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

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

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

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

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      Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster as US House speaker was a tragedy foretold

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      “In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” These words, delivered at the US Capitol by president John F Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address, seemed particularly apt on Tuesday.Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as speaker of the House of Representatives was a personal tragedy foretold. The first seeds of destruction had been planted when, days after declaring Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection, McCarthy went grovelling at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and made his pact with the devil.Then came last year’s midterm elections when, thanks to Trump’s assault on democracy and his rightwing supreme court’s assault on abortion rights, Republicans underperformed and squeezed out only a narrow majority, handing extremists a huge influence.The power-hungry McCarthy was elected speaker after an epic 15 rounds of voting and, minutes later, publicly paid tribute to Trump for working the phones to help him secure victory. But he had cut a deal with the far right that would come back to bite him, including rules that made it easier to challenge his leadership.McCarthy then spent nine months trying to govern an ungovernable party, described by former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod as the “Lord of the Flies caucus”. As the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has noted, the House Republican caucus is in a state of civil war.It is further proof that the political consultant Rick Wilson was on to something when he wrote a book titled Everything Trump Touches Dies. After sneaking a win in the electoral college in 2016 while losing the national popular vote, Trump has repeatedly been a grim reaper for his party’s fortunes in 2018, 2020 and 2022.The toadies who have shown extreme loyalty to Trump have usually regretted it. His fixer Michael Cohen went to prison. His vice-president, Mike Pence, could have been hanged on January 6 and is now condemned to the purgatory of explaining to half-empty rooms why he should be president. Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and other January 6 co-conspirators face possible jail time.Now McCarthy, who purported to be restraining Trump’s worst impulses, has become the first speaker of the US House in history to be forced out of the job. Trump did nothing to spare him the humiliation. McCarthy destroyed any hope of being rescued by Democrats by announcing a baseless impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and blaming them for trying to shut down the government.Maxwell Frost, a Democratic congressman from Florida, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “The Speaker did this to himself by lying to both Democrats AND Republicans. Speaker McCarthy will go down in history as the weakest Speaker in the history of our country.”No one who has been following US politics in the self-destructive, nihilistic, eat-one’s-own age of Trump will be surprised by Tuesday’s events. Words such as “historic” or “unprecedented” will have to be retired. There is no obvious heir apparent.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, summed it up: “The Republican party of Trump cannot govern at any level; The Maga parasite is eating them alive. There will be a reckoning for the GOP as the next Speaker will be even more of a Maga apologist because that’s what the party demands. No one is coming to the rescue who has the courage to tell the truth, only cowards who hide behind the chaos and pretend to look busy.”It is a recipe for more days or perhaps weeks of inertia in Congress, which instead of tackling social inequality or supporting Ukraine will be consumed with factional infighting. America’s long march of democratic decay continues. More

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      Kevin McCarthy becomes first US House speaker in history to be ousted – video

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      McCarthy was ousted by hard-right members of his own Republican party, eight of which voted with 208 Democrats to remove him from office. ‘Chaos is Speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word,’ said Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who tabled the motion to vacate the chair that led to McCarthy being removed after nine months in the role. More

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      Five key takeaways from McCarthy’s historic ouster as US House speaker

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      The US House of Representatives voted to remove Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair on Tuesday, making McCarthy the first speaker of the House in US history to be removed from the job.McCarthy, who had only been in the post for nine months, set the wheels in motion for his removal last weekend when he collaborated with Democrats in an effort to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. That move prompted the hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida to introduce a motion on Monday night to oust him.Despite efforts from McCarthy and his allies to put a stop to Gaetz’s proposal, their motion failed in a vote by 208 to 218. A final vote was held on Tuesday afternoon and saw eight hard-right Republicans joining 208 Democrats to remove McCarthy from his post. The final vote was 216 to 210, in favor of McCarthy getting the boot.Here are five takeaways from the tumultuous event:The House has a new – temporary – speaker: Patrick McHenryAs we’ve noted above, this is the first time in history that a speaker has been removed so the House has entered uncharted territory.According to House rules, McCarthy would have been required to draft a list of names for the clerk of fellow members, in the event of his vacancy. According to Rule I, clause 8, whomever McCarthy put next on that list “shall act as Speaker pro tempore until the election of a Speaker or a Speaker pro tempore”.That person was the North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry, who has now taken over as House speaker pro tempore, or “for the time being.” McHenry is the chair of the financial services committee, and voted against removing McCarthy.Given McCarthy’s chaotic 15-ballot election in January, it seems all but certain that another multiple ballot election will ensue.This may open the door for Steve ScaliseRepresentative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, currently the No 2 House Republican, has been mentioned as McCarthy’s potential successor. Gaetz notably called out the longtime rival of McCarthy on Monday in a chat with reporters.“I am not going to pass over Steve Scalise just because he has blood cancer,” Gaetz said.Scalise, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment for blood cancer, announced his diagnosis in August, calling the illness “very treatable” and noting that it had been detected early.We’ll likely continue to see a galvanized GaetzGaetz, who had been critical of McCarthy long before the latter took the speakership, lambasted the disgraced politician shortly after his ousting as “a creature of the swamp”.“He has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors,” Gaetz said on Tuesday during an interview on CNN. “We are breaking the fever and we should elect a speaker who is better.”Gaetz doubled down on his vote of confidence for Scalise, telling the network in response to a question of whether he would now nominate Scalise: “I think the world of Steve Scalise. I think he would make a phenomenal speaker.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiven that Gaetz used the vote to boot McCarthy as a means to fundraise for himself, he is expected to make more trouble for the House in the coming weeks.The GOP is now in full-fledged ‘chaos’No one likes to live in unprecedented times, but – yet again – here we are. Eight Republicans voting in favor of removing McCarthy illuminates the burgeoning fissures amid the GOP. Those eight included representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana, and Gaetz.The former Republican vice-president Mike Pence, speaking at an event at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, said: “Chaos is never America’s strength and it’s never a friend of American families that are struggling. I’m deeply disappointed that a handful of Republicans have partnered with Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.”House Rules committee chairman Tom Cole told CNN things are now unclear.“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, including all the people that voted to vacate … they have no plan. They have no alternative at this point. So it’s just simply a vote for chaos,” Cole said.Neither side of the aisle knows what’s going to happen next with some saying it looks ‘apocalyptic’During his attempt to keep McCarthy as speaker, congressman Tom McClintock of California declared that “if this motion carries, the House will be paralyzed”.“We can expect week after week of fruitless ballots while no other business can be conducted. The Democrats will revel in Republican dysfunction and the public will rightly be repulsed,” McClintock said.He went on to predict that Democrats would then “enlist a rump caucus of Republicans to join a coalition to end the impasse. This House will shift dramatically to the left and will effectively end the Republican House majority that the voters elected in 2022. And this, in turn, will neutralize the only counterweight in our elected government to the woke left control of the Senate and the White House at a time when their … policies are destroying our economy and have opened our borders to invasion.”Lest he hold back at all, McClintock continued ominously: “There are turning points in history whose significance is only realized by the events that they unleash. This is one of those times. We are at the precipice. There are only minutes left to come to our senses and realize the grave danger our country is in at this moment. Dear God, grant us the wisdom to see it and to save our country from it.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy ousted as House speaker; Republicans to meet to discuss next steps – live

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      From 1h agoCalifornia Republican Kevin McCarthy has become the first speaker of the House forced out of the job in US history, after a rebellion by far-right Republicans that was aided by Democrats and fueled by frustration over his approach to government spending and negotiating with Joe Biden.The final vote tally was 216 in favor and 210 against.A congressman since 2007, McCarthy was elected to the speaker’s post in January, but only through a grueling 15 rounds of balloting after the same rightwing Republicans who would later plot his ouster demanded concessions in exchange for their assent. In the months that followed, those lawmakers grew frustrated with the speaker’s approach to governing after he struck deals with Biden and the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and, this past weekend, keep the federal government open while lawmakers worked out long-term spending plans.That agreement prompted Florida Republican Matt Gaetz to on Monday file a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. While most House Republicans supported McCarthy, Democrats’ hostility to the speaker, who is an ally of Donald Trump, and a handful of GOP defections sealed his fate.The House must now begin the process of finding a new speaker. Republicans maintain a four-set majority in Congress’s lower chamber.House Democrats will meet at 9am eastern time on Wednesday after the chamber voted to remove Kevin McCarthy from his role as speaker.As we reported earlier, House Republicans are expected to meet at 6.30pm this evening to decide their next steps.Speaker election votes are not expected tonight, according to reports.South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace was among the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership.Explaining her decision, Mace said McCarthy “has not lived up to his word on how the House would operate”. She added:
      With the current speaker, this chaos will continue. We need a fresh start so we can get back to the people’s business free of these distractions.
      House Republicans will convene to meet at 6.30pm to decide their next steps after eight rightwing members joined with Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy from the post of speaker of the House, according to Punchbowl News:The big question before them is who will they elect to replace McCarthy. One obvious name: Kevin McCarthy. Nothing is stopping him from running for the speakership again and hoping his detractors have changed their minds.But if they refuse, the GOP will have to find someone else.Lots of emotions in the Capitol right now, particularly among the many House Republicans who did not want to see Kevin McCarthy booted as their speaker.Case in point: Patrick McHenry, who is now acting House speaker. The way he gavelled the chamber into recess following the successful expulsion vote says it all:Speaking at an event at Georgetown University in Washington DC, Mike Pence, the former vice-president and current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, condemned Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow as ‘chaos’.
      Chaos is never America’s strength and it’s never a friend of American families that are struggling. I’m deeply disappointed that a handful of Republicans have partnered with Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.
      Pence added: “Political performance art in Washington DC does little to address the issues the American people are facing.”Pence represented an Indiana district in the House from 2001 to 2013.Per CNN, Kevin McCarthy had nothing to say as he left the House chamber following the vote that removed him as speaker:Eight Republicans voted to remove Kevin McCarthy, among them Tim Burchett of Tennessee.Burchett said that as he was considering whether or not to support ejecting McCarthy, the then speaker called him and “said something that I thought belittled me and my belief system”, Burchett told CNN.“You know, that pretty much sealed it with me right there. I thought that showed the character of a man,” he continued, but declined to elaborate on what McCarthy said.Asked by anchor Jake Tapper if he would support any of the high-ranking Republicans who have been floated as potential McCarthy replacements – such as Minnesota’s Tom Emmer, Oklahoma’s Tom Cole or Louisiana’s Steve Scalise – Burchett replied “All three of those would be excellent choices, and I think they can do an excellent job. They’re honorable men.”“They’ve never openly mocked me anyway,” he added.North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry has taken over as House speaker pro tempore following Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the leadership role in Congress’s lower chamber moments ago.Per House rules, McCarthy submitted to the chamber’s clerk a list of lawmakers who would take over if his seat becomes vacant, of which McHenry was apparently first.McHenry is the chair of the financial services committee, and voted against removing McCarthy. After picking up the gavel, he recessed the House.Some sharp intakes of breath in the chamber as Kevin McCarthy was removed.McCarthy threw his head back and chuckled – perhaps the only thing he could do – as a couple of members walked over to shake his hand. The upper section of the gallery emptied pretty quickly as soon as the vote to remove was gavelled.California Republican Kevin McCarthy has become the first speaker of the House forced out of the job in US history, after a rebellion by far-right Republicans that was aided by Democrats and fueled by frustration over his approach to government spending and negotiating with Joe Biden.The final vote tally was 216 in favor and 210 against.A congressman since 2007, McCarthy was elected to the speaker’s post in January, but only through a grueling 15 rounds of balloting after the same rightwing Republicans who would later plot his ouster demanded concessions in exchange for their assent. In the months that followed, those lawmakers grew frustrated with the speaker’s approach to governing after he struck deals with Biden and the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and, this past weekend, keep the federal government open while lawmakers worked out long-term spending plans.That agreement prompted Florida Republican Matt Gaetz to on Monday file a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. While most House Republicans supported McCarthy, Democrats’ hostility to the speaker, who is an ally of Donald Trump, and a handful of GOP defections sealed his fate.The House must now begin the process of finding a new speaker. Republicans maintain a four-set majority in Congress’s lower chamber.The vote is nearly over.The motion to vacate is currently leading with 216 in favor, and 207 opposed. Kevin McCarthy is on course to lose his position as speaker of the House.Kevin McCarthy looks resigned as he sits in his chair with his palms over each other in his lap.The number of Republicans voting for his ouster just crossed eight members – likely enough to end his speakership.Matt Gaetz, who filed the motion to remove him as speaker, is sitting towards the back of the chamber, also in an aisle seat, leaning forward in his chair and talking to a few members sitting around him.Standing near Gaetz is George Santos, the Republican congressman who is an admitted fabulist and also facing a federal indictment. It seems like he’s eavesdropping on Gaetz’s conversation.Seven Republicans have now voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker.Assuming all Democrats vote for his ouster, McCarthy is on track to become the first House speaker in American history ejected from the job.Ohio Republican Warren Davidson joined with Democrats to vote for proceeding with the vote to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker.But, interestingly, he just voted against actually removing McCarthy.I’m standing in the House press gallery, which is on the second level above the dais, and currently packed with reporters.The chamber feels tense. None of the lawmakers are moving around, and are barely speaking except to call out their votes. Kevin McCarthy is sitting three rows in from the well, in an aisle seat. He seems to be gripping the arm rest quite tightly with his right hand.Most of the rest of the Republican conference is standing at the back of the chamber.So far, about 120 votes have been cast, and the motion to vacate has a small lead.The House is now voting on whether to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Lawmakers will be called to vote in alphabetical order, similarly to how it was done in January, when he was elected to the post.About an hour ago, a motion to block the removal motion was defeated with 218 votes. That amount of support would also be enough to remove McCarthy as speaker, assuming no lawmakers change their minds.Should the motion to vacate be successful, McCarthy will become the first speaker of the House removed from his post in US history.As Republicans debate his fate on the House floor, NBC News reports that Kevin McCarthy’s office has reached out to some moderate Democrats to ask them to vote to keep him as speaker.There is no indication they are willing to oblige:If Democrats were to save McCarthy, he would likely have had to make substantial concessions to Joe Biden’s allies. One can only imagine what those would have been, but ending the impeachment inquiry would probably have been one of them. More

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      Who is Matt Gaetz, the congressman who led the ouster of Kevin McCarthy?

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      All it took was a single-page resolution for the congressman Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican from Florida, to set in motion a move unprecedented in Congressional history: the ousting of a House speaker.On Tuesday, a handful of conservative rebels joined Gaetz in voting to depose Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker. By a vote of 216-210, the effort succeeded, plunging the Republican-controlled House once again into chaos and cementing Gaetz’s position as one of Capitol Hill’s chief antagonists.It has also brought renewed media attention to a controversial politician who thrives on it.“Florida Man. Built for Battle,” reads Gaetz’s bio on X, formerly Twitter.Gaetz followed his father into politics more than two decades ago. After serving in the Florida statehouse, Gaetz was elected in 2016 to represent a ruby-red chunk of the Florida panhandle.Since his arrival in Washington, the pompadoured lawmaker has built a political brand as a far-right provocateur, courting controversy seemingly as a matter of course.Like Donald Trump, to whom he is fiercely loyal, Gaetz is more interested in sparring with political foes than in the dry business of governance, according to his critics. On Capitol Hill, he has repeatedly disrupted House proceedings, including once barging into a secure facility where Democrats were holding a deposition hearing.In 2018, he was condemned for inviting a Holocaust denier to Trump’s State of the Union address. A year later, he hired a speechwriter who had left the Trump administration after speaking at a conference that regularly attracts white nationalists.Months after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Gaetz embarked on an “America First” tour with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, in which they amplified the former president’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. He also continued to attack Republicans critical of Trump, using language that reportedly alarmed McCarthy, who feared the lawmakers’ words could incite violence.Earlier this year, Gaetz led the bid to block McCarthy from becoming speaker, relenting on the 15th round of balloting after McCarthy consented to concessions. Among promises McCarthy made to hard-right lawmakers was to allow any member to bring a motion to remove the speaker from the leadership position.Gaetz and other far-right members threatened to deploy the tactic if McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to pass any spending legislation, as he did over the weekend to narrowly avert a government shutdown. On Monday, Gaetz filed the motion that resulted in McCarthy’s removal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGaetz has argued that he is acting in the interest of the American people and Republican voters who want McCarthy to stand up to the president, even if that means risking a debt default or a government shutdown.McCarthy has charged that Gaetz was motivated by vengeance after McCarthy declined to interfere in a congressional investigation into Gaetz’s conduct. Over the past two years, the House ethics committee has been leading an inquiry into allegations of sexual misconduct, including sex trafficking and sex with a minor, illicit drug use and misuse of campaign funds, among others.In February, the justice department declined to bring charges against Gaetz. Gaetz maintained his innocence throughout.“I am the most investigated man in the United States Congress,” Gaetz told reporters on Monday, insinuating that the inquiry was an effort to smear him. “It seems that the ethics committee’s interest in me waxes and wanes based on my relationship with the speaker.”In recent months, speculation has swirled that Gaetz has his sights set on higher office. About his future political ambitions, the Florida congressman was dismissive of both the suggestion he planned to run for governor or the US Senate. “If I want to go to a retirement community,” the 41-year-old told reporters, “I’m going to The Villages, not the United States Senate.” More

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      House speaker contender Steve Scalise reportedly said he was ‘David Duke without the baggage’

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      Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who some in his party reportedly want to elect as speaker of the US House of Representatives after the stunning and historic removal of Kevin McCarthy, was once reported to have called himself “David Duke without the baggage”.Duke, 73, is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, an avowed white supremacist who has run for Louisiana governor, the US House and Senate and for president and who in 2003 was sentenced to 15 months in jail for mail and tax fraud.Scalise, now 57, was elected to Congress in 2008. He became Republican House whip in 2014 and was elected majority leader in 2022, as a hardline conservative acceptable to the far right of his party, which has now successfully rebelled against McCarthy.Ahead of McCarthy’s removal, Scalise implored his fellow Republicans “to keep doing this work that we were sent to do” rather than focus on ejecting the speaker.“This isn’t the time to slow that process down,” said Scalise, denying interest in the speakership.Immediately after the vote to remove McCarthy, however, the ringleader of the motion to vacate, Matt Gaetz of Florida, used his first remarks to say Scalise would be “a phenomenal speaker”. He also said Tom Emmer of Minnesota or Tom Cole of Oklahoma might be good choices.The speakership may offer Scalise a tempting prize: if he is elevated into the role, he will become the highest-ranking member of Congress ever to come from Louisiana.His fellow Louisianan, Duke, last made national headlines when he supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 – support Trump was slow to disavow.Two years before that, Scalise ran into controversy, and his remark about Duke surfaced, after a blogger revealed Scalise’s attendance at a white supremacist conference organised by Duke in 2002.Scalise, whose district includes a large suburban area of New Orleans, said he had been seeking “support for legislation that focused on cutting wasteful state spending, eliminating government corruption and stopping tax hikes”, but “wholeheartedly condemn[ed]” the views of the group concerned.He also said attending the conference “was a mistake I regret”, as he “emphatically oppose[d] the divisive racial and religious views that groups like these hold”.Citing his Catholicism, Scalise said “these groups hold views that are vehemently opposed to my own personal faith, and I reject that kind of hateful bigotry. Those who know me best know I have always been passionate about helping, serving and fighting for every family that I represent. And I will continue to do so.”Duke, however, told the Washington Post: “Scalise would communicate a lot with my campaign manager, Kenny Knight. That is why he was invited and why he would come. Kenny knew Scalise, Scalise knew Kenny. They were friendly.”That wasn’t the end of it. The controversy deepened when Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana politics reporter and columnist, told the New York Times that at the start of Scalise’s legislative career, while “explaining his politics”, he told her “he was like David Duke without the baggage”.Grace said she thought Scalise had “meant he supported the same policy ideas as David Duke, but he wasn’t David Duke, that he didn’t have the same feelings about certain people as David Duke did”.Scalise did not comment on Grace’s remarks. But Chuck Kleckley, the Republican speaker of the Louisiana state house at the time, told the paper comparisons between Scalise and the Klan leader were “not fair to Steve at all”.Nonetheless, the Duke controversy has followed Scalise throughout a career in Republican leadership which has seen him survive being seriously wounded in a mass shooting at congressional baseball practice, in 2017; become one of five Louisiana Congress members to vote against certifying some election results hours after the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January 2021; become majority leader in 2022; and, in August this year, announce a cancer diagnosis.The 2017 shooting was an assassination attempt. The gunman, a leftist extremist who was killed by law enforcement, legally bought the rifle used to shoot Scalise and three others despite a history of run-ins with police.Despite that, through legislation he has sponsored and co-sponsored, Scalise has staunchly advocated to keep guns as accessible to the public as possible, citing the right to bear arms enshrined in the US constitution’s second amendment.In the aftermath of his own shooting, Scalise told reporters: “I was a strong supporter of the second amendment before the shooting and, frankly, as ardent as ever after the shooting in part because I was saved by people who had guns.”Last month, discussing his recent diagnosis of multiple myeloma, Scalise said aggressive treatment meant his outlook was improving.Should Scalise eventually secure the speaker’s gavel, he will surpass the New Orleans Democrat Hale Boggs as the most powerful member of Congress ever to come from the state. Boggs was House majority leader before his plane disappeared over Alaska in 1972. More