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    Fact-Checking Claims That Senate Bill Allows 5,000 Unauthorized Immigrants a Day

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    Republican critics are misrepresenting one provision of a bipartisan deal to suggest that it permits 5,000 illegal crossings a day.Republican critics have quickly twisted one element of a bipartisan compromise bill unveiled on Sunday to misleadingly suggest that it permits 5,000 migrants to enter the country illegally every day.The legislation, which links additional funding in military aid for Ukraine with immigration policy, would more aggressively tamp down on illegal crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico.The claim has become a popular talking point, reflecting broader pushback by Republicans who have seized on the border security provisions in the $118.3 billion bill and derided them as too lax.But the bill does not, in fact, authorize immigrants to cross the border illegally. Instead, among other provisions, it would give officials the authority to summarily remove migrants, with little recourse, after a certain number cross: an average of 5,000 encounters per day for a week, or 8,500 in a single day.Here’s a fact check.WHAT WAS SAID“The Biden/Schumer Open Border Bill allows 5,000 immigrants a day into our country.”— House Republicans in a social media post on Monday“Here’s what the people pushing this ‘deal’ aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients — a magnet for more illegal immigration.”— Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, in a social media post on SundayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The People Who Broke the House

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      When it comes to Congress, Americans have come to expect a certain baseline of dysfunction. But I think most of us can agree that the current House Republican majority is something special. Overthrowing a speaker for the first time in history. Rejecting multiple nominees to replace him. Members publicly trashing one another. One faction’s supporters threatening opposing members.And so here we languish, with the government’s most basic functions held hostage by a conference divided over everything from ideological differences to petty personal slights: Candidate X broke his promise! Candidate Y ignores me! Candidate Z never votes for my bills! It’s like watching a pack of middle-schoolers hopped up on hormones and Skittles.To help make sense of this dark farce, it is useful to dig into the warring factions that have already destroyed the speaker dreams of multiple colleagues. Boiling down the action so far: A tiny gaggle of eight Republicans, mostly hard-right extremists, took down Kevin McCarthy. Then a larger group of hard-liners quashed the candidacy of Steve Scalise, the majority leader, before it even came up for a floor vote, with an eye toward elevating one of their own, the chronically belligerent Jim Jordan. But a coalition of moderates, institutionalists and members who just can’t stomach Mr. Jordan struck back, voting him down again and again and again — and again, if you count Friday’s closed-conference ballot effectively stripping him of the nomination.The Republicans Who Blocked Jordan and McCarthy From the SpeakershipAcross four votes in the House, both conservative and moderate Republican holdouts ousted Kevin McCarthy and denied Jim Jordan the speaker’s gavel. The colored dots show where those holdouts fall on the ideological spectrum, based on their voting records. More

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      Republican Speaker Fight Has Parallels in the Gingrich Era

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      The current chaos is not the first time Republicans have found themselves rocked by a vacancy at the top.The House speaker had been unceremoniously dumped by colleagues unhappy with his performance and overly optimistic political predictions. Those who would typically be considered next in line had made too many enemies to be able to secure the necessary numbers to take his place. The House was in utter chaos as bombs fell in the Middle East.Today’s relentless Republican turmoil over the House speakership has striking parallels to the tumult of 1998, when House G.O.P. lawmakers were also feuding over who would lead them at a crucial period.Then as now, personal vendettas and warring factions drove an extraordinary internal party fight that threw the House into chaos. The saga had multiple twists and turns as Republicans cycled through would-be speakers in rapid succession — just as the G.O.P. did this week. And in the end, they settled on a little-known congressman as a compromise choice.It’s not clear how the current speaker drama will end; Republicans left Washington on Friday after nominating their second candidate for speaker of the week, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, with plans to return on Tuesday for a vote but no certainty that he could be elected.Back in 1998, Republicans moved swiftly to fill their power vacuum in just one day, unlike the present situation, where they have let unrest fester for more than a week while struggling to overcome deep internal divisions and anoint a new leader.“That was pretty chaotic,” said Representative Harold Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who was already a veteran lawmaker at the time and is now the dean of the House as its longest-serving member. “But it didn’t last very long.”Both dramas began when a Republican speaker lost the faith of some key colleagues. Hard-right Republicans precipitated their party’s current crisis by forcing out Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from the speaker post as punishment for working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. Twenty-five years ago, Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican whose closest allies were turning on him, announced he would not run again for speaker.Mr. Gingrich, whose scorched-earth tactics had returned Republicans to the majority in 1995 after four decades in the minority wilderness, was finally burned himself after predicting Republican gains in that November’s elections, only to lose seats.Representative Richard K. Armey of Texas, who held the same majority leader position then as Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana does today, was a potential replacement, as was Representative Tom DeLay, the powerful No. 3 Republican whip who was also from Texas. But both had political baggage likely to keep them from the top job, and Mr. Armey faced a fight just to remain in the No. 2 slot.Neither even bothered going through the motions of seeking their party’s nomination, as Mr. Scalise did successfully on Wednesday — only to discover quickly that he lacked the support to be elected, leading to his abrupt withdrawal.“Both of them were toxic, and they knew it,” Fred Upton, the recently retired moderate Republican from Michigan who was in the House at the time, said of Mr. Armey and Mr. DeLay.Sensing an opportunity, Robert Livingston, an ambitious Louisiana Republican who commanded a solid bloc of supporters as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, jumped into the speaker’s race and cleared the field. He won the Republican nomination without opposition in mid-November.Mr. Livingston went about setting up his new leadership operation as Republicans plunged ahead with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton growing out of his relationship with a White House intern. Many Republicans believed the impeachment push had cost them in the just-concluded election, but pursuing Mr. Clinton was a priority of Mr. DeLay, whose nickname was the Hammer, and he was not one to be deterred.Then Saturday, Dec. 19, arrived, with the House set to consider articles of impeachment even as Mr. Clinton had ordered airstrikes against Iraq over suspected weapons violations — an action that Republicans accused him of taking to stave off impeachment.Mr. Livingston, who had not yet assumed the speakership but was playing a leadership role, rose on the floor to urge Mr. Clinton to resign and spare the nation a divisive impeachment fight. But Mr. Livingston himself had acknowledged extramarital affairs a few days earlier to his colleagues. Democrats began shouting “no, no, no” as he spoke.“You resign,” shouted Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California. “You resign.”To the amazement of everyone present, Mr. Livingston did just that, saying that he would set an example for the president and that he would not run for speaker. The House was stunned as lawmakers absorbed the news — similar to the surreal atmosphere last week when it became clear that Mr. McCarthy would be removed as speaker after hard-right Republicans moved to oust him and eight of them joined Democrats in pushing through a motion to vacate the chair.Dennis Hastert became the longest-serving Republican speaker in history before Democrats won the House back in 2006. He was later convicted of paying to cover up sexual abuse.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA mad scramble was on to identify a new speaker candidate. Names of prominent and seasoned House Republicans were bandied about, but Mr. DeLay, a singular force in the chamber, was not about to accept one of them as a potential rival.He turned to a fairly innocuous Illinois Republican who had watched Mr. Livingston from the back row of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, a former wrestling coach who served as Mr. DeLay’s chief deputy and would not be a threat to usurp much of his influence. Mr. DeLay and others told Mr. Hastert that he needed to step up to unify Republicans.By the end of the day, Republicans had approved articles of impeachment against Mr. Clinton and coalesced around Mr. Hastert as the next speaker — a rapid resolution that Mr. Upton noted was lacking in the present speaker drama. He said Republicans should have moved much more quickly after the vote to depose Mr. McCarthy to install someone rather than recessing for the week.“It would have been over and done with,” Mr. Upton said.Mr. Hastert went on to be the longest-serving Republican speaker in history before Democrats won the House back in 2006. But his public career ended in disgrace when he was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in 2016 for paying to cover up admitted sexual abuse of young wrestlers committed long before he rose to surprising power in Congress.Mr. DeLay, his patron, was forced from Congress by ethics issues but ultimately had his conviction on campaign finance violations thrown out of court. Mr. Livingston went on to become a successful Washington lobbyist. Mr. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. Mr. Gingrich remains a voice in G.O.P. politics. And Republicans still struggle with speaker issues. More

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      Scalise Bid for Speaker Meets Resistance From G.O.P. Factions

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      The holdouts who refuse to back the No. 2 Republican, the party’s nominee, reflect the many competing groups inside the divided G.O.P. conference.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, may have narrowly won his party’s nomination for speaker on Wednesday, but he is still facing an uphill battle to secure the 217 votes he needs to win the leadership post.Mr. Scalise postponed a vote on the House floor Wednesday afternoon in an effort to win over some of the remaining holdouts who have said they are either undecided on whether to support him, or will refuse to. He has a difficult path ahead of him, in part because the fractious Republican conference includes so many different factions — some overlapping and some not — that make it difficult for any one person to corral.In fact, resistance against Mr. Scalise’s speakership appeared to have grown, with lawmakers newly declaring on Wednesday evening that they were irrevocably opposed to voting for him.Many of the holdouts against Mr. Scalise do not fall neatly into any specific category. Others may prove impossible to win over altogether.The eight lawmakers who voted to oust Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from the speakership have largely lined up behind Mr. Scalise’s candidacy. But Mr. Scalise’s nomination has unlocked a new group of dissidents. If all Democrats are present and voting during the vote for speaker, Mr. Scalise can lose only four Republican votes.Here’s a broad overview of the factions not yet sold on Mr. Scalise.The McCarthy LoyalistsThese are mainstream conservative lawmakers who are close to Mr. McCarthy and are still furious that he was ousted, including Representatives Carlos Gimenez of Florida, Mike Lawler of New York and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania. Mr. Gimenez suggested to reporters that he intends to vote for Mr. McCarthy on the House floor, and Mr. Lawler told CNN in an interview that he had not yet decided who he would vote for.Mainstream conservative lawmakers who are close to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy are still furious that he was ousted, and some are reluctant to back Mr. Scalise.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesHours after the vote, Mr. Smucker wrote on X that the Republican conference was “broken,” and it did not make sense to oust Mr. McCarthy and then turn around and promote those immediately underneath him in leadership. He urged his colleagues to chart a different path forward, adding, “In the meantime, I plan to vote for Jim Jordan on the floor.”Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Scalise have an icy relationship, making the prospect of switching their allegiance even more unpalatable to the former speaker’s closest allies.The UltraconservativesA number of members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus who backed Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a co-founder of the group, have said that they will either continue to vote for Mr. Jordan on the House floor, or at least continue to oppose Mr. Scalise.Many of them have said that they are concerned that Mr. Scalise could try to force through another short-term spending bill to avert a shutdown in mid-November. Bringing up such a measure was Mr. McCarthy’s final move as speaker, and right-wing Republicans called it the final straw for his ouster.“I let Scalise know in person that he doesn’t have my vote on the floor, because he has not articulated a viable plan for avoiding an omnibus,” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky wrote on X, using the term for a single bill that funds the entire government.These holdouts include Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Bob Good of Virginia.Still other conservatives who have long demanded fundamental changes in the way the House operates complained that Mr. Scalise appeared unwilling to accept a new way of doing business.Representative Chip Roy pledged not to vote for Mr. Scalise.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesRepresentative Chip Roy of Texas, an influential conservative who led the bloc of lawmakers who opposed Mr. McCarthy’s speakership bid in January, said he was “not happy” with how Mr. Scalise quickly shot down his bid on Wednesday to change the party’s internal rules for nominating a speaker. And Representative Michael Cloud of Texas said Mr. Scalise had tried to rush his election on the floor, calling it “underhanded.”Mr. Scalise appeared on Wednesday evening to have won over one hard-right holdout, Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida. She emerged from a meeting with the Louisiana Republican saying she would vote for him after being assured that he would prioritize issues like impeaching President Biden and defunding the office of the special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump.But in a reflection of the difficulty of the task ahead of Mr. Scalise, Ms. Luna tempered her endorsement hours later, and on Thursday afternoon, after Mr. Trump weighed in against Mr. Scalise, she said on X that she would not vote for him after all.“There is no consensus candidate for speaker,” she wrote. “We need to stay in Washington till we figure this out.”The Wild CardsThen there are the Republicans with their own, singular grievances. One of them is Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, a former prosecutor who has said he wants the next speaker to clearly state that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen from Mr. Trump and a commitment that the next speaker will secure deep cuts in federal spending.During closed-door discussions in the run-up to the nomination vote on Wednesday, Mr. Buck directly asked both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan who won the 2020 election, and neither would flatly state that it was Mr. Biden.Representative George Santos of New York, who had originally supported Mr. Jordan for speaker, announced on X around 10 p.m. Wednesday that he had “yet to hear from the Speaker-Designate” and had “come to the conclusion that my VOTE doesn’t matter to him.”“I’m now declaring I’m an ANYONE but Scalise and come hell or high water I won’t change my mind,” wrote Mr. Santos, who has been indicted on a litany of charges including money laundering, wire fraud, and stealing the identities and credit card details of donors to his campaign.Representative Nancy Mace criticized Mr. Scalise on national television over a meeting he attended decades ago with white nationalists.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThe group also includes Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy. She showed up to a private meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday night wearing a tank top emblazoned with a scarlet letter “A,” to represent how she said she was being marginalized for her vote.Another holdout is Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who has previously floated resigning from Congress. In a statement earlier this month, she called Washington a “circus” for which she would not sacrifice her time away from her children, adding that “I cannot save this republic alone.”Ms. Spartz said she voted “present” during the closed-door G.O.P. nominating contest and did not know how she would vote on the House floor. More

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      The Two Candidates for House Speaker Are Even Worse Than Kevin McCarthy

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      The crisis of terror in Israel has made it even more urgent that the House of Representatives move past its schoolyard infighting, elect itself a speaker and demonstrate that the United States still has a functional government, one that can play a significant role in supporting democratic allies around the globe. So far, however, the Republican House majority has shown no indication it is up to the job.Only two candidates, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, are officially running for speaker. Neither seems to have a majority of Republicans locked up yet, and both are trying to appeal to the party’s worst instincts — making it clear they would perpetuate the chaos that was unleashed during the reign of Kevin McCarthy, who was overthrown by a group of far-right rebels on Oct. 3. In several ways, Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan would probably be worse.Both express opposition to the Biden administration’s request for additional military aid to Ukraine. Like Mr. McCarthy, both have cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 presidential race, and voted against certifying the election results, a permanent stain on their reputations. But for anyone who cares about basic governmental function, the most worrisome part is that they also seem to be repudiating the two moments when Mr. McCarthy defused a fiscal crisis in recent months — over the debt ceiling and the threatened government shutdown. They want the House to use more “leverage” in its battles against President Biden.“Leverage,” in case you missed the constant reference in the battle over Mr. McCarthy, is a Washington euphemism for blackmail. By holding the country’s credit hostage, or shutting down government functions, a small band of wrecking-ball ideologues can try to get a win on some unrelated matter. The anti-McCarthyites said he failed to use his speakership to rewrite the rules of government in Washington.“Many of us had begged the speaker, pleaded with the speaker repeatedly, to utilize the debt ceiling to leverage spending cuts and reforms,” Bob Good, Republican of Virginia, told the House before the big vote. “Instead, he negotiated an unlimited increase to the debt ceiling.”Of the two ways to achieve political success in a divided government, leverage is the poisoned choice. The more effective path, the one that used to be employed regularly in Washington, is to cut deals and make compromises with your opponents, even if they are occasionally painful and at odds with your principles. That’s how Lincoln operated, that’s how Lyndon Johnson pushed through his Great Society and civil rights bills, and it’s how Obamacare was created.But ever since Newt Gingrich’s era, the idea of compromising with the Democratic Party, of putting bills on the House floor that both sides can support, has been anathema to Republicans. Speakers from that party who do so tend to lose their jobs or quit under pressure, as John Boehner and Mr. McCarthy learned. The preferred method of dealing with Democrats now is to extort them, and though that usually fails, the mere act of trying brings great cheer to extremists who view centrists from both sides as the rotten core of the “uniparty.” (An exception occurred in 2011, when Barack Obama was forced to make massive spending cuts to prevent a default caused by Republicans.)Mr. McCarthy abandoned leverage to keep the government open through mid-November, and earlier to prevent a ruinous default. But both candidates to replace him have made it clear to their restive caucus that they intend to use the leverage he discarded.“If we stay united, we can preserve leverage for the House to secure tangible wins in our impending policy fights,” Mr. Scalise, the current majority leader, said in announcing his candidacy for speaker last week. Mr. Scalise, as a member of the leadership team, voted for the recent deal to prevent a shutdown, but the signal he sent to the rebels was unmistakable.Representative Steve Scalise of LouisianaMark Peterson for The New York TimesAnd Mr. Jordan didn’t even need to send a signal. He was one of a minority of House Republicans who voted against the shutdown deal, against the wishes of his putative ally, Mr. McCarthy, and his credentials as a legislative bomb-thrower are already impeccable. He has helped lead Republican shutdown efforts at least three times: over defunding the Affordable Care Act, over cutting money to Planned Parenthood and (during the Trump administration) over building a border wall. He told Punchbowl News a few days ago that he would insist on refusing to spend any additional money on processing new migrants, though that would violate U.S. asylum law.Donald Trump’s “Complete & Total Endorsement!” of Mr. Jordan — and his debasement of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he presented to Mr. Jordan in 2021 as a reward for feverishly defending him in his impeachments and during the Russia investigation — tell you pretty much all you need to know about what kind of leader Mr. Jordan would be.Mr. Scalise is less incendiary than Mr. Jordan, but is no more likely to end his chamber’s chaos and bring any degree of bipartisanship to the House than was Mr. McCarthy. He blamed “Soros-backed elements of the Democratic Party” for committing acts of violence against Republicans. Long after the 2020 election was over, he continued to suggest the outcome was stolen, relying on a theory about the primacy of state legislatures that was shot down by the Supreme Court. He had to apologize for speaking in 2002 at a white nationalist group headed by David Duke, but also described himself, according to a columnist, as like “David Duke without the baggage,” and opposed a holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Republicans will spend the next few days trying to determine whether they have the votes to elect any speaker, and it’s possible their internal discord could go on for weeks. You might think that the world’s desperate need for a morally persuasive American leadership would pressure them to make a responsible decision, but given the abysmal choice they are facing, that outcome is hard to imagine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      From the Fringe to the Center of the G.O.P., Jordan Remains a Hard-Liner

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      Once a tormentor of the Republican Party’s speakers, the Ohio congressman and unapologetic right-wing pugilist has become a potential speaker himself.As a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, once antagonized his party’s leadership so mercilessly that former Speaker John A. Boehner, whom he helped chase from his position, branded him a “legislative terrorist.”Less than a decade later, Mr. Jordan — a fast-talking Republican often seen sans jacket, known for his hard-line stances and aggressive tactics — is now one of two leading candidates to claim the very speakership whose occupants he once tormented.Mr. Jordan’s journey from the fringe of Republican politics to its epicenter on Capitol Hill is a testament to how sharply his party has veered to the right in recent years, and how thoroughly it has adopted his pugilistic style.Those forces played a pivotal role in the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, though Mr. Jordan, once a thorn in his side, had since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. Now, the same dynamics have placed Mr. Jordan in contention for the post that is second in line to the presidency, a notion that is mind-blowing to many establishment Republicans who have tracked his career.“That notion that he could go from ‘legislative terrorist’ to speaker of the House is just insane,” said Mike Ricci, a former aide to both Mr. Boehner and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. “Jordan is an outsider, but he’s very much done the work of an insider to get to this moment. Keeping that balance is what will determine whether he will win, and what kind of speaker he will be.”The race between Mr. Jordan, a populist who questions federal law enforcement and America’s funding of overseas wars, and Representative Steve Scalise, a staunch conservative and the No. 2 House Republican from Louisiana, continued to heat up on Friday. Both men worked the phones relentlessly seeking support, including making calls with freshman lawmakers, the Congressional Western Caucus and the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-oriented Republicans.On Friday, as they were vying for support, a bloc of Republicans were quietly requesting a change to party rules that would raise the vote threshold for nominating a candidate for speaker, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail.While Mr. Scalise is amassing dozens of commitments of support, so is Mr. Jordan, which could lead to a bitter and potentially prolonged battle when Republicans meet behind closed doors next week to choose their nominee — or spill into public disarray on the House floor.Mr. Jordan’s rise in Congress to a position where he can credibly challenge Mr. Scalise, who has served in leadership for years, stems from a number of important alliances he has formed over the years. His strongest base of power is his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom consider him a mentor. He has built a solid relationship with Mr. McCarthy, for whom Mr. Jordan proved a reliable supporter and important validator on the right. And he has forged close ties with former President Donald J. Trump, perhaps his most important ally.In a Republican House that has defined itself in large part by its determination to protect Mr. Trump and attack President Biden, Mr. Jordan has been a leader of both efforts. He leads a special subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” against conservatives. He has started investigations into federal and state prosecutors who indicted Mr. Trump, and he is a co-leader of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden that Mr. McCarthy formally announced last month as he worked to appease the right and cling to his post.Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Jordan for the top House job early on Friday, ending speculation, however unrealistic, that the former president might seek the job himself. (A speaker is not required to be an elected lawmaker.)“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”Mr. Trump’s endorsement could help Mr. Jordan garner support from his other fellow House Republicans, among whom Mr. Trump is popular. But it is not expected to seal a victory.Representative Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who is the whip of the House Freedom Caucus and a supporter of Mr. Jordan, said Mr. Trump’s endorsement was a “positive” for Mr. Jordan because “Trump is widely viewed as the leader of our party.”But, he said, some more mainstream Republicans aren’t thrilled about aligning themselves with Mr. Trump.“There are some folks in moderate districts that are like, ‘Well, that might actually complicate things for me,’” Mr. Davidson said.Mr. Jordan helped undermine faith in the 2020 presidential election results as Mr. Trump spread the lie that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud. Mr. Jordan strategized with Mr. Trump about how to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject the results, voting to object even after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol. His candidacy for speaker has drawn a stark warning from former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 Republican and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, who said that if he prevailed, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”In a speech at the University of Minnesota this week, Ms. Cheney told the audience that “Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election.”Mr. Jordan has defended his actions in challenging the results of the 2020 election, saying he had a “duty” to object given the way some states changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.His quick rise in the Republican ranks was nearly derailed in 2018, when a sexual abuse scandal in Ohio State University’s athletics program came to light, leading to accusations that Mr. Jordan, who had been an assistant wrestling coach at the time, knew about the abuse and did nothing. Mr. Jordan has said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing.On Capitol Hill, Mr. Jordan initially worked to build some relationships with Democrats early in his career. He and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, once teamed up on bipartisan legislation to protect press freedom. He counts former Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is now running Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, as a friend. Even as Mr. Jordan and Representative Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who died in 2019, sparred over investigations of Mr. Trump, the two men occasionally found common ground on other Oversight Committee issues.But as Mr. Jordan formed an alliance with Mr. Trump and then became one of his most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill, his relationships with Democrats disintegrated. When Mr. Raskin introduced his press freedom bill this year, Mr. Jordan was no longer listed as a sponsor.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said that Mr. Jordan’s true power lay in the love he commands from base voters, built up through years of defending Mr. Trump and advocating conservative policies on Fox News and in combative congressional hearings. Mr. Jordan is known to fly to districts around the country to help raise money for candidates who are aligned with the House Freedom Caucus — and even for Republicans who are not.Mr. Banks suggested that Mr. Jordan’s credibility with the right would make it easier for the party to unify behind any spending deal he were to cut with Democrats and the White House should he become speaker. Such a deal would be a tall order. Mr. Jordan voted last week against a measure to avoid a government shutdown — an agreement with Democrats that ultimately drove Mr. McCarthy from the speakership.“Jim Jordan is a trusted conservative; he’s well-respected by the base of the Republican Party,” Mr. Banks said. “So when we get to some of these tough spending fights and Speaker Jim Jordan is negotiating with the White House and the Senate, that’s going to help Republicans rally behind him and get to a place where they can vote for those deals.”“This is a different Republican Party today than what it was a decade ago,” he added. “And the Republican Party today is a lot more like Jim Jordan. It’s more of a fighting Republican Party.” More

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      Scalise and Jordan Seek House Speaker Backing as Trump Hangs Over Race

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      The two lawmakers sought support from members of their fractured party as the former president threatened to get involved in a potentially fierce struggle over who will lead the House.The two leading candidates to become the next Republican speaker of the House worked the phones and the halls of the Capitol on Thursday, vying for support from within their party’s fractured ranks as the chamber remained in a state of paralysis after the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.Representatives Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had each landed more than a dozen endorsements by the afternoon as they raced toward a vote of Republicans tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. An election on the House floor could follow the next day, though the process could stretch much longer if no consensus can be reached.Far from the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump, whose far-right acolytes in Congress helped lead the rebellion that has plunged the House into chaos, weighed in on what could become an epic struggle.Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote Thursday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Mr. Trump, and that he had said he was endorsing Mr. Jordan. “I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Mr. Nehls said. “I fully support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House.”Mr. Jordan picked up an important G.O.P. backer and cleared a potential challenger from the field with the endorsement of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who had previously been exploring his own run for speaker, according to a person familiar with his calls to lawmakers. Mr. Donalds said on the social media site X that Mr. Jordan “has my full support to become the next Speaker of the House!”Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan are faced with the difficult challenge of attempting to unite a fractious Republican conference that is reeling after Mr. McCarthy’s removal from the speakership.For Mr. Jordan, an Ohioan and co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the task will be to convince more mainstream Republicans that he can govern and not simply tear things down. He met on Thursday with members of the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-minded Republicans.For Mr. Scalise, a Louisianian who has won conference elections before as majority leader, the challenge will be to stay one step ahead of Mr. Jordan, and make better inroads with the right wing of the party.Both men are considered further to the right than Mr. McCarthy, a point Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust Mr. McCarthy, has noted with a sense of satisfaction.“If it’s Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise, there will be very few conservatives in the country who don’t see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz said on Newsmax.Casting a long shadow over the race is Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. presidential front-runner who holds heavy sway among congressional Republicans because of his strong standing with the party base, including many of their constituents.Some right-wing Republicans had been encouraging Mr. Trump to make a run for speaker himself, though the party’s current conference rules would block him from doing so because he is under multiple felony indictments and facing the possibility of significant prison time. Speaking Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse where he is facing a civil fraud case, Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy dangling the possibility of a run for speaker, telling reporters: “Lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party.”“If I can help them during the process,” he added, “I’ll do it.”Back in the halls of the Congress, a serious race was taking shape.Mr. Scalise, who has been in leadership since 2014, has built relationships across the Republican conference. He has been quietly securing commitments through one-on-one calls with members.On such calls seeking support, Mr. Scalise has emphasized that he is second only to Mr. McCarthy in fund-raising prowess, and he has locked up a string of commitments from the south and the Midwest, according to a person familiar with his private calls, who described them on the condition of anonymity.“Not only is Steve a principled conservative, he has overcome adversity far beyond the infighting in our conference right now,” said Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who endorsed Mr. Scalise after speaking with him.One clear point of contrast between Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan is their dueling positions on continued aid to Ukraine for its war against Russian aggression, which has become increasingly politicized and is now regarded by many Republicans as toxic.Mr. Jordan was one of 117 Republicans who voted last week against continuing a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops, while Mr. Scalise sided with 101 Republicans in supporting it.“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Mr. Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”Several Republicans said they were waiting to hear more from the candidates before deciding whom to support.Representative Marc Molinaro of New York said he had spoken with both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan by phone.“There really wasn’t any one person in Congress who worked harder to help me get to Congress or to earn my support than Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Molinaro said.“We now have individuals who have a week,” he added. “And so I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to demand that members like me and the people we represent have a seat at the table, and then make a decision.”Robert Jimison More

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      Here Are the House Republicans to Watch if McCarthy’s Bid for Speaker Falters

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      Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far faced no viable challenger for the speakership. But if he is unable to secure the votes, an alternative could quickly emerge.WASHINGTON — A big factor in Representative Kevin McCarthy’s favor as he labors to become speaker of the House is that no viable candidate has emerged to challenge him.A group of hard-right lawmakers has pledged to block Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California, in his ascent to the speakership, imperiling his path to the top job. But he was nominated by a lopsided majority of his conference and has remained the only broadly supported candidate for the post.The threat that some of Mr. McCarthy’s allies have dangled — that moderate Republicans could band together with Democrats to elect a Democratic speaker should he fail — is highly improbable.But the landscape could quickly change should Mr. McCarthy falter on Tuesday, when the new Congress convenes and lawmakers vote to elect a new speaker. House precedent requires that lawmakers continue voting on ballot after ballot if no one is able to win the gavel. If Mr. McCarthy is unable to quickly win election, Republicans would be under immense pressure to coalesce around an alternative, ending a potentially chaotic and divisive fight on the floor that could taint the start of their majority in the House.Here are the Republicans to watch:Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesThe Deputy: Representative Steve Scalise of LouisianaMr. Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, is in some ways Mr. McCarthy’s obvious successor.Deeply conservative and always on message, Mr. Scalise began his ascent up the leadership ranks in Congress when he became the chairman of the influential right-wing Republican Study Committee and beat out a candidate who endorsed a more combative approach to dealing with party leadership. Speculation about his ambition to one day become speaker has followed him ever since.The party’s hard-right flank is not altogether trusting of Mr. Scalise, in part because the whip has sometimes quietly staked out neutral or mainstream positions when his colleagues have gone the other way. He broke with most other top House leaders in declining to endorse the primary challenger to Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was exiled by Republicans for repudiating former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies.A New Congress Takes ShapeAfter the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.George Santos: The Republican congressman-elect from New York, who is under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn in even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.Elise Stefanik: The New York congresswoman’s climb to MAGA stardom is a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment, but her rise may also be a cautionary tale.Retirements: While each legislative session always brings a round of retirements, the departure of experienced politicians this year is set to reverberate even more starkly in a divided Congress.At the internal conference election to choose party leaders in November, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida pressed Mr. Scalise about comments he made on a private conference call days after the Jan. 6 riot. During that call, Mr. Scalise agreed with Mr. McCarthy that Mr. Gaetz’s comments about conservatives he deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump had been dangerous and “potentially illegal.”Still, many rank-and-file lawmakers regard Mr. Scalise as a solid alternative and one seen by some conservative lawmakers as a more palatable option than Mr. McCarthy.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesThe Firebrand: Representative Jim Jordan of OhioMr. Jordan, a founder of the Freedom Caucus, helped upend Mr. McCarthy’s last bid to become speaker in 2015. He continued to be an irritant to the California Republican when he challenged Mr. McCarthy, unsuccessfully, for the top leadership position in 2018.But Mr. McCarthy worked to mend fences with Mr. Jordan when he paved the way for him to take the top seat on the Judiciary Committee and dispatched him as a pugilistic defender of Mr. Trump during two impeachments.It is unclear whether the more moderate lawmakers in the party would back a bid by Mr. Jordan for speaker. But he has a number of disciples among the far-right group of lawmakers who have vowed to oppose Mr. McCarthy.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe Dark Horse: Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North CarolinaMr. McHenry came to Congress in 2005 at the age of 29 as a conservative rabble-rouser, and was frequently seen yelling on the House floor or on cable news shows.But in the years that followed, the silver-haired, bow-tie-wearing Mr. McHenry underwent a metamorphosis. He became chief deputy whip to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who later predicted that Mr. McHenry would become speaker himself one day. He pointedly took a lower-profile, behind-the-scenes approach to the job. And he developed a reputation among other lawmakers for his braininess and interest in tax and financial policy.“What changed for me was once I slowed down enough to respect the process and to respect the people that I served with in the institution,” Mr. McHenry once told a local newspaper. “I was able to get more done when I slowed down and had respect for others.”Mr. McHenry, who has for years been an informal adviser to Mr. McCarthy, has previously tried to scuttle the notion that he was interested in any top leadership post, saying he would rather lead the Financial Services Committee. He once gave the Republican leader a silver bowl in a joking reference to a famous scene from the crime drama series “The Wire,” in which a former mayor tells an incoming one that the vaunted top job is akin to eating silver bowls of feces all day.He is the only Republican lawmaker whose name has been floated as a possible candidate for speaker who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesThe MAGA Warrior: Representative Elise Stefanik of New YorkWhen Ms. Stefanik first came to the House in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she was viewed as a rising star in the mold of Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who had hired her to work on his 2012 campaign for vice president.She presented herself as a moderate pragmatist willing to work with Democrats and hoping to expand the party’s appeal. When Mr. Trump’s star began to rise in the Republican Party, she remained so skeptical of his inflammatory style that she refused to say his name in 2016 when she rolled out a tepid endorsement of her party’s presidential nominee.But she has undergone a profound political metamorphosis. Ms. Stefanik is now one of the former president’s most vociferous and aggressive defenders in Congress. She became the No. 3 House Republican in May 2021 after the party ousted Ms. Cheney from the post for her vocal criticism of Mr. Trump. More

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      For Republicans, ‘Crisis’ Is the Message as the Outrage Machine Ramps Up

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      With next year’s midterm elections seen as a referendum on Democratic rule, Republicans are seeking to create a sense of instability and overreach, diverting focus from their own divisions.WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis.There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis.Pressed Tuesday on whether the nation is really so beleaguered, the No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, thought of still more crises: anti-Semitism in the Democratic ranks, “yet another crisis,” he asserted, and a labor shortage crisis.“Unfortunately they’re all real,” he said capping a 25-minute news conference in which the word “crisis” was used once a minute, “and they’re all being caused by President Biden’s actions.”As Americans groggily emerge from their pandemic-driven isolation, they could be forgiven for not seeing the situation as quite so dire. They might also be a little confused about which of the many outrages truly needs their focus: the border, perhaps, but what about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and the Wuhan lab leak theory, the teaching of critical race theory in the nation’s schools, the fact that some schools are not fully reopened, Representative Ilhan Omar, or all those transgender athletes competing in high school sports?But for divided House Republicans, outrage may be the tie that binds — at least their leaders hope so.“Look, our main crisis is we’re not the majority — that’s our top crisis,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma.House Republicans, still overwhelmingly in the thrall of Donald J. Trump, have learned over the last four years that grievance, loudly expressed, carries political weight, especially with their core voters. Mr. Trump certainly did not teach members of his party how to express anger over perceived injustices; many of them had been doing it for years. But the House Republican leadership has shifted to Trumpian expressions of outrage since the days of former Speaker Paul D. Ryan, a self-described “policy guy” with a happy-warrior image, and the backslapping bonhomie of his predecessor John A. Boehner.There is a method to all the remonstrance. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who took over as the message maestro of the Republican conference after the banishment of Representative Liz Cheney, hatched the crisis strategy as one of her first ventures, Mr. Cole said, distributing talking points this month on the perils facing the country.He thought the list had five crises; Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, remembered four.The idea is that with Democrats in control of the White House, House and Senate, next year’s midterm elections will be a referendum on one-party control, not on Republican governing plans, said Mr. Cole, a former chairman of the House Republicans’ campaign arm. The Republicans, at least this early in the political cycle, need to seed a sense of instability, overreach and fear, he said.The strategy is also predicated on the adage that the best defense is a good offense. By focusing on an array of real or imagined disasters, Republicans avoid addressing the crisis in democracy created by Mr. Trump with his efforts to nullify the election, which he continues to stoke. On Tuesday night, 21 House Republicans voted against awarding congressional gold medals to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers who protected them when a mob of the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.David Winston, who has long worked with congressional Republicans on polling and messaging, said every new president faces an early challenge, and how he responds helps cement his image with curious voters. Republicans tried to make that early challenge the surge of migrants — including unaccompanied children — at the border.But there is a risk of throwing up too much chaff, he said. And eventually, Republican leaders are going to have to find a theme, like former Speaker John Boehner’s groan-worthy “Where are the jobs?” mantra. Its repetition might have annoyed reporters, but it was effective with voters.A group of migrants who recently crossed the border from Mexico into Yuma, Ariz., waiting to be taken to a processing center. Republican leaders have focused on a “crisis” at the border as well as several other issues.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesRepublicans have long been better than Democrats at imparting a sense of crisis. They made Solyndra a household name, with heated news conferences, accusatory hearings and angry statements, when the solar company went bankrupt and left the Obama administration — and the taxpayers — the bill for a $535 million federal loan guarantee that was part of Barack Obama’s economic rescue plan. This week, an electric pickup truck plant in Lordstown, Ohio, midwifed by Mr. Trump, lost its top executives, its prototype burst into flames and it is on the brink of collapse — with hardly a Democratic peep.The deadly terrorist assault on Benghazi became a two-year ordeal for Hillary Clinton, thanks to the Republican outrage machine, while a botched military raid ordered by Mr. Trump in Niger, which left four Americans dead, has largely been forgotten — even after Mr. Trump fumbled the name of one of the dead and told a grieving widow her husband “knew what he signed up for.”Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic operative, said some in the party had wanted to “Benghazi” the Niger raid, but, “It’s just not who most of the Dem Party and Dem Party leadership is.”“I guess you can say we don’t gin up phony crises, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” he added. “At some point, the public turns back to what they think is reasonable leadership.”Democrats have not been able to get the same traction even on the Capitol riot, which aimed to stop the official awarding of a presidential election to its victor, in part because Republican antics and accusations have disrupted hearings on the assault.Part of the Republican advantage is just a sheer will to muscle through, regardless of Democratic incredulity. One of this week’s outrages is Mr. Biden’s supposed weakness before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a “crisis” that seeks to send four years of Mr. Trump’s deference to the Russian leader down the memory hole.Veteran House Republicans say they have a traditional message to impart.“I think the biggest contrast right now with the Biden-Pelosi agenda is their goal to control from Washington so much of your daily life, from your paycheck to your health care decisions to everything else,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas. “We stand for the opposite. We want to create more freedom for individuals with lower taxes, a stronger economy and a safer nation.”But that message has been lost amid a constantly shifting menu of crises and outrages. At the state level, Republican legislators have obscured very real efforts to curtail voting access by spotlighting cultural issues like blocking transgender athletes from high school competitions or stopping the teaching to children of “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that explores how racism is infused in American institutions.But a drumbeat of cries for Vice President Kamala Harris to visit a southwestern border in crisis gave way to accusations that the nation’s gasoline supply was nearing collapse, which then subsided amid demands for the firing of the government’s leading virologist, Dr. Fauci, and an investigation of the theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, then released on the world.Last week, the target of Republican outrage was Ms. Omar, after a tweet she posted that appeared to equate the actions of Israel and the United States with the human rights abuses of Hamas and the Taliban. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, called the tweet anti-Semitic — though it did not mention Jews or Judaism — and threatened to try to remove Ms. Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, an action they have yet to take.Republicans are also pressing their case that the push by some progressive Democrats to “defund the police” has led directly to a very real surge in crime facing the nation’s cities.It can get difficult to keep up with all the catastrophizing. On Tuesday, minutes after Representative Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, warned of Moscow’s aggressive cyber attacks and a looming Russian stranglehold over Europe’s power supply, Mr. Scalise said, “I don’t know if Vice President Harris understands the crisis is not in Europe, it’s at America’s southern border, and she and President Biden created it.”There are plans to put together some Republican policy proposals. Mr. McCarthy has assembled seven task forces: jobs and the economy; Big Tech censorship; the “Future of American Freedoms”; energy, climate and conservation; American security; “healthy future”; and China. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who leads the big tech task force, said the panels will take a year to come up with legislative and policy responses to take into the midterm elections.“The goal is to be ready on Day 1,” should the Republicans take back the majority, she said.For now, even Republicans who have been critical of their leaders say they have time to formulate an agenda beyond the outrage machine they are eagerly feeding. Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, noted that Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America really didn’t emerge until September 1994, two months before Republicans’ resounding midterm sweep.“There’s night-and-day difference between Republicans and Democrats, say, on border security, where we’re fairly united that we need to secure the border, and I don’t think they care,” he said. “We’re watching small businesses unable to hire people because they’re paying people more not to work. We’re pretty united on those key differences. Thematically bringing all that together and how you message that the American people, I think that’s something you work on.”As for the Democrats, most simply don’t think the crisis talk is working, beyond spinning out clicks for right-wing media outlets and Facebook algorithms that thrive on outrage over such things as the decision by Dr. Seuss’s estate to cease publishing works that include egregious racial and ethnic stereotypes or the switch by Hasbro to a non-gendered brand name for its iconic plastic toy, now known as Potato Head.“President Biden, for all this angst, including Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, has a plus-eight approval rating overall, a plus-four on the economy and a plus-28 approval on the pandemic,” Mr. Woodhouse said.As House Republican leaders were leaving the stage on Tuesday, Ms. Stefanik wanted to reiterate for one last time the state of a nation on the brink.“Thank you so much for embracing our effective messaging,” she told a small clutch of reporters, sitting in socially distanced seating. “America is in crisis.” More