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      Tom Emmer drops out of House speaker race amid significant Republican opposition and Trump attacks- US politics live

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      It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.House Republicans’ long search for a leader is far from over. Tom Emmer, the latest member vying for the speakership, announced he was dropping out of the race just four hours after his peers designated him as a nominee.Like Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan before him, Emmer couldn’t unite House GOP members to back him. His detractors on the far-right cited his stance on same-sex marriage and government spending bills, and his willingness to certify the 2020 election in Congress.In other news:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified that the former president was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to report from ABC. This is the latest, and perhaps most damning evidence yet in the federal government’s case against Trump .
      Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, spoke with the special counsel investigating the former president several times, testifying that Trump was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to ABC.Per ABC, which sites unnamed sources familiar with the matter:
      The sources said Meadows informed [special counsel Jack] Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump’s prolific rhetoric regarding the election.
      Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.
      Such testimony would be among the most damning evidence yet in special counsel’s case alleging that Trump tried to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.On Fox Business, far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she couldn’t support Tom Emmer because he hadn’t supported a ban on trans people serving in the military, and because he supported the “voting rights … national voting movement that was completely against what we stand for”.It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.Punchbowl News reports that Republicans are returning to a Capitol complex meeting room for behind-closed-door discussions that could decide whether they move forward with Tom Emmer’s candidacy as speaker:The Minnesota congressman, who, as the party’s whip is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, won the GOP nomination for speaker this afternoon, but now faces opposition from perhaps 26 of his counterparts – which means defeat in a floor vote.We’ll be looking out for details on what Republicans decide at this meeting.Earlier in the day, House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar weighed in on congressman Dean Phillips’s attempt to make a deal with Republicans.The Minnesota Democrat had suggested he would be willing to vote “present” and lower the threshold for Republican Tom Emmer to win election as speaker on the House floor in exchange for policy concessions around aid to Ukraine and Israel, among other things.That would represent a break from Democrats’ tactics ever since Kevin McCarthy was ousted, which have generally involved sitting back and doing nothing while the GOP fights among themselves. But with perhaps 26 Republicans willing to oppose his candidacy as speaker, it would not be enough to save Emmer, and Aguilar made clear the rest of the party is not on board.Here are his comments:The ranks of Tom Emmer’s detractors appear to be growing.Rightwing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna is not among those reported to have voted against Emmer behind closed doors, but now says she would oppose him on the House floor:That could mean his opponents number 27, which would guarantee his defeat.Wondering who exactly is this Tom Emmer fellow, emerged from the (figurative) wilds of Minnesota to be the latest Republican congressman (all men, so far) to attempt to grasp and keep hold of the gavel of the speaker of the US House? Let the Guardian’s Sam Levine enlighten you:The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer will now be the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids to be House speaker.It remains unclear if Emmer will be able to get the 217 votes he needs to be speaker, but – for the moment at least – he is in the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government.Emmer was elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right figutr who was one of the earliest Tea Party stars. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0”, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key.Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative: Donald Trump carried it in 2020 by more than 17 points.Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election.“Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said.He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.Read on here:Courtesy of Politico, here is a full list of all of Tom Emmer’s opponents among the House GOP, and who they voted for.As you can see, many cast ballots for Jim Jordan, a prominent rightwing lawmaker and 2020 election denier who last week abandoned his bid for speaker after concluding he could not win a floor vote:CNN, meanwhile, heard from Indiana’s Jim Banks, who had no problems pillorying Emmer:Tom Emmer’s issues with Donald Trump and his allies are well known, and it appeared the Minnesota congressman had moved to address them.While campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, the former president batted away a question about whether he was opposed to Emmer becoming speaker – video of which was posted by the congressman, as a sign he had Trump’s support:It was apparently all for naught, since Trump has now put out a strongly worded statement against Emmer.Politico had a good rundown over the weekend of why Trump is opposed to Emmer, who is notable for not supporting attempts to certify election results in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, as some of the other speaker candidates had. Here’s more from Politico:
      The former president’s top allies are already working to thwart Emmer’s candidacy. Trump supporters have begun passing around opposition research on the congressmember, and the pro-Trump “War Room” podcast on Friday afternoon turned into an Emmer bash-fest. During an appearance on the program, top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn noted that Emmer had yet to endorse Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
      “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. “We need a MAGA speaker. That’s what it comes down to. Because if you look at the numbers, if you look at the energy, if you look at the heat, this is the Trump party, this is the MAGA party. It is no longer the old-school khaki establishment Republican Party.”
      Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser and the “War Room” host, chimed in to call Emmer a “Trump hater.”
      Others close to Trump said Emmer as speaker would open a breach between House Republicans and their likely presidential nominee. Emmer “has no relationship with Trump,” one adviser said.
      And … Donald Trump hath spoken. And … he isn’t a fan of Tom Emmer, the current choice of the Republican party to be speaker of the US House.
      I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors. RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them. He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA – MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He fought me all the way, and actually spent more time defending Ilhan Omar, than he did me—He is totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters. I believe he has now learned his lesson, because he is saying that he is Pro-Trump all the way, but who can ever be sure? Has he only changed because that’s what it takes to win? The Republican Party cannot take that chance, because that’s not where the America First Voters are. Voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!
      That word salad brought to you by Truth Social, of course. Whether Emmer has “fought Trump all the way” or not is, to put it mildly, doubtful. He didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election but he did sign on to a lawsuit seeking to throw out results, and so forth.Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is a Democratic representative from Minnesota – Emmer’s state – a migrant from Somalia, both one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress and a leading progressive, part of a so-called “Squad” of left-leaning Democratic women.In July 2019, a crowd at a Trump rally in North Carolina targeted Omar with chants of “send her back”. Amid condemnation (Omar said: “I believe [Trump] is fascist”), Emmer said: “I didn’t watch the rally last night, sorry, but there’s no place for that kind of talk. I don’t agree with it.”Trump – who at the time said himself he was “not happy” with the crowd and claimed to have tried to stop the chants – may now wish to consider that in the same session with reporters, Emmer both said he didn’t think Trump had a “racist bone” in his body, and tried to explain Trump’s attacks on Omar.“What he was trying to say he said wrong,” Emmer said. “What he was trying to say is that if you don’t appreciate this country you don’t have to be here. It has nothing to do with your race or gender, or your family history. It has to do with respecting and loving the country that is giving you the opportunities that you have.“I had somebody say to me recently: ‘You know when Ilhan talks, Ilhan makes it look like she lets people believe she hates America.’ Now I don’t know if that’s true, but as somebody said to me back at home, they said to me: ‘How about a little gratitude with that attitude?’”Sidney Blumenthal’s Guardian column today – on the short-lived candidacy for speaker of Jim Jordan, the end of which precipitated today’s votes and the rise of Tom Emmer – is worth your time, starting from the opening lines about the necessity of counting votes and proceeding through Jordan’s unique political career: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.Read on:Steve Scalise, the majority leader, emerges to talk about the talks (and discuss the discussions) going on behind closed doors. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Scalise, of Louisiana and a previous candidate for speaker, says of the 20 or more holdouts against Emmer: “There’s some conversations, some are moving.”From the top: “First of all, I want to congratulate Tom Emmer on being selected our speaker designate with strong support. We are working right now through some questions still and we just continue our conversations.“Obviously we want to work to make sure when we get to the floor we have 217 [votes, to make Emmer speaker] and that’s something that Tom has said he wants to do before we go to the floor. So we’re gonna have some more conversations, but this is an ongoing process. We like to wrap this up today, but we’re still talking to some individual members.”Asked about the likelihood of Emmer (from Minnesota) making it to the floor today, Scalise says: “There’s some conversations, some are moving. You got to continue having these conversations. That’s what we’re doing right now.”Emmer, Scalise says, is “hearing everybody in those conversations going on as we speak. So that’s the first thing that Tom’s doing, is hearing people out, and that’s what, frankly, this whole process has been about. And so he’s got to hear people out. Ultimately, work to to move them over. And we’ve got to keep working until we get to 217. And I’m gonna do what I can to help Tom.”Matt Gaetz of Florida, who started this whole mess by prompting the ejection of Kevin McCarthy, then appears and stalks off, followed by the media scrum.Some reading to pass the time while we wait for Tom Emmer to speak – or not – concerning the last person to actually be speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and his relationships with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two anti-Trump Republicans who sat on the House January 6 committee and subsequently left Congress, Cheney defeated in Wyoming and Kinzinger retired in Illinois.Kinzinger will next week publish a book: Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country.Inside, he says McCarthy dismissed Cheney’s warning about January 6 on a party conference call five days before.Kinzinger also details two occasions on which, he says, McCarthy shoulder-checked him, physically, in the House chamber.Those moments, Kinzinger says, made him think: “What a child.’”In a passage written before McCarthy’s historic ejection by Matt Gaetz of Florida, the catalyst for the current mess, Kinzinger adds: “I just chalked it up to the immature behaviour that [McCarthy] favoured and that had become more and more common inside the chamber.”Full story:House Republicans have nominated Tom Emmer to become the next speaker of Congress’s lower chamber, but their long search for leadership is far from over. As many as 26 members of the party signaled they will not vote for him on the floor, more than enough to sink his candidacy. This is the exact same position Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan found themselves in, and highlights just how disunited the GOP has become and what an absolute mess that ouster of Kevin McCarthy created. Emmer has reportedly vowed to continue polling Republicans behind closed doors until he gets the support he needs to win. We’ll see what becomes of that.Here’s a rundown of today’s news so far:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Emmer’s detractors cite his stance on same-sex marriage and on government spending bills.
      Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman who is mulling challenging Joe Biden in the primary, said he would be willing to vote “present” when Emmer’s nomination is considered in exchange for policy concessions.
      Tom Emmer is pressing on in the face of the significant GOP opposition to his candidacy for speaker.CNN reports that he wants to continue holding roll call votes behind closed doors until he has the numbers he needs to win. But if he is not successful, congressman David Joyce says he will offer a resolution to give acting speaker Patrick McHenry the full powers of the job. Joyce made the same proposal last week, when Jim Jordan’s candidacy was flailing:Up to 26 Republicans may oppose Tom Emmer becoming speaker of the House, enough to stop him from getting the gavel, Punchbowl News reports:Assuming all Democrats vote against him, Emmer can only afford to lose four of the 221 Republicans in the House – a goal he appears to be well short of.The nominees who came before him, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, faced the same problem, and ultimately had to drop out. House Republicans have not yet announced when they will convene the chamber to hold a floor vote on making Emmer speaker. More

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      in US Politics

      Who is Tom Emmer, Republicans’ latest failed House speaker hopeful?

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      The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer was the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans to be House speaker after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids.But he rapidly found he was unableto muster the 217 votes he needed to get the job.He was for a few hours at the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government. But Emmer did not even make it to a public floor vote in the House before his support ebbed away and he dropped out – not least due to withering attacks by the former US president Donald Trump.Emmer was first elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right member of Congress who was one of the earliest members of the Tea Party. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0”, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key than she was.Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative – Donald Trump handily carried the district in 2020 by more than 17 points.Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election. “Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said in a statement after certification.He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.Emmer’s rise in Congress was shaped by two terms he spent as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the wing of the House Republicans that helps the party defend and pick up seats. During Emmer’s first term as chair in 2020, Republicans gained a net 13 seats, getting them very close to a majority. In 2022, in Emmer’s second term, Republicans gained that majority, though they didn’t pick up as many seats as expected.During the midterm elections last year, CNN reported Emmer reportedly advised candidates not to talk about Trump on the campaign trail – an accusation he strongly denies. That history, in addition to Emmer’s vote to certify the election, has reportedly cause friction with Trump, whose allies are said to be pushing to block him from the speakership.Trump himself said he was largely staying out of the speaker’s race and noted that Emmer had called him to offer praise. “I think he’s my biggest fan now,” he told reporters on Monday in New Hampshire.After Republicans won control of the House last year, Emmer won a contentious election to be the majority whip, the number three position in leadership that is in charge of counting votes. He narrowly defeated the Indiana representative Jim Banks in a contest that reportedly generated bad blood.In addition to his vote to certify the election, Emmer has also taken at least one other vote that broke with the majority of his caucus. Last year, he was one of 39 Republicans to vote in favor of having the federal government recognize same-sex marriages.Before serving in Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state representative in Minnesota, where in 2005 he backed a bill favoring chemical castration for some sex offenders. In 2010, he ran for governor, losing by an extremely close 9,000 votes after a recount. He has seven children. More

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      House still without speaker as Republicans fail yet again to unify

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      After three weeks of the House having no speaker and mere hours after Tom Emmer of Minnesota won the nomination, the House still did not have a speaker on Tuesday when Emmer dropped out after just hours.Again, Republicans have failed to unify after the historic removal of Kevin McCarthy.Ahead of the Tuesday vote, seven House Republicans had launched speakership bids: Emmer, Jack Bergman of Michigan, Byron Donalds of Florida, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Austin Scott of Georgia and Pete Sessions of Texas. Two other declared candidates, Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania and Gary Palmer of Alabama, announced before the Tuesday vote that they would withdraw from the race.Sessions, Bergman, Scott and Hern were eliminated after the first four ballots, while Donalds dropped out following the fourth round of voting. On the fifth and final ballot, Emmer and Johnson were the only two candidates, and Emmer pulled off the win, becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in three weeks.The final vote was 117 to 97, underscoring the significant challenge that Emmer faced in attempting to unify his deeply divided conference. An internal roll call vote taken after Emmer won the nomination indicated that more than 20 Republicans intended to oppose him on the floor, members told reporters. Although Emmer tried to allay those members’ concerns, he was unable to sway enough of his detractors to advance to a floor vote.Of the declared candidates, Emmer was arguably the best known within the conference, because of his position in House leadership. But Emmer has shown an occasional willingness to clash with Donald Trump, which raised issues with some of his House colleagues. For example, Emmer is one of just two speaker candidates, along with Scott, who voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election despite the former president’s false claims of widespread fraud in battleground states. However, Emmer also signed an amicus brief urging the US supreme court to invalidate the election results of four key swing states, which would have voided Biden’s victory in the presidential race.Emmer’s mixed record on election denial was not enough to assuage the concerns of Trump, who urged House Republicans to oppose the speaker nominee on Tuesday. Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump warned that a vote for Emmer would be “a tragic mistake”.“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Trump said. “Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them.”Emmer’s nomination came four days after Jim Jordan of Ohio abandoned his speakership bid due to entrenched opposition among more moderate Republicans.The House has now been without a speaker for three weeks, since McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month. Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, any speaker candidate can only afford four defections within the party and still secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.As the House remains at a standstill, the chamber is unable to advance any legislation. Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass a supplemental funding package providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, but the House cannot consider such a bill until a new speaker is elected.Despite the high stakes, House Republicans have been unable to unify around a single candidate. Following McCarthy’s removal, the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, won the conference’s speaker nomination, but he dropped out days later amid fierce backlash from hard-right lawmakers. Jordan then won Republicans’ speaker nomination, but he was forced to withdraw after three failed floor votes.“Chaos and dysfunction continue to be the order of the day in the House Republican majority,” the House Democratic caucus chair, Pete Aguilar of California, said Tuesday. “The American people and our allies abroad can’t afford any more delays. Every day of this Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] madness is another day of not sending aid to Israel and Ukraine, not taking meaningful steps to fund our government and not making sure that we’re looking out for working families across this country.”In a potentially grim sign for Republicans’ hopes of quickly reaching a resolution to the deadlock, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus has demanded that members remain in Washington DC until a new speaker is elected, jeopardizing the chamber’s planned recess starting next week.“We must proceed with all possible speed and determination,” the caucus said in a statement released on Monday. “Intentional and unnecessary delays must end. It serves only the lobbyists of the swamp and defenders of the status quo to continue to drag out this process.” More

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      Virginia Democrats defend Susanna Gibson after sex-livestream revelation

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      Democrats in Virginia are defending their candidate for a competitive statehouse seat against “desperate” efforts by Republicans to exploit her appearances on an adult porn website.The state’s Republican party has admitted it sent out several thousand “explicit” flyers to voters in House district 57 containing still images reportedly of Democrat Susanna Gibson engaged in livestreamed sex acts with her husband.The nurse practitioner and first-time candidate denounced as “gutter politics” the publication of a report last month that the couple had performed on the pornographic website Chaturbate in exchange for electronic “tips”. Videos of their encounters were archived last year, according to a Washington Post report, although it is unclear when they were shot.The mailings, marked “Warning: explicit material enclosed” and “Do not open if you are under the age of 18”, also contain censored quotes from Gibson, according to Richmond’s NBC12 news channel.A statement from her campaign denounced both the messaging and timing of the mailings, barely two weeks before election day in her closely contested race with the Republican David Owen.“David Owen and the Virginia GOP are trying to distract voters from their extreme agenda to ban abortion, defund schools and allow violent criminals to access weapons of war,” it said.“Voters are tired of these desperate attacks, and they will not be fooled by them. Nothing will ever deter her commitment to our community.”The seat could prove crucial in Republicans’ efforts to secure a majority in both houses of the commonwealth’s general assembly, and embrace the extremist policies of Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin, who favors a 15-week abortion ban.Currently, Democrats hold a narrow advantage in the state senate. Republicans recaptured a slim advantage in the house of delegates in 2021.The Virginia Democratic party’s house caucus issued its own defense of Gibson, questioning Republicans’ motives.“The Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans can’t help themselves from showing their true colors. This is a desperate attempt to distract and deflect from how many of their candidates are on the record wanting to ban abortion,” it said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Let’s not forget, David Owen is the same guy who was caught on camera saying he wanted to change the makeup of the general assembly to institute said ban. The VA GOP can’t be trusted and this continues to make that clear.”Owen’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, NBC12 said.Rich Anderson, the chair of the Virginia Republican party, told the outlet: “Gibson’s campaign has falsely alleged that the videos of her publicly engaging in sexual activity on publicly accessible pornography websites were ‘leaked’ by Republicans. In reality, the opposite is true.“The mail piece corrects her false statements using already published mainstream media news accounts and Gibson’s own public words as documented via her videos.”Youngkin told the station he had not seen the mailers, but felt Gibson should be held accountable. “This candidate’s personal life is something that that candidate needs to explain to people, and the Democratic party needs to have an opinion on this,” he said. More

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      Kevin McCarthy dismissed Liz Cheney warning before January 6, book says

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      When Liz Cheney warned fellow Republicans five days before January 6 of a “dark day” to come if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, the then House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, swiftly slapped her down.“After Liz spoke,” the former Wyoming representative’s fellow anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger writes in a new book, “McCarthy immediately told everyone who was listening, ‘I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference. She speaks for herself.’”Five days after Cheney delivered her warning on a Republican conference call, Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Biden’s win.McCarthy’s statement, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.Kinzinger details McCarthy’s “notably juvenile” intervention – and even what he says were two physical blows delivered to him by McCarthy – in Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, which will be published in the US this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds convicted, some with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack, and acquitted a second time when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. When the dust cleared from the January 6 attack, McCarthy was among 147 House and Senate Republicans who still voted to object to results in key states.Like Cheney, Kinzinger, from Illinois, sat on the House January 6 committee, then left office. Unlike Cheney, who was beaten by a Trump ally, Kinzinger chose to retire.Cheney has maintained a high profile, warning of the threat Trump poses as he leads polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, 91 criminal charges (17 concerning election subversion) and assorted civil threats notwithstanding, and refusing to rule out a presidential run of her own.Kinzinger has founded Country First, an organisation meant to combat Republican extremism, and become a political commentator. In his book, he says he responded to McCarthy on the 1 January 2021 conference call by issuing his own warning about the potential for violence on 6 January and “calling on McCarthy to say he wouldn’t join the group opposing the electoral college states.“He replied by coming on the line to say, ‘OK, Adam. Operator, who’s up next?’”Such a “rude and dismissive tone”, Kinzinger says, “was typical of [McCarthy’s] style, which was notably juvenile”.McCarthy briefly blamed Trump for January 6, swiftly reversed course, stayed close to the former president and became speaker of the House, only to lose the role after less than a year, in the face of a Trumpist rebellion.Kinzinger accuses McCarthy, from California, of behaving less like a party leader than “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”. And while characterising McCarthy’s dismissal of Cheney’s warning about January 6 as “a little dig”, Kinzinger also details two physical digs he says he took from McCarthy himself.“I went from being one of the boys he treated with big smiles and pats on the back to outcast as soon as I started speaking the truth about the president who would be king,” Kinzinger writes.McCarthy “responded by trying to intimidate me physically. Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber. As he passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.“If we had been in high school, I would have dropped my books, papers would have been scattered and I would have had to endure the snickers of passersby. I was startled but took it as the kind of thing Kevin did when he liked you.“Another time, I was standing at the rail that curves around the back of the last row of seats in the chamber. As he shoulder-checked me again, I thought to myself, ‘What a child.’”Kinzinger is not above robust language of his own. Describing Trump’s Senate trial over the Capitol attack, the former congressman bemoans the decision of the Republican leader in that chamber, Mitch McConnell, to vote to acquit because Trump had left office – then deliver a speech excoriating Trump nonetheless.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger writes, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.” 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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      Republicans fail to find consensus for US House speaker at candidate forum

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      Republicans, whose party infighting has stymied the US House of Representatives for three weeks, tried on Monday to find consensus on a new speaker to lead the chamber and address funding needs for Israel, Ukraine and the federal government.Nine speaker candidates, including No 3 House Republican Tom Emmer, made their pitches to fellow Republicans at a closed-door forum, and answered questions about how they would handle the job, which has become a flashpoint for factional strife between rightwing hardliners and more mainstream Republicans.The field quickly dropped to eight when one of the candidates, Dan Meuser, used his presentation to announce he was withdrawing. He told reporters it was time for the party to get its act together.“People are angry, people are frustrated, people are blaming us for the dysfunction, and they are kind of right. So we need to respond. We need to get this done,” Meuser said.The House has been rudderless since 3 October, when former speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted. Infighting later derailed leadership bids by two would-be successors: No 2 House Republican Steve Scalise and prominent conservative Jim Jordan.After Monday’s candidate forum, Republicans are due to meet at 9am ET on Tuesday to begin choosing a nominee behind closed-doors through a series of secret ballots.Monday night, Representative Matt Gaetz told CNN he thinks the House GOP “might” have a speaker Tuesday night. “We had some great candidates in there. And we’ll go from this current group down to our designee and I hope it’s a productive endeavor,” the Florida Republican said leaving the GOP’s candidate forum.McCarthy has endorsed Emmer, stressing his experience in working to marshal party votes on major legislation since January, when Republicans became the majority party. But Emmer could face an uphill battle if hardliners oppose him.The leadership vacuum of the past three weeks has stymied congressional action, as Congress faces a 17 November deadline to avoid a government shutdown by extending federal agency funding, and a request from President Joe Biden to approve military aid for Israel and Ukraine.House Republicans are concerned that none of the declared speaker candidates will be able to get the requisite 217 votes on the House floor needed to claim the speaker’s gavel.Michael McCaul, the House foreign affairs committee chair, told CNN: “It’s going to be very difficult, but we have to get there.”Any candidate nominated by the party conference can afford to lose no more than four Republicans when the full House votes. Meanwhile, the conference is split over spending cuts, Ukraine funding and other hot-button issues.Jordan tried and failed three times to win a floor vote in the House. He had been endorsed by the former president Donald Trump, who is a clear favorite to win the party’s nomination to run again as president in 2024.Democrats, who backed their own House leader Hakeem Jeffries for the speaker position, described Jordan as a dangerous extremist and opponents inside his own party were angered by a pressure campaign from his supporters that resulted in death threats.Six of the eight new candidates for speaker – Jack Bergman, Byron Donalds, Kevin Hern, Mike Johnson, Gary Palmer and Pete Sessions – voted to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden on the day that Trump supporters assaulted Congress on 6 January 2021.The two remaining candidates, Emmer and Austin Scott, did not vote to block the certification of the election results.House Republicans have been embroiled in chaos all year. McCarthy needed an agonizing 15 votes to win the speaker’s gavel in January, and along the way had to make concessions that enabled a single member to force a vote for his removal.That happened this month when eight Republicans forced him out after he passed legislation with Democratic support that averted a partial government shutdown.Investors say the tumult has contributed to market turbulence and Biden has urged Republicans to sort out their problems. 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