US Politics

Democrats commemorate January 6 attack with tears and silence at US CapitolHundreds of members of Congress gathered to pay tribute to five police officers whose deaths have been tied to the insurrectionSenior Democrats on Friday led a large and poignant gathering on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington to commemorate the “solemn day” on the second anniversary of the deadly January 6 insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump.Hundreds of members of Congress paid tribute to five police officers whose deaths have been tied to the violent insurrection in 2021, as rioters overwhelmed law enforcement and broke into the Capitol at the urging of the then president, intent on stopping the official certification of his election defeat by Joe Biden.Many were in tears at Friday morning’s event, including Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who had to flee for safety two years ago as the mob rampaged through the Capitol, calling out for her and invading her office while members of her staff hid in fear for their lives.Pelosi’s replacement as the most senior Democrat in the House, the new minority leader and New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries, paid tribute to the deceased police officers.“Many more will forever be scarred by the bloodthirsty violence of the insurrection of this mob,” he said.Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died not long after being attacked by the mob. Four other police officers affected by the events that day later took their own lives.The ceremony included families of the fallen officers reading out their names, with the tolling of a bell, and concluded with 140 seconds of silence, one for each of the 140 law enforcement officers injured during the attack.Jeffries announced it was a bipartisan gathering of lawmakers, but there was no sign of Republican leadership. Many Republican House members were engaged in a simultaneous conference call with Kevin McCarthy as he pleaded for their support in his epic struggle to become the next speaker of the House.One Republican Congress member was spotted by CNN as being at the event, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.Jeffries said: “We stand here today with our democracy intact because of those officers. Violent insurrectionists stormed the Capitol and attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power, a cornerstone of our republic. They failed.“They failed because of the bravery and valor of the United States Capitol police and the Metropolitan police department officers who fought heroically to defend our democracy. We will never forget their sacrifice and we will never forget this day.”Pelosi dabbed at tears as she listened to Jeffries’ remarks.Then she added: “The January 6 insurrection shook our republic to the core.”She noted that many inside and outside Congress still held the “physical, psychological and emotional scars” of an unprecedented day in modern American democracy.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS CongressDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

It is fair to say that the beginning of the 118th U.S. Congress has not gone entirely to plan.

In the space of four days, members-elect of the House of Representatives have held more than a dozen votes over who would take on the role of speaker. Yet, as of the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2023, the position remains unfilled.

As a result, representatives have not been sworn in to start the job they were elected to do. The sticking point: A dwindling group of holdout conservatives in the GOP are refusing to toe the line and fall behind the party leadership’s preferred candidate, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.

The Conversation had a plethora of questions over what this means for governance, and the authority of the speaker – whoever that may be. So we put them to Rachel Paine Caufield, an expert on all thing Congress at Drake University.

Can the House do any other business while there is no speaker?

In short, no. The only business being done in the U.S. House of Representatives at the moment is voting for the role of speaker.

No other business can proceed until a speaker is in place. And this is for one very simple reason: No representatives can be sworn in until there is a speaker. So right now we have no formal representatives serving in the House of Representatives, and as a result no one has the legal authority in the House to carry out the work of government.

Other usual House activity, such as briefings on issues including security, is also not happening. Would-be representatives can’t be briefed yet because they have not been sworn in.

They can still meet with constituents. But they can’t make any formal request of government, because they are just representatives-elect until they are sworn in – and that applies to both new members of the House as well as returning members.

Does it affect the Senate?

The Senate can still operate, and there are certain things the Senate alone is responsible for, such as ratifying treaties and confirming judicial nominees.

But any legislation needs to go through both the Senate and the House – so no laws can be passed until a speaker is in place.

Can unofficial business be done in the House?

Certainly representatives are meeting while this situation is going on. My guess would be that the Democrats – who are unified in their support of Hakeem Jeffries as their nominee for speaker – are having conversations about future legislative activity.

GOP conservative holdouts Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz (right).
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

For the Republicans, the priority right now is how to navigate this impasse over the speaker position. But don’t think that some of those discussions are not also about legislation. The holdouts in the GOP are looking for concessions on things such as term limits for representatives – and that is a legislative issue; they will need to pass law on it.

But for the most part, the fight over the speakership is the only issue in town.

What is the U.S. missing out on in terms of House business?

If you look at the House calendar for the first few weeks of the year, there isn’t an awful lot on it.

In the first few days, normally you would have the selection of the speaker and swearing in of members. And then they would traditionally break. There wasn’t expected to be a huge amount of legislation being pushed straight out of the gate.

One thing that is being delayed is a revision of the rules of the House of Representatives – something that happens at the beginning of each session of Congress. A rules package decides what the rules of the House will be in that session; then representatives get down to legislative business.

You have to keep in mind that legislative activity is heavier at the end of sessions – and we just finished a session of Congress in December. If legislation doesn’t pass in the House and the Senate in a single two-year session, then it dies – so there is no leftover business from last year; everything starts over again.

As a result, you traditionally don’t see a lot of dramatic legislative activity early in a House session.

But what happens if the impasse continues?

The one pressing thing the House has coming up that is not being dealt with is a vote over the raising of the debt ceiling.

Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling this spring; otherwise the U.S. will default on its obligations.

But the House still has four or five weeks until this really is a pressing issue – and brinkmanship is common when it comes to the debt ceiling, so expect that to be a protracted debate and negotiation in any case.

Can this situation continue forever?

Yes. The U.S. Constitution identifies only three congressional roles that need to be filled – the speaker of the House is one, the other two being the president of the Senate (the constitution designates that the vice president of the U.S. fills this role), and the Senate president pro tempore, a ceremonial position to serve as the president of the Senate if the vice president can’t fulfill his or her Senate duties.

So there does need to be a speaker in place. The Constitution requires only that the House shall elect a speaker, but doesn’t specify how or lay out a time frame – they can vote for weeks or even months.

By tradition, the speaker is elected by a majority of the House – so right now that would mean 218 representatives, assuming all are present and voting. Although the House rules currently specify that a majority is needed, that can be changed – it isn’t in the Constitution. The GOP could lower the vote majority needed to 213 to push McCarthy over the line, although they wouldn’t go lower as that could allow the Democrats to select Jeffries, who already has the support of all 212 Democrats in the House.

Hang on! If representatives aren’t sworn in, who can change the House rules?

That could come down to the clerk’s office that is currently presiding over the House session. In the same way that the clerk’s office is allowing representatives-elect to nominate speakers, they could allow a motion putting forward a change in the House rules.

It has never happened before, and it would raise a number of procedural questions – but theoretically it is possible.

Who can be a House speaker? We have heard a lot of names

The Constitution has no rules whatsoever about who can and cannot be the House speaker. Representatives-elect can nominate – and even elect – someone who is not a member of the House to be speaker. That is why you have seen Donald Trump be nominated by one member; someone even joked about former speaker Newt Gingrich.

There are requirements for serving as a member of the House of Representatives – you have to be over the age of 25, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and live in the state from which you were elected. But as a speaker doesn’t have to be a member of the House, these rules don’t apply. So you could, theoretically, nominate a 7-year-old German child.

Could Trump really be the speaker?

Constitutionally, yes. Practically, no. There seems to be very little appetite for this among GOP members in the House – he only received one vote, and may not want the job in any case.

How has this all affected the authority of the role of Speaker?

The short answer is we don’t know yet. The fact that it has taken this many votes and still we don’t have a speaker in place in itself will have an effect. It indicates a divided majority party that will be difficult to lead – that in itself will diminish the power of the role.

Any concessions struck to reach a deal over the speakership could further erode the speaker’s authority. What is being negotiated by holdouts in the GOP are largely measures to empower individual members at the expense of party leadership.

This isn’t that uncommon. Over history the power of the speakership has ebbed and flowed.

‘Uncle’ Joe Cannon – a powerful speaker.
HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

One of the most powerful speakers in U.S. history, “Uncle” Joe Cannon, was removed in 1910 by his party for that reason – they thought the speaker had too much power. In 1974, the influx of so-called “Watergate babies” – a group of northern liberal Democrats elected as part of a backlash after Watergate – led to an effort to diminish the power of committee chairs in the House. The rules changes left a vacuum that was filled by the speaker, with the result that the power of the position increased.

That all said, what is being discussed is unheard of. The main concession – a change to the “motion to vacate the chair” rule so that any one member, or a small number of members, can initiate a process that is effectively a vote of no confidence – has never been tried before.

Another request by the GOP holdouts is to open the rules on the house floor so that any member can propose amendments to any bill. There are 435 members, and all have pet projects and constituent needs. Such a change would be chaos. In effect, it would mean that 435 people will be involved in the making of the legislative sausage right on the house floor.

Will any concessions be binding?

They don’t necessarily have to be adopted by future speakers, no. Some will have to be adopted in a new rules package for the House, but the rules package is changed every new session, so they won’t be binding forever. Indeed, some Democratic representatives have indicated that if concessions are made, they would potentially challenge the rules package or vote against some of the most extreme measures that holdouts are demanding.

Some of the concessions being discussed won’t need a rule change at all. They are, in effect, agreements between different factions in the Republican Party. For example, a concession that the GOP leadership will not use its SuperPac to favor candidates in open Republican primaries – that is something that can’t be dictated by House rules; it is more an issue of trust. More

Editor’s note: This article was published prior to a 15th vote in the House of Representatives that saw Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California elected as House Speaker in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2023. It still has lots of super interesting information and analysis in it though, so please do read on.

It is fair to say that the beginning of the 118th U.S. Congress has not gone entirely to plan.

In the space of four days, members-elect of the House of Representatives have held more than a dozen votes over who would take on the role of speaker. Yet, as of Jan. 6, 2023, the position remains unfilled.

As a result, representatives have not been sworn in to start the job they were elected to do. The sticking point: A dwindling group of holdout conservatives in the GOP are refusing to toe the line and fall behind the party leadership’s preferred candidate, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.

The Conversation had a plethora of questions over what this means for governance, and the authority of the speaker – whoever that may be. So we put them to Rachel Paine Caufield, an expert on all thing Congress at Drake University.

Can the House do any other business while there is no speaker?

In short, no. The only business being done in the U.S. House of Representatives at the moment is voting for the role of speaker.

No other business can proceed until a speaker is in place. And this is for one very simple reason: No representatives can be sworn in until there is a speaker. So right now we have no formal representatives serving in the House of Representatives, and as a result no one has the legal authority in the House to carry out the work of government.

Other usual House activity, such as briefings on issues including security, is also not happening. Would-be representatives can’t be briefed yet because they have not been sworn in.

They can still meet with constituents. But they can’t make any formal request of government, because they are just representatives-elect until they are sworn in – and that applies to both new members of the House as well as returning members.

Does it affect the Senate?

The Senate can still operate, and there are certain things the Senate alone is responsible for, such as ratifying treaties and confirming judicial nominees.

But any legislation needs to go through both the Senate and the House – so no laws can be passed until a speaker is in place.

Can unofficial business be done in the House?

Certainly representatives are meeting while this situation is going on. My guess would be that the Democrats – who are unified in their support of Hakeem Jeffries as their nominee for speaker – are having conversations about future legislative activity.

GOP conservative holdouts Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz (right).
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

For the Republicans, the priority right now is how to navigate this impasse over the speaker position. But don’t think that some of those discussions are not also about legislation. The holdouts in the GOP are looking for concessions on things such as term limits for representatives – and that is a legislative issue; they will need to pass law on it.

But for the most part, the fight over the speakership is the only issue in town.

What is the U.S. missing out on in terms of House business?

If you look at the House calendar for the first few weeks of the year, there isn’t an awful lot on it.

In the first few days, normally you would have the selection of the speaker and swearing in of members. And then they would traditionally break. There wasn’t expected to be a huge amount of legislation being pushed straight out of the gate.

One thing that is being delayed is a revision of the rules of the House of Representatives – something that happens at the beginning of each session of Congress. A rules package decides what the rules of the House will be in that session; then representatives get down to legislative business.

You have to keep in mind that legislative activity is heavier at the end of sessions – and we just finished a session of Congress in December. If legislation doesn’t pass in the House and the Senate in a single two-year session, then it dies – so there is no leftover business from last year; everything starts over again.

As a result, you traditionally don’t see a lot of dramatic legislative activity early in a House session.

But what happens if the impasse continues?

The one pressing thing the House has coming up that is not being dealt with is a vote over the raising of the debt ceiling.

Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling this spring; otherwise the U.S. will default on its obligations.

But the House still has four or five weeks until this really is a pressing issue – and brinkmanship is common when it comes to the debt ceiling, so expect that to be a protracted debate and negotiation in any case.

Can this situation continue?

Yes. The U.S. Constitution identifies only three congressional roles that need to be filled – the speaker of the House is one, the other two being the president of the Senate (the constitution designates that the vice president of the U.S. fills this role), and the Senate president pro tempore, a ceremonial position to serve as the president of the Senate if the vice president can’t fulfill his or her Senate duties.

So there does need to be a speaker in place. The Constitution requires only that the House shall elect a speaker, but doesn’t specify how or lay out a time frame – they can vote for weeks or even months.

By tradition, the speaker is elected by a majority of the House – so right now that would mean 218 representatives, assuming all are present and voting. Although the House rules currently specify that a majority is needed, that can be changed – it isn’t in the Constitution. The GOP could lower the vote majority needed to 213 to push McCarthy over the line, although they wouldn’t go lower as that could allow the Democrats to select Jeffries, who already has the support of all 212 Democrats in the House.

Hang on! If representatives aren’t sworn in, who can change the House rules?

That could come down to the clerk’s office that is currently presiding over the House session. In the same way that the clerk’s office is allowing representatives-elect to nominate speakers, they could allow a motion putting forward a change in the House rules.

It has never happened before, and it would raise a number of procedural questions – but theoretically it is possible.

Who can be a House speaker? We have heard a lot of names

The Constitution has no rules whatsoever about who can and cannot be the House speaker. Representatives-elect can nominate – and even elect – someone who is not a member of the House to be speaker. That is why you have seen Donald Trump be nominated by one member; someone even joked about former speaker Newt Gingrich.

There are requirements for serving as a member of the House of Representatives – you have to be over the age of 25, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and live in the state from which you were elected. But as a speaker doesn’t have to be a member of the House, these rules don’t apply. So you could, theoretically, nominate a 7-year-old German child.

Could Trump really be the speaker?

Constitutionally, yes. Practically, no. There seems to be very little appetite for this among GOP members in the House – he only received one vote, and may not want the job in any case.

How has this all affected the authority of the role of Speaker?

The short answer is we don’t know yet. The fact that it has taken this many votes and still we don’t have a speaker in place in itself will have an effect. It indicates a divided majority party that will be difficult to lead – that in itself will diminish the power of the role.

Any concessions struck to reach a deal over the speakership could further erode the speaker’s authority. What is being negotiated by holdouts in the GOP are largely measures to empower individual members at the expense of party leadership.

This isn’t that uncommon. Over history the power of the speakership has ebbed and flowed.

‘Uncle’ Joe Cannon – a powerful speaker.
HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

One of the most powerful speakers in U.S. history, “Uncle” Joe Cannon, was removed in 1910 by his party for that reason – they thought the speaker had too much power. In 1974, the influx of so-called “Watergate babies” – a group of northern liberal Democrats elected as part of a backlash after Watergate – led to an effort to diminish the power of committee chairs in the House. The rules changes left a vacuum that was filled by the speaker, with the result that the power of the position increased.

That all said, what is being discussed is unheard of. The main concession – a change to the “motion to vacate the chair” rule so that any one member, or a small number of members, can initiate a process that is effectively a vote of no confidence – has never been tried before.

Another request by the GOP holdouts is to open the rules on the house floor so that any member can propose amendments to any bill. There are 435 members, and all have pet projects and constituent needs. Such a change would be chaos. In effect, it would mean that 435 people will be involved in the making of the legislative sausage right on the house floor.

Will any concessions be binding?

They don’t necessarily have to be adopted by future speakers, no. Some will have to be adopted in a new rules package for the House, but the rules package is changed every new session, so they won’t be binding forever. Indeed, some Democratic representatives have indicated that if concessions are made, they would potentially challenge the rules package or vote against some of the most extreme measures that holdouts are demanding.

Some of the concessions being discussed won’t need a rule change at all. They are, in effect, agreements between different factions in the Republican Party. For example, a concession that the GOP leadership will not use its SuperPac to favor candidates in open Republican primaries – that is something that can’t be dictated by House rules; it is more an issue of trust. More

‘Coward’ Josh Hawley mocked by Senate rival for fleeing Capitol mob he incitedDemocrat Lucas Kunce says ‘I swear this coward is always running from something’ as he announces bid to challenge key Republican01:08Announcing a run for US Senate in 2024, the populist Missouri Democrat Lucas Kunce released an ad focusing on how his prospective opponent, the Republican senator Josh Hawley, ran from the mob he encouraged on the day the US Capitol came under attack.Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with itRead more“I’ve done a lot of running in my life,” Kunce said, over footage of a man in a ripped suit running on a country road, dropping a US flag pin.“Running to stay healthy, running to fight for my country, running to defend democracy. And by the way, that guy you’re looking at, that’s not me. That’s our current US senator, Josh Hawley. This guy.”The ad then showed a famous picture from 6 January 2021, of Hawley raising a fist to Trump supporters outside the Capitol, a picture Hawley has used for fundraising purposes.Kunce said: “Or maybe you better recognise him running for his life a few hours later.”Last July, the House January 6 committee released security footage of Hawley running from supporters of Donald Trump after they breached the Capitol, looking for lawmakers to capture and possibly kill in a riot now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.The footage of Hawley went viral, in many cases scored to satirical music.Nonetheless, Hawley is widely seen as a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Accordingly, he is due to release a book this year.According to promotional material, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, will argue “that the character of men and the male virtue that goes along with it is a necessary ingredient to a functioning society and a healthy, free republic”.Kunce said: “I swear this coward is always running from something and now this is the guy who’s writing a book telling every single one of us how to be a man.”A former US marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kunce, 40, also worked on international arms control. He has already mounted a Senate run, last year, losing the primary to Trudy Busch Valentine, a brewing heiress who went on to lose to Eric Schmitt, a former state attorney general.Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’Read moreA Hawley spokesman told news outlets: “We welcome this desperate woke activist to yet another political race. He just barely finished losing his last one. Maybe he’s running in the wrong state.”Signing off the ad, Kunce said: “Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward and by the time I’m done with him, the whole world’s gonna know it. So keep on running, Josh. Keep on running.”Released on the second anniversary of the January 6 attack, the ad was widely noted for its combative tone.Lis Smith, a Democratic consultant who ran Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign in 2020, said Kunce “takes a metaphorical bat to coward Josh Hawley in his first ad”.Hawley, Smith said, “should never able to live down how he helped stoke the crowd on January 6 then sprinted away as they stormed the Capitol”.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsMissourinewsReuse this content More

House speaker election at ‘a turning point’ despite McCarthy’s 13th lossRepublican is hopeful that deal with far-right detractors could award him speaker title while House business remains paralyzed The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, came within striking distance of winning the speakership, in a clear sign of momentum despite losing a 13th consecutive vote on the fourth day of a grinding intra-party showdown.House still without speaker as McCarthy pleads with Republican holdouts – liveRead moreFifteen far-right holdouts dropped their opposition and voted for McCarthy, after the embattled Republican appeared willing to accept a proposal that would undermine his own power while giving the far-right flank more influence over the legislative process, including the ability to more easily remove a speaker.“We’re at a turning point,” congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a leader of the conservative rebellion who voted for McCarthy on Friday, said. Encouraged by the contours of the emerging deal, Perry said he cast his vote in a “good-faith effort” to end the stalemate.For the first time, McCarthy was the top vote winner, surpassing the Democrats’ choice for speaker, congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, though it was still not enough to cement the top job. And despite the movement, it was not clear the the proposal would placate the remaining detractors, who remained committed to denying McCarthy the 218 votes traditionally needed to secure the gavel.“You only earn the position of speaker if you get the votes,” said congressman Matt Gaetz, a holdout who voted for conservative congressman Jim Jordan on the 13th ballot. McCarthy, he predicted, “will not have the votes tomorrow and he will not have the votes next week, next month, next year”.Building frustration between the holdouts and the rest of the Republican conference spilled onto the chamber floor. As Gaetz assailed McCarthy in a nominating speech for his alternative speaker candidate, congressman Mike Bost, a Republican of Illinois, angrily interjected. shaking a finger at Gaetz he shouted: “This is not going to bring anyone.”The house clerk banged the gavel, ending the exchange, but several Republicans stormed off the floor in protest as Gaetz finished his remarks. But the general mood had shifted. Republicans burst into applause with each defection from the rebel camp. McCarthy, who had watched with a forlorn expression as the spectacle of defeat without progress unfolded, was notably more upbeat, smiling and laughing as he listened to the roll call.Until a speaker is chosen, the House will continue to operate in a suspended state of paralysis, with members unable to be sworn in and business unable to proceed.McCarthy’s allies worked late into the night on Thursday to hammer out the details of a deal, after a third day of balloting yielded the longest succession of failed speaker votes since the Congress of 1859, which went 44 rounds and two months. Only four other speakership elections in American history have required more than 12 ballots.“Apparently, I like to make history,” McCarthy told reporters as he left the House floor on Thursday night, following an 11th vote that produced effectively the same failed result.A handful of members were absent for the fourth day of the speakership election, which was not originally supposed to be a voting day for the House. Congressman Wesley Hunt, a Republican of Texas, had to rush home to be with his wife and newly born son. Congressman David Trone, a Democrat of Maryland, missed the 12th vote because he was undergoing surgery. Trone returned to the Capitol for the 13th vote, receiving a standing ovation from his colleagues as he cast a ballot for Jeffries with his arm in a sling.7AM: Surgery2PM: Back at the Capitol, still wearing my slippers and hospital socksTime to vote for Hakeem Jeffries! pic.twitter.com/Xvyg8VL4Wp— Rep. David Trone (@RepDavidTrone) January 6, 2023
The House reconvened for a fourth day of voting, in the shadow of the second anniversary of the deadly Capitol assault. The shocking scenes of violence and chaos that erupted on 6 January 2021 began with an attempt by ultra-conservative lawmakers loyal to Donald Trump to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won. Several of those election-denying lawmakers are leading the revolt against McCarthy.After initially condemning the insurrection and Trump’s role fomenting it, McCarthy traveled to Mar-a-Lago in early 2021 to repair relations with the former president and his loyalists in anticipation of his speaker bid. Trump emphatically endorsed McCarthy this week, but it has so far failed to change any minds.Before voting began, members of Congress, mostly Democratic lawmakers, gathered with the families of officers who died in the attack on the steps of the Capitol to mark the “solemn day”.“We stand here today with our democracy intact because of those officers,” said Jeffries, the new Democratic leader. “Violent insurrectionists stormed the Capitol and attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power, a cornerstone of our republic. They failed.”Meanwhile, House Republicans were holding a conference call to discuss the terms of a possible deal hammered out between emissaries of McCarthy and leaders of the rightwing rebels.“The entire conference is going to have to learn how to work together,” McCarthy told reporters before leaving the Capitol on Thursday night. “So it’s better that we go through this process right now.To win the bloc of rebels thwarting his rise, McCarthy was apparently prepared to agree to conditions that he had not been previously willing to accept. That includes reinstating a rule that would allow a single lawmaker to force a vote to remove the speaker, effectively placing himself at the mercy of his detractors who could trigger a vote at any point.There is a risk that Republican leadership’s myriad concessions to the party’s hard-right faction could repel more moderate members, who have so far remained loyal to McCarthy. But so far all the momentum has only trended in McCarthy’s favor.In yet another sign of the shifting tide, the conservative grassroots group FreedomWorks, which had previously mocked McCarthy’s speakership bid, dropped its opposition to his candidacy.“While details continue to be deliberated on McCarthy’s campaign to 218 votes,” the group’s president said, “today represents a step in the right direction to changing the way business is conducted in Congress.”Democrats remained united behind Jeffries as their choice for speaker. He repeatedly won the most votes during the first three days of balloting, but remained short of the majority.The spectacle foreshadows the difficulties that lie ahead for the Republican party as it aims to reclaim the Senate and the White House in 2024. Already riven by infighting, and constrained by a narrow majority, the party’s new leaders will face many of the same challenges as past Republican speakers, whose tenures were defined by government shutdowns and political brinkmanship.TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

AnalysisRepublicans’ dysfunction over speaker threatens the health of US governmentJoan E GreveElection spectacle shows any speaker will face significant hurdles in trying to advance legislation, including must-pass bills The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, began the first week of the 118th Congress striking a defiant tone, insisting he would not abandon his quest for the speakership until he was declared the winner.“I have the record for the longest speech ever on the floor,” McCarthy said on Tuesday. “I don’t have a problem getting a record for the most votes for speaker, too.”The speaker of the House debacle is the Maga revolution eating its children | Jan-Werner MüllerRead moreBy Friday, McCarthy was well on his way to fulfilling that pledge. When the House adjourned on Thursday evening, McCarthy had already failed 11 times to win the speakership. The stalemate marked the first time in 163 years that it required more than nine ballots to choose a House speaker.The embarrassing spectacle has attracted international scrutiny and raised more questions about the future of the Republican party, as well as the US Congress. With a narrow majority in the House and an unruly conference to lead, any Republican speaker will face significant hurdles in trying to advance legislation.When it comes to must-pass bills like a government funding package or a debt ceiling hike, the Republican dysfunction displayed during the speakership election could threaten the health and legitimacy of the US government and economy.The delay in choosing a speaker has already affected congressional offices, preventing House members from communicating with agencies about constituent requests or receiving classified briefings.“If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will make very clear from the outset they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities,” Brendan Buck, a former senior adviser to House Republican leaders, wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week. “No matter who emerges as the top House Republican, the prolonged spectacle would leave the Republican majority hopelessly damaged from the start, along with the institution of the House itself.”The cause of McCarthy’s woes can be attributed to 20 members of the House Republican conference who refuse to back his candidacy. The hard-right lawmakers have pushed for a number of chamber rule changes, among other demands, before they will even consider backing McCarthy.Fears over lax security in Republican-controlled House two years after Capitol attackRead moreSome of those rule changes would essentially force McCarthy to lead the House with one hand tied behind his back. The anti-McCarthy coalition has proposed a rule allowing a single member to call for a vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which could bring a swift end to any leader’s tenure.“There are only two outcomes here,” Congressman Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida and one of McCarthy’s detractors, said on Twitter on Thursday. “Either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the Speaker’s race, or he has to wake up every morning and put on the world’s best constructive straitjacket before the beginning of every House session.”Even an endorsement from Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican party, has not been enough to sway Gaetz and his allies. In a worrisome sign for whoever becomes the next House speaker, some of the holdouts do not appear to have any concrete demands in the negotiations. Their only stance in the speakership battle is to oppose McCarthy.“I’m not looking for a deal,” the freshman congressman Eli Crane, a Republican of Arizona, told Politico. “Leadership knows where I’m at.”The ongoing chaos could further jeopardize Republicans’ long-term political prospects. After expressing high hopes for a “red wave” in the midterm elections, Republicans had to instead settle for a slim majority in the House, while Democrats maintained control of the Senate.Some of McCarthy’s allies have blamed their disappointing performance in November on the extremism displayed by Trump and his acolytes. The speakership standoff will only intensify voters’ concerns about the trajectory of the Republican party, they warn.“If this remains the face of the GOP in 2024, we will get pummeled in the presidential and congressional elections,” Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican of Nebraska and a McCarthy supporter, told Politico. “We would have won more seats in 2022, but too many feared the extremes in the GOP even before this.”For many of McCarthy’s Democratic critics, his latest crisis comes with some schadenfreude. McCarthy first became a member of House Republican leadership under former speaker John Boehner, who stepped down in 2015 after numerous clashes with the most conservative members of the conference. Boehner memorably attacked some of those members as “political terrorists”.McCarthy has been expected to succeed Boehner as speaker but took himself out of the running for the post. In the years since, McCarthy has made a point to stay in Trump’s good graces and play ball with some of the most far-right members of his conference. As the speakership battle has unfolded, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously lost her committee assignments over her extreme views, has been a vocal supporter of McCarthy’s candidacy.The House speaker fiasco shows that Republicans are unable to govern | Andrew GawthorpeRead moreNow, despite McCarthy’s best efforts to cajole them, many of those far-right members are staging a revolt against him. Unless McCarthy can convince them otherwise, they have the numbers to deprive him of a job that he has chased for nearly a decade.Some Democrats cannot help but see a certain amount of justice in McCarthy’s plight.“Years of blindly pursuing power, currying the favor of special interests and bowing to election deniers has left the GOP in shambles,” Congresswoman Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip, said on Thursday. “Kevin McCarthy is now being held hostage to his own ambitions by the dangerous members that he’s enabled.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressRepublicansUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi have led an emotional commemoration on the steps of the US Capitol building to mark the second anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Hundreds of Congress members, many in tears, flanked Jeffries, the new Democratic leader, as he paid tribute to the five law enforcement officers who lost their lives in connection with the attack

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After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t governJonathan FreedlandThe farcical scenes among US Republicans have echoes in our Tory party. Both promise disruption, then deliver exactly that The US right has this week been staging a clown show that has had liberals in that country and beyond pulling up a chair and breaking out the popcorn. There has been a karmic pleasure in watching the Republicans who won control of the House of Representatives struggle to complete the most basic piece of business – the election of a speaker – but it’s also been instructive, and not only to Americans. For it has confirmed the dirty little secret of that strain of rightwing populist politics that revels in what it calls disruption: it always ends in bitter factional fighting, chaos and paralysis. We in Britain should know, because Brexit has gone the exact same way.Start with the karma that saw House Republicans gather two years to the day since they sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another: often overlooked in the anniversary recollections of 6 January 2021 is that, mere hours after rioters had stormed the US Capitol, a majority of Republican House members voted to do precisely as the rioters had demanded and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Yet here were those same House Republicans on 6 January 2023, having prevented the smooth transfer of power from one party to another – except this time, the party they were thwarting was their own.House still without speaker as McCarthy pleads with Republican holdouts – liveRead moreIt should have been straightforward. Republicans won a narrow majority in the House in November, which gave them the right to put one of their number in the speaker’s chair. The trouble was, while most backed Kevin McCarthy, about 20 rebels did not. By Thursday night, they had gone through 11 rounds of voting – the most since the civil war era – without McCarthy or anyone else winning a majority. The result: deadlock.It was a study in incompetence. A party asks the electorate to give them power; they get it and then freeze, unable to take even the first step towards using it. There’s no clear political logic to the stalemate. The rebels are devotees of Donald Trump, but McCarthy himself is a tireless Trump sycophant – patronised by the former president as “my Kevin” – who begged for and won the backing of the orange one. The pro-Trump rebels are divided among themselves: one rebuked Trump for sticking with McCarthy, while another voted to make Trump himself speaker.It’s telling that the rebels’ demands are not on policy but on procedure, seeking rule changes or committee seats that would give them more power. Otherwise, they can’t really say what they want. They succeeded in getting metal detectors removed from the entrance to the chamber, so now people can walk on to the floor of the House carrying a gun, but apart from that, and their hunger to start investigating Democrats, including Joe Biden’s son Hunter, nothing.All this has significance for the year ahead in US politics. For one thing, it’s yet more evidence of the diminishing strength of Trump among Republican leaders, if not yet among the party faithful. For another, if Republicans cannot make a relatively easy decision like this one, how are they going to make the tough but necessary choices that are coming – such as authorising the spending, and debt, required to keep the US government functioning?But its meaning goes far wider. For what’s been on display this week, in especially florid form, is a strain of politics that has infected many democracies, including our own. Its key feature is its delight in disruption, in promising to upend the system. That was the thrust of the twin movements of 2016, Trump and Brexit. Both promised to sweep away the elites, the experts, the orthodoxy – whether in Washington DC or Brussels. They were new movements, but they were drawing on deep roots. Four decades ago both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher cast themselves as radicals daring to shake off the dead hand of the government.So we can hardly be surprised that those who railed against government should be so bad at it. They promised disruption, and that’s what they’ve delivered. In the US it was the chaos of Trump himself, and now a House of mini-Trumps that can’t tie its own shoelaces. In the UK, it looks different: we have a prime minister in Rishi Sunak whose pitch is technocratic competence. But that should not conceal two things.First, the post-2016 Tory party delivered just as much parliamentary turmoil and intra-party division as McCarthy and co served up this week. Whether it was the Commons gridlock of the two years preceding the 2019 election or the psychodrama of the three years after it, Brexit-era Conservatism has proved every bit as unhinged as Trump-era Republicanism. When it comes to burn-it-all-down politics, the Republicans’ craziest wing are mere novices compared with a master arsonist such as Liz Truss. The US and UK are simply at different points in the cycle.House Democrats should unite with moderate Republicans to elect a speaker | Robert ReichRead moreSecond, even with Sunak in charge, and though painted in less vivid colours, Brexit-era Toryism is just as paralysed as its sister movement in the US. The five-point plan unveiled in the PM’s new year address consisted mostly of the basics of state administration – growing the economy, managing inflation – rather than anything amounting to a political programme.And that’s chiefly because his party, like the Republicans, cannot agree among themselves. Consider how much Sunak has had to drop, under pressure from assorted rebels. Whether it was reform of the planning system, the manifesto commitment to build 300,000 new houses a year or the perennial pledge to grasp the nettle of social care, Sunak has had to back away from tasks that are essential for the wellbeing of the country. True, he has avoided the farcical scenes that played out this week on Capitol Hill, but that’s only because he has preferred to preserve the veneer of unity than to force a whole slew of issues. The result is a prime minister who cannot propose much more than extra maths lessons lest he lose the fractious, restive coalition that keeps him in office.None of this is coincidence. It’s in the nature of the rightwing populist project, in Britain, the US and across the globe. Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence.The Conservatives are several stages further down this road than the Republicans, perhaps because their power has been uninterrupted throughout. But in both cases, and others, the shift is unmistakable. Once parties of the right saw themselves as the obvious custodians of state authority: the natural party of government. Now they are happier shaking their fists at those they insist are really in charge. They are becoming the natural party of opposition. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpBrexitConservativesRishi SunakEuropean UnioncommentReuse this content More