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    House remains without speaker as Jim Jordan falls short of votes in first ballot

    The House of Representatives was unable to elect a new speaker on Tuesday, as the hard-right congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio struggled to win the gavel following the historic ouster of the Republican Kevin McCarthy earlier this month.In the first round of voting, 20 Republicans opposed Jordan, while 200 Republicans supported the judiciary committee chair. The result left Jordan far short of winning the speakership, given that he can only afford four defections within his conference and still capture the gavel. All 212 House Democrats supported Hakeem Jeffries of New York, giving the Democratic leader more votes than Jordan.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Jordan initially indicated Republicans would hold another vote on Tuesday evening, but that plan was scrapped as Jordan’s critics doubled down on their opposition. The House will instead reconvene on Wednesday at 11am to commence the next round of voting, but it remained unclear whether Jordan had a path to victory.In a worrisome sign for Jordan, several of his detractors, led by congressman Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida, called for an immediate second vote on Tuesday, potentially indicating that they believed their ranks were growing. Jordan picked up at least one new supporter, congressman Doug LaMalfa of California, after the first failed vote, but that still left him short of a majority.The deadlock marked only the second time since 1923 that the House has required more than one ballot to elect a speaker; the other recent standoff occurred in January, when McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting to win the top job.The House has now been without a speaker for two weeks, leaving the chamber paralyzed. The House remains unable to pass any legislation, even as many lawmakers of both parties have stressed the urgent need to approve an aid package for Israel following the recent Hamas attacks.The chair of the House Republican conference, Elise Stefanik of New York, kicked off the session on Tuesday by formally nominating Jordan and encouraging her colleagues to support him. She celebrated Jordan, who is best known for his past clashes with leadership and his staunch support of Donald Trump, as “an America First warrior who wins the toughest of fights”.“We are at a time of great crisis across America, a time of historic challenges in this very chamber,” Stefanik said. “I am reminded of the book of Esther: ‘for such a time as this’. Jim Jordan will be America’s speaker for such a time as this.”Congressman Pete Aguilar of California, chair of the House Democratic caucus, then nominated the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, to the speakership, and he warned that Jordan’s ascension would represent a dangerous abdication to “extremism”.“A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection inciter the speaker of this House would be a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Aguilar said.Jordan won the Republican conference’s speakership nomination on Friday, after the House majority whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, was forced to drop out of the race due to opposition from hard-right lawmakers. Jordan, who finished second to Scalise in the initial conference vote, secured the nomination in his second attempt, defeating his fellow Republican Austin Scott of Georgia in a vote of 124 to 81.Although he captured the nomination, Jordan’s level of support fell far short of the 217 votes that he will need to win the speakership on Tuesday. Heading into the floor vote, which began at 1pm, it remained unclear whether Jordan had convinced enough of his critics to become speaker. A handful of more moderate Republicans, including Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Lawler, continued to insist that they would not support Jordan, and they voted against their conference’s nominee on the first ballot.“I’m not budging,” Bacon said on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday evening. “I’m a five-time commander and deployed to Middle-East four times. I’ll do what is best for country.”Before the session began on Tuesday, Jordan indicated Republicans would keep voting until a new leader is chosen, potentially teeing up another lengthy speakership election. But after the first ballot failed to produce a result, the acting speaker, the Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, announced that the House was in recess. A few hours later, Jordan informed reporters that Republicans would reconvene on Wednesday to resume voting.Jeffries has called on more moderate members of the Republican conference to join with Democrats in forming a bipartisan coalition, but even Jordan skeptics have rejected that proposal, insisting they would not entertain the idea of collaborating with Democrats.If Jordan can win the speakership, Democrats appear ready to use his victory as an example of the extremism that they say has overtaken the Republican party. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ fundraising arm, has circulated a memo to members encouraging them to highlight Jordan’s legislative record, including his vote to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.“A Speaker Jordan means extremism and far-right priorities will govern the House of Representatives,” the memo reads. “It is imperative that our caucus makes clear to voters just how extreme Congressman Jordan is.” More

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    Former Navajo Nation Leader Is Running for Congress in Arizona

    Jonathan Nez, a Democrat, is seeking to become the first Native American to represent the state in the House.Jonathan Nez, a former president of the Navajo Nation, will run as a Democrat for a congressional seat in Arizona — a bid that could make him the first Native American from the state to be elected to the House.The seat, in Arizona’s Second District, is now held by Eli Crane, a freshman lawmaker who was among the small group of Republicans who voted to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. Mr. Nez announced his candidacy in a video posted Monday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.“I grew up in a rural, low-income home without electricity or running water,” Mr. Nez said in the video. “I understand the struggles that Second District families are facing right now, from the rising costs of food, gas and child care to increasingly devastating wildfires and health care deserts.”The sprawling district, which is larger than several states, includes 14 of the 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona. But it leans more Republican after redistricting last year.Mr. Nez, 48, who lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., led the Navajo Nation, one of the largest federally recognized tribes in the country, from 2019 to 2023, a period marked by an enrollment surge during the pandemic. But last fall, he lost his bid for re-election as president of the tribe, a group that tilts Democratic.Mr. Crane, 43, a former Navy SEAL and a contender on “Shark Tank,” won a crowded Republican primary last year in the district, aided by an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump.His arrival on Capitol Hill was hardly low key. At the beginning of the year, he was one of the notable holdouts among a group of right-wing Republicans who opposed Mr. McCarthy’s election as speaker, voting against him 14 times until Mr. McCarthy garnered enough votes on the 15th ballot. He voted “present” on the final ballot.That intraparty fight played out again this month, when Mr. Crane cast his vote to oust Mr. McCarthy.At least two other candidates have filed to run in the race: Lindsay Bowe, a Democrat, and David Bies, a Libertarian. More

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    Election lies to Fox News fixture: key things to know about Jim Jordan

    As the House gears up to vote for its new speaker, all eyes are on Jim Jordan, a founder of the hard-right Freedom caucus. But while the Ohio congressman and his allies say they will have the votes soon, Jordan also has a long history of controversial views that many of his own party members and constituents are not aligned with.Here are some of the key things to know about Jordan as a politician – and a look into how he might act in the role of speaker.Jordan was closely involved in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the electionJordan was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. As early as November of 2020, he was part of discussions with Trump campaign and White House officials examining whether Mike Pence could overturn the election. Immediately after the election, he met with Trump campaign and White House officials at the campaign’s headquarters to help develop a strategy of repeatedly, and falsely, saying the election was fraudulent, the New York Times reported.On 2 January 2021, Jordan led a conference call with members of Congress and the White House in which they discussed urging Trump supporters to march to the Capitol. The day before the January 6 attack, Jordan texted the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pass on advice that Pence should “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all”.After the violence at the Capitol, Jordan was one of several members of Congress to whom the White House reached out to try to delay counting of electoral votes. He received five calls from Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s closest allies, that night, according to the January 6 committee. The two men spoke at least twice that night. Jordan later said he spoke with Trump on January 6, but could not recall how many times.Given his staunch efforts to spread misinformation, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Jordan was one of 147 House Republicans who voted to overturn the election. He also signed on to an unsuccessful lawsuit Texas filed at the supreme court seeking to get electoral college votes thrown out in key battleground states.Jordan helped seed the lie that the election was stolenJordan has been one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation about the election. Weeks before election day, Jordan accused Democrats of “trying to steal” the election. After election day, he continued to claim that something was amiss in Pennsylvania, one of the key states that swung the election for Biden and repeatedly and falsely tied mail-in voting to fraud. He quickly called for congressional investigations into claims of fraud and supported outlandish investigations by Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani into voting equipment.Jordan blocked efforts to find out more about his involvement in the plan to overturn the electionThe January 6 committee subpoenaed Jordan and four other congressmen after the group refused to voluntarily cooperate with the panel. Jordan refused to comply with that subpoena, calling it “an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives”. The committee referred Jordan to the ethics committee for investigation.Jordan was accused of engaging in a cover-up of widespread sexual abuse at Ohio State UniversityBetween 1987 and 1995, Jordan served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. During that time, he worked alongside Richard Strauss, a team doctor who was accused of sexual abuse. A 2019 independent report commissioned by OSU concluded that Strauss “sexually abused at least 177 male student-patients he was charged with treating as a university physician”.Jordan has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Strauss’s actions, but former wrestlers have attested that Jordan was directly informed of the doctor’s misconduct. Earlier this month, four former OSU wrestlers publicly denounced Jordan, saying his inaction rendered him unqualified to become speaker of the House.“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” the former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC News. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”Jordan is known for disrupting the House – but not getting much doneJohn Boehner, the former Republican House speaker, repeatedly criticized Jordan for pressuring Republican leadership to advance his hard-right agenda. Speaking to Politico Magazine in 2017, Boehner described Jordan as a “legislative terrorist”.Jordan was part of a coalition of archconservative lawmakers that antagonized Bohener, repeatedly threatening to remove him from the speakership. Though they never followed through, the constant pressure and threats ultimately drove Boehner to early retirement.“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together,” Boehner told CBS News in 2021.According to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking, Jordan consistently ranks among Congress’s least effective lawmakers. In the last Congress, Jordan ranked 217th out of 222 House Republicans.Jordan was behind many recent shutdownsSince arriving in Congress 16 years ago, Jordan has played a central role in several of the most consequential government shutdowns. In an attempt to undermine Barack Obama’s healthcare law, Jordan led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. It lasted 16 days and nearly drove the US to the brink of default.Two years later, in 2015, he and his conservative allies in Congress used similar tactics, threatening a shutdown in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, though an agreement was reached and a closure was averted in time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAgain in 2018, Jordan was one of the architects of the 2018 government shutdown that lasted 35 days, the longest in US history. Jordan urged Trump to shutter federal agencies in an attempt to force Congress to fund his border wall. It backfired and Congress and Trump eventually agreed to reopen the government without providing any funding for Trump’s wall.Congress recently passed a stopgap funding measure, part of a deal the former speaker Kevin McCarthy struck with the support of Democrats to avert a government shutdown on his watch. The move enraged conservatives, who then moved to oust him.The next speaker will have to move quickly to address federal funding, set to expire in mid-November, or again risk another shutdown.Jordan has already indicated he will block more aid to Ukraine if he becomes speakerJordan has consistently voted against aid packages to assist Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia, which have become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.As he launched his speakership bid earlier this month, Jordan told reporters that he was “against” providing more funding to Ukraine.“The most pressing issue on Americans’ minds is not Ukraine,” he said. “It is the border situation, and it’s crime on the streets. And everybody knows that. So let’s address those.”Foreign policy experts have warned that, without additional US aid, Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia will falter and more Ukrainian citizens will die.Jordan is a fixture on Fox News, a platform that he has used to elevate Trump and attack the Biden administrationAccording to the left-leaning group Media Matters, Jordan has appeared on Fox News at least 565 times since August 2017, making him the network’s most frequently interviewed member of Congress.Jordan has capitalized on those appearances by consistently touting the virtues of Trump, even as the former president faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.“I am 100% for President Trump,” Jordan told Fox News back in April. He added: “No one has demonstrated that they will do what they said and get things done like he did.”That sycophancy has paid dividends, as Trump has now endorsed Jordan’s speakership bid. Jordan has also used his Fox appearances to elevate his work, as chair of the House judiciary committee, to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the justice department, accusing federal officials of giving the president’s son “preferential treatment”.Jordan supports a nationwide ban on abortionJordan, an evangelical Christian, is a staunch abortion opponent. In fact, he has said the desire to restrict access to the procedure was one of the reasons he entered politics. On his congressional website, Jordan boasts that the first piece of legislation he ever co-sponsored was a bill that would extend protections to fetuses under the 14th amendment.He also introduced a “Life at Conception” act that would ban all abortions nationally. After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Jordan claimed on social media that the story ​​of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped was “another lie”. He later deleted the tweet after authorities charged a man in connection with the case and refused to apologize.Additionally, he opposes same-sex marriage. According to his website, Jordan says he is “committed to defending the sanctity of marriage and the family” and “oppose[s] all attempts to redefine marriage”. More

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    Hakeem Jeffries seeks bipartisan path in House to avoid ‘extremist’ power

    Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries confirmed Sunday that “informal conversations have been underway” for a bipartisan solution to the leadership crisis in the US House of Representatives.The legislative chamber has been without a speaker since 5 October when Republican right-wingers voted to remove California’s Kevin McCarthy from his position and Democrats did not step in with votes to secure him, effectively paralyzing the body.Since then, Steve Scalise of Louisiana has failed to get enough support from his own party to win a vote to get the role. Next up is set to be Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan of Ohio, but it remains doubtful whether he too can garner enough votes to succeed.New York Democrat Jeffries, the House minority leader, told NBC’s Meet the Press that he is anticipating discussions next week when lawmakers return to Washington on Monday. “It’s important to begin to formalize those discussions,” he said, but warned that Democrats want to ensure that “extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda”.“The current rules of the House have facilitated a handful of Republicans being able to determine what gets voted on,” he added. “We want to ensure that votes are taken on bills that have substantial Democratic support and substantial Republican support so that the extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda.”But what exactly the nature of any solution to the paralyzing chaos might be remains unclear.Jeffries declined to say if he would allow Democrat representatives to vote for a Republican speaker as a way of ushering one into power, given the apparent inability of any Republican to unite their members.“We have not identified any candidate on the other side of the aisle because our focus is not on the individual. It’s on the institution of Congress,” he said.He added that Republicans had a simple choice. “They can either double or triple down on the chaos, dysfunction, and extremism. Or, let’s have a real conversation about changing the rules of the House so it can work in the best interests of the American people.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe election of a new speaker has important implications: lawmakers have until the middle of November to pass a new bill ensuring the funding of the US government, which runs to approximately $6.3tn a year, after securing a 45-day funding package extension in late September.Asked if Democrats will stall any intervention until the imminent approach of a shutdown, Jeffries said that his party was “not the party of government shutdowns” and Democrats are prepared to enter into an agreement to avoid a debt default as it had in May.“More than 300 members of Congress supported that agreement, which included top-line spending numbers, so that we would avert a government shutdown and could lean in to providing for the health, the safety and the economic well-being of the American people.” More

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    Jim Jordan races to try to change minds of holdouts in bid for House speaker

    The rightwing congressman Jim Jordan is seeking to shore up support for his bid to succeed Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, with plans to appear on the House floor early this week to try to sway Republican members of Congress who signaled in a secret ballot vote they will not support his bid.Jordan, a staunch ally of Donald Trump, claimed in a brief interview with Politico he believes he will get the 217 votes required to secure the speakership in a vote now set to happen on Tuesday at noon.“We think we’re going to get 217,” Jordan said.Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy has expressed support for Jordan’s bid to succeed him after a small faction of eight Republicans in the House joined Democrats to oust McCarthy from the role earlier this month and plunged the party into a bitter squabble.Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana was slated to secure the Republican nomination for the speaker role before Scalise withdrew from the speakership race after he failed to secure enough support to win a vote. With Republicans holding a slim majority of three seats in the House, any group of Republican holdouts could cause any nominee to fail to secure the speakership.Several Republicans have publicly said they remain no votes on Jordan’s speakership. Mike Rogers of Alabama and John Rutherford and Carlos Gimenez of Florida are in this group, according to Politico.Meanwhile, yet another potential Republican candidate has emerged if Jordan’s effort fails. Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson plans to jump into the race if Jordan stumbles, according to NBC News.“If Jordan cannot get to 217, Johnson intends to step up,” a source told the television network. “Many members are asking him to do so.”NBC added: “Johnson would seek to be a consensus candidate, attempting to bridge hard-right conservatives and moderates who have been waging a war against one another”.”Trump has vocally supported Jordan for the speakership role. The stalemate has halted legislative business.Supporters of Jordan have gone on social media encouraging followers to call Republican holdouts to demand they support Jordan’s bid or face ousting efforts of their own in primaries.That is a hardline tactic that has prompted some dismay even among Jordan’s own supporters.Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw slammed some of his fellow Republicans for an online pressure campaign on behalf of Jordan, saying it would likely put people off backing him.“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan and I’m supporting Jordan. I’m going to vote for Jordan. And as somebody who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them,” Crenshaw told CNN’s State of the Union show.Democrats have expressed concerns over Jordan’s speakership bid, citing the congressman’s role leading up to and in the wake of the 6 January insurrection.“House Republicans are intent on doubling down and have chosen to nominate a vocal election-denier in Jim Jordan,” Congressman Pete Aguilar, chair of the Democratic caucus, told reporters. “A man whose rhetoric and partisanship fomented the January 6 attack on this very building, on these very steps.” More

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    ‘He’s Bakersfield’: Kevin McCarthy’s constituents know him better than he knows himself

    For two decades, Julie and Jared Vawter have been among the Republicans whose votes for Kevin McCarthy sent him from his conservative inland California hometown of Bakersfield to Sacramento and then Washington DC, where he rose through the GOP’s ranks in the House of Representatives and, this year, was elected speaker.That climb came to an abrupt end last week, when a small group of rightwing Republicans revolted against McCarthy and, with the help of Democrats, made him the first speaker removed from the post in the chamber’s 234-year history.A week and two days after McCarthy’s downfall, the Vawters affixed McCarthy campaign pins and made their way to the monthly meeting of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly (GBRA), a conservative group where some members were partial to the rightwing insurgency and its leader, the congressman Matt Gaetz.“He was a man that I feel has integrity,” Jared Vawter, 64, said of McCarthy. “And, to me, that’s one of the most important things for a congressman, is that he stand up and do what he says and says what he does.”“And reach across the aisle,” 60-year-old Julie Vawter added in the banquet room of a Bakersfield institution, Hodel’s Country Dining, just after the prayer that closed the GBRA’s meeting. “Because we have to have that. We want that from their side. We gotta have that from our side. We can’t be the Matt Gaetz, who [has] a solid line and won’t budge.”Standing on the other side of the hall, Joyce Perrone said she saw McCarthy’s downfall as the type of change that may have been a loss for Bakersfield’s famed son, but was long overdue for Washington’s political class, whom she viewed as derelict in reducing the national debt, and securing the country’s border with Mexico.“I think we welcome the chaos,” Perrone said. As for McCarthy: “He’s a good fundraiser, good speaker, he did some things, but I think people are tired of the status quo.”There’s no telling what comes next, either for McCarthy or for Congress. House Republicans have found no exit from the power vacuum McCarthy’s ouster created, and without a speaker, the chamber is essentially nonoperational.There appeared to be a breakthrough on Wednesday, when McCarthy’s deputy Steve Scalise won the party’s nomination to replace him, but he dropped out a day later after concluding he could not attain the near-unanimity required among House Republicans to win the speaker’s gavel.The consequences of McCarthy’s downfall for Bakersfield are far less apparent. The 58-year-old former speaker says he has no intention of resigning, and the district he represents, which includes about half the city’s neighborhoods and portions of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and San Joaquin valley, is considered the most Republican-leaning in the state. But McCarthy’s ouster could damage his formidable fundraising operation, while Democrats in Bakersfield and the surrounding Kern county believe they have more momentum than one would think in the traditionally conservative area.“Nobody has ever accused Kevin of not working hard, that’s for darn sure,” said Greg Perrone, the GBRA’s president. “He’s not a Harvard-educated or Ivy League-educated guy. Nobody has ever said he’s a slacker. He’s Bakersfield.”Politically conservative, culturally distinct and inland from California’s populous and picturesque coastline, Bakersfield has ever-expanding neighborhoods surrounded by the pump jacks and orchards of its two main industries, agriculture and oil – which together make the air there the worst in the nation.Half of the city’s 400,000-plus residents identify as Latino. Bakersfield is also home to a growing Punjabi Sikh community; to the descendants of the midwesterners who migrated to California during the dust bowl of the 1930s; and to a population of Basque sheepherders who arrived at the dawn of the 20th century. The city’s poverty rate, at 16%, is above the national average, according to Census Bureau data, and its rate of youth disconnectedness – the population aged 16-24 who are neither in school nor working – is among the highest in the country, according to the Social Science Research Council.McCarthy’s origin story involves him winning a $5,000 lottery ticket and, at the age of 21, using the money to open Kevin O’s Deli in a corner of his family’s store, McCarthy’s Yogurt, on Stine Road in south-west Bakersfield. Though he has occasionally fudged the details, a fact-check by the Washington Post found, McCarthy put his experience as an entrepreneur at the center of his pitch as a politician, which began when he applied for an internship with the Republican congressman Bill Thomas while attending California State University, Bakersfield.Though his parents were Democrats, McCarthy recounted in a 2014 Fox News interview that he contrasted Democratic president Jimmy Carter’s plea for Americans to wear sweaters at home to cope with rising heating prices with Republican Ronald Reagan’s description of the country as a “shining city on a hill”, and decided the latter was for him.“I knew what I wanted to believe. I believed in an entrepreneur, in greater liberty and freedom,” he said.Thomas’s chief of staff, Cathy Abernathy, turned him down for the position in Washington DC he applied for in 1987, so McCarthy asked to work in his Bakersfield office, and was accepted. He dove so deep into the tasks before him – answering the phones, tracking down delayed passport applications, sorting out constituents’ immigration troubles – that Abernathy realized McCarthy needed help.“He was on the phone so much and doing so much stuff that … he had his own intern,” she recalls.McCarthy later joined Thomas’s staff as an aide, where he met Mark Martinez, a political science professor at his alma mater. In the late 1990s, before McCarthy would win his first election as a trustee of the local community college, Martinez invited him to address his introduction to American government class.“Kevin didn’t understand what a lecture was,” Martinez recalled. “He came in, and he was actually trying to rally the troops.” The rhetoric fell flat at Cal State Bakersfield, which, unlike some of California’s other public universities, is a commuter school of politically moderate students who are often starting families or looking to change careers, Martinez said.“How do you do this?” McCarthy whispered under his breath to Martinez. “I said, ‘Kevin, this is a lecture – lecture on campaigns.’” A spokesperson for McCarthy declined to comment about this incident.By 2002, McCarthy had won an assembly seat in the state legislature and, by the end of the following year, was made the Republican minority leader.“McCarthy leans to the middle. He supports most abortion rights, but opposes spending tax dollars on abortions,” the Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton wrote in a 2003 profile. McCarthy also called for the creation of an independent commission to handle redistricting, because “the present system protects incumbents and produces extremists”, as Skelton tells it.Thomas opted not to run again in 2006, and that year, McCarthy took over his old seat. By 2014, his colleagues had elected him GOP majority leader in the House, the post just below speaker, making McCarthy the least experienced lawmaker to occupy the job in history, according to a University of Minnesota study.He threw his support behind Donald Trump in 2016, developing a close relationship with him during his presidency that included signing on to a baseless lawsuit trying to overturn his re-election loss in 2020. Daylight appeared between them in the wake of the January 6 attack, when McCarthy said on the House floor that Trump “bears responsibility” for the sacking of the Capitol but he wouldn’t vote to impeach him.In an interview with Bakersfield broadcaster KGET two days later, Thomas, McCarthy’s former boss, faulted him for “months of supporting those outrageous lies of the president” but said he hoped that when Joe Biden takes office, “the Kevin who spoke during the impeachment … will be the Kevin leading the Republicans on the floor of the House”.Instead, McCarthy traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to made amends, paving the way for him to emerge as the Republican frontrunner for next year’s election, and McCarthy to be elected as speaker – but only after a grueling 15 rounds of voting, thanks to opposition from many of the same GOP lawmakers who would vote to eject him months later.During his rise, McCarthy worked to make sure his roots as a small businessman were publicly known. Every few years or so, his social media accounts would share a photo of the Kevin O’s menu, or a shot of a young and mustached McCarthy at work at the deli. But at the strip mall on Stine Road where he once did business, no sign of his family’s eponymous shop remains. Today, the L-shaped building is home to a closed-up discount store, a Spanish-language church and a butcher shop where the owner, Abel Roman, is weighing whether to vote for Trump next year, or even vote at all.“Right now, I’m not pro-Biden, neither Trump,” said Roman, who immigrated from Peru 25 years ago. In 2020, he skipped voting because he “didn’t feel it’ll make any difference”. Ahead of next year’s elections, he’s similarly apathetic, and skeptical about whether politicians have the will to address why the costs of goods at his store are rising or why it’s so hard to get a loan.For the Democratic party in Kern county, McCarthy’s ouster could provide another boost in the rise they believe they’re on. The city is filling up with new residents from pricier coastal areas, who are bringing their more liberal values with them, said Christian Romo, the county Democratic party chair. The GOP still has the edge in voter registration in Kern county, but only by about 7,000 votes, while Democrats have effective control of the Bakersfield city council, thanks to an alliance with a moderate Republican.McCarthy’s district is still so thoroughly Republican that Romo views it as unconquerable. But next door to him is David Valadao, a Republican congressman who represents the remaining neighborhoods of Bakersfield and a swath of Central Valley farmland that voted for Biden in 2020. Romo says the spectacle of McCarthy’s defenestration will be part of their pitch to independent voters, whom he expects will decide whether Valadao is replaced by a Democrat next year.“It’s embarrassing that our local leader, right, ‘our local hometown guy’, had to go through 15 rounds of votes, and now was … the only speaker to ever be stripped of his power. I mean, that’s embarrassing for Bakersfield. It’s a scar in Bakersfield,” he said.McCarthy was a prodigious fundraiser, channeling the tens of millions he would reap to Republican candidates in last year’s midterms. James Brulte, who was the Republican minority leader in the state senate during McCarthy’s time in the assembly, worries about his ability to continue that from the diminished rank of speaker emeritus.“I don’t think this affects any individual race one way or another,” Brulte said of his removal. “But, given McCarthy’s prolific fundraising ability, given the fact that there is no Republican speaker right now, every day that goes by, that probably hurts Republicans, collectively, on the margins, primarily because of the fundraising impact.”Only eight Republicans voted for McCarthy’s removal, but with the party appearing as disunited with him gone as it was with him as speaker, Martinez thinks he may take a stab at returning to the post, even though he has said he does not want it.“He could become a big player and start doing stuff for the community and the region, if he was … genuinely concerned about doing what representative government is supposed to do. But that’s not where he’s at,” Martinez said. “Kevin, if he stays in Congress, is going to want to become speaker again.” More

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    Hard-right House Republicans are against Ukraine aid – and they seem to be in charge

    As he excoriated Kevin McCarthy over his leadership of the House Republican conference last week, hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz accused the then speaker of cutting a “secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine amid its ongoing war against Russia.“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Gaetz, who represents a solidly Republican district in Florida, said in a floor speech at the time.The day after Gaetz delivered that speech, McCarthy was out of a job, becoming the first House speaker in US history ever to be ejected from office. Although McCarthy denied the existence of a side deal, Gaetz’s complaints underscored how funding for Ukraine served as one of the thorniest issues during the former speaker’s brief and contentious tenure.As Donald Trump’s “America First” philosophy has gained popularity among Republicans, anti-Ukraine sentiment has spread through the party’s base and now into the halls of Congress. Even as bipartisan support for Ukraine remains robust in the Senate, a majority of the House Republican conference appears skeptical if not outright hostile to the idea of more funding.That dynamic has further complicated House Republicans’ already difficult task of electing a new speaker, as any speaker candidate must negotiate with hard-right lawmakers who adamantly oppose more funding for Kyiv. Those lawmakers have made Ukraine funding a top priority in the search for a new speaker, and that tension raises serious questions about whether Congress will be able to approve another aid package, especially now that much of their attention has shifted to the war between Israel and Hamas. If lawmakers cannot pass more funding, Ukraine supporters warn the consequences could be deadly.“This is critical to the war effort for Ukraine, which is then critical to the defense of Europe and, I think, critical to US national security,” said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “If Congress doesn’t act now, then a lot of Ukrainians are going to die.”The rising opposition to funding Ukraine among Republicans appears to be a direct response to Trump’s approach to foreign policy, which has resonated deeply with the more isolationist faction of his party. That philosophy has frustrated establishment Republicans, who embrace the party’s traditional vision of diplomacy, remembering the days of Ronald Reagan using the country’s military and economic might to fight communism abroad.“Republicans once stood against communism and thugs like Vladimir Putin, but it’s a shame that not every Republican is speaking out against what Russia is doing to Ukraine,” said Gunner Ramer, a spokesperson for the group Republicans for Ukraine.Ramer’s group, which is a project of the anti-Trump conservative group Defending Democracy Together, often conducts focus groups with Republican voters. Those discussions have seen an increase in anti-Ukraine sentiment in recent months, Ramer said, and polling confirms that trend.According to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last month, only 39% of Republicans now believe the US should send weapons to Ukraine, representing a 10-point drop in support since February. On the question of sending aid and supplies to Ukraine, 50% of Republicans support the idea while 50% oppose it. In contrast, 86% of Democrats and 63% of independent voters support sending aid and supplies to Ukraine.“I think it’s a top-down thing. We recognize that Donald Trump has overtaken the Republican party,” Ramer said. “What Donald Trump tapped into is this isolationist bit of the Republican party, and I think that that is affecting how Republican voters approach the issue.”When the House voted last month on a bill to provide $300m in funding for a program to train and equip Ukrainian fighters, a majority of the Republican conference – 117 members – opposed the legislation. The vote represented a crucial tipping point, as hard-right lawmakers like Gaetz have implored leaders to block any bill that does not have the support of a majority of the Republican conference.In a statement explaining his opposition to the bill, the congressman John Curtis of Utah, a Republican who had previously showed support for Ukraine, called on the Biden administration to articulate a clear strategy for defeating Russia and to specify how funds were being used.“I support Ukraine in their war,” Curtis said. “I support continued funding for their efforts, but these are basic questions any organization would ask in a transaction. To continue spending Utahans taxpayer dollars, Congress must receive assurances to these questions.”Ukraine still has support from many lawmakers of both parties in Congress, who have helped deliver more than $100bn in aid to Kyiv since the start of the war. But the rising opposition to Ukraine among House Republicans specifically, combined with the party’s razor-thin majority in the lower chamber, has made it all the more difficult for any speaker to lead the conference – as McCarthy knows all too well.Although McCarthy has been supportive of Ukraine aid, he used the power of his speakership to secure some wins for the “America First” contingent of his conference. When the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited Capitol Hill last month, McCarthy denied him the opportunity to deliver a joint address to Congress.As Congress scrambled late last month to avoid a government shutdown, McCarthy introduced a stopgap spending bill that included no additional funding for Ukraine. The Senate version of the stopgap bill, which was ultimately shelved in favor of McCarthy’s proposal, had included $6bn in Ukraine aid, and that was already well below the $24bn requested by Biden in August.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThose concessions were not enough to sway the eight House Republicans, including Gaetz, who collaborated with Democrats to oust McCarthy last week. Now Republicans must unite around a new speaker, and that process is proving even more arduous than expected.On Wednesday, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, won his conference’s nomination, defeating the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan. Scalise’s victory may have come as a relief to Ukraine supporters, given that Jordan had already signaled he would not support another aid package. Scalise, on the other hand, received a grade of B on Republicans for Ukraine’s lawmaker report card.Then, on Thursday evening, Scalise abruptly dropped out of the race due to opposition from some of the same hard-right lawmakers, who have also embraced anti-Ukraine views. After the ouster of McCarthy and the rapid downfall of Scalise, Ramer fears that the successful maneuvers staged by hard-right lawmakers might intimidate some of the pro-Ukraine Republicans in the House.“I do have a concern that a lot of even rank-and-file Republicans are going to look at what happened to McCarthy and be afraid to alienate this isolationist part of the Republican party,” Ramer said.Ukraine supporters have suggested a number of ideas to ease the passage of another aid package through Congress, such as including the money in a broader bill providing funding for Taiwan and border security. With House Republicans eager to approve more funding for Israel following the Hamas attacks last weekend, members of both parties proposed a joint Ukraine-Israel aid package.Hard-right lawmakers have staunchly opposed the idea of a Ukraine-Israel package, but such a bill could provide some political cover for the next Republican speaker, Bergmann noted.“It gives a new speaker the opportunity to say that their hands were tied, and they have to bring this to the floor and essentially get Ukraine funding over the line, without being seen as betraying the far right,” Bergmann said.Another idea floated by some Ukraine supporters in Congress, including the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, involves passing a much larger aid package to support Kyiv through next year – thus avoiding another drawn-out fight on the issue until after the 2024 elections.“You just want to make this done through this political cycle, and then you can approach it again during the lame-duck session,” Bergmann said. “[It] makes all the sense in the world. Frankly, to not do that is crazy.”The clock is ticking. Ukraine cannot indefinitely continue its current efforts without more aid, and a prolonged delay could imperil its military and humanitarian missions. If that happens, Bergmann suggested, the hard-right Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid may soon start to see the political tide turn against them, which could prompt a change of their hearts.“The ads sort of write themselves,” Bergmann said. “When there’s imagery of Ukrainian cities getting pummeled, the ads will be: these people caused this, and they have blood on their hands.” More

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    ‘A dangerous game’: Republican chaos and indecision as crises shake the world

    The US’s closest ally in the Middle East is reeling from what many call its “9/11” and now a humanitarian disaster looms in Gaza. Winter is approaching in Ukraine, which needs urgent supplies to maintain its counteroffensive against Russia. From China’s expansive ambitions, to coups in Africa, to the climate crisis, the world is crying out for leadership.But on Capitol Hill in Washington, Republicans can’t find one. Friday marked the 10th day of paralysis as the party struggles to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy. This after majority leader Steve Scalise won a closed-door vote but abandoned his run because he lacked enough support to win on the House floor.Such petty bickering, grievances and vendettas might typically fascinate seasoned Washington watchers and readers of political insider newsletters but be met by a shrug by many Americans and indifference overseas. This time, however, is different. The ripples of Republican dysfunction could soon be felt across a troubled world.“It’s a dangerous game that we’re playing,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, told reporters on Thursday. “It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching. They need our help.”McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, has put forward a bipartisan resolution with Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, condemning Hamas and reaffirming support for Israel. But the House cannot vote on it until there is a speaker in the chair.McCaul added: “I’m going to remind my colleagues about how dangerous this is. If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need after this terrorist attack. So I think we’re playing with fire and we need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.”The House speaker is the third-highest-ranking elected official in the country, second in line to the presidency. Without one, legislative business is at a standstill. The House is currently under the control of Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who was named as the temporary speaker after McCarthy’s departure, but his ability to move legislation is unclear.Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he would seek approval from Congress for additional funding for Israel in the wake of the devastating attack by Hamas. But the fight over the speakership puts a question mark over how soon such aid could be approved and sent.Biden has also requested $24bn in additional funding for Ukraine but this too hangs in limbo. Although the White House has claimed that the vast majority of House Republicans still support such assistance, there has been growing dissent in recent weeks and the issue was a factor in McCarthy’s downfall.Then there is the threat of a government shutdown that would further dent US credibility overseas. Congress has until a self-imposed deadline of 17 November to pass 12 new bills to fund the government for the rest of the year and into 2024. The leadership vacuum is sucking up precious time and energy and making a shutdown more likely.Biden had spent the first two years of his presidency seeking to restore order and rebuild alliances after the “America first” mayhem of the Donald Trump years. But when Republicans gained control of the House in January with a narrow majority that empowered the far right, that effort was always likely to suffer erosion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “What we’re seeing is certainly shambolic chaos over there on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and they need to get their act together … We’ve never seen a conference behave this way or be this chaotic.”Biden’s speech on Tuesday was described as one of the most powerful statements of support for Israel ever given by a US president; he has previously spoken of his deep-rooted love for the country. Huge uncertainties remain: Israel has ordered a million people to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Hamas could still have more surprises in store; Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, could still open a second front.But instead of addressing the crisis with one voice, Republicans are consumed with a bogus impeachment inquiry into Biden and the publicity-seeking antics of members such as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace. And this week New York Republicans moved to expel accused fraudster George Santos.Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Since day one the Maga Republicans in the House majority have failed to work on real domestic priorities and instead focused on partisan stunts in their extreme efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House.“Their ongoing dysfunction, misplaced priorities and failures now impede the efforts of President Biden to come to the aid of key allies internationally. Chaos, not governance, defines the House Republican Caucus.” More