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      Two US House Republicans make their bid for the speaker’s gavel

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      Prominent Republican party members Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan made their pitches for the powerful role of speaker of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday amid mounting pressure from a war in the Middle East and another looming government shutdown. Lawmakers exiting a closed-door forum said neither Scalise, the House majority leader, nor Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, will have a clear advantage when Republicans begin to vote for a nominee by secret ballot on Wednesday.“We’ve got two good leaders within our party, with good perspectives on where the party needs to go and an understanding and an emphasis on reuniting the party,” Mike Garcia told reporters. But before voting for a candidate on Wednesday, Republicans will have to decide whether to keep internal disagreements behind closed doors by requiring any nominee to win 217 Republican votes, enough to elect the next speaker on the House floor over Democratic opposition. Current rules require only a simple majority. “The first order of business is figuring out a rules change that works for the conference,” said congresswoman Kat Cammack.Republicans hold a narrow 221-212 majority in the House.The narrowly divided caucus raised some worries that neither candidate would be able to win enough support to be elected speaker in the first round of voting.“We’re going to go get this done tomorrow, and the House is going to get back to work,” Scalise told reporters after the candidate forum, which ran more than two hours.Scalise and Jordan each pledged to back whichever candidate ultimately emerged as the nominee, lawmakers said.Republicans’ narrow majority in House made it possible for a fraction of their members to force Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted as speaker last week, to endure 15 grueling floor votes to become speaker in January.“We need to handle this inside the caucus and not go through what we did in January,” said Representative Ralph Norman, who opposed McCarthy at the time. McCarthy on Monday said he would take the job back if asked to by House Republicans, but on Tuesday told reporters, “I asked them please not to nominate me.”It took only eight Republicans to oust McCarthy last week, which could make leading the caucus a challenge for any new speaker. While McCarthy was the first speaker to be ousted in a formal vote, the previous two Republicans to hold the job left under pressure from party hardliners.Republicans may have to tackle other thorny issues, including how to move forward on government funding for the fiscal year that began 1 October and whether to change the rule that allowed just one lawmaker to call a vote to oust McCarthy. Current government funding expires on 17 November. Jordan, a prominent hardline conservative backed by former President Donald Trump, told Tuesday’s forum that he would back a new stopgap measure to fund the government through April to avoid a partial government shutdown, according to Thomas Massie, a Jordan supporter.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther lawmakers said Scalise also backed a temporary funding measure, but they offered few details.Scalise appeared to have the support of many veteran and establishment Republicans including party leaders, while Jordan drew endorsements from others including Trump-style populists.Representative Patrick McHenry, who is standing in as interim speaker, has been seen as a possible fallback candidate if no one else wins enough votes. But McHenry told reporters on Tuesday that he has not spoken to colleagues about running, adding that there are two candidates. Until a new speaker is chosen, the House cannot take action. That has brought new pressure on Republicans after Israel declared war on Sunday following an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas that has prompted calls for more U.S. military aid. Some Republicans are hoping to have a new speaker in place as early as Thursday. More

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      The View From the Press Gallery on a ‘Surreal’ Day in the House

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      A congressional reporter talks about the vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, and what the ‘frenetic’ days ahead may look like.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Catie Edmondson, a reporter who covers Congress for The New York Times, was in the press gallery inside the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Oct. 3, when lawmakers voted to remove the Republican speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy. In the 234-year history of the chamber, such an action had never been taken.“It was, until the last minute, hard to believe it was really happening,” Ms. Edmondson said in a recent interview.The House cannot fully function without a speaker. During a brief recess, two Republicans announced that they would run for the post, and on Monday Mr. McCarthy even indicated that he may seek to reclaim his seat.Ahead of a House session on Wednesday, when lawmakers are expected to formally begin the campaign for a new speaker, Ms. Edmondson discussed reporting from the chamber at the moment of Mr. McCarthy’s ouster. This conversation has been edited.When did you realize something extraordinary was happening?I’ll go back to the very beginning. I covered McCarthy’s election to the leadership post in January. There were 15 rounds of voting before he eventually won the gavel. Because that hard-right faction put him through the ringer in order to get him elected in the first place, there was a sense that this moment was inevitable, that McCarthy would face a challenge like this from the hard right.But it was still completely surreal to watch it unfold in real time. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had been teasing the idea that he was going to introduce a resolution to oust McCarthy the week before. But it wasn’t quite clear to us how many Republicans he had on board.The big question was always going to be, What are Democrats going to do? Republicans have such a thin margin in the House, and our understanding was that if Democrats moved to try to give him passive support by voting present, there was a better chance he would be able to weather any sort of challenge. But it became clear, talking with Democrats late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, that they had no intention of helping McCarthy.How did you and your colleagues cover the vote in the chamber?We had our team in the gallery counting every single vote. I was sitting next to my colleague Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, who has covered Capitol Hill for decades. He had never seen anything like this, either. I was having frenetic conversations with Carl and my editor, Julie Hirschfeld Davis. We had two sets of stories ready to go: One set if McCarthy survived the challenge, and one if he didn’t.Capitol Hill’s decorum is well known. Lawmakers, acting in the public view, often guard their behavior. Could you see the gravity of this moment reflected in the behavior of House members?Once that gavel came down and the presiding officer declared the speaker’s office to be empty, we saw many Republicans looking really upset. We saw a huge crowd go up to McCarthy to shake his hand, to give him a hug. It was a singular experience to watch. It’s very rare that the House votes in the fashion that it did, where lawmakers stand up, one by one, to cast their votes. I think that added to the sense of tension and drama.What happens as the House resumes its work?We expect a flurry of activity before there is a formal vote on the House floor to elect the speaker, which House rules require. There’s going to be a candidate forum where the candidates running for speaker make their pitch. It’s going to be a pretty frenetic few days. Most people are preparing for an extended race. Maybe they’ll be able to coalesce around someone more quickly than we expect. But I think there are a lot of people who are girding for another drawn-out election.What does a typical workweek look like for a congressional reporter?I’m up on the Hill at least four days of the week. We have our desk space in the press gallery, but a lot of our time is spent roaming around the hallways, trying to buttonhole lawmakers and ask how they are thinking about voting. For pivotal votes, we sit in the press gallery in the House chamber, just over the lawmakers sitting on the House floor.Is there a skill required to do this job that you could not have anticipated?I came to the congressional team to help with our coverage of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice. I thought it was a pretty crazy, chaotic, fast-moving atmosphere that would slow down at some point. It never really did. The ability to adapt and keep going is one skill that’s tricky to anticipate. The other is facial recognition — being able to identify lawmakers in the House and pull them aside. More

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      George Santos Draws Another Democratic Challenger: Tom Suozzi

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      The NewsThomas R. Suozzi, the Long Island Democrat whose failed bid for governor in 2022 may have helped clear the way for Representative George Santos to get to Congress, announced on Tuesday that he would run to replace Mr. Santos and take back his seat in the House of Representatives.Tom Suozzi, during a 2022 campaign visit to Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, left his House seat for an unsuccessful run for governor that year.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesWhy It Matters: Democrats see a major opportunity to flip the district, and the House.Mr. Santos, a Republican, flipped a suburban district covering parts of Long Island and Queens last year that had largely favored Democrats, after Mr. Suozzi chose to run in the Democratic primary for governor instead of defending his seat in Congress. Mr. Santos’s victory helped his party narrowly take control of the House.Democrats were already champing at the bit to win back the seat and others they lost in New York next year, hoping it could help them flip the House. They are already pouring money into the state, and hope to damage other New York Republicans by linking Mr. Santos’s issues — most notably a 13-count federal indictment — to them.Republicans are eager to hold the line. They are also eyeing pickup opportunities. On Tuesday, Alison Esposito, a Republican who lost her bid for lieutenant governor last year, said she would challenge a Democratic incumbent, Representative Pat Ryan, in the Hudson Valley.Before Mr. Santos even took office, he was dogged by scandal. The New York Times and other news outlets reported that he had lied to voters about much of his life. His campaign was found to have engaged in questionable fund-raising and spending, and his personal finances were murky.Lies, Charges and Questions Remaining in the George Santos ScandalGeorge Santos has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.The Background: Santos’s court case is ongoing.In May, Mr. Santos was charged in federal court with 13 felonies in three alleged financial schemes. Prosecutors have accused him of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and false statements.Mr. Santos has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and he has insisted he will remain in his race.On Thursday, his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty in a related case. In court, Ms. Marks said that she and an unnamed co-conspirator agreed to report false campaign donations and a fictional $500,000 loan that Mr. Santos said he made to his campaign.That co-conspirator is understood to be Mr. Santos.Prosecutors have not charged him with falsifying the loan or with other campaign finance violations. But his apparent involvement, which prosecutors documented with text messages and emails, would seem to leave him vulnerable to more charges.Court documents filed last month suggested that Mr. Santos and prosecutors may be discussing a plea deal, though Mr. Santos has denied it. But a guilty plea or further charges would increase the pressure on him to leave or be removed from office.What Happens NextIf Mr. Santos were to leave his seat, there would be a special election to replace him. In that case, local party leaders would pick their nominees.Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat who served six years in Congress, could be a prime choice for his party. Even after redistricting, the district largely resembles the one Mr. Suozzi represented, so he is familiar to voters there and has a track record he could cite against a Republican opponent.If no special election takes place, Mr. Suozzi would have to win what is shaping up to be a crowded Democratic primary next June. Already, seven others have filed statements with the Federal Election Commission saying they were entering the race.Mr. Santos, too, is facing challengers, with at least nine people filing similar documents for the Republican primary. He is expected to face a tough battle. Even before the criminal case, local Republican leaders said they would not back Mr. Santos’s bid.The former House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, also said that he would not support Mr. Santos’s re-election. It is unclear whether Mr. McCarthy’s successor, once one is chosen, would change course.Mr. Santos is next scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 27. More

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      Matt Gaetz says ousting of Kevin McCarthy was worth risk of losing seat

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      The Republican US congressman Matt Gaetz claims it would not matter to him if he lost his seat in Congress for leading the ouster of his fellow party member Kevin McCarthy as US House speaker last week.Asked Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press whether McCarthy’s removal as House speaker would be worth losing his job over, Gaetz responded: “Absolutely. Look, I am here to fight for my constituents.”Gaetz, a Florida representative, on Tuesday followed through on months of threats to boot McCarthy from the speakership after the Republican congressman from California struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown at the beginning of October. Gaetz sided with seven other far-right House Republicans and all Democrats in the chamber to strip McCarthy of his role, making him the first speaker in US history to be removed.In response, some House Republicans have openly talked about kicking Gaetz out of their caucus. That manoeuvre would require approval of two-thirds of House Republicans.A more extreme option on the table is to move for Gaetz’s expulsion from Congress altogether, which would also require two-thirds of the House to vote in favor of it.“I don’t see how they can really be part of a conference when they come on the inside, listen to what is going on, and then [go] outside and lob bombs into the middle,” Republican congressman Dave Joyce of Ohio told CNN. Joyce, the Republican Governance Group’s chairperson, added: “It’s a waste of time having conversations with these people.”In his conversation on Sunday with Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, Gaetz said it was nonsense that House Republicans would consider kicking him out of either their caucus or the legislative body.“The voters of Florida’s first congressional district sent me here with about 70% of the vote,” Gaetz said, alluding to his comfortable margin of victory during his re-election run in last year’s midterms. “So I think that anyone trying to kick me out of Congress because they didn’t like me would have a bone to pick with them.“They want to expel me from Congress? That’s crazy.”Welker asked Gaetz whether it was irresponsible for him to successfully plot McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker without a clear replacement. Gaetz argued that Republicans – who hold a thin majority in the House – have “two men who are incredibly respected” ready to succeed McCarthy as speaker.The remark referred to the two Republican congressmen who have announced bids to run for the vacant speakership: Jim Jordan of Ohio and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, who is the House majority leader.Gaetz declined to endorse one over the other on Monday. He only said he was “heartened” to talk with both “on their specific plans on spending and single-subject appropriations bills” ahead of a House vote to select a new speaker that is tentatively expected to occur in the coming days.“If either of those men get the most support in the conference, I’m eager to vote for them on the floor,” Gaetz said. More

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      Top Republican urges party to end ‘civil war’ and elect House speaker this week

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      Republicans in Washington need to elect a new speaker “this week” and end the party’s “civil war” in the House that is sending a message to the world of dysfunction, especially amid the conflict unfolding in Israel, a senior GOP figure said on Sunday.The Texas Republican congressman Mike McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, urged his own party in the House to unify because “we have got to move quickly, we cannot paralyze democracy, especially when we have hotspots all over the world… and I’m just worried about the messaging this sends.”A small group of hard-right House Republicans last week managed to force out speaker and California Republican Kevin McCarthy, against the wishes of moderate colleagues, in an unprecedented move to punish him for allying with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown. McCarthy had only served in the post since January when he scraped through an unparalleled 15 rounds of voting.In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday morning, McCaul said it was important for the House, which cannot pass legislation without a speaker, to reboot “so that we can get things to the floor”, such as a bipartisan resolution condemning the attack by Hamas militants on Israel and action to help with Israel “replenishing” its Iron Dome anti-missile system.“It’s too dangerous a time right now to be playing games with national security,” he said, also expressing hope that the fighting in Israel does not escalate and spread.McCaul said of there were worries about an expansion of the crisis unfolding in southern Israel.“If this lights up into a larger jihadist war against the zionist, if you will, that’s always what keeps everyone up at night,” he said.Meanwhile, McCaul thought the House Republican conference was “ready to unify around one speaker and not have this civil war”. The rightwing congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has been backed by former president Donald Trump, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana are the current leading contenders to succeed McCarthy and votes are expected on Wednesday.“It was not my idea to oust the speaker, I thought it was dangerous…[considering] all the threats that are out there,” McCaul said in the CNN interview.“What kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we cannot govern, when we are dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House? I mean how does Chairman Xi of China look at that when he says democracy doesn’t work, how does the Ayatollah [of Iran] look at this, knowing that we cannot function properly?” McCaul said, referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping.He said he thought either Jordan or Scalise “can provide solidarity”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, also told CNN’s State of the Union that “it’s time for the GOP to end the Republican civil war…[because] we need to get things done” on Capitol Hill.Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, who instigated the ousting of McCarthy last week, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that there would be a new speaker this week and House Republicans would be “back on track” and “invigorated”.He called the crisis in Israel “horrifying” but said the situation in the House would not stop the US coming to Israel’s aid.The Republican presidential candidate for 2024 and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said on ABC’s This Week that even without the events in Israel the ousting of the speaker of the House by a small GOP faction was “wholly irresponsible”. More

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      ‘They didn’t stand up to Trump’: how the Republican party descended into disarray

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      They are fresh-faced, suited and booted, the National Mall behind them and the world at their feet. Congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan smile out from the cover of Young Guns, their co-authored 2010 book about the next generation of conservatives. “This isn’t your grandfather’s Republican party,” said publicity material at the time.Thirteen years later, the trio is neither young nor the future. Cantor (“the leader”) became Republican leader in the House of Representatives but lost his seat to a nascent rightwing populism. Ryan (“the thinker”) became speaker but retired early to escape a toxic political relationship with President Donald Trump. And this week McCarthy (“the strategist”) was ousted by some of the extremists he helped elect to Congress but could not tame.The men’s careers chart the Republican party’s journey from disciplined machine to dysfunctional malaise. Like Britain’s Conservative party, Republicans were once admired and feared for their ability to fall into line and ruthlessly consolidate power. But on Tuesday, as eight rebels joined Democrats to visit humiliation on McCarthy, the party of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan was in turmoil – and nearly came to blows.“I’ll be really candid, I think if we had stayed together in the meeting last night, I think you would have seen fists thrown,” Congressman Garret Graves, an ally of McCarthy, told CNN. “And I’m not being dramatic when I say that. There is a lot of raw emotion right now.”Such a scene would have been unthinkable two decades ago when Republicans were effective at wielding power and pushing through laws relating to everything from foreign wars and domestic surveillance programmes to Medicare and the No Child Left Behind schools policy. Tom DeLay, House majority leader from 2003 to 2006, was dubbed “the Hammer” because of his willingness to crush dissent.Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, said: “They were a legislative juggernaut. But that changed in the 2010s with the emergence of the Tea Party. The disruptive factions within the Republican party began to splinter away from the traditional, more pragmatic conservatism that we saw in the 2000s.“Whether it was [Speaker John] Boehner, Cantor, Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy, none of them was equipped to be able to manage that. None of them was equipped to prevent their own demise. It’s basically a Maga hitlist at this point, when you look at Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy on the cover of that book.”McCarthy had, as campaign chairman, played a central role in 2010 in recruiting dozens of Tea Party conservatives who took control of the House. He shared their views on fiscal restraint but underestimated their darker impulses: distrust in government, racial hostility to Barack Obama and a conviction that the base had been betrayed by the elites.It was fertile territory for Trump, who in 2015 and 2016 fused celebrity culture with economic discontent and white grievance to knock the Republican party back on its heels. Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party conservative who served in Congress, said: “The one thing Trump got right was he understood how weak the party establishment was, and so they were in no position to fight him.“When he came on the scene in 15 and 16, the base was pissed off. The establishment ignored the base for years. People like me inflamed the base, so when Trump got there the base was ready to just dictate shit. The donors in the establishment have never understood that.”Republicans at the time such as Tara Setmayer, a former communications director who worked on Capitol Hill for seven years, believed the party needed to reach young voters, women and minorities to survive. But the ascent of Trump sent it spinning in the opposite direction, with consequences that still reverberate today.“That was the inflection point,” Setmayer said. “It was political expediency instead of standing up for what was right. If enough people had stood up to Donald Trump they could have beaten him back. But they didn’t, and they let it get away from them. They mistakenly thought they could control him and it was a case of a political Frankenstein’s monster.”Ryan, then the speaker, clung to the hope that Trump would mature, moderate and become “presidential” once in office. It proved to be folly. Ryan appreciated the tax cuts and military spending but, after two years, had to accept that the “Make America great again” forces could not be contained. He bowed out of public life.The baton passed to McCarthy, who had an advantage: with Democrats in control of the House, Republicans had reason to bury their differences and unite in opposition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But last year’s midterm elections sowed the seeds of his downfall.Republicans emerged with a much thinner majority than opinion polls had predicted. In January it took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to be elected speaker after cutting a deal with the far right, including a rule change that would let any member of the House to seek his removal. Nine rocky months later, after averting a government shutdown with Democratic help, he became the first speaker in history to be ditched.Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said on Wednesday: “All three of them were chased out. Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and now Speaker McCarthy have all learned the same lesson: you cannot allow the hard right to run the House, or the country.”McCarthy’s nemesis was Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman egged on by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who hosts an influential podcast (Gaetz was a guest on it a day after McCarthy’s demise). Critics say Gaetz is taking advantage of an era in which, instead of working their way up the ranks one committee at a time, politicians can build their brand, “go viral” and raise money by flaunting their extremism in the rightwing media ecosystem.Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review magazine, wrote: “Republican backbenchers used to be people such as Jack Kemp and Paul Ryan, who became something by promoting ideas that they carefully developed, sincerely believed, and persuaded their colleagues to embrace. Now, the emphasis is on becoming a micro-celebrity via constant outrage.”Bardella, a former spokesperson for the conservative Breitbart News who is now a Democratic strategist, added: “Matt Gaetz isn’t the cause. He’s a symptom of the complete radicalisation of not only the Republican party a the conservative rightwing media sphere in general.“Their deliberate decision to amplify the most extreme voices and give them a platform and give them a microphone and give them an audience every single night of the most ardent Republican primary voters to watch it, absorb it, paved the way for the chaos that has engulfed the entire Republican party right now.”It seems likely to get worse before it gets better. Without a speaker, the House cannot fully function to pass laws or fund the government. Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the judiciary committee chairman, are the two leading candidates to succeed McCarthy and frantically chasing endorsements ahead of a vote among Republicans expected on Tuesday.A long, divisive struggle could ensue while Democrats remain united, making a mockery of the temptingly alliterative headline “Dems in disarray”. Now the roles have been reversed. Even Trump wondered aloud: “Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves?”Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “We now see [that] the kind of authoritarian populism that talks about taking control, bringing order and strongman rule is an utter fiction.“That rhetoric has led to anarchy and the breakdown of governance and, just to bring it full circle, we’re now almost assuredly going to hear Trump and other Republican presidential candidates running on the promise to bring order to Washington to solve the very disorder they created.”He added: “We are in some very weird Alice in Wonderland politics here. The problems created by the fanatics in the Republican party have created a disorder that they are claiming they can solve.” More

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      Democratic unity strikes contrast to Republican chaos as McCarthy exits

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      “Democrats in disarray” has been an oft-repeated joke in Washington in recent years, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tensions that repeatedly flared up between the progressives and the centrists of Joe Biden’s party. But on Tuesday, House Democrats presented a united front as their Republican counterparts turned against each other and ultimately ousted one of their own in a historic defeat.The entire House Democratic caucus voted unanimously to remove the Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker on Tuesday, joining eight mostly hard-right lawmakers in supporting a motion to vacate the chair. Refusing to intervene in a mess of Republicans’ own making, Democrats looked on as McCarthy was unseated, making him the first House speaker in US history to be removed from office.Under the oversight of their new leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, House Democrats have marched in lockstep to challenge Republicans’ policy agenda, offering a stark contrast to the fractious conference that McCarthy tried and failed to unify. As they look to take back the House next year, Democrats hope to use the instability displayed this week to make a broader argument about the extremism that they say has come to define the modern Republican party.Heading into the Tuesday vote, speculation abounded over whether McCarthy might offer Democrats some kind of deal to help save his speakership. But McCarthy chose not to, telling CNBC on Tuesday: “They haven’t asked for anything, and I’m not going to provide anything.”Instead, McCarthy tried to appeal to members’ faith in the integrity of the House to keep his gavel, arguing that a removal of a speaker would represent an irreversible black mark on the institution.But that argument struck many Democrats as hypocritical coming from McCarthy, particularly given the speaker’s stunning flip-flop regarding the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. In the days after the attack, McCarthy said Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for the violence carried out by a group of the former president’s supporters. But just two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to make amends, and he later denounced the work of the House select committee investigating the insurrection.McCarthy “went to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and voted not to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the 2020 presidential election and our government”, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the select committee, said Tuesday. “This is a somber day for America as the chickens come home to roost for Kevin McCarthy.”The final self-inflicted nail in McCarthy’s coffin came on Sunday, the day after the House passed a continuing resolution to extend government funding through 17 November and avert a federal shutdown. House Democrats overwhelmingly supported the stopgap funding bill, with just one member voting against it, but 90 House Republicans opposed the legislation.And yet, when McCarthy appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, he attempted to blame Democrats for the last-minute scramble.“I wasn’t sure it was going to pass. You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass,” McCarthy said. “They did not want the bill. They were willing to let government shut down, for our military not to be paid.”House Democratic leaders played a clip of McCarthy’s interview during their Tuesday morning caucus meeting, just hours before the chamber’s vote on removing the speaker. McCarthy’s comments outraged Democrats, fortifying the caucus’s resolve to support the motion to vacate.“It goes in political 101 textbooks going forward as maybe one of the most … stupid things somebody could do on the eve of your survival vote,” Gerry Connolly, a Democratic Virginia congressman, told NBC News.In the end, every present House Democrat voted to oust McCarthy, ensuring the end of his speakership. Democrats commended Jeffries on keeping his members unified on Tuesday, mirroring the caucus’s unanimous support for Jeffries through 15 rounds of voting during the speakership election in January.“Yesterday was a pure demonstration of the type of leadership and continuity that [Jeffries] brings to the table and how inclusive he is,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist. “He has, I think, been extra intentional about keeping all four corners of the House Democratic caucus square together and living out what diversity and inclusion means when it comes to House Democrats.”Jeffries has now called on more centrist members of the House Republican conference to join Democrats in forming a “bipartisan governing coalition”.“At this point, we simply need Republican partners willing to break with Maga extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common ground for the people,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on Friday.So far, Republican partners have been difficult to find. Some of McCarthy’s allies blamed House Democrats for the speaker’s removal, accusing them of prioritizing their political goals over the good of the country. Democrats have scoffed at that argument, asserting that McCarthy brought about his own downfall by trying to appease the hard-right members who ultimately ousted him. McCarthy only won the speakership in January by making concessions to hard-right lawmakers, including a rule allowing any single member to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. That decision came back to haunt McCarthy this week.“The same rightwing extremism that gave McCarthy the speakership was the same rightwing extremism that took away his speakership,” Seawright said. “House Democrats should continue to draw the contrast with extremism that has hijacked and pretty much taken over the Republican conference with the comparison and the contrast of what was able to be done” when the Democrats had the House majority.Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, suggested the speakership debacle could be a launchpad for Democrats to engage in a fuller discussion about rightwing extremism. With government funding due to run out in just a month, Green said it was urgent for Democrats to make a policy-based pitch against Republicans’ legislative agenda.“Extremism doesn’t just mean they can’t rally their caucus on the House floor. Extremism means they would actually cut social security benefits for millions of current and future seniors,” Green said. “The extremists within an already extreme Republican party that are in charge are the same ones who would be most likely to use their leverage to cut programs like social security.”As the House prepares for another speakership election, much of the conversation in Washington has focused on who might replace McCarthy. But for Green, the more important conversation involves how the new Republican speaker will govern with a newly emboldened hard-right faction in his conference. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, two speaker candidates, have also backed drastic government funding cuts, voting in favor of McCarthy’s recent failed proposal to temporarily reduce most government agencies’ budgets by up to 30%.“I think it’s important to connect the dots between the chaos and extremism we’ve seen playing out in this leadership fight and what those same forces will attempt to do in the upcoming government funding fight,” Green said. “It’s very possible that members of the public perceive these as two very different stories, as opposed to two chapters in the same story.” More

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      From the Fringe to the Center of the G.O.P., Jordan Remains a Hard-Liner

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      Once a tormentor of the Republican Party’s speakers, the Ohio congressman and unapologetic right-wing pugilist has become a potential speaker himself.As a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, once antagonized his party’s leadership so mercilessly that former Speaker John A. Boehner, whom he helped chase from his position, branded him a “legislative terrorist.”Less than a decade later, Mr. Jordan — a fast-talking Republican often seen sans jacket, known for his hard-line stances and aggressive tactics — is now one of two leading candidates to claim the very speakership whose occupants he once tormented.Mr. Jordan’s journey from the fringe of Republican politics to its epicenter on Capitol Hill is a testament to how sharply his party has veered to the right in recent years, and how thoroughly it has adopted his pugilistic style.Those forces played a pivotal role in the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, though Mr. Jordan, once a thorn in his side, had since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. Now, the same dynamics have placed Mr. Jordan in contention for the post that is second in line to the presidency, a notion that is mind-blowing to many establishment Republicans who have tracked his career.“That notion that he could go from ‘legislative terrorist’ to speaker of the House is just insane,” said Mike Ricci, a former aide to both Mr. Boehner and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. “Jordan is an outsider, but he’s very much done the work of an insider to get to this moment. Keeping that balance is what will determine whether he will win, and what kind of speaker he will be.”The race between Mr. Jordan, a populist who questions federal law enforcement and America’s funding of overseas wars, and Representative Steve Scalise, a staunch conservative and the No. 2 House Republican from Louisiana, continued to heat up on Friday. Both men worked the phones relentlessly seeking support, including making calls with freshman lawmakers, the Congressional Western Caucus and the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-oriented Republicans.On Friday, as they were vying for support, a bloc of Republicans were quietly requesting a change to party rules that would raise the vote threshold for nominating a candidate for speaker, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail.While Mr. Scalise is amassing dozens of commitments of support, so is Mr. Jordan, which could lead to a bitter and potentially prolonged battle when Republicans meet behind closed doors next week to choose their nominee — or spill into public disarray on the House floor.Mr. Jordan’s rise in Congress to a position where he can credibly challenge Mr. Scalise, who has served in leadership for years, stems from a number of important alliances he has formed over the years. His strongest base of power is his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom consider him a mentor. He has built a solid relationship with Mr. McCarthy, for whom Mr. Jordan proved a reliable supporter and important validator on the right. And he has forged close ties with former President Donald J. Trump, perhaps his most important ally.In a Republican House that has defined itself in large part by its determination to protect Mr. Trump and attack President Biden, Mr. Jordan has been a leader of both efforts. He leads a special subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” against conservatives. He has started investigations into federal and state prosecutors who indicted Mr. Trump, and he is a co-leader of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden that Mr. McCarthy formally announced last month as he worked to appease the right and cling to his post.Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Jordan for the top House job early on Friday, ending speculation, however unrealistic, that the former president might seek the job himself. (A speaker is not required to be an elected lawmaker.)“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”Mr. Trump’s endorsement could help Mr. Jordan garner support from his other fellow House Republicans, among whom Mr. Trump is popular. But it is not expected to seal a victory.Representative Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who is the whip of the House Freedom Caucus and a supporter of Mr. Jordan, said Mr. Trump’s endorsement was a “positive” for Mr. Jordan because “Trump is widely viewed as the leader of our party.”But, he said, some more mainstream Republicans aren’t thrilled about aligning themselves with Mr. Trump.“There are some folks in moderate districts that are like, ‘Well, that might actually complicate things for me,’” Mr. Davidson said.Mr. Jordan helped undermine faith in the 2020 presidential election results as Mr. Trump spread the lie that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud. Mr. Jordan strategized with Mr. Trump about how to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject the results, voting to object even after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol. His candidacy for speaker has drawn a stark warning from former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 Republican and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, who said that if he prevailed, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”In a speech at the University of Minnesota this week, Ms. Cheney told the audience that “Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election.”Mr. Jordan has defended his actions in challenging the results of the 2020 election, saying he had a “duty” to object given the way some states changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.His quick rise in the Republican ranks was nearly derailed in 2018, when a sexual abuse scandal in Ohio State University’s athletics program came to light, leading to accusations that Mr. Jordan, who had been an assistant wrestling coach at the time, knew about the abuse and did nothing. Mr. Jordan has said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing.On Capitol Hill, Mr. Jordan initially worked to build some relationships with Democrats early in his career. He and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, once teamed up on bipartisan legislation to protect press freedom. He counts former Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is now running Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, as a friend. Even as Mr. Jordan and Representative Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who died in 2019, sparred over investigations of Mr. Trump, the two men occasionally found common ground on other Oversight Committee issues.But as Mr. Jordan formed an alliance with Mr. Trump and then became one of his most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill, his relationships with Democrats disintegrated. When Mr. Raskin introduced his press freedom bill this year, Mr. Jordan was no longer listed as a sponsor.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said that Mr. Jordan’s true power lay in the love he commands from base voters, built up through years of defending Mr. Trump and advocating conservative policies on Fox News and in combative congressional hearings. Mr. Jordan is known to fly to districts around the country to help raise money for candidates who are aligned with the House Freedom Caucus — and even for Republicans who are not.Mr. Banks suggested that Mr. Jordan’s credibility with the right would make it easier for the party to unify behind any spending deal he were to cut with Democrats and the White House should he become speaker. Such a deal would be a tall order. Mr. Jordan voted last week against a measure to avoid a government shutdown — an agreement with Democrats that ultimately drove Mr. McCarthy from the speakership.“Jim Jordan is a trusted conservative; he’s well-respected by the base of the Republican Party,” Mr. Banks said. “So when we get to some of these tough spending fights and Speaker Jim Jordan is negotiating with the White House and the Senate, that’s going to help Republicans rally behind him and get to a place where they can vote for those deals.”“This is a different Republican Party today than what it was a decade ago,” he added. “And the Republican Party today is a lot more like Jim Jordan. It’s more of a fighting Republican Party.” More