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      The Conspiracy to End America review: Trump and the fascist threat

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      Donald Trump’s supporters want an American Caesar. Back in 2016, Paul LePage, then governor of Maine, made it explicit. “We need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country,” he declared. Joe Sitt, a major player in New York real estate and an early Trump backer, chipped in: “We don’t have a president, we have a king.”Five years later, January 6 and its aftermath crystalized another reality: Trump found fair and free elections useless. He and his allies had grown weary of democracy. After all, they had lost.The Republican party had a new credo: “Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.”The last time the GOP won the popular vote was in 2004, and before that 1988. Seeking to return to office, Trump has threatened the media with charges of treason and hankered for the execution of Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff.Against this dystopian backdrop, Stuart Stevens delivers his second book, The Conspiracy to End America, on what happened to the party he served for so long, this one under the subtitle Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy. The words are jarring but dead-on. Once a senior campaign operative, Stevens knows of what he speaks. In his view, only the Democratic party values democracy as an end in itself.He did media for George W Bush’s White House runs, then helped guide Mitt Romney to the Republican nomination in 2012. Now, though, Stevens is at the Lincoln Project, a haven for never-Trumpers. Their commercials got under Trump’s skin – to the delectation of Democrats. They were mean and funny. On the page, Stevens picks up where he left off in It Was All a Lie, his book of 2019. Four years furnished plenty of new material. At present, Trump faces 91 felony counts across multiple jurisdictions yet is the odds-on favorite to capture the 2024 presidential nomination. Truth is stranger than fiction.“Trump understood the true nature of the Republican party better than those who were the party’s leaders,” Stevens writes of Trump’s first campaign, launched in 2015, a tacit admission that the author himself did not fully comprehend the world around him. It was about resentments, not upward arc: “Hate was creating a surge of appeal.”Trump beat Hillary Clinton, then lost to Joe Biden. His ambitions were only momentarily derailed. His chief challenger, the hard-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis, faded in primary polling. The rest of the field is running in place or approaching asterisk status. None can land a punch.As Stevens sees it, the late Weimar Republic and the US today have plenty in common. As was the case 90 years ago, democracy could be made expendable, particularly if the donor class goes along for the ride.Back then, in Stevens’ telling, the German aristocracy lost touch with the workers. Fearing communism, they and the industrialists made peace with Adolf Hitler – much as GOP donors opened their wallets to Trump. Stevens leaves little to the imagination: “Like Adolf Hitler, Trump hated the establishment figures who supported him, and they despised him.”He quotes Mitch McConnell, the living embodiment of the Republican establishment, the Senate majority leader when Trump won the White House. With hindsight, McConnell sounds clueless, oblivious to the approaching storm.“I think we’re much more likely to change [Trump] because if he is president, he’s going to have to deal with the sort of the right-of-center world, which is where most of us are,” McConnell told CNBC.“Going to have to deal”? Really?After McConnell helped Trump’s judicial nominees over the finishing line, the senator became expendable. He emerged as a target for Trump’s rants and loathing, including potshots at Elaine Chao, McConnell’s Chinese American wife, who resigned from Trump’s cabinet – if only after January 6. At times, McConnell’s disdain seeped out. Ultimately, though, he maintained sufficient devotion to his Caesar: McConnell blamed Trump for January 6 but refused to vote to convict at the second impeachment trial.In the same quisling spirit, McConnell has said he would vote for Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee again. A coda: just like Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, McConnell never responded to the barbs Trump aimed at his wife.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs for Cruz, Trump linked his father to the assassination of John F Kennedy and, for good measure, called his wife ugly. No matter: “lyin’ Ted,” as Trump nicknamed him, was there to polish Trump’s boots with his tongue.Not surprisingly, Stevens shines an unflattering light on Cruz. He also stresses that McConnell wasn’t alone in trashing Trump and then acquiescing to his dominance: he namechecks the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the New York Republican Elise Stefanik and senators Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn and Tim Scott, all for condemning the insurrection only to backslide swiftly.“Two weeks after the insurrection, Kevin McCarthy was once again the aging fraternity rush chairman who would do anything to be accepted by the Big Man on Campus fraternity president,” Stevens writes.This month, in McCarthy’s hour of need, Trump did not rally to his side. The Californian became the first House speaker ever ejected by his own party – while Trump toyed with the idea of becoming speaker himself. Meanwhile, out on the presidential campaign trail, Pence and Scott go nowhere. The Republican party really is The Trump Show.On Wednesday, House Republicans tapped Steve Scalise, reportedly a David Duke wannabe, as their guy for House speaker. But his candidacy was short lived. On Thursday, he pulled the plug. Other far-right connections continue. Eric Trump was slated to share the stage with Ian Smith, a Nazi apologist, at Trump Doral in Florida this week.“The collapse of American democracy is like the pandemic,” Stevens warns. “Whatever you say at the beginning will sound alarmist but likely prove inadequate at the end.”
      The Conspiracy to End America is published in the US by Hachette More

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      Florida governor Ron DeSantis rejects idea of Palestinian refugees in US

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      Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has rejected accepting Palestinian refugees from Gaza to the US, speaking at a campaign rally in the US midwest on Saturday.“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees,” he said. “If you look how they behave … not all of them are Hamas but they are all antisemitic, none of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”DeSantis, who is tracking at around 12% support among Republican voters for the party’s nomination for next year’s presidential election – far below Donald Trump at 58%– spoke at a campaign rally in Creston, Iowa.Last week, the Florida governor described a pro-Palestine demonstration in Tampa and a “Victory to Palestine” event in Fort Lauderdale as “abhorrent”.In his comments Saturday, DeSantis called on neighboring Arab nations to “open their borders and absorb” Palestinian refugees.Conflating Palestinian freedoms with support of Hamas, DeSantis attacked students at Harvard for their support of Palestinian and humanitarian causes and invoked reports of babies being murdered during the cross-border Hamas attack in Israel a week ago.“We’ve got some serious problems in this country, and we’ve allowed a lot of them to fester. My view is simple: if you don’t like this country, if you hate America, you should not come to this country. We’ve got to start being smart about this,” he said.DeSantis’s comments come as some Republicans have sought to amplify an anti-immigration agenda, with claims by Maga-extremists that the Biden administration’s US-Mexico border policy could allow foreign nationals sympathetic to radical Islamist causes into the US.The New York Post reported on Saturday that House Republicans had introduced new legislation to prevent the United States from accepting any new Palestinian refugees who might be fleeing the crisis in Gaza.Tom Tiffany, one of the congressmembers behind the act, posted on social media: “We can’t let President Biden abuse our parole and visa rules to bring unvetted Palestinians into American communities the way he did with thousands of unvetted Afghans.”The Gaza Act – Guaranteeing Aggressors Zero Admission Act – would also block the Department of Homeland Security from allowing Palestinians into the United States through the agency’s parole program.Separately, the fraud-indicted New York congressman George Santos has said he was “berated” by anti-war activists at the US Capitol on Friday as they protested Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCapitol Police said they had arrested Shabd Khalsa, 36, and “charged him with simple assault after an officer witnessed him have physical contact with a congressional staffer in the Longworth Building”.Khalsa, who said he was Jewish American, said he had stepped back when Santos told him he was in his personal space. Khalsa told Newsday he was trying to ask what lawmakers were doing to stop attacks on “civilians by the Israeli army in Gaza”.“My ancestors, entire branches of my family were killed in the Holocaust,” he told the outlet. “I’m here to say, you cannot weaponize Jewish pain to continue the mass murder of civilians in Gaza.” More

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      Hard-right House Republicans are against Ukraine aid – and they seem to be in charge

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      As he excoriated Kevin McCarthy over his leadership of the House Republican conference last week, hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz accused the then speaker of cutting a “secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine amid its ongoing war against Russia.“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Gaetz, who represents a solidly Republican district in Florida, said in a floor speech at the time.The day after Gaetz delivered that speech, McCarthy was out of a job, becoming the first House speaker in US history ever to be ejected from office. Although McCarthy denied the existence of a side deal, Gaetz’s complaints underscored how funding for Ukraine served as one of the thorniest issues during the former speaker’s brief and contentious tenure.As Donald Trump’s “America First” philosophy has gained popularity among Republicans, anti-Ukraine sentiment has spread through the party’s base and now into the halls of Congress. Even as bipartisan support for Ukraine remains robust in the Senate, a majority of the House Republican conference appears skeptical if not outright hostile to the idea of more funding.That dynamic has further complicated House Republicans’ already difficult task of electing a new speaker, as any speaker candidate must negotiate with hard-right lawmakers who adamantly oppose more funding for Kyiv. Those lawmakers have made Ukraine funding a top priority in the search for a new speaker, and that tension raises serious questions about whether Congress will be able to approve another aid package, especially now that much of their attention has shifted to the war between Israel and Hamas. If lawmakers cannot pass more funding, Ukraine supporters warn the consequences could be deadly.“This is critical to the war effort for Ukraine, which is then critical to the defense of Europe and, I think, critical to US national security,” said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “If Congress doesn’t act now, then a lot of Ukrainians are going to die.”The rising opposition to funding Ukraine among Republicans appears to be a direct response to Trump’s approach to foreign policy, which has resonated deeply with the more isolationist faction of his party. That philosophy has frustrated establishment Republicans, who embrace the party’s traditional vision of diplomacy, remembering the days of Ronald Reagan using the country’s military and economic might to fight communism abroad.“Republicans once stood against communism and thugs like Vladimir Putin, but it’s a shame that not every Republican is speaking out against what Russia is doing to Ukraine,” said Gunner Ramer, a spokesperson for the group Republicans for Ukraine.Ramer’s group, which is a project of the anti-Trump conservative group Defending Democracy Together, often conducts focus groups with Republican voters. Those discussions have seen an increase in anti-Ukraine sentiment in recent months, Ramer said, and polling confirms that trend.According to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last month, only 39% of Republicans now believe the US should send weapons to Ukraine, representing a 10-point drop in support since February. On the question of sending aid and supplies to Ukraine, 50% of Republicans support the idea while 50% oppose it. In contrast, 86% of Democrats and 63% of independent voters support sending aid and supplies to Ukraine.“I think it’s a top-down thing. We recognize that Donald Trump has overtaken the Republican party,” Ramer said. “What Donald Trump tapped into is this isolationist bit of the Republican party, and I think that that is affecting how Republican voters approach the issue.”When the House voted last month on a bill to provide $300m in funding for a program to train and equip Ukrainian fighters, a majority of the Republican conference – 117 members – opposed the legislation. The vote represented a crucial tipping point, as hard-right lawmakers like Gaetz have implored leaders to block any bill that does not have the support of a majority of the Republican conference.In a statement explaining his opposition to the bill, the congressman John Curtis of Utah, a Republican who had previously showed support for Ukraine, called on the Biden administration to articulate a clear strategy for defeating Russia and to specify how funds were being used.“I support Ukraine in their war,” Curtis said. “I support continued funding for their efforts, but these are basic questions any organization would ask in a transaction. To continue spending Utahans taxpayer dollars, Congress must receive assurances to these questions.”Ukraine still has support from many lawmakers of both parties in Congress, who have helped deliver more than $100bn in aid to Kyiv since the start of the war. But the rising opposition to Ukraine among House Republicans specifically, combined with the party’s razor-thin majority in the lower chamber, has made it all the more difficult for any speaker to lead the conference – as McCarthy knows all too well.Although McCarthy has been supportive of Ukraine aid, he used the power of his speakership to secure some wins for the “America First” contingent of his conference. When the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited Capitol Hill last month, McCarthy denied him the opportunity to deliver a joint address to Congress.As Congress scrambled late last month to avoid a government shutdown, McCarthy introduced a stopgap spending bill that included no additional funding for Ukraine. The Senate version of the stopgap bill, which was ultimately shelved in favor of McCarthy’s proposal, had included $6bn in Ukraine aid, and that was already well below the $24bn requested by Biden in August.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThose concessions were not enough to sway the eight House Republicans, including Gaetz, who collaborated with Democrats to oust McCarthy last week. Now Republicans must unite around a new speaker, and that process is proving even more arduous than expected.On Wednesday, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, won his conference’s nomination, defeating the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan. Scalise’s victory may have come as a relief to Ukraine supporters, given that Jordan had already signaled he would not support another aid package. Scalise, on the other hand, received a grade of B on Republicans for Ukraine’s lawmaker report card.Then, on Thursday evening, Scalise abruptly dropped out of the race due to opposition from some of the same hard-right lawmakers, who have also embraced anti-Ukraine views. After the ouster of McCarthy and the rapid downfall of Scalise, Ramer fears that the successful maneuvers staged by hard-right lawmakers might intimidate some of the pro-Ukraine Republicans in the House.“I do have a concern that a lot of even rank-and-file Republicans are going to look at what happened to McCarthy and be afraid to alienate this isolationist part of the Republican party,” Ramer said.Ukraine supporters have suggested a number of ideas to ease the passage of another aid package through Congress, such as including the money in a broader bill providing funding for Taiwan and border security. With House Republicans eager to approve more funding for Israel following the Hamas attacks last weekend, members of both parties proposed a joint Ukraine-Israel aid package.Hard-right lawmakers have staunchly opposed the idea of a Ukraine-Israel package, but such a bill could provide some political cover for the next Republican speaker, Bergmann noted.“It gives a new speaker the opportunity to say that their hands were tied, and they have to bring this to the floor and essentially get Ukraine funding over the line, without being seen as betraying the far right,” Bergmann said.Another idea floated by some Ukraine supporters in Congress, including the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, involves passing a much larger aid package to support Kyiv through next year – thus avoiding another drawn-out fight on the issue until after the 2024 elections.“You just want to make this done through this political cycle, and then you can approach it again during the lame-duck session,” Bergmann said. “[It] makes all the sense in the world. Frankly, to not do that is crazy.”The clock is ticking. Ukraine cannot indefinitely continue its current efforts without more aid, and a prolonged delay could imperil its military and humanitarian missions. If that happens, Bergmann suggested, the hard-right Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid may soon start to see the political tide turn against them, which could prompt a change of their hearts.“The ads sort of write themselves,” Bergmann said. “When there’s imagery of Ukrainian cities getting pummeled, the ads will be: these people caused this, and they have blood on their hands.” More

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      ‘A dangerous game’: Republican chaos and indecision as crises shake the world

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      The US’s closest ally in the Middle East is reeling from what many call its “9/11” and now a humanitarian disaster looms in Gaza. Winter is approaching in Ukraine, which needs urgent supplies to maintain its counteroffensive against Russia. From China’s expansive ambitions, to coups in Africa, to the climate crisis, the world is crying out for leadership.But on Capitol Hill in Washington, Republicans can’t find one. Friday marked the 10th day of paralysis as the party struggles to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy. This after majority leader Steve Scalise won a closed-door vote but abandoned his run because he lacked enough support to win on the House floor.Such petty bickering, grievances and vendettas might typically fascinate seasoned Washington watchers and readers of political insider newsletters but be met by a shrug by many Americans and indifference overseas. This time, however, is different. The ripples of Republican dysfunction could soon be felt across a troubled world.“It’s a dangerous game that we’re playing,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, told reporters on Thursday. “It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching. They need our help.”McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, has put forward a bipartisan resolution with Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, condemning Hamas and reaffirming support for Israel. But the House cannot vote on it until there is a speaker in the chair.McCaul added: “I’m going to remind my colleagues about how dangerous this is. If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need after this terrorist attack. So I think we’re playing with fire and we need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.”The House speaker is the third-highest-ranking elected official in the country, second in line to the presidency. Without one, legislative business is at a standstill. The House is currently under the control of Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who was named as the temporary speaker after McCarthy’s departure, but his ability to move legislation is unclear.Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he would seek approval from Congress for additional funding for Israel in the wake of the devastating attack by Hamas. But the fight over the speakership puts a question mark over how soon such aid could be approved and sent.Biden has also requested $24bn in additional funding for Ukraine but this too hangs in limbo. Although the White House has claimed that the vast majority of House Republicans still support such assistance, there has been growing dissent in recent weeks and the issue was a factor in McCarthy’s downfall.Then there is the threat of a government shutdown that would further dent US credibility overseas. Congress has until a self-imposed deadline of 17 November to pass 12 new bills to fund the government for the rest of the year and into 2024. The leadership vacuum is sucking up precious time and energy and making a shutdown more likely.Biden had spent the first two years of his presidency seeking to restore order and rebuild alliances after the “America first” mayhem of the Donald Trump years. But when Republicans gained control of the House in January with a narrow majority that empowered the far right, that effort was always likely to suffer erosion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “What we’re seeing is certainly shambolic chaos over there on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and they need to get their act together … We’ve never seen a conference behave this way or be this chaotic.”Biden’s speech on Tuesday was described as one of the most powerful statements of support for Israel ever given by a US president; he has previously spoken of his deep-rooted love for the country. Huge uncertainties remain: Israel has ordered a million people to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Hamas could still have more surprises in store; Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, could still open a second front.But instead of addressing the crisis with one voice, Republicans are consumed with a bogus impeachment inquiry into Biden and the publicity-seeking antics of members such as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace. And this week New York Republicans moved to expel accused fraudster George Santos.Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Since day one the Maga Republicans in the House majority have failed to work on real domestic priorities and instead focused on partisan stunts in their extreme efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House.“Their ongoing dysfunction, misplaced priorities and failures now impede the efforts of President Biden to come to the aid of key allies internationally. Chaos, not governance, defines the House Republican Caucus.” More

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      House speaker saga underscores Republican party’s dramatic evolution

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      The US House of Representatives will remain leaderless into a third week as Republicans continue to confront a familiar conundrum: how to unite their fractious majority and prove to a skeptical US public that they are a party capable of governing, not just funneling rightwing outrage and culture war rhetoric.More than a week after a cadre of discontented Republicans deposed their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, the conference is still deeply divided over who should replace him with no one candidate seemingly able to garner enough support to end the squabbling.Congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, won the first secret internal election to be the party’s nominee to be speaker on Wednesday but by Thursday evening he had withdrawn his consideration.On Friday, Republicans met again and chose his challenger, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom caucus and one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill. But the behind-closed-doors vote showed he was still a staggering 65 votes short of the 217 needed to get the job.If Jordan were to eventually win – and a floor vote could now come on Tuesday next week – it would be a remarkable victory for the hard-right faction of Republican lawmakers. After years of driving their party’s speakers from power, they are now on the cusp of claiming the gavel for themselves.But victory is far from certain in a Republican party once known for its iron discipline and ability to stay on message but now seen as a group of politicians scrapping for power and influence among themselves.The long saga to elect a new speaker underscores the dramatic evolution of the House Republican conference, whose own members now fear may no longer be governable. As McCarthy’s short tenure proved, grievance not the gavel is the coin of the realm in present-day Republican House politics. And whenever there is a handful of discontented Republicans, dysfunction is likely to follow.“These guys want to be in the minority,” Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, who represents a swing district being targeted by Democrats, told reporters on Thursday. “I think they would prefer that because they could just vote no and yell and scream all the time.”In another era, it would have been unthinkable for House Republicans to undermine their party’s chosen candidate for speaker. But in present-day Republican politics, there are often more incentives than consequences for breaking the rules and thwarting the majority.Case in point: Jordan was elected to be the party’s candidate to lead the House, days after losing to Scalise in the House’s internal election for speaker. But an intervention on his behalf by Donald Trump, and a refusal by his supporters to stand down, blocked Scalise’s path and afforded Jordan a second chance at the nomination.It marks quite the journey for the Ohio congressman, who the former Republican House speaker John Boehner once branded Jordan a “legislative terrorist”. Jordan and his allies tormented Boehner until he left the post. Boehner’s successors worked harder to appease the right flank of their party, but it did little to ease the internal unrest.Among the many concessions McCarthy made to the far right in exchange for their support for his speakership bid was a rule allowing any single member of the House to force action on a resolution to remove the speaker. It won him the gavel, after an unprecedented 15 rounds of balloting, but it also sealed his fate as the first speaker in US history to be removed from the position.Tensions were already boiling on the right, when a handful of ultraconservative Republicans revolted and triggered his ouster last week. They were angry with McCarthy for forging an 11th-hour deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. It came after McCarthy worked with Democrats and the White House earlier this year to avert a calamitous debt-default, which they viewed as a betrayal.Since his removal, McCarthy has insisted he would not have done it differently.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think it’s important whoever takes that job is willing to risk the job for doing what’s right for the American public,” McCarthy said, insisting he did what a speaker should do when faced with government closure: compromise with the minority party.Yet Jordan has shown repeatedly that he is willing to risk a debt default or government shutdown when the alternative means a compromise with Democrats. Jordan voted earlier this month against a measure that kept the government open.A fixture of rightwing media, the Ohio congressman is better known for his hardball tactics and loyalty to Donald Trump than his legislative accomplishments, of which there are few. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Jordan 217th out of 222 House Republicans in the 117th Congress. Compare that to Scalise who ranked 95th.In 2018, Jordan was instrumental in triggering the longest federal government shutdown in US history. Two years later, he helped amplify Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and voted against certifying the electoral college vote in the hours after the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Over the last year, he has used his position as chair of the House judiciary committee to pursue politically-motivated investigations into Biden and his administration.Several of the party’s relatively moderate members, especially those who represent districts Biden won in 2020, are wary of where a Speaker Jordan might lead. But whether there is an appetite to find a more mainstream alternative remains to be seen.Congress is under pressure to respond to the war between Israel and Hamas, there is the question of additional funding for Ukraine as it attempts to repel invading Russian forces, and the stopgap bill to keep the government open is set to expire in mid-November.With Americans, and the world, watching, Republicans are poised to return to the House floor next week to once again attempt to elect a new speaker. But whether Jordan wins or loses, it all sets the stage for another combustible speakership. More

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      Trump ally Jim Jordan emerges as next Republican House speaker nominee – live

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

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      Jim Jordan emerges as House speaker nominee but doesn’t have votes to win

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      Republicans in the US House of Representatives scrambled to find a new speaker on Friday as Congressman Jim Jordan won an internal vote but with a margin that suggests the disarray is far from over.Jordan, endorsed by former president Donald Trump and ex-speaker Kevin McCarthy, defeated a surprise candidate, Austin Scott of Georgia, who had barely campaigned.According to media reports, Jordan’s won by 124 votes to 81, meaning that he gained only 25 votes since his defeat by Steve Scalise in a previous contest. Scalise subsequently abandoned his bid after failing to secure enough support for a floor vote. It remains far from certain whether Jordan can avoid a similar fate.Without a speaker, the House has been paralyzed for 10 days, unable to take up legislation including approving aid for Israel following the attacks by Hamas, a priority for many Republicans.Scalise, from Louisiana, announced his decision to drop out on Thursday, following a meeting in which it became clear he had no path to securing the 217 votes any winner would need.“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. This country is counting on us to come back together. This House of Representatives needs a speaker, and we need to open up the House again.”The conference met again on Friday morning, seeking to determine whether Ohio congressman Jordan, 59, the judiciary committee chair, a hard-right bomb-thrower and a leading supporter of Trump, the presidential frontrunner, could cobble together enough votes to become speaker.He prevailed but must now seek the votes of 217 members of the full House, including Democrats, in a vote on the floor. Among those he will have to win over is Scalise ally Ann Wagner of Missouri, who told CNN on Thursday she was a “non-starter” on Jordan.Jordan is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus. He was a key Trump ally before and after the January 6 insurrection who refused to cooperate with the House panel that investigated the attack. Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman from an influential Republican family, had suggested the conference would make a dangerous mistake if it elected Jordan.“Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that [then vice-president Mike] Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes,” Cheney, who was vice-chair of the January 6 committee, said on social media. “If [Republicans] nominate Jordan to be speaker, they will be abandoning the constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.”Scott, 53 and the longest-serving House Republican from Georgia, if with a strikingly low profile in Washington, offered himself as a relatively moderate alternative to Jordan. “We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people,” he wrote on social media.In January 2021, in the aftermath of the deadly attack on Congress by Trump supporters, Scott was not among the 139 House Republicans (and eight senators) who voted to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.He also rejected the move to eject Kevin McCarthy last week, dismissing the eight Republicans who made their own speaker the first ever removed from the role by his own party as “grifters” working “in the name of their own glory and fundraising”.Elsewhere on Friday, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, widely thought a possible candidate, ruled himself out of the running – “after much prayer and deliberation”. According to CNN another name widely touted in the corridors of Capitol Hill, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, was planning to stay as majority whip but could mount a challenge if Jordan could not muster the votes.As Republicans hold the House by a razor-thin majority, any candidate for speaker can only afford four defections if they are to win the gavel.Brian Mast, from Florida, acknowledged that Scalise’s downfall so soon after that of McCarthy had created bad blood in the party.“One of the obstacles is simply the fact that Kevin got thrown out [and] Steve wasn’t able to come to the floor,” Mast said. “Just that being the case, there’s going to be people that are upset and … possibly want to take it out on Jim just because that happened.”Patrick McHenry of North Carolina continues to serve as temporary speaker but his limited powers have left the chamber unable to work. Michael McCaul of Texas, the chair of the foreign relations committee, warned that the standoff was sending the wrong message to foreign powers such as Russia and China.“It’s a dangerous game that we’re playing,” McCaul said. “It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, continued to call on moderate Republicans to “break with the extremists” and form a bipartisan coalition.“We are ready, willing and able to do so,” Jeffries told PBS. “I know there are traditional Republicans who are good women and men who want to see government function but they are unable to do it within the ranks of their own conference, which is dominated by the extremist wing, and that’s why we continue to extend the hand of bipartisanship to them.”Republicans have shown no sign of entertaining that idea. Despite the chaos, though, some chose to laugh at their own mismanagement.Mike Collins, of Georgia, said: “The good thing is, at the rate we’re going, I should have my turn [to try to get] 217 [votes] by Halloween. Plenty of time to get my flyers ready.” More

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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