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      Kevin McCarthy is as responsible as anyone for his own downfall | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      This week, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker of the House of Representatives in history to be voted out of office. It was a fitting end to his speakership, one in which McCarthy had served only at the pleasure of a nihilistic bloc of far-right Republicans. It was little wonder, then, that he seemed almost jolly as he announced at a press conference that he didn’t intend to run for the office again.Far more galling was McCarthy’s attempt at the same event to present himself, in contrast to those who ousted him, as some sort of force for moderation and reasonableness. The truth is that McCarthy has been at the cutting edge of his party’s descent into madness, encouraging its worst instincts and indulging its most destructive personalities. People sometimes say that the congressional Republican party has become “ungovernable”. It’s more accurate to say that it has been deliberately radicalized – and that Kevin McCarthy played a key role in that process.Take a look down the list of recent Republican outrages and you’ll find McCarthy implicated at every turn. Flirting with birtherism? Check. Joking about physically attacking Nancy Pelosi, even after a violent mob stormed the Capitol to search for her? Check. Angrily demanding that other Republicans defend Donald Trump after the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump seemed to admit to committing sexual assault? Yep, that was Kevin.Perhaps most egregious have been McCarthy’s attempts to aid Trump in subverting the 2020 election, and then to minimize the January 6 insurrection which followed. Just hours after the deadly attack on the Capitol, McCarthy voted to reject Biden’s lawful election, citing spurious conspiracy theories. Although McCarthy briefly condemned the violence of that day, he soon moved to reconcile with Trump and became a firm opponent of imposing any sort of accountability on those responsible. In one of his most outrageous acts, he released thousands of hours of Capitol security video to Tucker Carlson, allowing the Fox News host to cherry-pick footage and spin the attack as merely a peaceful protest.McCarthy also defended and elevated the very worst members of his own caucus, declining to endorse their opponents in primaries or to marginalize them once they made it to the chamber. He was an early supporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who has supported QAnon conspiracy theories, called for prominent Democrats to be executed, and made racist and antisemitic remarks. Once she was seated, Greene emerged as one of McCarthy’s closest allies and his conduit to the Trumpian base. When Trump, Greene and other Republicans called for an inquiry into the possibility of impeaching Joe Biden over spurious allegations of corruption, McCarthy was happy to oblige.Even on the more mundane issues of taxing and spending which ultimately led to his ouster, McCarthy did nothing to quiet his party’s worst instincts. The speaker supports the practice of using the annual vote on raising the debt ceiling to hold the government hostage, threatening an economy-wrecking default in order to leverage policy concessions. After using that tactic earlier this year to force Democrats into a deal which would cut spending, he then reneged on it and sent the country hurtling towards a government shutdown. His management of the chaos which ensued proved to be his downfall.By actively working to radicalize the Republican party in so many different ways, McCarthy now bears as much responsibility as anyone else for the abject state in which the Republican party finds itself. Embittered and delusional, Republicans cannot pull themselves together enough to perform even the most basic tasks of governing. The speaker’s chair is vacant as the country heads towards another government shutdown, and Republican congressmen have gone back to their districts to nurse their wounds for a week. When they return there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to cohere around a new choice for speaker – or that whoever they pick will do a better job than McCarthy did.Nobody should welcome this paralysis in the nation’s legislature. But if there’s a bright spot in all of this, it’s the fact that Democrats are well-placed to make hay from the Republicans’ self-inflicted wounds. Voters’ rejection of the Republican party’s radicalization is one of the reasons that Democrats did so well in the 2022 midterm elections. For all of the schadenfreude currently directed at Republicans, it’s Democrats like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi who deserve credit for denying Republicans a bigger majority and putting them in this bind to begin with. The struggle against Maga extremism has proven motivational for many voters, and McCarthy only helped Democrats to make the case.Ultimately, though, a two-party democracy cannot survive and prosper if one of its parties becomes so consumed by nihilism. It’s no surprise that Republican attacks on democracy and the basic norms of common decency make it so hard for them to navigate any task requiring compromise or reasonableness. But the corrosion that is eating away at their own ranks is unlikely to stop there. It’s also threatening to damage the country, be it through a catastrophic debt default or another outpouring of violence. That threat will remain until a critical mass of Republicans and their leaders will stand up and say: no more. Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t. Will anyone else?
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      The US supreme court is facing a crisis of legitimacy | Steven Greenhouse

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      Donald Trump’s rightwing appointees to the US supreme court have insisted that they’re neither “politicians in robes” nor “partisan hacks”, but many Americans strongly disagree about that, and that’s a major factor behind the court’s extraordinary crisis of legitimacy. With the court lurching to the right in recent years, three in four Americans say it has become “too politicized”, according to a recent poll, while just 49% say they have “trust and confidence” in the court, a sharp decline from 80% when Bill Clinton was president.As the supreme court’s new term begins this week, it should be no surprise that many Americans are questioning the court’s legitimacy considering all of the following. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have taken lavish favors from rightwing billionaires with business before the court and then failed to disclose those favors. The court’s conservative majority has often served as a partisan battering ram to advance the Republican party’s electoral fortunes. Mitch McConnell brazenly stole a supreme court seat from Merrick Garland to preserve the court’s rightwing majority. Not stopping there, McConnell and the Republican-led Senate raced to ram through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation even after voting had started for the 2020 election.Many ethics experts say Thomas and Alito – supposed guardians of the law – violated ethics laws by failing to disclose the luxurious favors they took from billionaires. Adding to the overall stench, the court still hasn’t adopted an ethics code and acts as if the extravagant favors Thomas and Alito received are in no way a problem. Dismayed by the court’s ethical lapses, 40 watchdog groups have called on Chief Justice Roberts to require Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves in cases with links to their billionaire donor friends.Among many Americans, there’s a growing sense that the Roberts court, with its 6-3 hard-right supermajority, is irrevocably broken. Prominent critics say the conservative justices too often act like partisan activists eager to impose their personal preferences, whether by banning affirmative action at universities, overturning gun regulations or torpedoing President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loans.Concerns about the court’s legitimacy multiplied after it issued the blockbuster Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and women’s right to choose. With nearly two-thirds of voters believing that Roe was correctly decided, many Americans complained that the court’s conservatives, in toppling Roe, were imposing their personal religious views on society.On one hand, the justices can assert they have legitimacy – they were duly nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate. But on the other hand, using other democratic measures, the court seems squarely illegitimate. One might say the conservative supermajority is the product of counter-majoritarianism cubed. First, four of the six right-wing justices were nominated by presidents elected with a minority of the popular vote, and second, they were confirmed by Senators who represented a minority of the nation’s population. Third, these hard-right justices are often deeply out of synch with a majority of the public. They’re far more opposed to abortion rights, business regulations, labor unions and government measures that advance economic and social justice.Back in 1982 when I graduated from law school, many people thought the Rehnquist court was too conservative, but no one questioned its legitimacy. But then came the Bush v Gore ruling in which the conservative majority exerted its muscle in an extraordinary partisan fashion to deliver victory in the 2000 election to George W Bush – and thereby assure continued conservative control of the court.At his confirmation hearing, John Roberts famously said he would merely call balls and strikes as chief justice. But that statement has proven to be flatly untrue, an unfortunate curveball. As chief justice, Roberts has repeatedly gone far beyond calling balls and strikes, often in rulings that increased the Republican’s chances of winning elections. In Citizens United, Roberts engineered an atom bomb of a decision that blew up our campaign finance system and overturned century-old rules that sought to prevent corporations and the mega-rich from having undue sway over our politics and government. In Citizens United, the Roberts court did grievous damage to our democracy, helping transform our nation into a plutocracy where billionaires’ money dwarfs the voices of average Americans.Roberts also led the way in overturning a pivotal part of the Voting Rights Act that required Alabama, South Carolina and other states with a dismal history of racial discrimination to obtain pre-clearance from the federal government before they changed voting rules. Showing how out of touch he was with political realities, Roberts wrote a majority decision that essentially said that racial discrimination on voting matters was a thing of the past and that pre-clearance unduly interfered in those states’ internal affairs, despite their disturbing legacy of racism. That decision was one of supreme judicial arrogance, overturning a law that the Senate passed 98 to 0 and the House passed 390 to 33 to extend the Voting Rights Act for 25 years.Roberts handed the Republicans another huge victory when he led the court in turning a blind eye to egregious gerrymandering. In doing so, Roberts gave a green light to brazen gerrymanders and minority rule, like that in Wisconsin where in a recent election, the Republican party won nearly two-thirds of state assembly seats even though its candidates received just 46% of the vote. The supreme court is supposed to safeguard America’s democracy for the ages, and we should all question the legitimacy of a court that in decision after decision has eroded our democracy in a way that favors one political party. (I should note that Roberts, embarrassed by the court’s headlong lurch to the right, recently sought to shore up the court’s flagging legitimacy by mustering a 5-4 majority to overturn an Alabama voting map that diluted Blacks’ voting power.)Clarence Thomas’s corrupt behavior has raised concerns about the court’s legitimacy to new heights. As ProPublica reported, not only did rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow provide Thomas with a free nine-day yacht vacation in Indonesia, but Crow has ferried him around on private jets, purchased properties belonging to Thomas and his relatives and paid private school tuition for a grandnephew Thomas was raising. Separately, Thomas was flown to California to be the star attraction at a far-right Koch network fundraising weekend. Flouting ethics laws, Thomas disclosed none of this.Thomas seems to see a judge’s lifetime tenure as a license to skirt ethics and disclosure laws as well as a lifetime pass to take lavish favors from whomever he wants, even people with cases before the supreme court. As for Alito, he didn’t disclose that billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the supreme court, paid for his luxury fishing trip to Alaska.For decades, the nation’s law schools have taught aspiring lawyers about the importance of judicial restraint and humility, of not overreaching. At a time when so many Americans are questioning the court’s legitimacy, the court should try all the harder to act with restrain and humility – and caution. Instead, the conservative supermajority, enamored with its power, seems intent on acting boldly and overreaching to stamp its rightwing vision on our constitutional order. These unelected justices seem happy to hobble our democratically elected president, in ways large and small, and in doing so, to dangerously undermine our democracy.
      Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More

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      in Elections

      Biden admits he is worried Republican infighting could hurt Ukraine aid – video

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      Facing a likely roadblock from House Republicans, US president Joe Biden says he is worried their infighting in Congress could hurt Ukraine aid but said there was a ‘majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties’ that support the need for it. The president promised to deliver a speech soon to outline why the US needs to continue to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, and suggested there were ‘other means’ by which he could find funding but gave no further details More

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      Biden calls to ‘change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington’; Trump denies involvement in McCarthy removal – as it happened

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      From 3h agoIn a speech at the White House, Joe Biden said that despite Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House, Democrats were willing to work with the GOP to pass spending bills and avoid a government shutdown that will otherwise occur in November.“We cannot and should not again be faced with 11th-hour decision of brinksmanship that threatens to shut down the government,” Biden said.“More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” he added. “You know, we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies, need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another.”Biden said he and the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, believe “our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. We were prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people”.Republicans in the House were reeling after far-right insurgents yesterday orchestrated the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The majority leader Steve Scalise and the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan have both announced they will run to replace him, while Donald Trump said he had nothing to do with McCarthy’s overthrow. At the White House, Joe Biden reiterated that House Democrats are willing to work with their GOP colleagues to prevent a still-looming government shutdown, while calling “to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington”.Here’s what else happened today:
      The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer warned the breakdown in the House threatens national security.
      At least one GOP congressman wants the architect of McCarthy’s overthrow, Matt Gaetz, to be kicked out of the conference.
      Will McCarthy’s downfall tip the scales of US politics ahead of next year’s elections? One analyst doesn’t think so, but warned it could nonetheless have unpredictable effects.
      Republicans are so angry Democrats helped remove McCarthy that they are kicking veteran lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their Capitol offices.
      Mitch McConnell says the next speaker of the House should change the rules so that what happened to McCarthy does not happen to them.
      In New York City, Donald Trump returned for a third day of trial.Judge Arthur Engoron is determining how much in damages Trump and his family must pay after finding they fraudulently inflated their assets for years. Yesterday, the judge imposed a gag order on the notoriously loquacious former president after he attacked Engoron’s clerk on social media.Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe with the latest on the trial:Donald Trump returned to his New York civil fraud trial on Wednesday a day after running afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.The former US president and Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race is voluntarily taking time out from the campaign trail to attend the trial. New York attorney general Letitia James’s lawsuit accuses Trump and his business of deceiving banks, insurers and others by providing financial statements that greatly exaggerated his wealth.Judge Arthur Engoron already has ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating the values of prized assets including his Trump Tower penthouse. The ruling could, if upheld on appeal, cost Trump control of his signature skyscraper and some other properties.Trump denies any wrongdoing. With familiar rhetoric, on his way into court Wednesday, he called James “incompetent”, portrayed her as part of a broader Democratic effort to weaken his 2024 prospects and termed the trial “a disgrace”.Trump has frequently vented in the courthouse hallway and on social media about the trial, James and Judge Engoron, also a Democrat.But after he assailed Engoron’s principal law clerk on social media on Tuesday, the judge imposed a limited gag order, commanding all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers. The judge told Trump to delete the “disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post”, and the former president took it down.Here’s a story to watch.Politico reports that one House Republican, Mike Lawler, thinks Matt Gaetz should be expelled from the party’s conference for engineering Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow:As Punchbowl News points out, Gaetz’s foes may be able to clear that bar:In the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell advised the next speaker of the House to “get rid of the motion to vacate”.As part of the deal he struck with far-right holdouts to end their blockade that prevented him being elected to the speaker’s post in January, Kevin McCarthy agreed to lower the threshold for any House lawmaker to make the motion to one. Matt Gaetz, one of those who objected to McCarthy’s initial election, took it upon himself to on Monday make a motion to vacate, leading to McCarthy’s ouster the next day.Here’s more from McConnell, who also indicated his party was ready to work with Senate Democrats on passing bills to fund the government over the fiscal year:A Texas Republican congressman said that he would nominate ex-president Donald Trump to assume the position of the next speaker of the House following Republicans’ ouster of Kevin McCarthy. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Troy Nehls said: “This week, when the US House of Representatives reconvenes, my first order of business will be to nominate Donald J Trump for speaker of the US House of Representatives.
      “President Trump, the greatest president of my lifetime, has a proven record of putting America first and will make the House great again.”
      The speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, though no speaker has ever assumed the role without holding a seat.Trump’s name has been floated before, including during the 15-vote marathon rightwingers put McCarthy through in January before allowing him to take up the gavel.On Tuesday, Nehls was not among the rightwingers who voted to remove McCarthy. Another congressman, Greg Steube of Florida, also said he would back Trump for speaker.For the full story, click here:Ohio’s far-right congressman Jim Jordan, who confirmed his run for House speaker, tweeted the following on Wednesday:“Secure the border. Get spending under control. Fix the institution. Unify the party,” he wrote.Jordan’s tweet follows his public plea for support for the House speaker position that he issued earlier today:
      We are at a critical crossroad in our nation’s history. Now is the time for our Republican conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans. The problems we face are challenging, but they are not insurmountable. We can focus on the changes that improve the country and unite us in offering real solutions. But no matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
      Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman who has confirmed a run for House speaker, is a celebrity on the far right of US politics – and a magnet for controversy whom a former speaker from his own party once called a “political terrorist”.The full extent of Jordan’s involvement in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading up to the deadly attack on Congress, remains unknown.In the last Congress, when Democrats controlled the gavel, Jordan refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee, despite being served with a subpoena.Joe Biden was asked what his advice would be for the next House speaker, to which he laughed before replying:
      That’s above my pay grade.
      Here’s House majority leader Steve Scalise’s full letter to colleagues announcing his decision to run to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker.Republicans in the House are reeling after far-right insurgents yesterday orchestrated the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The majority leader Steve Scalise and the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan have both announced they will run to replace him, while Donald Trump said he had nothing to do with McCarthy’s overthrow. At the White House, Joe Biden reiterated that House Democrats are willing to work with their GOP colleagues to prevent a still-looming government shutdown, while calling “to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington”.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer warned the breakdown in the House threatens national security.
      Will McCarthy’s downfall tip the scales of American politics ahead of next year’s elections? One analyst doesn’t think so, but warned it could nonetheless have unpredictable effects.
      Republicans are so mad Democrats helped remove McCarthy that they are kicking veteran lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their Capitol offices.
      The House majority leader, Steve Scalise, has officially announced that he will run to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker.The Louisiana congressman currently occupies the No 2 role among the chamber’s Republicans, and in a letter to colleagues, he cast himself as a leader who would rededicate the GOP to the work its lawmakers were elected to do.“We all came here to save this country from being taken down a dangerous path of destruction. We don’t sacrifice time with our families to come to Washington to fight over the small things – we are here because we care about our children’s futures and the kind of country they will grow up in. Under the failed leadership of President Biden, our country is being pushed to the brink,” his letter began.Scalise is a survivor of a 2017 mass shooting at a baseball game practice in Virginia, a fact he mentioned in his pitch to Republicans:
      God already gave me another chance at life. I believe we were all put here for a purpose. This next chapter won’t be easy, but I know what it takes to fight and I am prepared for the battles that lie ahead. I humbly ask you for your support on this mission to be your Speaker of the House.
      In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden said that despite Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House, Democrats were willing to work with the GOP to pass spending bills and avoid a government shutdown that will otherwise occur in November.“We cannot and should not again be faced with 11th-hour decision of brinksmanship that threatens to shut down the government,” Biden said.“More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” he added. “You know, we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies, need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another.”Biden said he and the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, believe “our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. We were prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people”.Larry Sabato, a prominent University of Virginia political analyst, has weighed in with some thoughts about the wider ramifications of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster.As dramatic as yesterday’s events may have been, Congress’s inner workings are not exactly the sort of thing most Americans pay daily attention to. When they cast ballots in November 2024 to decide whether Joe Biden gets a second term, and which party controls Congress, issues like the state of the economy and perceptions of crime and candidates’ fitness to serve are instead expected to be among the many things voters weigh.Thus, in Sabato’s crystal ball newsletter, he concludes that McCarthy’s removal won’t necessarily tip the political scales by itself, but could spark chains of events that affect the fortunes of both parties:
      We doubt there is much actual political fallout here, but one thing to monitor going forward is how much more dysfunctional the House becomes. The chances of a shutdown, which McCarthy narrowly avoided thanks to Democratic votes over the weekend, just shot up, as we are going to be doing the shutdown dance again in November and the new GOP speaker (assuming there is one) may need to take a harder line in an attempt to satiate his most insatiable members. It may be that this speaker gets a reprieve from some of the hardliners simply because he or she is not McCarthy. Democrats, meanwhile, declined to throw McCarthy a lifeline during the motion to vacate, opting en masse to vote with the Republican rebels. The Democrats seemed legitimately angry at McCarthy for offering them less than nothing for their support, which he clearly needed (or he just needed some Democrats to vote present on the motion to vacate, allowing loyal Republicans to deliver a majority of those voting).
      Democrats also will likely relish the continued turbulence on the Republican side. That said, there are risks to them, too. Yes, it would probably be easy to blame Republicans for a future shutdown, but an extended one that has an impact on the economy could have repercussions for the president, too, as Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher argued when he suggested that Democrats bail out McCarthy. The Democrats voting for the motion to vacate is somewhat reminiscent of how their campaign arms, and their associated PACs, backed weak MAGA candidates in GOP primaries last year — perfectly defensible politically but also not the sort of thing that is likely to elevate the more reasonable Republicans that Democrats often claim to want. That said, the readily apparent lack of discipline on the Republican side is not the fault of Democrats, and it’s natural for any political party to want to exacerbate the other side’s fissures and problems.
      One final point: Despite his rocky rise to the top and short tenure as Speaker, McCarthy had been a prodigious fundraiser for House Republicans. Over the last several cycles, Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC he was aligned with, emerged as one of the most formidable outside spending groups in House races. With McCarthy out, there may be some negative effects on GOP fundraising.
      A couple of other GOP old hands got into it over whether Democrats bore any responsibility for the downfall of Kevin McCarthy.It began when Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary under George W Bush, accused Democrats of collaborating with Matt Gaetz to remove the speaker:That prompted a riposte from Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, who is an outspoken Donald Trump foe. Steele noted that McCarthy’s problems became apparent at the start of the year when lawmakers from his own party blocked his election as speaker for days, and only relented when McCarthy made the concessions that led to his downfall:Here’s a view from within the GOP on what just happened yesterday.This CNN guest is Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant who has been involved for decades in Washington politics. He’s clearly not pleased with Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speaker’s chair, and raises the prospect that the effort’s architect, Matt Gaetz, could soon be revealed to have committed serious ethical infractions.McCarthy and his allies referenced the ongoing ethics investigation against Gaetz yesterday, about which few details are known, but the lawmaker denied it had anything to do with his campaign to remove the speaker.Here’s Luntz’s interview, on CNN:Donald Trump said he was not involved in rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz’s motion that led to Kevin McCarthy’s ejection as House speaker yesterday.Here’s what the former president had to say as he departed the courtroom in New York where a judge is considering what damages he and his family must pay after being found civilly liable for fraud:Trump is broadly popular among House Republicans, many of whom have endorsed his attempt to return to the White House in next year’s presidential election. Gaetz is among the many lawmakers who have made names for themselves defending Trump, while McCarthy is also seen as an ally. As House minority leader in 2020, he signed on to a baseless effort to get the supreme court to block Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden.Also speaking from the Senate floor, the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell gave something of a eulogy for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership: More

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      Republicans Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise launch House speakership bids

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      Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana announced Wednesday that they would seek to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House of Representatives, after the Californian was brutally removed by his own Republican party on Tuesday.Jordan is chair of the powerful judiciary committee, while Scalise is the majority leader. Both had been named as potential successors to McCarthy, and they confirmed their intentions to run for the top House job a day after the speakership was declared vacant.Pitching his candidacy in a “Dear Colleague” letter, Jordan pledged to unify his fractious conference, which has repeatedly stumbled under the weight of a razor-thin majority.“We are at a critical crossroad in our nation’s history. Now is the time for our Republican conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans,” Jordan said. “No matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for speaker of the House of Representatives.”But Scalise argued he had the experience needed to unite the conference, after serving as part of the House Republican leadership team for the past decade.“I have a proven track record of bringing together the diverse array of viewpoints within our Conference to build consensus where others thought it impossible,” Scalise said in his own “Dear Colleague” letter. “We have an extremely talented Conference, and we all need to come together and pull in the same direction to get the country back on the right track.”Weighing in on the speakership race, Joe Biden expressed concern over the “dysfunction” in the House and emphasized the importance of continuing funding to Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.Asked for his advice to the next House speaker, Biden laughed and said: “That’s above my pay grade.”Ukraine could become a central focus of House Republicans’ speaker candidate forum, which is scheduled for next Tuesday. Asked about his stance on approving more funding for Ukraine, Jordan said: “I’m against that … The most pressing issue on Americans’ mind is not Ukraine. It is the border situation, and it is crime on the streets.”Another sticking point for Republicans involves the mechanism that Matt Gaetz used to oust McCarthy, the motion to vacate. Under current House rules, any single member can force a vote on removing the speaker, and some of the more moderate House Republicans want to raise that threshold to avoid a repeat of Tuesday’s spectacle.“The ability for one person to vacate the speaker of the House will keep a chokehold on this body through 2024,” the Republican Main Street caucus, representing the the more centrist House Republicans, said in a statement. “Personal politics should never again be used to trump the will of 96% of House conservatives. Any candidate for speaker must explain to us how what happened on Tuesday will never happen again.”Jordan and Scalise are both hardline conservatives who may struggle to attract support from moderates – a fact not lost on observers after Gaetz and seven other hard-right Republicans chose to make McCarthy the first speaker ever removed by his own party.Scalise’s hard-right views – which have even seen him linked to the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke – and his personal health could pose challenges as he seeks the gavel. Scalise, 57, walks with a cane, having survived a shooting at congressional baseball practice in 2017. He is also in treatment for mutliple myeloma, an aggressive form of cancer. He has said the treatment is going well.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Republicans weigh their options, hard-right lawmaker Andy Harris of Maryland suggested Byron Donalds as the next speaker, but it is unclear whether the Florida congressman will throw his hat in the ring. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, chair of the Republican study committee, was named as another potential candidate.“I didn’t volunteer to do this,” Hern told reporters on Capitol Hill. “People have asked me about looking at an alternate choice. And so I’m going around talking about this issue with other groups of people and see if their votes are there.”Three House Republicans and Fox News host Sean Hannity have pitched a different wildcard option: elect Donald Trump as speaker. The speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, though no speaker has ever filled the role without holding a seat. But House Republican rules say anyone indicted and facing two years or more of prison time cannot hold a leadership role, which would render Trump ineligible.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump, who is in New York for a trial involving allegations of massive fraud at his company, said he was keeping his focus on his presidential campaign. He also denied encouraging Gaetz to push for McCarthy’s removal.In the Senate, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, urged the next speaker to embrace bipartisanship, even though hard-right Republicans will probably feel emboldened following McCarthy’s ouster.“You cannot allow a small band of [‘Make America Great Again’] extremists, which represent just a very small percentage of the views of the country, to tell the overwhelming majority of Americans what to do,” Schumer said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Maga extremism is a poison that the House GOP has refused to confront for years, and until the mainstream House Republicans deal with this issue, chaos will continue.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Kevin McCarthy’s removal: dysfunction is the Republicans’ new normal | Editorial

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      Stunning. Unprecedented. Uncharted territory. A first in American history. Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday was a startling moment. But it only confirmed that the predictable thing about American politics is now its unpredictability. Chaos and dysfunction increasingly look not anomalous but characteristic. The Biden administration’s aura of calm stewardship can only go so far, because the saboteurs hold significant chunks of government machinery. The bitter divisions within the Republican party keep the rest of the country captive.A party once known for its ruthless discipline is obviously unmanageable; Donald Trump piously bemoaned the infighting of a party he has done more than anyone to break. Mr McCarthy’s removal by a handful of his own party’s lawmakers came on the same day that the former president, and likely Republican presidential nominee, was in court on fraud charges – only one of the multitude of civil and criminal cases bearing down on him, none of which have dented his popularity. Stories that would once have dominated the news for a week or more now jostle for coverage. In another courtroom, Hunter Biden became the first child of an incumbent president to be criminally prosecuted, pleading not guilty to federal gun charges.It is less than three years since an armed mob stormed the Capitol. Six in 10 Republicans still don’t believe that Joe Biden won legitimately in 2020. Last week, House Republicans launched a confected impeachment inquiry – equal parts fishing expedition and misinformation exercise. Threatening to shut down the government and leading the country to the brink of default on its debt has become almost routine for them.It took Mr McCarthy 15 roll-call votes to become speaker in the first place, and he only succeeded after agreeing to make it easier to remove him. He held the post for less than a year before far-right Republicans moved against him, apparently motivated largely by ego, spite and anger that he had worked with Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to avert shutdown. (It is, perhaps, another sign of the times that the ringleader, Matt Gaetz, is under investigation by the House ethics committee over allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of funds.) Mr McCarthy gave Democrats little reason to back him on Tuesday. Quite apart from a shameful record which includes voting to overturn the 2020 election results, he attacked Democrats for “trying to shut down the government” after relying on their votes for the funding bill, and offered them nothing.It is entirely possible that his successor may be worse. The frontrunners are Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, who reportedly once called himself “David Duke [the former Ku Klux Klan leader] without the baggage”. Whoever wins will have to contend with the same ultraconservatives. Partial government shutdown looms again, with a 17 November deadline to provide more money. And Mr McCarthy’s departure is felt far from Washington: Democrats backed the spending bill shorn of funding for Ukraine, believing he would help to see it through separately. Beyond Kyiv’s immediate need lies the necessity of firming up longer-term support in the west.Democrats may benefit from the infighting of the Republicans, who look increasingly self-obsessed and extreme. But voters could also conclude that the political class as a whole is failing – and perhaps, as Mr Trump must hope, that it will take a disruptive strongman to get things done. It’s their party, but the rest of the world has to live with it.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in Elections

      Jim Jordan: favorite of hard right who defied January 6 subpoena

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      Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman who has confirmed a run for House speaker, is a prominent celebrity on the far right of US politics – and a magnet for controversy who a former speaker from his own party once called a “political terrorist”.The full extent of Jordan’s involvement in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading up to the deadly attack on Congress, remains unknown.Jordan, 59, is also dogged by questions about a sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State University, where he was a wrestling coach before he entered politics.John Boehner, the former speaker, also from Ohio, famously referred to Jordan as a “political terrorist”, only interested in destructive action rather than legislative achievement.In the last Congress, when Democrats controlled the gavel, Jordan refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee, despite being served with a subpoena.His involvement in Trump’s machinations has been widely reported. He is known, for instance, to have spoken with the then president on the morning of the riot.In their book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig reported a startling conversation from the day after the riot, 7 January 2021.According to Rucker and Leonnig, Liz Cheney, then a Wyoming Republican congresswoman, and future vice-chair of the January 6 committee, spoke to Gen Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff.“That fucking guy Jim Jordan,” Cheney said. “That son of a bitch. While these maniacs are going through the place, I’m standing in the aisle and he said, ‘We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.’“I smacked his hand away and told him, ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”Jordan was a prominent supporter of Trump’s lie about electoral fraud. Efforts on Trump’s behalf included speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania two days after election day; attending White House meetings at which strategy was discussed; appearing on Fox News to promote such efforts; and, on the morning of January 6 itself, speaking in the House, to object to results from Arizona.Five days after the Capitol attack, Trump gave Jordan the presidential medal of freedom.The Ohio State sexual abuse scandal also rumbles on.From 1987 to 1995, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at OSU. Former athletes have said he turned a blind eye to abuse perpetrated by Richard Strauss, a doctor, which, according to an official report, was widely seen as an “open secret”.One ex-OSU wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, has said: “If Jordan says he didn’t know about it, then he’s lying.”Jordan denies a cover-up. He also refused to co-operate with the official investigation.Becoming speaker would cap a congressional career that began in 2006 and has included leading the powerful judiciary committee and being the first chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.In 2021, Boehner told CBS: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together.”For Jordan, becoming speaker would also invite uncomfortable mentions of Dennis Hastert.Hastert, from Illinois, is the longest-serving Republican speaker, having filled the role from 1999 to 2007.After leaving politics, however, he became embroiled in scandal, eventually admitting to sexually abusing teenage boys while a wrestling coach himself, then paying his accusers to stay quiet. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison. More

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      in US Politics

      McCarthy ouster shows Republicans don’t want to govern – and they don’t want anyone else to either | Moira Donegan

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      The worst job in America has just become available. On Tuesday, after a weeks-long struggle with his caucus to fund the government and avert a government shutdown had proved fruitless and Kevin McCarthy had at last conceded to compromise with the Democrats, Republicans, led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz and other members of the far-right, Trumpist Freedom Caucus, voted McCarthy out of the House speakership.He is the first speaker of the House to ever be removed from his post by a vote – a technique that was only possible because McCarthy had made so many procedural concessions to get the speakership in the first place. It took McCarthy 15 votes to achieve the speakership when the Republicans took control of the House back in January; it took him 269 days to lose it. Now, the job will be someone else’s problem.McCarthy’s ouster comes as House Republicans confront a caucus that is increasingly nihilistic, intent on obstructionism, chaos and pulling the kind of public stunts that make for good fundraising emails. Much of the party’s congressional delegation is in thrall to Donald Trump – or at least, they feel that their seats depend on convincing their primary electorate that they are. And his is not a faction much concerned with coalition building, difficult choices or the hard work of actually governing.If anything, that’s what they seem to have ousted McCarthy for doing. Late last week, the Republicans seemed poised to tip the country over into a government shutdown, suspending crucial services like food stamps and suspending pay for everyone from soldiers to air traffic controllers to national parks rangers. This was because when it came time to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government, the far-right Republican caucus couldn’t take yes for an answer. McCarthy had agreed to more and more cuts to social spending, more and more cuts to Ukraine aid, and more and more money for the sadistic and strategically pointless militarization of the border. None of it was enough: the Republicans in his caucus kept demanding more and more, contradicting each other and taking every opportunity to say something nonsensically self-righteous into a camera.The simple fact is that last week, as the clock dwindled down to a government shutdown, Republicans weren’t accepting any of the deals that he offered them because making an actual deal to keep the government running is not in the interests of Republican congressmen – interests which they seem to understand as encompassing little more than maximizing attention to themselves. Unable to pass a resolution with only Republican votes, McCarthy crossed the Rubicon of Republican politics: he compromised with the Democrats. And in so doing, he sealed his fate: he gave attention-hungry members of his caucus a chance to demonstrate that they were more rightwing than he is.Could Democrats have voted to uphold McCarthy’s speakership, and averted the disaster that now surely will follow? Maybe. But it’s not clear why they would. There is no love lost for McCarthy on the Democratic side. Democrats have soured on the onetime Republican House leader at least since the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, when McCarthy, like many Republicans, initially condemned the riots, only to eventually walk back his condemnation of the violence and eagerly seek to repair his relationship to Donald Trump.They have not exactly been more endeared to him by the events of the past week. McCarthy insisted over and over that he would only accept a strictly Republican continuing resolution, and then folded when he needed Democrats’ help; by way of thanks, he went on the Sunday shows this weekend to blame them for the shutdown’s near-miss. Why should they have voted for him to remain speaker? They have neither the incentive nor the obligation to save him from his own mistakes.McCarthy’s ouster is a symptom of Republican dysfunction. To many of his Republican foes, notably Gaetz, the dislike of McCarthy appears to be intensely personal, ascending beyond policy differences or factional loyalties into a contempt of character. Mitch McConnell has clashed with him over Ukraine; other members of the Freedom Caucus have cast him as soft and untrustworthy. Republicans have descended into backbiting, disunity and petty competitions of egos. The party is beholden to a base that it has fed misinformation and trained to view politics as high-stakes entertainment. If they were women, we would call this a catfight. But they’re men, at least for the most part, and so we call it politics.The Republicans cannot govern and it remains to be seen whether they will even be able to elect a new speaker. Their internal dissent is not compatible with governing, with democratic aspiration, with the dignity or responsibility of power. But to them, that might not matter. Their nihilistic, sadistic and exclusionary worldview does not really need to govern, or build a coalition, or make things better for Americans: it just needs to stop the other party from being able to do so. In this sense, they’re getting exactly what they want: a fight. Meanwhile, there are those on Capitol Hill acting in unison, with uncanny discipline, allowing their opponents to destroy one another without so much as lifting a finger: the House Democrats.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More