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    Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

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    Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.In his report released in February, Hur, a Republican former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.“My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully,” Hur said in his opening remarks to the House judiciary committee. “I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial.”He defended his comments about Biden’s recollections, saying: “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.”Republicans are also unhappy with Hur’s finding that Biden should not be charged, arguing it was evidence of double standards at the justice department. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, has indicted Donald Trump for allegedly taking government secrets with him after leaving the White House and, unlike Biden, conspiring to keep them out of the hands of investigators. The justice department also decided last year not to bring charges against Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, after classified documents were found at his home.Both men were appointed by Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, but operate independently, while justice department policy also prohibits the indictment of sitting presidents.The judiciary committee’s chair, Trump ally Jim Jordan, sought to focus public attention on Hur’s conclusion that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency”.“Mr Hur produced a 345-page report, but in the end, it boils down to a few key facts. Joe Biden kept classified information. Joe Biden failed to properly secure classified information. And Joe Biden shared classified information with people he wasn’t supposed to,” Jordan said as the hearing began.Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, focused on how the special counsel cleared the president, and noted his cooperation with the investigation.“The Hur report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden,” Nadler said.“And how does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida?” Nadler continued, recounting the details of the former president’s alleged hoarding of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort.Trump is facing charges “not because of some vast conspiracy, not because the so-called deep state was out to get him, but because former president Trump was fundamentally incapable of taking advantage of even one of the many, many chances he was given to avoid those charges”, Nadler said.Hur made clear later on that he does not consider his report to be an “exoneration” of the president, saying “that is not a word that I used”.A transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, which lasted for hours over several days, was released shortly before the hearing began, and shows the president fumbled occasionally with the sequence of events and certain dates, but otherwise was sharp throughout, and also corrected Hur and others when they made errors.The Democratic congressman Adam Schiff seized on Hur’s insistence that he did not “disparage” Biden, saying he did just that by including details of the president’s ability to recalls details in his report.“You chose a general pejorative reference to the president. You understood when you made that decision, didn’t you Mr Hur, that you would ignite a political firestorm with that language, didn’t you?” Schiff asked.“Congressman, politics played no part whatsoever in my investigative steps,” Hur replied, saying he followed justice department policy in writing his report. More

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      Russia-linked Biden accuser charged with lying? Who cares, Republicans say

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      Congress should publicly investigate the case of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying about corruption involving Joe Biden and linked to Russian intelligence, a leading lawyer said, adding that senior Republicans who pushed Smirnov’s claims should be forced to testify.“The Senate should open an immediate investigation into the Alexander Smirnov scandal – with public hearings,“ said Tristan Snell, formerly a prosecutor on the Trump University fraud case, now author of Taking Down Trump, a book on the former president’s many legal challenges.“Bring Smirnov in to testify,” Snell added. “And then bring Jim Jordan, James Comer and Elise Stefanik in right behind him. This is a national security breach of the highest order.”Stefanik, from New York, is the Republican House conference chair and a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, the probable presidential nominee whose desire for revenge for his own impeachments is widely held to motivate Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden in return.Jordan, from Ohio, is the House judiciary chair. On Wednesday, his committee and the oversight panel, chaired by Comer of Kentucky, interviewed James Biden about his business affairs and links to his older brother, the president. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, is due to be interviewed next week.The bombshell news of Smirnov’s ties to Russian intelligence exploded the night before, in filings related to his arrest in Nevada. After James Biden’s interview, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, told Republicans it was time to bring to an end the “circus” of attempts to impeach the president.Republicans were not listening. Charges against Smirnov and news of his links with Russian intelligence did not “change the fundamental facts” of the case, Jordan told reporters, rehashing claims about Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company and the supposed involvement of his father.One reporter, Manu Raju of CNN, pushed back, referring to an FBI document containing claims Smirnov is now charged with making up, possibly in connection with Russian intelligence, a document senior Republicans used eagerly as they pushed their claims.“You said the 1023 is the most corroborating piece of information you have,” Raju said to Jordan. “But it’s not true!”Comer, the leader of the impeachment effort, also showed little sign of concern with the truth. Reaching for Trump-like language, he told the rightwing Newsmax network Democrats were “going to play the Russia card again”, a reference to investigations of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow which dogged Trump’s term in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s what Dan Goldman’s done, that’s what Jamie Raskin’s done,” Comer said, referring to prominent Democratic voices calling for impeachment efforts to end.Goldman, from New York, told CNN: “Wittingly or unwittingly, House Republicans have been acting as an agent or an asset of Russian intelligence.”Raskin said Republicans “just say, ‘Russia hoax Russia hoax.’ What part of it is the hoax? Is it the war in Ukraine? Is it the death of [Alexander] Navalny? What is hoax-like about it?“The hoax is that there’s a Russian hoax. There’s not a Russian hoax. There has been a series of efforts by Vladimir Putin to destabilize and undermine American political democracy.” More

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      Hunter Biden makes appearance at his own contempt of Congress hearing

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      Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, as Republicans on the US House oversight committee convened to consider a resolution to hold the president’s son in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony.Appearing with his attorney Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden sat silently in the front row as the committee chair and vice-chair delivered opening statements to a hearing that would be dominated by partisan bickering.“We will not provide Hunter Biden with special treatment because of his last name,” said James Comer, the Republican chair, from Kentucky. “All Americans must be treated equally under the law. That includes the Bidens.”Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Democratic vice-chair, hit back by reminding Republicans Hunter Biden offered to testify in public. Raskin also noted that Republicans including the House judiciary chair, Jim Jordan, defied subpoenas issued by the January 6 committee.“We are here today because the chairman has bizarrely decided to obstruct his own investigation and is now seeking to hold Hunter Biden in contempt after he accepted the chairman’s multiple public offers to come answer the committee’s questions under oath before the American people,” Raskin said.The hearing descended into chaos as Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, called Hunter Biden “the epitome of white privilege” for, she said, “spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed”.“What are you afraid of?” Mace said. “You have no balls. I think that Hunter Biden should be arrested right here right now and go straight to jail.”The notion of Biden being “afraid” to face House Republicans struck Democrats as absurd, given his presence in the room. Jared Moskowitz, from Florida, interrupted Mace to say: “If the gentlelady wants to hear from Hunter Biden, we can hear from him right now, Mr Chairman. Let’s take a vote and hear from Hunter Biden. What are you afraid of?”Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a Black Democrat, took issue with Mace’s invocation of white privilege.“I can’t get over the gentlelady from South Carolina talking about white privilege,” Crockett said. “It was a spit in the face, at least of mine as a Black woman, for you to talk about what white privilege looks like, especially from that side of the aisle.”Mace pointed to a previous role as the ranking Republican on the civil rights subcommittee and said she took “great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country”.As Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican from Georgia, was speaking, Hunter Biden left the room. Greene, who in a previous hearing showed what appeared to be a sexually explicit picture of Biden, claimed he was “afraid of my words”.Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, defended Biden, saying: “I think it’s really interesting to hear the gentlelady from Georgia speak about Hunter Biden leaving, when she is the person that showed nude photos of Hunter Biden in this very committee room.”When Greene attempted to enter evidence into the record, Raskin protested that Democrats had not seen it, saying: “In the past, she’s displayed pornography. Are pornographic photos allowed to be displayed in this committee room?”Greene said her evidence was not pornographic. Raskin said: “OK, well, you’re the expert.”Outside, Lowell told reporters: “Republican chairs … are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold somebody in contempt who has offered to publicly answer all their proper questions. The question there is, what are they afraid of?”Republicans are targeting Biden as part of attempts to portray his father as corrupt and secure his impeachment, as an expected election rematch with Donald Trump looms. Republicans have however presented no evidence that Joe Biden profited from his son’s dealings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn early December, Hunter Biden, 53, defied a subpoena for testimony in private, instead appearing in front of reporters on Capitol Hill.“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said then. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”On Monday, Comer and Jordan released their contempt resolution and an attendant report. They said Biden’s “willful refusal to comply with our subpoenas constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to the appropriate United States attorney’s office for prosecution.”Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanour criminal offence. As described by the Congressional Research Service, “a witness suffers no direct legal consequence from House or Senate approval of a contempt citation, though a variety of political consequences may [follow]. If the individual is prosecuted and convicted, violations … are punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment ‘for not less than one month nor more than 12 months’.”Hunter Biden is already in extensive legal jeopardy. In September, he was indicted in Delaware on three federal charges related to his purchase and ownership of a handgun while experiencing (and lying about) addiction. Facing a sentence of up to 25 years, he pleaded not guilty.In December, he was indicted in California on nine tax charges carrying a maximum sentence of 17 years. Arraignment is scheduled for Thursday.Democrats have attempted to make news of their own, releasing a report detailing at least $7.8m in payments from 20 countries to Trump business concerns during his four years in power. Comer called that report “beyond parody” and said: “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses but the Bidens do not.”In December, Hunter Biden said: “There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen …“I have made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded. For that, I am responsible. For that, I am accountable. And for that, I am making amends.” More

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      ‘Stakes are really high’: misinformation researcher changes tack for 2024 US election

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      A key researcher in the fight against election misinformation – who herself became the subject of an intensive misinformation campaign – has said her field gets accused of “bias” precisely because it’s now mainly rightwingers who spread the worst lies.Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, added that she feared that the entirely false story of rigged elections has now “sunk in” for many Americans on the right. “The idea that they’re already going to the polls with the belief that they’re being cheated means they’ll misinterpret everything they see through that lens,” she said.Starbird’s group partnered with Stanford Internet Observatory on the Election Integrity Partnership ahead of the 2020 elections – a campaign during which a flood of misinformation swirled around the internet, with daily claims of unproven voter fraud.Starbird and her team helped document that flood, and in return congressional Republicans and conservative attorneys attacked her research, alleging it amounted to censorship and violated the first amendment.Starbird, a misinformation researcher, herself became the subject of an ongoing misinformation campaign – but said she would not let that deter her from her research. Her team wasn’t the only target of the conservative campaign against misinformation research, she noted: researchers across the country have received subpoenas, letters and criticism, all attempting to frame misinformation research as partisan and as censorship.Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, served as the ringleader of this effort in Congress, using his power to investigate groups and researchers that work to counter misinformation, particularly as it related to elections and Covid-19. One practice that especially upset Jordan and his colleagues was when researchers would flag misleading information to social media companies, who would sometimes respond by amending factchecks or taking down false posts entirely.Nor is it just Congress attacking anti-misinformation work. A federal lawsuit from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that the Biden administration violated the first amendment by colluding with social media companies to censor and suppress speech. A new lawsuit from the state of Texas and two rightwing media companies takes aim at the Global Engagement Center, a state department agency that focuses on how foreign powers spread information.The pressure campaign has chilled misinformation research just ahead of the pivotal 2024 presidential election, as some academics switch what they focus on and others figure out ways to better explain their work to a mixed audience. One thing they will probably no longer do is flag posts to social media companies, as the practice remains an issue in several ongoing court cases.Starbird has landed in the middle of all this. Her work was included in Jordan’s investigation, her emails were sought by the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, she was sued in another lawsuit brought by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, and she and the center have been inundated by records requests.“In a few years, I’ll look back and say it was a really valuable perspective,” she said. “Because I’ve seen campaigns that were extremely effective at using disinformation to smear the reputation of people – so much so that I’ve seen someone that I was studying take his own life. I know that the stakes are really high in these spaces.”Jordan’s committee released reports with outlandish claims about how the government, researchers and tech companies “colluded” to “censor Americans”. Starbird served on an external advisory committee for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; when a Republican congressional report claimed the committee tried to censor people, when in reality it solely advised the security agency, Starbird fired back, calling the Republican report a “manipulated narrative”.“It was really weird to watch how they so effectively created this false narrative. It was frustrating,” she said. “And then at some point, you step back and you’re like, ‘You gotta appreciate their craft – good at what they did.’”Starbird started her academic career by studying online volunteerism, then misinformation campaigns after the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. She’s seen the work of political actors grow more sophisticated in spreading disinformation.The reason that research into election misinformation is labelled as biased was because it’s largely the right that spreads election lies these days, she said. Widespread misinformation shared by rightwing politicians and activists since the 2020 election culminated in the January 6 insurrection, which was motivated by false claims of electoral fraud, almost all of which have been thrown out of court.“The influencers, political elites on the right, have embraced those lies, which is one of the reasons that they spread further,” she said. “So this is an asymmetric phenomenon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Now, they may argue and say that they’re not false, and it’s really hard to have a conversation if you don’t have a shared view of reality.”Her work now focuses on election processes and procedures. She says she now refers more to “rumors” than to “misinformation” – both because “rumor” has more historical context, and because “misinformation” is a much more politicized term, co-opted by people outside the field, similar to how the legitimate phenomenon of “fake news” on social media before the 2016 election got twisted by Donald Trump into an insult to journalists.Her team will probably not flag content to social media platforms, either. “That piece of the work has been so effectively twisted into a censorship narrative that it becomes hard to help out in that way,” she said.While she had hoped to work with local and state elections officials – the experts on how elections work, who have themselves been subject to harassment – for context and help assessing viral rumors, “it’s increasingly hard for us to think that we’ll be able to communicate with them in a way that would be helpful for them, helpful for the world, and not cause more damage because it becomes fodder for these false claims”.With misinformation research under fire and social media platforms less willing to factcheck viral posts, 2024 could see a flood of voter fraud lies, making for an even more contentious election than in 2020. Even if social media platforms, which are optimized to spread the most attention-getting posts, did more work to address misinformation, they would still be accused of bias and censorship, Starbird said.She fears that the election fraud narrative has now “sunk in” so deeply for so many Americans on the right that it could end up creating worse laws and procedures – and actually increase the possibility of a successful foreign interference campaign in US elections.“Right now, we’ve got a space where we may be in a ‘Boy who cried wolf’ situation, where there’s so much misinformation about election integrity that if we have a true threat, we may miss it,” Starbird said.Still, despite the loud voices on the right continuing to spread disinformation about elections, Starbird thinks the people who got drawn into those narratives before might be a little savvier now, perhaps less likely to fall for some of the “more extravagant” claims again.“I am hopeful that we’ve seen the worst of it,” she said. “I’m not confident we’ve seen the worst of it.” More

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      Jim Jordan’s dizzying fall bodes an even more broken Republican party to come | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Jim Jordan’s march to seize the Capitol began as a beer hall putsch but veered into Sesame Street. Vote after vote, he has missed the sagacity of the Count, the puppet Dracula who teaches children the number of the day. Former speaker Nancy Pelosi wryly remarked that the Republicans should “take a lesson in mathematics and learning how to count”.After the second round, Jordan threw in the towel from his stool in the corner: no más! He endorsed instead extending the tenure and power of Patrick McHenry, the speaker pro tempore, until someone could figure something else out. But Jim Jordan the consensus builder was a short-lived phenomenon. The spirit of violence swirled around him.The House Republicans held a closed conference to deliberate. The ghostly Kevin McCarthy, the late speaker, stood to create order, though it was unclear what that order would be or what authority he invoked. Matt Gaetz, his assassin, rose to answer him. “Sit down!” McCarthy shouted. Foul oaths flew back and forth. “If you don’t sit down, I’ll put you down,” Representative Mike Bost told Gaetz. Gaetz gestured for him to come and fight. But the one who suffered a TKO was McHenry.Once again, Jordan had neglected to count. His followers did not follow him. “It’s the biggest F U to Republican voters I’ve ever seen,” said Jordan’s rabid advocate Representative Jim Banks. Another backer, Representative Scott Perry, Jordan’s successor as chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus and a fellow co-conspirator in the January 6th plot, rejected the McHenry gambit out of hand. “I’m going to stay with Mr Jordan to the end,” he declared. The collapse came quickly, with McHenry declining the honor. “If there is some goal to subvert the House rules to give me powers without a formal vote, I will not accept it,” he said, as he too proclaimed his allegiance to Jordan while politely sideswiping him.Outside the paralyzed House, a gaggle of Never Trump, anti-Jordan Republicans conjectured about performing a magic trick. Would Senator Mitt Romney take the speakership? He had announced he was not running for re-election; he could sit in the Senate at the same time he presided over the House. But then there was the book about him by McKay Coppins of the Atlantic in which, in a final act of belated truth-telling, Romney flayed each and every Republican leader. And, anyway, why would he accept the nomination to preside in hell? What about Arnold Schwarzenegger? Would the former California governor, flogging his guide to life lessons, be willing to lift the dead weights of the House? The other possibilities for a deus ex machina were even less plausible. These scenarios were more fanciful than casting during the actors’ strike.The Democratic House leaders, who have a ringside seat to the Republican chaos, have long believed that Gaetz was always Jordan’s cat’s paw. After credulous pundits blamed the unity of the Democrats for the shambles of the Republicans, even attributing it to “identity politics”, the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, offered the glimmer of a “bipartisan” coalition whenever breakaway Republicans would be willing to deal practically. But until the dawning of the Age of Aquarius the Democrats can do little but watch the Republicans’ crash landings. Aid for Israel? Ukraine? Border security? The world crisis is secondary to the petty vindictiveness of Republican strife.From the start, Jordan’s campaign counted on coercion. The Fox News host Sean Hannity made calls to recalcitrant members demanding to know why they were not in lockstep behind Jordan and urged his viewers to send angry messages to change hearts and minds. Steve Bannon, on his War Room podcast, instructed his listeners to target the office of Representative Steve Womack, who had not fallen into line. Gaetz, a guest on Bannon’s program, excitedly announced that one notable holdout, Representative Mike D Rogers, had joined the “Jordan train”.“It seems as though Congressman Rogers has been sufficiently encouraged,” boasted Gaetz about the efficacy of the threats. But this whip operation had its limits. When Representative Don Bacon voted for McCarthy, not Jordan, on the second ballot, the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade blurted on-air: “Dumbass!” We insult, you decide.After the McHenry debacle, Jordan leaped back in the ring. His Roberto Durán moment had passed. The threats were ratcheted up. Bacon’s wife was inundated with menacing phone calls and texts. “You’re going to be fucking molested!” said one voicemail. More than half a dozen members received death threats – “credible death threats”, said Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks. “One thing I cannot stomach, or support, is a bully.”Robocalls incited Republicans in their districts to call members, falsely claiming they were supporting Jeffries. Representative Carlos A Gimenez personally confronted Jordan. “I told him, ‘I don’t really take well to threats. I really don’t,’” he said. “Robocalls – they’re not free. So somebody is actually funding this. And then he told me that he wasn’t behind it and he’s asked people to stop. But if you’ve asked people to stop it, why aren’t they listening to you?”Another target, Representative John Rutherford, was skeptical of Jordan’s denial. “I think he’s absolutely responsible for it,” he said.Jordan’s reliance on threats disclosed his tried and true methods and their shortcoming. Since he has been in the House, he has not enacted a single piece of legislation. His raw rightwing partisanship has been unashamed, unapologetic and undisguised. McCarthy, who was genuinely shocked at the January 6th assault on the Capitol, reduced himself afterward to a beggar in the palace of Trump. Jordan was in the planning meetings of the coup all along. It was the logical trajectory of his political arc from his earliest days.Jordan entered into the Ohio house in 1995 as the youngest member of the self-described “Caveman Caucus” that warred against moderate Republican governors as though they were socialists. His feud with the Republican speaker John Boehner of his home state, which ultimately resulted in Boehner’s quitting in sheer exasperation, stemmed from Jordan’s contempt. Boehner’s view of him as a “legislative terrorist” was not the result of a newfound discovery about Jordan in Washington, but an insight he had already gained from his antagonism in Ohio. Boehner opposed him when he sought election to the state senate in 2000.Jordan’s concentrated malice, stripped of the jacket of respectability, has a purity that the older Republicans with their penchant for the occasional compromise and a drink lack. “Politics has never been a place for sissies,” Jordan told an Ohio sports journal more than a decade ago, when he was asked if politics had gotten nastier.Elected to the House in 2006, he anticipated the Tea Party, which he subsumed as the natural successor to the “Caveman Caucus” but turbocharged with Koch brothers’ money. Jordan’s formation of the Freedom Caucus in 2015 was his new synthesis inside the House of the Tea Party, dark money and intimidation. He was waiting for Trump before Trump ever appeared on the horizon.After the Republicans won the House in 2022 by a slim margin, Jordan became chairman of the judiciary committee, although, despite graduating from the Capital University Law School of Columbus, Ohio, he curiously never passed the bar or practiced law. He created the Orwellian-named select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government essentially to harass the prosecutions of Donald Trump. When he demanded that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, turn over her evidence in the fake electors case in Georgia, she replied: “A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia constitutions and codes.”Throughout his entire career Jordan himself has been under a cloud. Before he ever thought of running for the Ohio legislature, he was a star wrestler, recruited by his coach at the University of Wisconsin to be his assistant at the Ohio State University. The team doctor, Richard Strauss, whose locker was next to Jordan’s, near the showers, sexually abused a documented 177 students, according to the school’s official report, and OSU wound up paying more than $60m in settlements to about 300 people in all, while 200 suits are still pending.Jordan has adamantly denied any knowledge of Strauss’s crimes. Yet one of the wrestlers claimed he pleaded with him not to confirm the stories: “Jim Jordan called me crying, crying … begging me, crying for half an hour. That’s the kind of cover-ups going on here.” If it were to be shown that Jordan had even an inkling of the extraordinary sexual abuse his political career would be ended. “Politics has never been a place for sissies.” But the bully is often the coward.Before the vote it was known in certain political circles in Washington two major journalistic investigations into Jordan’s role in the wrestling scandal were being conducted. An HBO documentary produced by George Clooney and directed by Eva Orner (my colleague in the Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side) is far along in production. Throughout the speakership balloting a Washington Post story that had been filed as Jordan announced his candidacy was anxiously awaited. That investigation was at last published the day after Jordan dropped out. The Post would report that eight former wrestlers “had clear recollections of team members protesting Strauss’s conduct either directly to Jordan or within Jordan’s range of hearing. All considered it inconceivable that Jordan did not know about Strauss’s disturbing behaviors.”Jordan’s grasp for the speakership was his bid finally to have it all. He would no longer be a man on the side or behind the curtain. He would walk over the bodies of McCarthy and Steve Scalise to turn the whole House into a giant weaponization subcommittee. But loyalty to him could not deliver the votes. Threats of violence to his adversaries escalated. His strong-arm tactics backfired. The intimidation offended and failed to force submission. Twice defeated, his inability to accept the humiliation he has inflicted on himself compelled him to humiliate himself a third time. He could not win in an open ballot and did strikingly worse in a closed one, losing among Republicans by a margin of 86 to 112. Matt Gaetz screamed to the heavens at Jordan’s martyrdom: “The most popular Republican in Congress was just knifed in an anonymous vote in a secret closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol.”The difference between the 147 Republicans who voted against certification of Joe Biden’s election on the fateful night of January 6 and those same members who finally voted to reject Jordan is the mathematical measurement of the intimidation factor and its decline.Jordan’s abysmal failure has left the House Republicans to search for an inoffensive no-name alternative who by definition would lack the influence to move the party beyond its damage – “insurmountable” damage, said the ghost of Kevin McCarthy. “I’m concerned about where we go from here.” Several no-names threw in their hats. McCarthy endorsed the Republican whip, next in line, Tom Emmer. Bannon instantly dubbed him a “Trump hater”, parading his expertise on hatred, and Trump slammed him for not supporting the January 6 coup.No matter which Republican now accedes to the speakership that minor figure would not be able to maintain the discipline that Jeffries does among Democrats. Only when a majority of the whole House is allowed to bring a bill to the floor will regular order be restored. That would mean that a portion of the Republicans would ally with the Democrats as a majority to move most bills. Until then, the Hastert Rule, imposed by Republicans in the late 1990s, requiring a majority of the majority, in other words, a minority, will continue to serve the interests of extremist factions.“Politics,” wrote Henry Adams, descendant of two presidents, “is the systematic organization of hatreds.” Within the Republican party, that clever aphorism was turned into a strategy – the southern strategy, using race and resentment to realign the parties, a scheme laid out for the Nixon White House by the brilliant political analyst Kevin Phillips, who died this month.Jim Jordan rose in the party shaped by Nixon and has gone farther and farther right since, well to the right of the Nixonian or even Reaganite party. What Jordan encountered of the old Republican party, he attempted to extirpate. His constant battle to destroy its remnants was the foundation of his career, antedating Trump by a decade, at last coming close to a central place of power with Trump’s ascent. Jordan’s fight for the speakership is the “systematic organization of hatreds” in a new key. It is a war fought within the Republican party, of Republicans against Republicans, a Hobbesian struggle fit for a champion wrestler, but that has ended with his ferocious movements exhausting him and leaving him pinned to the mat.The Jordan flop is hardly the last match. It is not a singular or isolated event. The speakership battle is a function of the Trump candidacy. While Trump hurtles to the Republican nomination, campaigning courtroom by courtroom, gag order by gag order, Jordan’s collapse is an augury of an even more broken party to come, of the collision of planets.
      Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

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      House speaker hopeful Tom Emmer spoke to Trump to ease tensions as race to replace McCarthy drags into third week – as it happened

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      Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who is seen as a frontrunner in the race for speaker of the House, spoke with Donald Trump over the weekend, Punchbowl News reports:As the party’s whip, Emmer is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, but Politico reports that since announcing his candidacy, he’s been attacked as disloyal to Donald Trump – even though he repeatedly voted for Jim Jordan, the failed speaker candidate who won the former president’s endorsement for the job.Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon referred to Emmer as a “Trump Hater,” while Boris Epshteyn, a current aide to the former president, attacked him for not endorsing his presidential campaign.“If somebody is so out of step with where the Republican electorate is, where the MAGA movement is, how can they even be in the conversation?”, Epshteyn said.After days of dysfunction and bickering that culminated in rightwing lawmaker Jim Jordan abandoning his bid to become speaker of the House despite winning the GOP’s nomination for the post, the party is again gearing up to elect a new leader in Congress’s lower chamber. This time, Republicans have nine candidates to sort through, and we’ll get an indication of who they are leaning towards this evening, when the party holds a forum for the aspirants.Here’s a rundown of what we learned today about the race:
      Tom Emmer, who is considered a frontrunner for the post, reportedly spoke over the weekend with Donald Trump. The former president’s advisers have criticized the Minnesota lawmaker as not sufficiently loyal, which could pose a problem to his bid for speaker. Fellow candidates Kevin Hern and Pete Sessions also said they got on the phone with Trump.
      Trump seemed to indicate he thought only Jesus Christ could win enough votes to become speaker of the House.
      Hern, who leads the large and influential Republican Study Committee, delivered his pitch to become speaker along with McDonald’s hamburgers.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus said lawmakers should not leave Washington DC until a new speaker is appointed. Some of their members were behind the effort to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.
      Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator who last month was indicted for accepting bribes in return for political favors, has pleaded not guilty to a new charge of acting as an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, the Associated Press reports.Menendez made the plea during a New York City court appearance, after which he departed without answering shouted questions:Here’s more on the latest charges:More Republican House speaker aspirants say they’ve spoken to Donald Trump ahead of this evening’s candidate forum.This includes the chair of the influential Republican Study Committee Kevin Hern, CNN reports:As well as Texas lawmaker Pete Sessions, who voted for objecting to Arizona and Pennsylvania’s results in the 2020 election:Donald Trump has been campaigning in New Hampshire today, where he was asked about the race for speaker of the House.It’s a little unclear, but appears to say that only Jesus Christ could manage to win election in the fractured chamber. See his comments for yourself:Progressive senator Bernie Sanders has come out against the Biden administration’s request for a funding package aimed at providing Ukraine and Israel with military assistance: Sanders is an independent who caucuses with the chamber’s Democratic majority, and it’s unclear what impact his opposition will have on the fate of the package. The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he was partial to the request, meaning it may receive bipartisan support in that chamber.Its prospects in the House are less clear. Besides the fact that the chamber has no speaker and cannot pass legislation, a growing number of Republicans there have said they do not support further aid to Ukraine.Oklahoma congressman Kevin Hern just said in the corridors of the House that he hopes the Republican conference will be able to pick a nominee that they can coalesce around for speaker tomorrow night.The House is far into record breaking territory on its 20th day without a speaker while Congress is in session.Hern told CNN that he favors a roll call vote of GOP-ers behind closed doors – in hopes of having a nominee that the conference can unite behind sufficiently to have that person elected as speaker after the decision goes to a vote of the full House floor.The Biden administration wants to see safe passage for people out of Gaza ahead of a potential ground invasion by Israel, particularly for US citizens, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said moments ago at the regular briefing in the west wing, Reuters reports.
      We still want to see safe passage out and particularly for the several hundred American citizens that we know are in Gaza and want to leave,” Kirby said.
      Kirby said the US agrees with the Israeli government that “the top priority has to be going after Hamas.”
      There is no daylight there,” between Israel’s and the US position, Kirby said.
      We are on Israel’s side, here.”
      Kirby said that the US has sent some military advisers to Israel to advise the Israelis.Our global blog on the Israel-Gaza crisis can be read here.The White House is keeping information very tight on what it’s doing to try to speed the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Pressure has intensified on Israel to negotiate the release of more than 200 people, including chiefly Israelis but also some Americans and other foreigners, taken by Palestinian militants after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7.Meanwhile, Kirby said it would “certainly be helpful” if House Republicans could produce a speaker for the chamber. This a day after Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said he endorsed Joe Biden’s $106bn aid proposal to Israel and Ukraine, which won’t get anywhere while the House is paralyzed.After days of dysfunction and bickering that culminated in rightwing lawmaker Jim Jordan abandoning his bid to become speaker of the House despite having the GOP’s nomination for the post, the party is again gearing up to elect a new leader in Congress’s lower chamber. This time, Republicans have nine candidates to sort through, and we’ll get an indication of who they are leaning towards this evening, when the party holds a forum for the aspirants.Here’s a rundown of what we’ve learned today about the race:
      Tom Emmer, who is considered a frontrunner for the post, reportedly spoke over the weekend with Donald Trump. The former president’s advisers have criticized the Minnesota lawmaker as not sufficiently loyal, which could pose a problem to his bid for speaker.
      Kevin Hern, who leads the large and influential Republican Study Committee, delivered his pitch to become speaker along with McDonald’s hamburgers.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus said lawmakers should not leave Washington DC until a new speaker is appointed. Some of their members were behind the effort to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.
      Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who is seen as a frontrunner in the race for speaker of the House, spoke with Donald Trump over the weekend, Punchbowl News reports:As the party’s whip, Emmer is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, but Politico reports that since announcing his candidacy, he’s been attacked as disloyal to Donald Trump – even though he repeatedly voted for Jim Jordan, the failed speaker candidate who won the former president’s endorsement for the job.Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon referred to Emmer as a “Trump Hater,” while Boris Epshteyn, a current aide to the former president, attacked him for not endorsing his presidential campaign.“If somebody is so out of step with where the Republican electorate is, where the MAGA movement is, how can they even be in the conversation?”, Epshteyn said.Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician to Barack Obama and Donald Trump who is now a Republican congressman, endorsed Byron Donald’s candidacy for speaker.Here’s the Texas lawmaker’s announcement:Speaker candidate Kevin Hern is the chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest ideological caucus in the House, which is geared towards advancing conservative policy goals.Below is the “Dear Colleague” letter he sent out to announce his candidacy for the chamber’s top job. The Oklahoman is also a former McDonald’s franchise owner, and sent the letter to Republican lawmakers along with the chain’s signature burgers:While the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell is partial to Joe Biden’s request for a joint Ukraine-Israel aid package, speaker candidate Dan Meuser told CNN he opposes it.He’s just one man, and faces a crowded field of eight others to win the gavel, but is unlikely to be alone in his views. Here’s what he had to say: More

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      Speaker fiasco lays bare ungovernable dysfunction of House Republicans

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      Death threats. Screaming matches behind closed doors. A futile cycle of votes that put internecine warfare on full public display. The Republican party this week sank into new depths of disarray and dysfunction – with no remedy in sight.Never before has America gone so long without a speaker of the House of Representatives and, critics say, not for a very long time has a major party appeared so broken. It has left a branch of the US government leaderless at an extraordinary moment of peril in the Middle East and Ukraine.“When you look at the damage to the party’s image, its reputation, its ability to do anything substantive or serious, this is a week of unmitigated disaster for the Republican party,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy and anti-Trump group.The latest setback came on Friday when Jim Jordan, a rightwing Ohio congressman endorsed by former president Donald Trump, lost a third vote to become speaker and was then unceremoniously dumped by Republicans as their nominee. The majority leader, Steve Scalise, said they were going to “come back and start over” on Monday.This followed a week of turmoil remarkable even by the fractious standards of the Trump era, with ideological disagreements merging with personal vendettas in a combustible mix. After Kevin McCarthy was ousted on 3 October and Scalise failed to garner enough backing, Jordan, a bare knuckle rightwinger and election denier, had made an unlikely effort to unite the party.In the first floor vote on Tuesday, the House Republican conference chair, Elise Stefanik, formally nominated Jordan and aimed high by quoting the Bible (Esther 4:14) to claim that Jordan would be America’s speaker “for such a time as this”. But 20 Republicans holdouts denied him the gavel.A day later, Jordan tried again but this time 22 Republicans opposed him. There was a sense of absurdity as some called out alternative names such as John Boehner, a former speaker who quit eight years ago.Meanwhile it emerged that Jordan’s allies in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement had deployed a hardball pressure campaign. Every member who voted against him said they had received a barrage of angry phone calls and messages.Congressman Don Bacon said he received death threats and his wife slept with a loaded gun near her bedside one night. Others said their families had been threatened – indicative of dangerously violent undercurrents in American politics that Trump’s recent rhetoric has only encouraged.But the intimidation tactics had the opposite effect of that intended by hardening the resolve of the holdouts. Congressman Drew Ferguson said the death threats against his family were “unacceptable, unforgivable and will never be tolerated”. Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks added: “One thing I cannot stomach or support is a bully.”On Thursday, tragedy turned to farce. Jordan agreed to suspend his campaign in favor of a resolution that would temporarily expand the powers of the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, to get the House moving again. But that went down like a lead balloon at a closed-door meeting of Republicans where tempers flared.McCarthy yelled at Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman behind his ousting, when Gaetz tried to seize a microphone. The former speaker explained to reporters later: “I told him to sit down, and he sat down. I think the entire conference screamed at him. Listen, the whole country, I think, would scream at Matt Gaetz right now.”After the meeting, Jordan announced that the McHenry plan would be scrapped and that he would fight on after all. “I’m still running for speaker,” he declared. “I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race.” But on Friday the opposition grew to 25 Republicans, an election result that not even Jordan could deny.Soon after he lost the party nomination in a secret ballot, putting Republicans back to square one. Critics saw it as the awful spectacle of a party – held together by the glue of grievance, “owning the libs” and a cult of personality – coming apart at the seams.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “We are seeing the inevitable outcome of years of neglect, years of lack of leadership, years of lack of courage culminate with what is a completely ungovernable and dysfunctional Republican party. The fact that there isn’t a single Republican right now who can get 217 votes is illustrative of deep schisms within the party and these deep wounds that there is no healing from.”Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “Time and again the bad actors in the Republican party have been rewarded for their bad behavior. They get rewarded with television time. They get rewarded with raising millions of dollars in contributions.“They get rewarded with plum committee assignments. Whether it’s Jordan or a Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who time and again we’re told represent the fringe of the party, they continue to be elevated and empowered by the leadership that’s in charge.”Now ending its third week without a leader, the House cannot act on a $106bn national security package unveiled by Joe Biden on Friday that would bolster US border security and send aid to Israel and Ukraine. Congress also faces a 17 November deadline to pass funding to keep the government open.Jeffries has said Democrats are “ready, willing and able” to partner with centrist Republicans on a path to reopen the House. In the meantime the chaos should, in theory, present a campaign gift to Democrats in next year’s elections, contrasting Biden’s steady wartime leadership with a party at war with itself.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “It’s a slow drip. People are still going to work and living their lives so they’re not worried about it. But independent voters who have been uncomfortable with the very right wing of the Republican party, whether it’s Trump or anybody else, will get more uncomfortable because this is threatening the stability of the federal government to function at all.“It’s one thing to be chaotic if you’re Trump – but it’s another to not be able to pass any legislation at all.” More

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      Jim Jordan says he’s ‘going back to work’ after losing secret ballot for House speaker candidacy – US politics live

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      Jim Jordan lost a secret ballot held by House Republicans which removes him as speaker designate, said the Republican Florida representative Kat Cammack.Steve Scalise of Louisiana said that Republicans will start over on Monday.Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports that the vote margin was large, according to sources familiar with the vote.The Supreme Court on Friday kept a Missouri law on hold that bars police from enforcing federal gun laws, rejecting an emergency appeal from the state.The Associated Press reports:The 2019 law was ruled unconstitutional by a district judge but allowed to remain in effect. A federal appeals court then blocked enforcement while the state appeals the district court ruling.Missouri had wanted the law to be in effect while the court fight plays out.Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to side with Missouri on Friday.The law would impose a fine of $50,000 on an officer who knowingly enforces federal gun laws that don’t match up with state restrictions.Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include registration and tracking requirements and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.The court expanded gun rights in a 2022 decision authored by Thomas. It is hearing arguments next month in the first case stemming from last year’s ruling. An appeals court invalidated a federal law that aims to keep guns away from people facing domestic violence restraining orders.Long-shot Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson has announced his decision to suspend his presidential campaign.On Friday, the Michigan businessman released a statement, saying, “With no oppurtunity to share my vision on the debate stage, I have decided at this time, suspending my campaign is the right thing to do.”Johnson criticized the Republican National Committee and its “corrupt leaders” with “authoritarian powers.”“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the people should decide the next president of the United States, not the head of the RNC and her cronies,” he added.Johnson said that he is only suspending his campaign, rather than withdrawing entirely and plans to keep a small political team on staff “in the event the dynamics of the race change.”Tennessee’s Republican representative Mark Green is not runnning for speaker, Green’s office told Punchbowl News.With Jim Jordan out of the speaker race, here is an explainer by the Guardian’s Sam Levine on why he lost and what happens next:Why did Republicans oppose Jordan?Several of the members who are opposed to Jordan are members of the House appropriations committee, who are reportedly opposed to the way Jordan has embraced a hard line on spending cuts and shutting down the government.There is also reportedly bad blood over the way Jordan and his allies treated Steve Scalise. Scalise previously beat Jordan to win the conference’s nomination to be speaker, but withdrew his bid after it became clear he couldn’t get enough votes to win in the House. Some Scalise allies think Jordan didn’t do enough to rally Republicans around Scalise.What happens next?No one knows. Even as it was clear that Jordan had no clear path to becoming the speaker, no Republican emerged to seriously challenge him. Republicans currently have a Sunday noon deadline to announce their candidacy ahead of another round of speakership talks.For the full explainer, click here:Mike Pence has called on House Republicans to “decide what team you want to be on” as Republicans revert back to square one following their inability to decide on a speaker.Speaking on SiriusXM, the presidential candidate said:
      “Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined eight Republicans partnering with every Democrat in Congress to throw out a Republican speaker of the House. All roads lead back to the eight members of what I call the chaos caucus who set all this into motion.”
      “With everything that’s happening in the world … the American people are looking to Republicans in the Congress to stop fighting with each other and start fighting for them.”
      House Republicans have set Sunday 12pm as the deadline to file as a speaker candidate.A candidate forum for the speaker will be held on Monday at 6.30pm and a secret ballot leadership election will be held on Tuesday at 9am.It remains unclear when a floor vote for speaker will be.Texas’s Republican representative Chip Roy said that it was a “mistake for the Republican conference to just walk away from arguably the most popular Republican in the Republican party.”Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju, Roy said, “We shouldn’t have done that,” adding, “I think having the American people be able to see how we are wrestling with the tough decisions and what we’re trying to do, and doing it with intensity and doing it because we care about this country.”Former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is throwing his weight behind GOP whip Tom Emmer’s bid to replace him, Punchbowl News reports:It’s a boost for Emmer, but not necessarily a decisive one. McCarthy also supported Jim Jordan, and look how that turned out. Meanwhile, Punchbowl reports that Emmer is among a fairly sizable group of Republicans running for the House speaker post, or considering it:They’ll be having a busy weekend.The judge overseeing Donald Trump and his family members’ civil fraud trial in New York City fined the former president $5,000 for a post he determined violated a gag order, but did not order him to jail – yet.Here’s more on that, from the Associated Press:
      Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt, for now, but reserved the right to do so – and possibly even put him in jail – if he continued to violate a gag order barring parties in the case from personal attacks on court staff.
      Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage” but decided on a nominal fine because Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post was inadvertent and was a “first-time violation”.
      Earlier, an incensed Engoron said the failure to delete the post from the website was a “blatant violation” of his 3 October order, which required Trump to delete the offending message.
      Trump lawyer Christopher Kise blamed the “very large machine” of Trump’s presidential campaign for allowing his deleted social media post to remain on his website, calling it an unintentional oversight.
      Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, wasn’t in court Friday. He’d returned to the trial Tuesday and Wednesday after attending the first three days in early October, but skipped the rest of the week.
      Speaking of people who are running for office, Donald Trump has made it clear he won’t be at the third Republican primary debate in Miami on 8 November.But he will be in the city in his role as spoiler, hosting an open-air rally at the same time that his rivals for the party’s presidential nomination are taking the stage.Trump’s campaign announced Friday that the former president would be appearing at Ted Hendricks stadium in Hialeah, 10 miles from the Adrienne Arsht performing arts center in Miami where the Republican National Committee debate will take place.The former president is the runaway leader for the nomination, despite his worsening legal problems. He skipped the first debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August, and last month’s second event in Simi Valley, California, although he still emerged as the most-talked-about candidate despite his absence.Trump has called for the RNC to cancel the Miami debate, arguing that he’s so far ahead of his challengers as to make it meaningless, and that a failure to do so would be an admission that “national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden”.Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman who is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, will run for speaker, Punchbowl News reports:Before Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speaker’s post, the Washington Post reported that conservative hardliners were in favor of nominating him for the chamber’s top job.Jim Jordan started out the day by hinting that the House would have to stick around through the weekend to vote on his candidacy for speaker.Hours later, the GOP stripped him of the party’s nomination in a closed-door meeting. No more weekend votes for them.As CNN reports, the next phase of the speaker’s race will play out starting Monday with a candidates’ forum, but you can bet that Kevin Hern and other Republicans who throw their hat into the ring will spend this weekend campaigning within the party:Republican majority leader Steve Scalise, who was briefly the party’s nominee for speaker before withdrawing when he concluded he would not win majority support, will not run for the post again, Punchbowl News reports:Oklahoma’s Republican representative Kevin Hern has announced he will run for House speaker.Hern, the chair of the Republican study committee (the House’s largest caucus among Republicans), said:
      I just voted for my good friend Jim Jordan to stay as our speaker designate, but the conference has determined that he will no longer hold that title. We just had two speaker designates go down. We must unify and do it fast.
      I’ve spoken to every member of the conference over the last few weeks. We need a different type of leader who has a proven track record of success, which is why I’m running for speaker of the House.
      Following the secret GOP ballot, Jim Jordan said on live TV, “I’m going to go back to work.”In reference to who the next speaker would be, Jordan said, “Let’s work out who that individual is,” and added, “It’s time to unite.”White House spokesperson Andrew Bates has commented on the latest House speaker vote, urging House Republicans to “end their chaotic infighting and their competitions to out-extreme one another.” “While Joe Biden fights to advance bipartisan legislation that will protect our national security interests – including in Israel and Ukraine – provide humanitarian assistance for innocent civilians in Gaza, deliver critical border funding, compete with China, and grow our economy, House Republicans are somehow still fighting with each other,” said Bates.He went on to call upon House Republicans to “join President Biden in working on urgent priorities for American families shared by both parties in Congress.”The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy said that Republicans will now “have to go back to the drawing board”.“I’m concerned where we go from here,” added McCarthy. More

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      Why do Republicans oppose Jim Jordan as speaker and what’s next?

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      Ever since Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker on 3 October, the Republican conference has been mired in chaos. Friday marked an escalation as that dysfunction as Jim Jordan, the far-right congressman from Ohio, lost his third vote on the House floor to be speaker and his status as the GOP nominee.Here’s a look at what transpired this week:How did we get here again?There are currently 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the US House (there are two vacancies), giving the GOP a very slim majority. That means that any Republican who wants to be speaker has to have the support of nearly all of the Republicans in the House, something that is increasingly harder since individual members need less institutional support than they did in the past because of politically uncompetitive districts and the ability to raise huge sums of money online.When McCarthy negotiated himself into the speakership earlier this year, one of his key concessions was allowing any House member to file a motion to vacate, or remove him from speaker. Representative Matt Gaetz, a far-right Republican from Florida, filed such a motion earlier this month and enough Republicans – eight in total – voted against McCarthy to oust him.That vacancy essentially brought the House to a standstill. The speaker runs the business of the House and controls the floor schedule and which bills come to the floor. Without one, the House cannot operate.After McCarthy’s ouster, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jordan entered the speaker’s race. Scalise won a private vote among the Republican conference, but withdrew his name from contention after it became clear he could not get enough votes.What happened with Jim Jordan this week?Jordan, a far-right Ohio Republican who co-founded the House Freedom Caucus, earned the nomination to be the conference’s next speaker on 13 October. He won the nomination with 124 of the House Republican conference’s 221 votes. In order to become speaker he needed to get 217 votes from all house members.Things went from bad to worse when Jordan went to the House floor for formal votes on his speakership. On Tuesday, 20 Republicans voted against him, putting him far below the threshold he needed to be speaker. Twenty-two Republicans voted against him in a second vote on Wednesday. Twenty-five Republicans opposed him in a third vote, putting him even further from the speakership.After the third failed vote, Republicans took a vote by secret ballot on whether Jordan should remain the nominee. He lost that vote handily, losing his status as the Republican nominee for speaker.New Republican candidates can now declare next week, when Republicans will start the process all over again.Why did Republicans oppose Jordan?Several of the members who are opposed to Jordan are members of the House appropriations committee, who are reportedly opposed to the way Jordan has embraced a hard line on spending cuts and shutting down the government.Members also reported receiving death threats and outside pressure to vote for Jordan, a position that has only hardened their opposition to him. “The last thing you want to do is try to intimidate or pressure me, because then I close out entirely,” Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who opposes Jordan, told reporters earlier this week.There is also reportedly bad blood over the way Jordan and his allies treated Steve Scalise. Scalise previously beat Jordan to win the conference’s nomination to be speaker, but withdrew his bid after it became clear he couldn’t get enough votes to win in the House. Some Scalise allies think Jordan didn’t do enough to rally Republicans around Scalise.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He missed his moment of leadership when he failed Steve Scalise,” John Rutherford, a Florida congressman who voted against Jordan, said earlier this week.What happens next?No one knows. Even as it was clear that Jordan had no clear path to becoming the speaker, no Republican emerged to seriously challenge him. Republicans currently have a Sunday noon deadline to announce their candidacy ahead of another round of speakership talks.Who is Patrick McHenry and what is the speaker pro tempore?After Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker, Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, became the speaker pro tempore. McCarthy chose McHenry to take on that role should the speakership ever be declared vacant.There has never been a similar situation, so it’s unclear exactly what the scope of McHenry’s power is. It has been widely understood to be extremely narrow so far, limited to the authority to oversee a vote for the next speaker. As Republicans stalled in picking a new speaker, there has been chatter about temporarily expanding McHenry’s power so that the House can conduct some limited business. The majority of the GOP conference seems opposed to that kind of action.Could Democrats cut a deal with Republicans on a new speaker?Democrats have all voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in each of the speakership elections. Jeffries has said there have been “informal talks” with Republicans, but Democrats have been quiet about any negotiations. A pre-condition for any Democratic support for a speaker appears to be that they would allow any bipartisan bills come up for a vote. More