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      Republican hardliner Steve Scalise drops out of House speaker race

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      The Republican congressman Steve Scalise is ending his bid to become the US House speaker after failing to secure enough votes to win the gavel.“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for speaker-designee,” Scalise said as he emerged from the closed-door meeting at the Capitol, where he first informed fellow Republican colleagues of his decision.Scalise, a hardline conservative representing Louisiana, said the Republican majority “still has to come together and is not there”.“There are still some people that have their own agendas,” Scalise said. “And I was very clear, we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.”Next steps are uncertain as the House is now essentially closed, while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after a small number of them voted alongside Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy from the job.The standoff over the speakership, which was sparked by the hard-right Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, has left congressional business at a standstill, with many Republican lawmakers furious at the degree of division within their party – and how voters are likely to judge them for their inability to govern.Scalise’s decision to end his bid followed a day of meetings that moved him no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions imperiling his quest for the speakership.Scalise, who survived being wounded during the 2017 mass shooting targeting a Republican congressional baseball practice, made clear that the experience only deepened his commitment to protecting gun rights.He has been rising in Republican leadership ranks over the past decade, and was elected the House majority leader last year. Scalise has long been defended by his party despite reports that he compared himself to Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke early in his career, describing himself as “David Duke without the baggage”, and that he attended a white supremacist conference organised by Duke in 2002.Scalise has said that attending the conference “was a mistake I regret”, and that he “emphatically oppose[d] the divisive racial and religious views that groups like these hold”.House Republicans had raised a number of concerns with Scalise’s candidacy, among them that, as the No 2 House Republican, he doesn’t represent institutional change, that he lacks a unifying vision for the conference, or that his ​battle with blood cancer would make it difficult for him to lead the chamber.Supporters of the congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chair of the judiciary committee, said they would continue to push for his candidacy as speaker and called for other party members to rally around Jordan, who is a founding leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.“Make him the speaker. Do it tonight,” Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, said. “He’s the only one who can unite our party. It’s time to get behind him.”Other potential speaker nominees were being floated, including from the leadership team, but splitting the votes multiple ways would almost certainly only complicate the factional dynamics in the House majority.Asked if he would now throw his support behind Jordan, Scalise said: “It’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves and their own personal interest.”McCarthy himself said today that Scalise would remain as majority leader, but had no other advice for his colleagues.“I just think the conference as a whole has to figure out their problems, solve it and select the leader,” he said.Many hardliners taking their cues from Donald Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job, saying Scalise is not the replacement they will support. They argued that he is no better choice than McCarthy and should be focusing on his health.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, had previously endorsed Jordan, and repeatedly discussed Scalise’s health during a radio interview that aired Thursday.“Well, I like Steve. I like both of them very much. But the problem, you know, Steve is a man that is in serious trouble, from the standpoint of his cancer,” Trump said on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show.“I think it’s going to be very hard, maybe in either case, for somebody to get,” Trump said. “And then you end up in one of these crazy stalemates. It’s a very interesting situation.”Earlier on Thursday, Troy Nehls, a Republican congressman from Texas, had reaffirmed his support for Trump himself as speaker; the position does not need to go to a member of Congress.Scalise’s Thursday night announcement sent Republicans back to the drawing board, and some Republican members of Congress immediately started sparring on social media. When Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna tweeted out a list of potential candidates, after making headlines for changing her support for Scalise overnight, Georgia congressman Mike Collins responded: “We already did that,” and wrote that the real problem was that “it’s egos and TV time.”“We’re a ship without a rudder right now,” freshman Missouri congressman Mark Alford told reporters Thursday night. “And I’m thoroughly disappointed in the process. And I just pray to God that we find something.The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function. The political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern.Action is needed to fund the government before a potential federal shutdown in a month. Lawmakers also want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House. The White House is expected to soon ask for money for Israel, Ukraine and the backfill of the US weapons stockpile.The situation is not entirely different from that of the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall.Exasperated Democrats, who have been watching and waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out, warning the world is watching.“The House Republicans need to end the GOP civil war, now,” the New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries said.Lauren Gambino, Joan E Greve and Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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      Scalise lacks votes from hardline Republicans to become next House speaker – US politics live

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

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      House remains without speaker as Republican holdouts block Scalise

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      The House of Representatives remained without a speaker on Thursday, as the fractious Republican majority refused to unite behind their party’s chosen nominee, congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana.A day after narrowly becoming House Republicans’ candidate for speaker in a secret ballot vote, Scalise appeared no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions imperiling his quest for the gavel.Expectations were low that the House would hold a floor vote for speaker on Thursday after an hours-long, closed-door meeting failed to sway Scalise’s many skeptics.Supporters of the congressman Jim Jordan, the chair of the judiciary committee, who challenged Scalise for the nomination, said they would continue to push for his candidacy, while other members fumed that their conference was once again consumed by the very chaos that led to the sudden and historic ousting of the former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy last week.“Time is of the essence,” McCarthy told reporters upon arriving at the Capitol on Thursday. He added that Scalise, his former deputy, still faced a “big hill” in his quest to secure enough votes to win the gavel.Although some of McCarthy’s allies had suggested he should run again for the speakership, the California Republican has said he would support Scalise and encouraged his colleagues not to re-nominate him for the post.Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who was part of a hard-right coalition that forced 15 rounds of balloting to elect McCarthy as speaker, left a meeting with Scalise on Wednesday night saying he had won her vote after promising that her committee would be empowered to pursue its investigations into Biden. Hours later, during a private meeting with Republicans on Thursday, she said it had become clear Scalise could not form a consensus coalition and “no longer” had her vote.Among Scalise’s other detractors are South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace, one of the Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy. On Wednesday, she pointed to Scalise’s past as a reason she would not vote for him on the House floor.“I personally cannot in good conscience vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she said in an interview on CNN Wednesday. “I would be doing an enormous disservice to the voters that I represent in South Carolina if I were to do that.Scalise apologized in 2014 for attending the conference, saying he was unaware of the group’s political views. He represents the Louisiana congressional district once held by Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said concerns over Scalise’s health were the reason she would not support him. Scalise is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for blood cancer, but has insisted his prognosis is good and that he is well enough to serve.“I will be voting for Jim Jordan on the House floor,” Greene said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress.”Meanwhile, embattled congressman George Santos, of New York, who is now facing expulsion from Congress, said he would not vote for Scalise “come hell or high water”.The chaos has infuriated many House Republicans who feel Scalise’s objectors have not stated a clear rationale for their oppositions.“Your vote is for your constituents, not your personal grievances,” said Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who plans to vote for Scalise.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a gesture of goodwill, Jordan has encouraged his allies to support Scalise and offered to give his nominating speech on the House floor. So far those entreaties have done little to help Scalise persuade his skeptics, many of whom say they plan to vote for Jordan.Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority, Scalise can only afford four defections within the conference and still win the speakership, assuming all 433 current House members participate in the vote. As of Thursday morning, more than a dozen House Republicans had signaled they would not support Scalise on the floor, with several more still undecided.The House gaveled into session midday on Thursday. With no clear path for Scalise to secure the 217 votes needed to claim the speakership, no votes were scheduled, and some members suggested the standoff could stretch into the weekend.The pressure is on for Scalise to show he has a viable path forward, and to do so quickly. Without a speaker, the House is effectively at a standstill. Democrats, many Republicans and the White House have implored the House GOP to move swiftly to elect a new speaker so Congress can resume consideration of pressing matters, among them providing support to Israel in its war with the Palestinian group Hamas, which has claimed thousands of lives on both sides, including 27 Americans.The minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Thursday that his caucus was willing “to find a bipartisan path forward out of the chaos and dysfunction”. But Democrats are unlikely to find either Scalise or Jordan palatable choices for speaker, as both voted against certifying the 2020 electoral college vote and are now using their House majority to pursue investigations into Joe Biden and his administration.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called the Republicans’ struggle to elect a speaker “shambolic chaos” and said the American people have never seen a majority party “behave this way”. The White House is expected to soon ask Congress to appropriate additional funds for Israel and Ukraine, while the threat of a government shutdown looms next month if lawmakers fail to act.Donald Trump, who had endorsed Jordan for speaker, also weighed in against Scalise on Thursday, arguing that instead of pursuing the gavel he should focus on recovering from cancer. More

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      Biden under pressure to refreeze $6bn in Iranian oil money after Hamas attack

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      Joe Biden is under pressure from fellow Democrats to refreeze $6bn of Iranian oil revenues released last month as part of a prisoner exchange deal amid accusations that Iran played a key role in last weekend’s deadly attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.Five Democratic senators up for re-election next year have joined Republican calls for the US president to effectively renege on the agreement that led to the release of five Americans held captive by Iran unless it is proved that the country’s theocratic regime was not involved in Saturday’s assault, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis.The clamor comes even as US intelligence sources have sought to dampen speculation of close Iranian involvement.Although the White House has accused Tehran of being “broadly complicit” due to its long-term financial and logistical support for Hamas, US officials have said multiple pieces of intelligence indicate that Iran’s leadership had no prior knowledge of the devastating onslaught launched from Gaza, and that it may have caught them by surprise.That has failed to reassure some Democrats gearing up for tough challenges from Republicans in 2024.“Until I have full confidence that Iran did not play a role in these barbaric terrorist attacks on the Israeli people, the United States should freeze the $6bn dollars in Iranian assets,” wrote Tammy Baldwin, a senator for Wisconsin, on X, the platform formerly called Twitter.Four other Democrats in the Senate so far have echoed the call. They are Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Bob Casey, the senator from Pennsylvania.“I wasn’t supportive of the initial $6bn transfer,” Manchin, a known moderate with a track record of mirroring Republican positions, told reporters. “We should absolutely freeze these Iranian assets while we also consider additional sanctions.”Last month’s unfreezing of revenues from oil sold by Iran to South Korea – originally frozen by the Trump administration in 2019 due to sanctions imposed under its “maximum pressure” policy towards Tehran – had already been fiercely criticized by Republicans, who claimed it projected weakness and said the funds could be diverted to finance terrorism.After Saturday’s attack, Donald Trump, the former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner, intensified that criticism by falsely portraying the money freed in exchange for releasing the five prisoners as “US taxpayers’ dollars”, which he said had helped fund the Hamas assault.The White House dismissed the claim as “total lies” and “disinformation”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAdministration officials say the funds, which were released to a bank account in Qatar, have not been touched since they were unfrozen. They were released on condition that they were used only for humanitarian purposes, such as buying medicines and medical equipment.Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, speaking at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, said the administration could reverse the decision to unfreeze the money if evidence of Iran’s involvement emerged.Republicans have voiced skepticism over the intelligence notes of caution about an Iranian hand, even though they have been echoed in some Israeli quarters.Don Bacon, a Republican senator for Nebraska, accused the Biden administration of being “in denial” about Iran’s role, while the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, a candidate for the Republican presidential nominee, said Biden had “blood on his hands”. More

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      Jim Jordan will vote for Steve Scalise to be House speaker, source says – live

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

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      Republicans nominate Steve Scalise to replace McCarthy as House speaker

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      House Republicans nominated Steve Scalise to be the next speaker on Wednesday, a week after the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy. But a handful of objections to Scalise’s nomination left House Republicans unable to move to a final floor vote, making it unclear when a new speaker might be elected.By a vote of 113 to 99, Scalise, currently the second-ranking House Republican, defeated a challenge from congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the judiciary committee and a far-right firebrand.Still, the result fell well below the 217-vote threshold needed to be elected speaker on the House floor, where Republicans chaos and division triggered 15 rounds of balloting before the caucus united behind McCarthy earlier this year. The timing of a potential floor vote to elect Scalise remained uncertain on Wednesday afternoon, when the House held a brief pro forma session and then went into recess.If all 433 current House members participate in the vote, Scalise can only afford four defections within the Republican conference and still win the speakership. As of Wednesday, at least 10 House Republicans said they were not prepared to back Scalise, with several more still undecided.“Obviously we still have work to do,” Scalise said after winning the nomination. “We need to make sure we’re sending a message to people all throughout the world that the House is open and doing the people’s business.”Emerging from their conference meeting on Wednesday afternoon, a couple of Jordan’s allies, including Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, indicated they would still support Jordan in the floor vote.“We had a chance to unify the party behind closed doors, but the Swamp and K Street lobbyists prevented that,” Boebert said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The American people deserve a real change in leadership, not a continuation of the status quo.”Even as his allies rallied around him, Jordan appeared ready to support Scalise on the floor. According to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, Jordan plans to vote for Scalise and has encouraged his colleagues to do the same. Jordan also offered to deliver the nominating speech on Scalise’s behalf, the source said.That encouragement has not yet swayed some of Scalise’s detractors. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican from Georgia, said she would not support Scalise because of concerns over his health, as the congressman is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for blood cancer.“I will be voting for Jim Jordan on the House floor,” Greene said on X. “I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress.”Some members on Tuesday had suggested they would prefer an alternative – or McCarthy. But McCarthy, who recently suggested he would be open to reclaiming the gavel, said on Tuesday that he asked his caucus not to re-nominate him for the job.Leaving a meeting with Scalise on Wednesday, McCarthy reiterated his plans to support his former deputy. Of the Republican holdouts, McCarthy said: “Steve’s going to have to talk to them all, see what the concerns are. But I’m supporting Steve.”Republicans’ tenuous grasp on power was on full display last week, when McCarthy became the first House speaker in US history to be ejected from office. Eight Republicans, led by the hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, joined with House Democrats to remove McCarthy as speaker.But Gaetz said Wednesday that he was “excited” to support Scalise on the floor, telling reporters, “Long live Speaker Scalise!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUntil a new leader is chosen, the Republican congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina will continue serving as the acting speaker while the House remains unable to conduct other business.Republicans hope they can choose a speaker by the end of the week and avoid the spectacle that unfolded in January. A quick election would allow Republicans to turn their full attention to the situation in Israel, following this weekend’s attacks staged by Hamas.On Tuesday, the Republican chair of the House foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, and the panel’s top Democrat, Gregory Meeks of New York, introduced a bipartisan resolution expressing support for Israel. As he entered the conference meeting on Wednesday, Scalise said the resolution would be his top priority if he ascends to the speakership.“The first order of business under Speaker Steve Scalise is going to be bringing a strong resolution expressing support for Israel. We’ve got a very bipartisan bill, the McCaul-Meeks resolution, ready to go right away to express our support for Israel,” Scalise told reporters.Meanwhile, Democrats once again unanimously nominated their leader, congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, during a closed-door caucus meeting on Wednesday.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, California congressman Pete Aguilar, the Democratic caucus chair, said Republicans’ “self-inflicted chaos” spoke volumes about their governing priorities.“Israel, policy, friendship, alliance, strength, national security: that is what the Democratic caucus talked about this morning,” Aguilar said. “What the Republican conference is talking about are rule-changes and who’s in charge, so a dramatic difference.” More

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      The Israel crisis is horrific. Republicans say it’s a ‘great opportunity’ to attack Biden | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      This week the eyes of the world have been fixed on the horrific panorama of violence in the Middle East. Once all of the dead are counted, it is likely that nearly as many Israelis will have died in a single day as in the entire second intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2005. The death toll is also growing in Gaza, with no telling how high it may reach. The United States has dispatched naval forces to the region amid fears that the conflict may spiral to include Hezbollah or even Iran, an eventuality which could see the US join the fighting directly. The region is a tinderbox – and one wrong move could set it ablaze.In the US, steady and sober leadership is needed. Americans may be among those held hostage in Gaza, and the risk of a wider war is ever present. Now is not the time for partisan point-scoring. Unity shouldn’t mean a stifling consensus – there’s plenty of room for discussion about what the best American response to the situation should be – but it should mean agreement around basic norms of constructive debate and decision-making. This should also be a time in which everyone can agree that it’s important that the US government is able to perform its basic functions smoothly, both to ensure good decisions are made and that lives are protected.Unfortunately, Republicans seem incapable of rising to the occasion. From the first hours in which the world began to learn of the horrific events unfolding in southern Israel, prominent Republican figures have seemed just as interested in blaming Joe Biden as they have Hamas.One of the party’s first reactions came from Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who greeted news of the greatest atrocity in Israeli history by calling it a “great opportunity” for Republican presidential candidates to criticize Democrats. The candidates themselves seemed to agree, with many leaping into the fray to pin the blame for the attack on Biden’s supposed “weakness”.Perhaps most disgusting and divisive has been the spectacle of Republicans telling outright lies in order to claim that the Biden administration is directly “complicit” in the attack, as Senator Tim Scott has claimed. Donald Trump and others say that the Biden administration helped finance the attack with a recent deal in which $6bn in Iranian oil revenue was unfrozen in exchange for the release of five American hostages. But this money – not a cent of which has yet been spent – is controlled by Qatar and can only be used by Tehran to purchase humanitarian supplies. Meanwhile, it’s clear that this attack has been in the work for months – far before the deal was even struck.Cheap and partisan attacks not only make it difficult to have a serious discussion about American foreign policy – they also allow Republicans to avoid talking about the ways in which their own actions have made the US less prepared for a serious international crisis. The Republican senator Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly blocking 300 routine military appointments, including many top posts in the Middle East, in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policy. And he’s signaled he has no intention of changing his mind.Senators Rand Paul and JD Vance have also placed blanket holds on confirming nominees to the state department – in one case because Vance wanted them to fill in a “wokeness questionnaire” first. Among the positions that remain unfilled with a permanent appointments are the state department coordinator for counter-terrorism and ambassadors to both Israel and Egypt. Meanwhile, thanks to Republican dysfunction, there is currently no speaker of the House, making it unclear how additional US aid might be made available to Israel or Palestinian civilians if it is needed.In order to avoid the sort of partisan point-scoring that Republicans are engaging in, it should be made clear that these facts almost certainly had nothing to do with the decision by Hamas to launch its attack. The attack is not in any way the fault of the Republican party. But what is the fault of the Republican party is the fact that the US government is lacking crucial personnel at a time of grave international crisis.Hamstringing the ability of the Biden administration to act might even be a feature rather than a bug of the Republican response. If the party recognizes the unfolding horror primarily as a “great opportunity” to hammer the Democrats, then that opportunity can be maximized by making it as difficult as possible for the Biden administration to respond effectively. This is a grave charge, not to be made lightly. But how else to explain a party which refuses, in a time of possible war, to let the military appoint the officers it wants to their posts in the war zone?It is a perilous sign that Republicans would rather engage in partisan criticism rather than a constructive discussion over the best and most humane policies for the US to adopt. The party no longer believes in the basic idea of a functioning, competent government, even in the face of a regional war. As the Biden administration makes tough decisions about how to save American lives and stop the war from spreading, it can expect little help from across the aisle.Republicans have made the choice to put their own narrow interests over those of the nation. They could at least have the decency to stop pretending otherwise.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      Supreme court to review whether South Carolina map discriminated against Black voters

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      When South Carolina Republicans set out to redraw the state’s seven congressional districts after the 2020 census, they had a clear goal in mind: make the state’s first congressional district more friendly for Republicans.In 2018, Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat in an upset. In 2020, Republican Nancy Mace barely won it back. Now, Republicans wanted to redraw the district, which includes Charleston and stretches along the south-eastern part of the state, to be much safer. There was an easy way to do this – change the lines to add reliably Republican areas in three different counties to the district.But there was a problem. The old district was about 17.8% Black and the new additions would make it 20% Black, enough to make it politically competitive. So the mapmaker Republicans tasked with coming up with a new plan began removing Black voters in Charleston from the first district, placing them in the neighboring sixth district, which is represented by Democrat Jim Clyburn. Ultimately, he removed more than 30,000 Black voters – 62% of Charleston’s Black population in the district – out of it. Mace comfortably won re-election in 2022.Whether or not that removal was constitutional is at the center of a case the supreme court is set to hear on Wednesday called Alexander v South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.A three-judge panel ruled in January that Republicans had undertaken an “effective bleaching” of the district, deliberately sorting Black voters based on their race. That kind of racial sorting violates the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. It was “more than a coincidence” that the new, more-Republican configuration of the first district had the exact same percentage as Black voters as the old one. The court said Republicans had adopted a racial target of a 17% Black district and drawn the lines to meet it.Any decision striking down the lines is likely to make the first congressional district more competitive for Democrats, who are seeking to cut in to the razor-thin majority Republicans hold in the US House next fall.But South Carolina Republicans say their decision to move voters was based on partisan motivations, not racial ones. The mapmaker, Republicans say, didn’t even consider racial data when he was drawing the plans. The map South Carolina Republicans enacted is the only plan offered that increases the Republican vote share while all the ones proposed by the plaintiffs turned it into a majority-Democratic district, lawyers for the state wrote in their briefing to the supreme court.“If left uncorrected, the decision below will serve as a roadmap to invalidate commonplace districts designed with a political goal,” lawyers for the state wrote in their briefing to the supreme court.While the US supreme court has long prohibited racial gerrymandering – sorting voters into districts based on their race with no legitimate purpose – it said in 2019 that there is nothing the federal courts can do to stop gerrymandering for partisan aims.The South Carolina case is being closely watched because a ruling approving of the state’s redistricting approach could give lawmakers much more leeway to use partisanship as a pretext for unconstitutionally moving voters based on their race. That could be a boon to lawmakers in the US south, where voting is often racially polarized.While the current conservative court has been extremely hostile to voting rights in recent years, litigants have had some success in similar racial gerrymandering cases. In a 2017 case, for example, the court struck down two North Carolina congressional districts because Republicans in the state had relied too much on race with no legitimate purpose.“The sorting of voters on the grounds of their race remains suspect even if race is meant to function as a proxy for other (including political) characteristics,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a footnote in the majority opinion.“This case stands for the proposition that you cannot use partisanship as a guise to harm Black communities,” said Antonio Ingram II, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), which is representing the challengers in the case. “You cannot use political goals or interests in order to harm Black voters. Black voters cannot be collateral damage to craft partisan gerrymanders.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo bolster their argument, the challengers retained a statistical expert, Harvard professor Kosuke Imai, who produced 10,000 simulated maps that did not take race into account. None of those 10,000 simulations produced a Black voting age population in the first congressional district than the plan Republicans adopted.Another expert witness for the plaintiffs analyzed the areas that were moved from the first congressional district to the sixth to see if there was any correlation between race or partisanship and the likelihood it would be moved. The analysis found that the racial makeup of an area was a better predictor of whether it would be moved than its partisan composition.There are also allegations that Clyburn, one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, condoned adding Black voters to his district and assisted the legislature in coming up with a plan to do so. Clyburn has strongly disputed those allegations and filed a friend of the court brief urging the supreme court to uphold the lower court’s finding and strike down the first congressional district.The justice department also filed a brief urging the court to uphold the lower court’s ruling and strike down congressional district 1. “The court permissibly found that race predominated in the drawing of CD1 because mapmakers relied on race to achieve their partisan goals,” Elizabeth Prelogar, the solicitor general, wrote in a brief.Ingram, the LDF attorney, said that the map South Carolina Republicans had implemented would ultimately make it harder for Black voters along the coast of the state to get someone to advocate for them on issues like climate change. He noted that voters in Charleston, near the coast of South Carolina, who were being attached to CD-6, were being annexed into a largely inland district.“This is about Black voters not having champions in their own communities that are responsive to their needs that are influenced by their electoral power to really advocate for federal allocation of resources without things that will improve their quality of life.” More