US Congress

The speaker pro tempore, Patrick McHenry, who has been presiding over the US House of Representatives for the past two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was ousted, could become the next actual speaker, at least temporarily.Efforts by Republicans to elect a new speaker have stalled after a top contender, the congressman Jim Jordan, repeatedly failed to get enough votes, leaving the chamber without a leader and sitting largely idle on congressional work for two weeks.The father of three with a penchant for bow ties was thrown into the spotlight after McCarthy’s ouster, when McHenry slammed a gavel hard enough to go viral. The North Carolina congressman has since “wielded the gavel with extreme care, making no attempts to test the limits of his unusual role”, the Associated Press noted, basically just gaveling in and out quickly.In the latest idea to resume a semblance of normalcy and allow Congress to pass bills, some want to see McHenry given more power for a while instead of waiting on further rounds of speakership votes. Currently, a temporary speaker’s role is presumed to be more limited than an elected speaker, though the exact abilities of the odd position McHenry occupies have been cause for debate. The high-profile former Republican speakers John Boehner and Newt Gingrich like the plan.The 47-year-old, a Republican, was once the youngest member of Congress, first elected in 2004 at the age of 29. He is now in his 10th term representing North Carolina’s 10th congressional district and chairs the committee on financial services. His political career is long: before Congress, he served in the North Carolina house of representatives and he worked on the former president George W Bush’s 2000 campaign.While the top contenders for the speakership have, at least to some degree, cast doubt on the 2020 election, McHenry voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 win. McHenry helped McCarthy become speaker and was a key negotiator in the debt limit deal that got McCarthy booted by the far-right flank of the Republican party. But he also, soon after taking the interim role, ordered the former speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, to vacate her office in a “sharp departure from tradition”, Pelosi charged.Beyond his new high-profile placement, the lifelong North Carolinian says his most important role in Congress is to “listen to the voters of the 10th district and act as their voice in Washington” and “to provide the highest level of constituent services at home in western North Carolina”.McHenry also saved a child from choking earlier this year, when he helped the congressman Mike Lawler’s 15-month-old at an event. Lawler praised McHenry as a “good friend” who “became the favorite congressman in my household for my wife”, Lawler said. More

The House of Representatives was unable to elect a new speaker on Tuesday, as the hard-right congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio struggled to win the gavel following the historic ouster of the Republican Kevin McCarthy earlier this month.In the first round of voting, 20 Republicans opposed Jordan, while 200 Republicans supported the judiciary committee chair. The result left Jordan far short of winning the speakership, given that he can only afford four defections within his conference and still capture the gavel. All 212 House Democrats supported Hakeem Jeffries of New York, giving the Democratic leader more votes than Jordan.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Jordan initially indicated Republicans would hold another vote on Tuesday evening, but that plan was scrapped as Jordan’s critics doubled down on their opposition. The House will instead reconvene on Wednesday at 11am to commence the next round of voting, but it remained unclear whether Jordan had a path to victory.In a worrisome sign for Jordan, several of his detractors, led by congressman Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida, called for an immediate second vote on Tuesday, potentially indicating that they believed their ranks were growing. Jordan picked up at least one new supporter, congressman Doug LaMalfa of California, after the first failed vote, but that still left him short of a majority.The deadlock marked only the second time since 1923 that the House has required more than one ballot to elect a speaker; the other recent standoff occurred in January, when McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting to win the top job.The House has now been without a speaker for two weeks, leaving the chamber paralyzed. The House remains unable to pass any legislation, even as many lawmakers of both parties have stressed the urgent need to approve an aid package for Israel following the recent Hamas attacks.The chair of the House Republican conference, Elise Stefanik of New York, kicked off the session on Tuesday by formally nominating Jordan and encouraging her colleagues to support him. She celebrated Jordan, who is best known for his past clashes with leadership and his staunch support of Donald Trump, as “an America First warrior who wins the toughest of fights”.“We are at a time of great crisis across America, a time of historic challenges in this very chamber,” Stefanik said. “I am reminded of the book of Esther: ‘for such a time as this’. Jim Jordan will be America’s speaker for such a time as this.”Congressman Pete Aguilar of California, chair of the House Democratic caucus, then nominated the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, to the speakership, and he warned that Jordan’s ascension would represent a dangerous abdication to “extremism”.“A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection inciter the speaker of this House would be a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Aguilar said.Jordan won the Republican conference’s speakership nomination on Friday, after the House majority whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, was forced to drop out of the race due to opposition from hard-right lawmakers. Jordan, who finished second to Scalise in the initial conference vote, secured the nomination in his second attempt, defeating his fellow Republican Austin Scott of Georgia in a vote of 124 to 81.Although he captured the nomination, Jordan’s level of support fell far short of the 217 votes that he will need to win the speakership on Tuesday. Heading into the floor vote, which began at 1pm, it remained unclear whether Jordan had convinced enough of his critics to become speaker. A handful of more moderate Republicans, including Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Lawler, continued to insist that they would not support Jordan, and they voted against their conference’s nominee on the first ballot.“I’m not budging,” Bacon said on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday evening. “I’m a five-time commander and deployed to Middle-East four times. I’ll do what is best for country.”Before the session began on Tuesday, Jordan indicated Republicans would keep voting until a new leader is chosen, potentially teeing up another lengthy speakership election. But after the first ballot failed to produce a result, the acting speaker, the Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, announced that the House was in recess. A few hours later, Jordan informed reporters that Republicans would reconvene on Wednesday to resume voting.Jeffries has called on more moderate members of the Republican conference to join with Democrats in forming a bipartisan coalition, but even Jordan skeptics have rejected that proposal, insisting they would not entertain the idea of collaborating with Democrats.If Jordan can win the speakership, Democrats appear ready to use his victory as an example of the extremism that they say has overtaken the Republican party. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ fundraising arm, has circulated a memo to members encouraging them to highlight Jordan’s legislative record, including his vote to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.“A Speaker Jordan means extremism and far-right priorities will govern the House of Representatives,” the memo reads. “It is imperative that our caucus makes clear to voters just how extreme Congressman Jordan is.” More

As the House gears up to vote for its new speaker, all eyes are on Jim Jordan, a founder of the hard-right Freedom caucus. But while the Ohio congressman and his allies say they will have the votes soon, Jordan also has a long history of controversial views that many of his own party members and constituents are not aligned with.Here are some of the key things to know about Jordan as a politician – and a look into how he might act in the role of speaker.Jordan was closely involved in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the electionJordan was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. As early as November of 2020, he was part of discussions with Trump campaign and White House officials examining whether Mike Pence could overturn the election. Immediately after the election, he met with Trump campaign and White House officials at the campaign’s headquarters to help develop a strategy of repeatedly, and falsely, saying the election was fraudulent, the New York Times reported.On 2 January 2021, Jordan led a conference call with members of Congress and the White House in which they discussed urging Trump supporters to march to the Capitol. The day before the January 6 attack, Jordan texted the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pass on advice that Pence should “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all”.After the violence at the Capitol, Jordan was one of several members of Congress to whom the White House reached out to try to delay counting of electoral votes. He received five calls from Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s closest allies, that night, according to the January 6 committee. The two men spoke at least twice that night. Jordan later said he spoke with Trump on January 6, but could not recall how many times.Given his staunch efforts to spread misinformation, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Jordan was one of 147 House Republicans who voted to overturn the election. He also signed on to an unsuccessful lawsuit Texas filed at the supreme court seeking to get electoral college votes thrown out in key battleground states.Jordan helped seed the lie that the election was stolenJordan has been one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation about the election. Weeks before election day, Jordan accused Democrats of “trying to steal” the election. After election day, he continued to claim that something was amiss in Pennsylvania, one of the key states that swung the election for Biden and repeatedly and falsely tied mail-in voting to fraud. He quickly called for congressional investigations into claims of fraud and supported outlandish investigations by Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani into voting equipment.Jordan blocked efforts to find out more about his involvement in the plan to overturn the electionThe January 6 committee subpoenaed Jordan and four other congressmen after the group refused to voluntarily cooperate with the panel. Jordan refused to comply with that subpoena, calling it “an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives”. The committee referred Jordan to the ethics committee for investigation.Jordan was accused of engaging in a cover-up of widespread sexual abuse at Ohio State UniversityBetween 1987 and 1995, Jordan served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. During that time, he worked alongside Richard Strauss, a team doctor who was accused of sexual abuse. A 2019 independent report commissioned by OSU concluded that Strauss “sexually abused at least 177 male student-patients he was charged with treating as a university physician”.Jordan has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Strauss’s actions, but former wrestlers have attested that Jordan was directly informed of the doctor’s misconduct. Earlier this month, four former OSU wrestlers publicly denounced Jordan, saying his inaction rendered him unqualified to become speaker of the House.“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” the former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC News. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”Jordan is known for disrupting the House – but not getting much doneJohn Boehner, the former Republican House speaker, repeatedly criticized Jordan for pressuring Republican leadership to advance his hard-right agenda. Speaking to Politico Magazine in 2017, Boehner described Jordan as a “legislative terrorist”.Jordan was part of a coalition of archconservative lawmakers that antagonized Bohener, repeatedly threatening to remove him from the speakership. Though they never followed through, the constant pressure and threats ultimately drove Boehner to early retirement.“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together,” Boehner told CBS News in 2021.According to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking, Jordan consistently ranks among Congress’s least effective lawmakers. In the last Congress, Jordan ranked 217th out of 222 House Republicans.Jordan was behind many recent shutdownsSince arriving in Congress 16 years ago, Jordan has played a central role in several of the most consequential government shutdowns. In an attempt to undermine Barack Obama’s healthcare law, Jordan led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. It lasted 16 days and nearly drove the US to the brink of default.Two years later, in 2015, he and his conservative allies in Congress used similar tactics, threatening a shutdown in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, though an agreement was reached and a closure was averted in time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAgain in 2018, Jordan was one of the architects of the 2018 government shutdown that lasted 35 days, the longest in US history. Jordan urged Trump to shutter federal agencies in an attempt to force Congress to fund his border wall. It backfired and Congress and Trump eventually agreed to reopen the government without providing any funding for Trump’s wall.Congress recently passed a stopgap funding measure, part of a deal the former speaker Kevin McCarthy struck with the support of Democrats to avert a government shutdown on his watch. The move enraged conservatives, who then moved to oust him.The next speaker will have to move quickly to address federal funding, set to expire in mid-November, or again risk another shutdown.Jordan has already indicated he will block more aid to Ukraine if he becomes speakerJordan has consistently voted against aid packages to assist Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia, which have become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.As he launched his speakership bid earlier this month, Jordan told reporters that he was “against” providing more funding to Ukraine.“The most pressing issue on Americans’ minds is not Ukraine,” he said. “It is the border situation, and it’s crime on the streets. And everybody knows that. So let’s address those.”Foreign policy experts have warned that, without additional US aid, Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia will falter and more Ukrainian citizens will die.Jordan is a fixture on Fox News, a platform that he has used to elevate Trump and attack the Biden administrationAccording to the left-leaning group Media Matters, Jordan has appeared on Fox News at least 565 times since August 2017, making him the network’s most frequently interviewed member of Congress.Jordan has capitalized on those appearances by consistently touting the virtues of Trump, even as the former president faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.“I am 100% for President Trump,” Jordan told Fox News back in April. He added: “No one has demonstrated that they will do what they said and get things done like he did.”That sycophancy has paid dividends, as Trump has now endorsed Jordan’s speakership bid. Jordan has also used his Fox appearances to elevate his work, as chair of the House judiciary committee, to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the justice department, accusing federal officials of giving the president’s son “preferential treatment”.Jordan supports a nationwide ban on abortionJordan, an evangelical Christian, is a staunch abortion opponent. In fact, he has said the desire to restrict access to the procedure was one of the reasons he entered politics. On his congressional website, Jordan boasts that the first piece of legislation he ever co-sponsored was a bill that would extend protections to fetuses under the 14th amendment.He also introduced a “Life at Conception” act that would ban all abortions nationally. After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Jordan claimed on social media that the story ​​of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped was “another lie”. He later deleted the tweet after authorities charged a man in connection with the case and refused to apologize.Additionally, he opposes same-sex marriage. According to his website, Jordan says he is “committed to defending the sanctity of marriage and the family” and “oppose[s] all attempts to redefine marriage”. More