Is there a new speaker of the House yet? Republicans brace for infighting ahead of crucial vote

Table Of Content

• Jeffries
• McHenry unsure if House will vote on Tuesday
• After opposing Emmer bid for speaker, Trump says his "strong suggestion" is to support Johnson
• Who voted against Jim Jordan on Wednesday?
• Is there a new speaker of the House yet? Republicans brace for infighting ahead of crucial vote
• Republicans to hold another candidate forum at 6 p.m.

He began the day with a scant victory, winning an internal party nominating contest by a vote of 117 to 97 over Mr. Johnson. A social conservative, Mr. Johnson is a lawyer and the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Representative Mike Johnson, a little-known social conservative from Louisiana, emerged on Tuesday night as the latest contender for the post after Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid only hours after securing the nomination. Mr. Emmer’s downfall followed a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, that left his candidacy in shambles and the G.O.P. as divided as ever.

Jeffries

Now we wait to see when the third round of voting will take place. Four House Republicans who initially supported Jordan Tuesday flipped the script and voted for an alternative candidate Wednesday. As chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, Jordan is also one of few GOP lawmakers spearheading House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Jordan is a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump and voted against certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

McHenry unsure if House will vote on Tuesday

"Our mission here is to serve you well, to restore the people's faith in this House in this great and essential institution." Johnson has laid out a tentative legislative schedule to approve new spending and take up other pieces of legislation, but things could change quickly as he confronts the realities of governing, especially given the fractious nature of the Republican conference. Jordan lost 20 Republican votes in the first round, and in the final count, he ended up with 200 votes, leaving him shy of the 217 needed for a majority. He described himself during his first primary campaign as a "Trump-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment Black man." He went on to defeat his GOP opponents by just over 770 votes. Several members have said Emmer initially wanted to go to the floor today, but that seems highly unlikely unless he can flip some of the holdouts during the open forum.

After opposing Emmer bid for speaker, Trump says his "strong suggestion" is to support Johnson

Prior to the GOP's 40-year sentence as the minority party, several of its speakers had risen to the top rung largely on their personal popularity among their colleagues. One was Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who led the party in the House during two brief interludes of majority status after World War II. Both lasted only the minimum two years, the first ending with Democratic Harry S. Truman's surprise White House win in 1948.

Rep. Kevin Hern, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters that he decided to forgo his candidacy for speaker and is instead supporting Rep. Mike Johnson. With the lowest vote tally, Fleischman was dropped from the ballot. Johnson, a former radio host from Louisiana, was first elected to Congress in 2016. He voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results. The House has now been without an elected speaker for three weeks, which means that it has not been able to consider or pass legislation to address a rising number of domestic and foreign crises, including providing aid for Israel or Ukraine. Johnson, who was first elected to Congress in 2016, voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

Jordan received 199 votes while Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was the Democrats' nominee, secured 212 once again. Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan fell short of securing the gavel on Wednesday, just like he did on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Jordan was able to obtain several more votes but still didn't hit the magic number — 217. During a 2021 interview with ABC News, Scalise refused to say that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen - an allegation that Trump often brought up - though he did acknowledge President Joe Biden was president.

Is there a new speaker of the House yet? Republicans brace for infighting ahead of crucial vote

Vice President Kamala Harris last came to Morehouse in 2022 with Biden. Eugene Sledge, a Morehouse sophomore from Chicago, said Biden's address could inspire him and others to go to the polls in November. 11Alive reached out to Morehouse about Biden being chosen as the commencement speaker but has not heard back yet.

Republicans to hold another candidate forum at 6 p.m.

Jim Jordan vows to stay in speaker's race, House unable to do its work: What you missed - USA TODAY

Jim Jordan vows to stay in speaker's race, House unable to do its work: What you missed.

Posted: Thu, 19 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Students will also be able to engage with Morehouse College President David Thomas, NBC reported. If Johnson is removed, it is far from clear who would be next to wield the gavel. Last fall, the caucus cycled through Reps. Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and Tom Emmer before settling on Johnson.

In the second ballot, Jordan lost more ground than he gained, winning 199 votes, compared to the 200 he won on the first ballot. Six of the eight Republican candidates for House speaker voted to decertify the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021, in the hours after the assault on the U.S. "That four threshold is very tough. It's a very tough thing, no matter who it is," Trump said, referring to the number of Republican defections a speaker candidate can afford to lose and still win on the floor with a GOP majority. "I said there's only one person that can do it all the way. You know who that is? Jesus Christ." Since then, nine Republicans have announced they're running, although Rep. Dan Meuser dropped out of the running on Monday night, leaving eight Republicans. All but two of them voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election.

“This affirms the path that we took,” Representative Bob Good of Virginia, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, tells reporters. “We went through a lot to get here, but we are ready to govern and that will begin right away,” Johnson says in his first news conference as speaker. “From an outside point of view these last few weeks probably look like total chaos, confusion, no end in sight," he said. "But from my perspective, this is one of the greatest experiences of the recent history of our republic." Mainstream conservatives who backed Mr. Johnson said they hoped to quickly move to pull the House out of its funk. Almost immediately after Mr. Johnson was elected, lawmakers began debating a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel and condemning Hamas, which passed overwhelmingly. Mr. Johnson immediately faces a host of challenges that dogged his predecessor, Mr. McCarthy.

And after all of this, she’s kind of ended up in the exact same thicket, with people calling for her job with the White House, the Mayor of New York City, and others. Maybe not calling on her to resign quite yet, but saying, I don’t know what’s going on your campus. But back on campus, some of the students and faculty who had been watching the hearing came away with a very different set of conclusions.

Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email with any questions. Visit this 1818 home to see what life was like in California when it was still governed by Mexico. This is the oldest standing residence in the city, built by wealthy cattle rancher Francisco Avila, whose extensive 4,439-acre land grant covered much of Beverly Hills and the Miracle Mile district.

Rep.Tom Cole also said that he “would hope” that the conference would consider ongoing world events with the crisis in the Middle East and rapidly reach a consensus on a candidate. McCarthy, in multiple interviews on Monday, refused to rule out returning to the job and insisted he wants the conference to decide. Rep. Ralph Norman, who supports House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan for speaker, told CNN that he has concerns about House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s health in his ability to serve as speaker. To address it, the news outlet reported Brown plans to convene a virtual meeting on April 25 for faculty members to be able to share their feedback and perspectives.

And so instead of going to celebrate her successful appearance before Congress, Shafik walks out of the hearing room and gets in a black SUV to go right back to that war room, where she’s immediately confronted with a major dilemma. It basically boils down to this, she had just gone before Congress and told them, I’m going to get tough on these protests. So either she gets tough and risks inflaming tension on campus or she holds back and does nothing and her words before Congress immediately look hollow. And there was no clearer embodiment of that than what had happened that morning just as President Shafik was going to testify before Congress. A group of students before dawn set up tents in the middle of Columbia’s campus and declared themselves a pro-Palestinian encampment in open defiance of the very rules that Dr. Shafik had put in place to try and get these protests under control. The Republican Chairwoman of the Committee, Virginia Foxx, starts reminding her that there was a student who was actually hit with a stick on campus.

Emmer began to lose support from conservative lawmakers shortly after Trump's missive, and he bowed out of the contest shortly after. Democrats will nominate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and they are being urged to vote for him, according to a notice from Democratic whip Katherine Clark's office. Rep. Pete Aguilar , the Democratic caucus chair, will deliver the nominating speech for Jeffries. "Today is the day that House Republicans will humbly look in our hearts and elect Mike Johnson as speaker of the People's House," she said. Turning to Jeffries, Aguilar said the Democratic leader has "never turned his back on the will of the American people." He accused GOP lawmakers of working to find a candidate for speaker who can pass their "extreme litmus test" opposing marriage equality, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and enacting nationwide restrictions on abortion.

The House passed a foreign aid package Saturday as well as what's called the REPO Act, which would allow the Biden administration to confiscate billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets sitting in U.S. banks and transfer them to Ukraine for reconstruction. Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech. And these encampments have now started cropping up at universities from coast-to-coast, at Harvard and Yale, but also at University of California, at the University of Texas, at smaller campuses in between. And at each of these institutions, there’s presidents and deans, just like President Shafik at Columbia, who are facing a really difficult set of choices. The University of Texas in Austin this afternoon, we saw protesters physically clashing with police.