending cuts and other demands in legislation that also would raise Treasury’s borrowing cap. “If the president doesn’t act, we will,” he said.

Passing such a proposal will run into the same snags that have hindered the early efforts at rounding up support for border legislation, the budget resolution and other key items: With just 222 House Republicans, leadership can afford to lose only five votes.

And with several dozen hard-right conservatives demanding aggressive spending cuts, and given that several dozen Republicans are in competitive districts where moderation reigns, that is a tightrope act that this young majority has yet to truly walk on a big issue.

It is a stark contrast to Gingrich’s early days in charge.

Having become the first Republican speaker in 40 years, Gingrich fashioned himself as something akin to a prime minister. He was the first speaker to adopt the “first 100 days” standard that Franklin D. Roosevelt set for his presidency in 1933.

Just before his 100th day in power, he gave a nationally televised address in prime time that had the trappings of a State of the Union speech. “New ideas, new ways and old-fashioned common sense can improve government,” he said.

Much of Gingrich’s agenda crashed ashore in a Senate where liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats still existed, making centrism, not revolution, the coin of the realm. And all of his ego and confidence led him into a politically disastrous shutdown of the federal government, helping President Bill Clinton win a second term in 1996 and ending with Gingrich ousted as speaker and resigning soon after the 1998 elections.

Boehner had served as a junior member of Gingrich’s leadership team, so he saw Gingrich’s weaknesses and strengths up close, trying to learn from that in early 2011 after the Republican romp of 2010 left the conference with its largest majority since 1948.

Boehner decided to dig in for an immediate clash on that fiscal year – unlike today’s GOP leaders, who in December allowed the passage of a huge funding bill that clears the shutdown-deadline decks until Sept. 30. In mid-February 2011, Boehner held a week of late-night debate and amendment votes for a funding bill that eliminated dozens of federal programs and slashed some agency budgets by 40 percent.

“Democracy in action,” Boehner told reporters before 235 Republicans voted in favor.

By early April he had cut a deal with Obama that slashed that year’s agency funding, and by August he had won $1 trillion of spending cuts and a decade-long cap on agency budgets that liberals decried.

Yet, conservatives dismissed that victory as insufficient, and Boehner lost control of the GOP conference. Another long shutdown ensued in 2013, setting in motion the House Republican dynamics that exist today: If anywhere from a dozen to three dozen conservatives become sufficiently agitated, the House basically freezes in place.

Some of the 20 people who forced McCarthy’s pleadings and concessions in January were involved in helping eject Boehner as speaker in October 2015.

And, just as Boehner had a front-row seat to Gingrich’s performance, McCarthy served as a deputy to both Boehner and the next speaker, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

Rather than pushing for big early wins, McCarthy and his leadership team have opted for listening sessions with rank-and-file Republicans that are doubling as tutorials for a conference with little experience in big negotiations.

They forced Biden to retreat on his staff’s initial support for the D.C. crime law, which Republicans and some Democrats considered too soft on certain crimes, and then again on the resolution ending pandemic emergency provisions.

McCarthy grew up about 100 miles north of Hollywood, developing an affection for celebrity and an appreciation for theatrics that could fit into a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

He held elaborate rallies with dozens of Republicans in front of flags, celebrating the niche success on D.C. crime and the House’s passing its top legislative priority to increase domestic energy production, more than 85 days into the majority.

Those occasions gave the chance for staunch conservatives such as Reps. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) and Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.), both of whom withheld support from McCarthy in early January, to share the stage with swing-district moderates including Reps. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) and David G. Valadao (R-Calif.).

These feel-good moments lack the concrete successes that lay behind the other Republican majorities’ celebrations, but McCarthy hopes that keeping everyone cheerful in the short run is worth more in the long run than those early wins that Gingrich and Boehner notched.