Joe Biden

Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan has emerged as the next Republican House speaker nominee following an internal vote amongst House Republicans.The vote was reported to be 124-81, with 81 of the votes going to Georgia’s Republican representative Austin Scott.Jordan’s nomination follows a chaotic week in the House during which initial chief contender Steve Scalise dropped out on Thursday night after failing to secure enough support for a floor vote.Jordan will now attempt to garner unified support for a bid ahead of a floor vote across a fractioned Republican-led House that includes several hard-line rightwing extremists.In another House spectacle, Republican representative George Santos flew into a tirade on Friday with someone who appeared to be a protestor, saying that he “has no business” of being at the Capitol and called him a “terrorist sympathizer.”While yelling as cameras pointed in his face, Santos said, “What is happening in Israel is abhorrent. What is happening to the people of Israel should not be defended. Nobody defending Hamas should have any business in this building.”As Jordan prepares to rally support, calls from some Republicans to fall in line Earlier today, Georgia congressman Austin Scott ran against Jim Jordan in an internal Republican vote over who to support as the next House speaker. In a last-minute bid, Scott reportedly got 81 votes to Jordan’s 124.Now, Scott is publicly rallying support for Jordan, as the Ohio congressman and Trump ally tries to pick up the 65 additional votes he would need to secure the speakership next week.Axios is also reporting, citing one unnamed GOP source, that Kevin McCarthy and Patrick McHenry have also urged fellow Republicans to fall in line behind Jordan, something they reportedly did not do after House majority leader Steve Scalise failed to get to 217 votes yesterday.Tweeting it out: frustration among GOP lawmakers is very public Over the past few days, Georgia congressman Mike Collins’ social media posts have capture the anger and scorn at Republican infighting that many Republicans are feeling.Jim Jordan will work over the weekend to get more GOP support, CNN reports With an internal vote putting Jim Jordan 65 votes short of the number he needs to become speaker of the house, the Ohio congressman will spend the weekend trying to woo some of his opponents, CNN’s Manu Raju reports.Former GOP speaker Kevin McCarthy argued earlier today that the House should move forward and hold an official and public vote on whether to make Jordan speaker, even if internal votes have not shown that he has the support he needs to win that vote. Jordan, in contrast, suggested he did not want to move ahead to an official vote if it does not look like he could win.Stalemate math: why Jim Jordan’s latest vote count is bad news for himIf you’re following along and need a recap of why the House of Representatives remains without a leader, and largely unable to function, here’s a reminder of the vote count math.Last week, Kevin McCarthy, the GOP speaker of the house, was ousted from his speakership in a historic vote, in which a small group of Republicans who opposed McCarthy’s leadership joined together with the unified members of the Democratic party to vote McCarthy out.Since then, House Republicans have failed to find a new speaker candidate who can unify the party, including anti-McCarthy and pro-McCarthy factions. As the AP puts it:
With the House narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, any nominee can lose just a few Republicans before they fail to reach the 217 majority needed [to elect a speaker] in the face of opposition from Democrats, who will most certainly back their own leader, New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries.
After GOP house majority leader Steve Scalise failed to get the votes necessary to move forward yesterday, Trump’s pick, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, has taken the lead. But in the most recent internal vote today, with Republicans asked if they would vote for Jordan officially on the House floor, he was reportedly 65 votes short of the number he needs to win.After more than a week of continued GOP infighting, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman asked the obvious question: will Republicans ever agree on a candidate they can all support? Or will a GOP candidate have to get the backing of some Democratic members of congress in order to move forward?Republicans will leave for the weekend with Congress in limbo, no speaker in sight Punchbowl News, which has been ahead on the updates from Republicans’ internal negotiations, is reporting that Republicans have decided to give up for this week and go home.This means that the US House of Representatives will remain unable to conduct official business during a major geopolitical crisis.Falling short, Jim Jordan gets support from 152 Republicans in internal vote: reportIn the ongoing Republican battle over choosing the next Speaker of the House, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, who earned Donald Trump’s endorsement for the role, is currently the leading contenderBut in an internal Republican vote today, meant to gauge party support before an official floor vote in the House, Jordan captured just 124 votes.So Republicans held another internal vote to gauge whether they were ready to hold a floor vote in support of making Jordan speaker. This time, Jordan picked up just 154 votes, far short of the 217 Republican votes he needs to be confident of winning an official vote to become speaker on the floor, PunchBowl’s Jake Sherman reports.House Republicans are currently carrying out a second ballot on Jim Jordan and whether they want a floor vote.“Will you support Jordan on the floor,” is the question, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan has emerged as the next Republican House speaker nominee following an internal vote amongst House Republicans.The vote was reported to be 124-81, with 81 of the votes going to Georgia’s Republican representative Austin Scott.Jordan’s nomination follows a chaotic week in the House during which initial chief contender Steve Scalise dropped out on Thursday night after failing to secure enough support for a floor vote.Jordan will now attempt to garner unified support for a bid ahead of a floor vote across a fractioned Republican-led House that includes several hard-line rightwing extremists.Meanwhile, House Republicans are currently holding their internal speaker vote.Earlier, CNN’s Manu Raju asked former House speaker Kevin McCarthy whether chief contender Jim Jordan should “battle it out on the floor” if he is short of 217 votes, to which McCarthy replied, “Yes.”While in Philadelphia to deliver remarks on Bidenomics, Joe Biden revealed that he held a Zoom call for an hour and fifteen minutes with the families members of “all those Americans who are still unaccounted for” in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
“It’s gut-wrenching. I assured them my personal commitment to do everything possible to return every missing American to their families,” said Biden.
“We’re working around the clock to secure their release of Americans held by Hamas in close cooperation with Israel and our partners in the region and we’re not going to stop until we bring them home,” he added.
House Republicans Mike Rogers of Alabama and Carlos Gimenez of Florida have voiced their speakership support for former House speaker Kevin McCarthy. Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether the disarray could cost Republicans the majority, McCarthy, who said he will support Jim Jordan, responded:
“I think a lot of things have happened so far that make a real damage for us moving forward. I fear of different people retiring. I fear of having the resources to be able to do the job.”
House Republicans are set to hold a vote this afternoon on the House speaker.Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports that some Republicans are pushing for a floor vote today, despite the absence of many Democrats.Additionally, Steve Scalise’s supporters have told Sherman that they’ll “never vote” for Jim Jordan who is currently the top contender.Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy said today that he will support Jordan as the nominee.California’s Republican representative Darrell Issa has also thrown his support behind Jordan, saying, “Jim Jordan is the one you want in the toughest of fights. There’s a reason why Jim has been named to select committees, tasks forces, standing committees, and is a leading voice for the conference on the issues that matter most.” More

From 4h agoSteve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hardline Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy.On Thursday, at least 19 Republicans, including Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, whom Scalise is reported to have flipped yesterday, appears to have indicated they won’t vote for him. Luna told CNN’s Annie Grayer:
Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now, again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party.
House GOP officials are continuing to meet behind closed doors to decide on the House speaker nomination.“I’m not cutting any deals, I want to meet in front of all our members, answer every question,” Steve Scalise said following a closed-door meeting with GOP officials.
“The good news is our support continues to grow. We’re continuing to work to narrow the gap and that’s going on and we’re going to continue the meetings. There are some other members that want to meet as a group, individually,” Scalise said.
“I’ve asked that we convene those groups as well as members who expressed individual concerns on the floor so that we can deal with those before we go to the floor…. I took every question that everybody brought and we’re going to continue to go through this process as we grow our support,” he added.
The Illinois governor JB Pritzker has denounced Donald Trump’s praise for Hezbollah, saying:
No true friend of Israel, the Jewish people, or of peace would praise Hezbollah just days after what President Biden and Jewish leaders have called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Right now is the time to stand with Israel as they confront unimaginable loss and the ongoing threat from terrorists seeking to harm their people.
Donald Trump’s comments are disgusting, dangerous, and underscore a simple fact: he is unfit to lead our country and would make the United States and our allies around the world less safe.
On Wednesday, Trump called the Iran-aligned and pro-Hamas militant group Hezbollah “very smart” amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, prompting widespread criticism, including from the White House.Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on the Senate to expel New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez.After Menendez was charged by federal authorities on Thursday with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, Fetterman said:
Senator Menendez should not be a US senator. He should have been gone long ago. It is time for every one of my colleagues in the Senate to join me in expelling senator Menendez.
He added:
We cannot have an alleged foreign agent in the United States Senate. This is not a close call.
It appears that Republicans have left today’s closed-door meeting unhappy as they continue to decide on the House speakership nomination.Alabama’s Republican representative Mike Rogers is reported to have left the meeting unsatisfied, saying that eight Republicans were “traitors”, a word NBC’s Sahil Kapur said he used four times.Other Republicans said Steve Scalise repeatedly refused to disclose what his plans were, with one telling Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman: “Just rambled and didn’t directly answer questions. No plan. Didn’t unify or inspire the conference.”The conflict-of-interest hearing on Stanley Woodward, the lawyer for Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, in the classified documents case has been postponed.US district judge Aileen Cannon admonished prosecutors after they suggested Woodward should be precluded from making a closing argument to a jury, based on his prior defense of a trial witness.Cannon appeared furious, saying that prosecutors had suggested an “absolute bar” at the last minute – at the hearing itself – and had no case law authority from the southern district of Florida or eleventh circuit.“We cannot proceed with this Garcia hearing,” she said, referring to the name of a hearing that addresses conflict of interest.Here are the latest developments in the Donald Trump classified documents case in Fort Pierce, Florida, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:Trump co-defendant and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira told a judge he wants to keep his lead lawyer, John Irving – who is being paid by Trump’s PAC.De Oliveira was asked whether he understood Irving’s potential conflicts arising from his prior representation of three people the special counsel could call as trial witnesses, and he said he would move forward with Irving anyway.De Oliveira, who did not complete high school and told the judge he could read English better than he could write, struggled to explicate the exact nature of the potential conflicts in his own words, though he affirmed repeatedly when the judge walked him through questions.The defendant’s grasp of English has been an issue that the former Trump lawyers discussed among themselves previously – they had wondered whether he even understood the questions from the FBI during the interviews where he’s alleged to have lied.Judge Aileen Cannon will run through the potential conflicts for Trump’s other co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta.If the morning has been frantic for Steve Scalise and his supporters, as he tries to garner the Republican votes needed to become speaker of the House, for readers it’s been tense.The Louisiana congressman is, so far, getting nowhere fast amid deep divisions among the House GOP conference.Meanwhile, there’s court action involving Donald Trump. And overshadowing everything is the terrible conflict between Israel and Hamas in southern Israel and Gaza. We’re bringing you the main US developments in relation to the war here, but detailed live coverage is in our global blog, which is currently running around the clock and can be read here.Here’s where things stand:
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hard-line Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy. His prospects at this moment look grim.
Texas Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who is chair of the House foreign affairs committee and on Sunday said the GOP conference was in a state of “civil war”, said today that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been further charged by federal prosecutors, this time with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said that his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
A federal judge was expected on Thursday to weigh whether the lawyers for Donald Trump’s two co-defendants charged with trying to obstruct the US justice department from retrieving classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago club had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
And, where we started today: Louisiana congressman and House majority leader Steve Scalise has a fierce battle on his hands among warring House Republicans as he tries to scramble enough support from his own party to be elected speaker.
Buckle in: House Republicans are going to be in turmoil and deadlock for a while longer.Donald Trump has demanded an apology from Forbes magazine after it removed him again from its list of the 400 richest people in the US.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:“I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” the former president wrote on Wednesday on Truth Social, the reportedly struggling social media platform he set up after being expelled from mainstream platforms over the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Forbes released its Trump-free list last week, saying the his net worth was down $600m from a year before. Trump has been on the list since the 1990s, other than in 2021.In response, Trump complained about “really dumb writers assigned to hit me hard” and bragged about huge leads in Republican presidential polling he holds despite facing 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats.In that post from Monday, Trump concluded: “So much for Forbes!”For the full story, click here:According to Arkansas’ Republican representative Steve Womack, there are at least six hard no’s against Steve Scalise, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.“Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t [think] there’s going to be a vote this week,” Womack said, adding that the six hard no’s are the only people who spoke up during the GOP closed-door meeting today.“There are a lot of reasons for various members to be objecting to what the play call is for House Republicans. And the play call is Steve Scalise,” Sherman reports Womack as having said.New York’s Republican representative George Santos said he will not vote for Steve Scalise as speaker, telling C-Span that he isn’t voting for someone “who lacks fundamental leadership skills”.
It’s never Scalise. We’re going to have to find someone else in leadership that comes forward that’s going to be a compromise candidate.
If you’re in leadership … you talk to everybody. I’ve reached out numerous times to congressman Scalise and me reaching out and asking him for his guidance in leadership and him not reaching back out, that’s a dereliction of his duty as a leader so I’m not voting for him,.
The conservative political advocacy group Faith and Freedom Coalition has issued a statement announcing its support for Steve Scalise’s House speakership.The group called Scalise “a solid champion for life, the family, religious liberty, and sound fiscal policy throughout his public life,” and went on to describe him as an “unapologetic defender of conservative principles from the moment he arrived in Congress.”
“We are grateful to our friend Jim Jordan for agreeing to nominate Speaker-designate Scalise as a gesture of unity. Now that Republicans have chosen a speaker-designate, it is time for the House to get back to work,” it said.
“Republicans need to unite behind Rep. Scalise so they can address the critical issues facing American families and our longtime allies. We strongly urge Republicans to vote posthaste to make Steve Scalise the next House speaker,” the group added.
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hardline Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy.On Thursday, at least 19 Republicans, including Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, whom Scalise is reported to have flipped yesterday, appears to have indicated they won’t vote for him. Luna told CNN’s Annie Grayer:
Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now, again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party.
House GOP officials are continuing to meet behind closed doors to decide on the House speaker nomination.Texas’s Republican representative Michael McCaul said that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.Speaking to C-Span on Thursday, McCaul said:
It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching us. They need our help. I have my resolution condemning Hamas, supporting Israel. We can’t even vote on that until we put a speaker in the chair.
He went on to add:
If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need … We need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been charged by federal prosecutors with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.“The new charge was included in a revised indictment filed against the Democratic senator for New Jersey in federal court in Manhattan. His trial on corruption charges will begin in May,” Reuters reported on Thursday.Last month, Menendez and his wife were charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting various gifts including gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the Egyptian government.Since then, Menendez has faced resignation calls from across the aisle. Following revelations of the charges, the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “disturbed” by them and said that Menendez “fell way, way below the standard”.Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:“My poor mom, I told her to stop, you know, reading whatever. I said, ‘I promise you, we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s good,’” Kushner told the Lex Fridman podcast. “But you know, she’d call me [to] say … ‘Our friends on the Upper East Side were talking with Chuck Schumer, who says Jared’s going to jail.’”Schumer, the senior senator from New York, was the Democratic minority leader in the US Senate during the presidency of Donald Trump, Kushner’s father-in-law and White House boss. Since 2021, Schumer has been the majority leader.Married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner became his father-in-law’s chief adviser on the campaign trail and then in the White House.Trump’s first two years in power were dogged by investigations and speculation over his links to Russia and interference by Moscow in the 2016 US election.Kushner’s interactions with high-placed Russians were placed under the national spotlight.For the full story, click here:At the closed-door GOP meeting today, Steve Scalise is planning to deliver additional details on policy, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.Scalise is said to also reiterate that he has not made any side deals with individual Republicans.Texas’s Democratic representative Veronica Escobar announced that she would “welcome any Republican willing to join House Democrats to put our country ahead of petty politics.”Escobar, who represents the Texas’s 16th district, added in a tweet on Wednesday:
“We don’t have time for this. The American people and the global stage are looking to us for leadership…
With just over half of his party supporting him for Speaker, the only way [Steve] Scalise will win is by making concessions to the extremists and holdouts.”
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
I agree with MTG. Let’s do the messy work of governing and leadership selection in front of the people,” Gaetz tweeted on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Gaetz filed a motion to remove former House speaker Kevin McCarthy from office.Gaetz’s motion came just days after McCarthy worked alongside House Democrats to pass a bipartisan bill at the eleventh hour that narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown. More

From 3h agoJim Jordan, defeated in the Republican vote to decide a nominee for House speaker, plans to vote for the man who beat him, Steve Scalise, when the question comes to the House floor and is encouraging his colleagues to do the same, a source with direct knowledge tells the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.Scalise will only be able to lose four Republican votes if he is to be confirmed as speaker, presuming all Democrats in the closely divided chamber vote no.Matt Gaetz, the Florida hardliner who orchestrated the brutal ejection of the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has said today he will vote for Scalise. But other Republicans – the familiar contraversialists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert among them – have said they will not back Scalise.The Washington Post points to the biggest problem facing House Republican leaders, causing them to recess the chamber without a vote: too many members of the caucus are currently set to vote for McCarthy.“I think Jim Jordan is the fighter we need,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene following House Republican’s vote to nominate Steve Scalise as the next House speaker.“The speaker of the House is the hardest job in Congress, one of the hardest jobs in the country, it is extremely demanding and it’s very personal to me and I say this with the most compassion.My father died in April of 2021 with cancer and I like Steve Scalise…so much that I want to see him put all his time and energy into defeating cancer,” she added.Steve Scalise is short of the 217 votes required to win the speaker election, several Republican sources told CNN.According to one of the sources, there is broad skepticism towards Scalise as a result of an overall lack of trust throughout the GOP leadership.Scalise is reported to be meeting individually with Republicans in attempts to convince them to support him on the House floor.Bernie Sanders has issued a statement on the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza, calling on the international community to focus on reducing the humanitarian suffering as a result of the war. “The United States has rightly offered solidarity and support to Israel in responding to Hamas’ attack. But we must also insist on restraint from Israeli forces attacking Gaza and work to secure UN humanitarian access,” he said.He went on to add:
“Israel’s blanket denial of food, water, and other necessities to Gaza is a serious violation of international law and will do nothing but harm innocent cvilians…
Let us not forget that half of the two million people in Gaza are children. Children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished for the acts of Hamas.”
A Tennessee mayoral candidate has been accused by members the Franklin city council of refusing to condemn “actual, literal Nazis”.The Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:Gabrielle Hanson was at a candidates’ forum on 2 October when she received a visit by members of the Tennessee Active Club, a hate group known for promoting white nationalism. Members of the council, referred to as aldermen in Franklin, rebuked Hanson for enabling such hate groups, according to local news station WTVF.“I’m not going to denounce anybody their right to be whatever it is they want to be – whether I agree with what they do in their personal life or not,” Hanson said in response to her critics.Hanson told her colleagues “you reap what you sow”, in reference to the divisions within the community. She also noted that these were “spiritual repercussions”.On social media, Hanson emphasized that she did not invite the group to the debate and is “categorically” not a Nazi, nor does she support nazism.For the full story, click here:Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin asked on Wednesday whether the next House speaker will take a House vote to revive former House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry into president Joe Biden.Last month, McCarthy announced that he was directing the House to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden over unproven allegations surrounding his family’s business dealings.“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into president Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” McCarthy said at the time.Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib said that she does not support “targeting and killing of civilians, whether in Israel or Palestine.”Speaking to Michigan Adance, Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, said, “Fact that some have suggested otherwise is offensive and rooted in bigoted assumptions about my faith and ethnicity.”Earlier this week, Tlaib released a statement saying that the “path to that future must include lifting the [Gaza] blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.”She went on to denounce the Israeli government and the US’s continued support for it, saying, “As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”Tennessee Republican representative Tim Burchett, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust former House speaker Kevin McCarthy from his seat, said he will vote for Steve Scalise.“Absolutely,” Burchett said in response to a question from a CBS reporter on whether he would vote for Scalise on the House floor.Meanwhile, the curious case of George Santos, the Republican congressman, fabulist and 23-times charged alleged fraudster from New York, continues.In response to a move to expel him from Congress, mounted by his fellow New York Republicans, Santos has issued a long-winded statement.Republicans, he says, seemingly reaching for statesmanlike prose, “must remain steadfast in our commitment to upholding due process and respecting the constitution … the cornerstone of our democracy and the guiding light that ensures justice and fairness for all”.Santos adds:
An expulsion of myself as a member of Congress before being found guilty from a criminal investigation will set a dangerous precedent. This will do nothing other than erase the voices of the electorate. Let us not succumb to the distractions and let the political games take precedence over the people’s welfare. We must stay focused on the task at hand, working diligently to address the pressing issues that affect the lives of our constituents.
“Stay strong my fellow Americans, and trust that the process will unfold as it should.”
In a much briefer statement, the leader of the move to expel Santos, Anthony D’Esposito, said his fellow Republican’s “many deceptions coupled with the ever-expanding legal case against him further strengthen my long-held belief that he is unfit to serve in Congress”.More:Jim Jordan, defeated in the Republican vote to decide a nominee for House speaker, plans to vote for the man who beat him, Steve Scalise, when the question comes to the House floor and is encouraging his colleagues to do the same, a source with direct knowledge tells the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.Scalise will only be able to lose four Republican votes if he is to be confirmed as speaker, presuming all Democrats in the closely divided chamber vote no.Matt Gaetz, the Florida hardliner who orchestrated the brutal ejection of the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has said today he will vote for Scalise. But other Republicans – the familiar contraversialists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert among them – have said they will not back Scalise.The Washington Post points to the biggest problem facing House Republican leaders, causing them to recess the chamber without a vote: too many members of the caucus are currently set to vote for McCarthy.Some choice selections from the limpid prose of Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, newly announced candidate for the position of House majority leader, in his letter to Republican colleagues:
When my dear friend Steve [Scalise] is sworn in as speaker … we need a majority leader who will work alongside our speaker to help move this conference past the events of the last 10 days.
I believe that my experience outside of Congress makes me uniquely qualified to lead our majority. We need leaders who listen twice as much as they speak, who are conservative because they’ve seen the impact of Democrat [sic] policies firsthand, and who aren’t afraid to change the way things have been done around here.
… I spent 35 years in leadership outside of Washington DC, working with Americans across every aisle and background. The nameplate on my desk said “Head Excuse Eliminator” because I learned through years in business that empowering the people on my team to do their jobs was the most effective way to lead.
… My whole life, I’ve been told I couldn’t be successful, couldn’t go to college, couldn’t become an engineer. I learned at an early age that the harder you work, the luckier you are. I paid my way through college, became an engineer, and got my dream job in aerospace. No one believed in me, but I proved them wrong.
Key fact: Hern made his millions through an empire of McDonald’s franchises, thereby becoming the “McCongressman”, a nickname, Roll Call points out, he has eagerly embraced.Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced that she will not vote for Steve Scalise on the House floor, citing her concerns about his cancer.In a tweet on Wednesday, Greene said that she voted for Jim Jordan as House speaker on a private ballot and will continue to vote for Jordan on the House floor.“I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress. I lost my father to cancer and it’s a very serious battle,” said Greene.“We need a speaker who is able to put their full efforts into defeating the communist democrats and save America,” she added.Jim Jordan has offered to give Steve Scalise a nominating speech on his behalf, per a person with direct knowledge. Additionally, the House will not vote on electing a speaker today, CNN reports.“I hope that the House Republicans get their affairs in order so they can stop the chaos and select the speaker of their choosing so that we can move forward and do the people’s business,” the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.“We’re not part of the process, we’re not going to comment on the process … but we want to see the chaos be done with,” she added.Speaking to reporters, national security council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that the “sooner there is a speaker of the House, the more comfortable we’ll all be in terms of being able to support Israel and Ukraine right now”.
That position is critical in terms of bringing legislation to the floor and moving things forward … Because of existing appropriations and existing authorities, we’ve been OK but that’s not going to last forever.
In the immediate term right now, we can continue to support, with the authorities and appropriations we have, Israel and Ukraine, but we’re certainly running out of runway. More

From 3h agoBiden opened his remarks by saying that the attacks were done by “the bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas.”“This was an act of sheer evil”, said Biden, adding that more than 1,000 civilians were “slaughtered” in Israel.Biden confirmed that at 14 American citizens were killed. He also said Americans were among the hostages in Gaza.Biden added: “In this moment, we must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel.”It’s been a tense day in Washington, the terrible conflict in Israel casting a shadow over national politics, and House Republicans getting ready to try to elect a new speaker – a gap in Congress made to look ever more gaping by the Middle East tumult.This blog is closing now. It will resume on Wednesday morning US time. The Israel-Gaza global live blog continues here.Here’s how the day went:
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to Israel on Wednesday, arriving Thursday, to meet with Israeli officials show US solidarity following attacks from Hamas.
At least 20 Americans are missing in Israel amid ongoing fighting, in addition to the 14 Americans known to have been killed so far, according to the White House.
Joe Biden confirmed that Americans are among the people being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas militants.
Biden called the attacks by Hamas on southern Israel an act of “sheer evil” and reiterated in a speech from the White House that “we stand with Israel”.
The special counsel for the federal January 6 election subversion case against Donald Trump has requested that the former president be restricted from doing juror research and publishing the identities of jurors in the case.
The special counsel also filed a request asking that Donald Trump be required to say if he will advance an “advice of counsel” defense.
House Republicans supporting Kevin McCarthy plan to nominate the former House speaker, who was ousted from the post just days ago, for the position again during the upcoming election on Wednesday.
Republicans are under pressure to elect a new House speaker ASAP this week, amid the Hamas-Israel crisis reverberating across the globe.
Until last weekend, the Biden administration was counting on the Middle East to remain relatively calm while it quietly pursued its main policy goals there: brokering the Israeli-Saudi detente and containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Reuters writes.Those hopes were shattered when Palestinian Hamas militants infiltrated Israel from Gaza and rampaged through towns on Saturday, killing hundreds and abducting scores more. Israeli forces have retaliated by pounding the coastal enclave, killing hundreds and imposing a total blockade there.After keeping the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict at arm’s length, Joe Biden now finds himself thrust into a crisis likely to reshape his Middle East policy, and into an uneasy alliance with the far-right Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He is dispatching the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to meet with Israeli leaders this week.It is a politically risky situation for a president seeking re-election in 2024, one that could have significant implications for world oil prices and pull US resources and attention away from what until now has been his defining foreign policy challenge – Russia’s war in Ukraine.The surprise Hamas attack has dealt a blow to US efforts to broker a landmark normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia and complicated Washington’s approach toward Iran, Hamas’s longtime benefactor.While US officials insist that their bid to establish ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, longtime foes, can survive the crisis, many experts take a more pessimistic view.
Quite simply, all efforts at normalization are on hold for the foreseeable future,” said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, contradicting the official US government line.
Khaled Elgindy, a former Palestinian negotiations adviser, accused the Biden administration of leading an Israeli-Saudi normalization process that mostly bypassed the Palestinians and their hopes of ending Israeli occupation.
That sort of neglect is part of why we’re seeing what we’re seeing,” he said.
Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, will travel to Israel this week to show US solidarity following attacks from Hamas, the Associated Press reports.The state department confirmed Blinken’s visit on Tuesday.Blinken will talk with Israeli officials about “what additional resources we can give them”, said the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller, the AP reported.Blinken will leave for Israel on Wednesday and arrive on Thursday.At least 20 Americans are missing in Israel amid ongoing fighting, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.14 Americans have also been killed in Israel, in addition to the 20 who are unaccounted for.During a press briefing on Tuesday, Sullivan confirmed that more than a dozen Americans have not been accounted for as fighting escalates between Israel and Hamas.“We believe that there are 20 or more Americans that are missing. I want to underscore that does not mean 20 or more are being held hostage. That is the number unaccounted for… We do not know how many hostages we have at this time,” said Sullivan, reported the Guardian’s David Smith.Biden ended his remarks with a stark message of support for Israel:“We’re with Israel. Let’s make no mistake.”Biden, accompanied by Vice president Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony, left without taking any questions from the press.Biden added that the police departments of several US cities have beefed up security around centers of Jewish life.Biden added that national security officials are working to identify and disrupt domestic threats that “could emerge in connection with these horrific attacks”.Biden added: “There’s no place for hate in America, not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anyone.”Biden also confirmed that Americans are among the people being held hostage in Gaza.Similar news came on Monday from the Israeli ambassador to the UN.From CNN’s Kaitlan Collins:At least 100 people have been taken captive by Hamas, said Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen on Monday.Biden has made it clear that the US is committed to supporting Israel materially.“We will make sure Israel has what it needs,” said Biden.Biden added: “There is no justification for terrorism. Hamas doesn’t stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity…they use Palestinian civilians as human shields.”Biden also noted that Congress has been asked to “take urgent action” to fund the “national security requirements of our critical partners.”Biden added that the “Israel has a duty to respond to these vicious attacks.”Biden compared the actions of Hamas to the “worst acts” of the terrorist group ISIS, specifically naming reports that Hamas is raping individuals and killing children.Biden opened his remarks by saying that the attacks were done by “the bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas.”“This was an act of sheer evil”, said Biden, adding that more than 1,000 civilians were “slaughtered” in Israel.Biden confirmed that at 14 American citizens were killed. He also said Americans were among the hostages in Gaza.Biden added: “In this moment, we must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel.”Biden posted a snapshot from his meeting with Netanyahu to X, formerly known as Twitter.From the official President of the United States’ account:
[The Vice president] and I sat down with our teams to receive a situation update on the terrorist attack in Israel and to direct next steps.
We connected with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss coordination to support Israel, deter hostile actors, and protect innocent people.
Biden and Harris wrapped up a phone call about a half hour ago with Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss US support of Israel. Biden is expected to give remarks shortly on escalating fighting in Israel.From the Wall Street Journal’s Catherine Lucey:Biden has yet to make remarks from the White House about escalating fighting between Israel and Hamas. In other news, Republican Steve Garvey has entered the California Senate race.The former Dodgers baseball player will be running for the Senate seat left by the late senator Dianne Feinstein, the Los Angeles Times reports.“In those 20 years that I played for the Dodgers and the Padres, played up in cold Candlestick Park, I never played for Democrats or Republicans or independents,” Garvey said to the Times. “I played for all the fans, and I’m running for all the people.”Garvey, 74, is a relative political newcomer, but brings some celebrity to the upcoming election.Garvey told the Times he was inspired to run after witnessing dysfunction in Washington DC and being told by a Dodgers fan that they would vote for Garvey.Garvey faces several top Democrats for the position, including California representatives Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff.Joe Biden is due to make remarks from the White House at the top of the hour and it’s expected that the US president will slam Hamas and reiterate unswerving US support for Israel.We’ll expect to have a live feed of his speech in this blog and will report highlights of his remarks. For all the wider developments in the conflict in Israel, we have our global blog on the situation running here, with our Léonie Chao-Fong at the helm at the moment as part of our worldwide team.From the White House, Biden will express concern about the potential that some Americans are being held hostage by Hamas, an Iranian-backed Islamist group, a senior White House official said, and Reuters reports.Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Tuesday with the fiercest air strikes in its 75-year-old conflict with the Palestinians, razing whole districts to dust despite a threat from Hamas militants to execute a captive for each home hit.Biden will speak after holding his third phone call in four days with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He will outline in his remarks the US military assistance being sent to help Israel in its fight, the official said.A second White House official said Biden will strongly condemn Hamas* attacks and provide an overview of the actions the United States is taking with allies around the world to support Israel. More