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      What is the Pepfar fight and what does it mean for Africa?

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      What is Pepfar and why is it in the news?Pepfar is an acronym for the US “president’s emergency plan for Aids relief”. It was set up two decades ago by George W Bush to address the HIV epidemic.It’s the biggest government-run fund of its kind. Since 2003, the project has donated about $110bn (£90.5bn) to governments, universities and nonprofits in 50 countries, either directly or through agencies such as USAid.Until now Pepfar has been funded in five-year cycles. In the past the programme has had virtually unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats. But the next funding cycle (from 2023 to 2028) became ensnared in US abortion politics and the fallout contributed to Congress missing the 30 September deadline to allow another five-year funding cycle for the initiative.What’s the link between Pepfar and abortion?US laws already prevent Pepfar (or any state agencies) from paying for abortion services, according to the California-based policy research group, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). But in May, a coalition of conservative thinktanks and lawmakers began to make waves with arguments that Joe Biden’s administration has “hijacked” Pepfar to promote abortion instead of treating and preventing HIV.That’s where the risk to Pepfar’s five-year budget emerged – because the Republican lawmakers then refused to sign off on a spending bill for Pepfar if there weren’t stricter rules in place to stop Pepfar funds from overlapping with abortion services in any way.According to Brian Honermann, deputy director of public policy at the US-based Foundation for Aids Research, the allegations that Pepfar has been usurped to push a “radical social agenda” overseas are “baseless” and “stitched together from unrelated policy speeches, documents and assertions about how those apply to Pepfar”.What will happen to Pepfar now?The multibillion-dollar health programme is a permanent part of US law. That means Pepfar funding will continue, but it will lose its favoured position of receiving five years of funding at a time.The failure to reauthorise Pepfar will mean some of its built-in rules will expire, including a guideline that requires 10% of Pepfar money to go to orphans and children in need.Will organisations and governments lose their Pepfar grants?The fund has enough money to pay governments and civil society organisations until September 2024 (about $6.8bn), but a state department spokesperson warns that Pepfar won’t escape unscathed in the long term.Moreover, getting funding for only one year at a time will make it harder for Pepfar to plan ahead and to source crucial HIV tools, such as condoms or medicine, at the best prices. This could ultimately imperil the people that rely on the fund’s support, the spokesperson warned.The symbolic power of a five-year commitment will also be lost, says Honermann. “It shows partner countries that the US is invested for a significant period of time and that Pepfar won’t just disappear.”The threat of a permanent ‘gag rule’Another factor has swirled around Pepfar’s funding drama: some lawmakers have said they’ll only agree to restart the five-year funding regime if the fund is once again subject to the “Mexico City policy”, also called the “gag rule”.The gag rule bans organisations and governments from providing or promoting termination of pregnancy services regardless of whose money they’re using to do it. It was expanded to apply to Pepfar for the first time in 2017. It is only ever enforced when there’s a Republican president in the White House, so is not currently in effect.And while there is no finalised legislation that would make a permanent gag rule a reality (and Honermann argues it would be unlikely to get past the Democrats), the threat of it may already have done some damage.Research conducted by Fòs Feminista, a global alliance that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights, found that the 2022 decision to roll back the national right to an abortion in the US had a contagious impact in a number of countries. In Nigeria, for instance, respondents told Fòs Feminista that local lawmakers were using the change in US abortion laws to push back on a more liberal law in their country. Terminations are legal in Nigeria only if carrying the foetus to term threatens the mother’s life.Recipients of US government funding are often so worried about losing it that they enforce abortion laws more harshly than is necessary. Research shows that confusion about whether the gag rule had been revoked at the start of the Biden administration resulted in the policy – and its harms – being in place for much longer in practice.And the Pepfar wrangling and attendant media coverage has already resulted in mixed messages reaching health advocates in Africa. Some South African activists told the Guardian they were concerned that the news would be calamitous for civil society in the country. Such organisations receive the most Pepfar dollars (44%) in South Africa according to 2020 tracking data. The government gets just under 1.5% of the money.Honermann says that there is an intentional political strategy to keep communication about the changes in restrictions vague. “It’s a way to encourage over-enforcement for fear of falling on the wrong side of this.”He adds: “For now, Pepfar will continue as long as funding is made available. But these political threats to the programme are ultimately playing with the lives of millions of people worldwide who rely on this programme.”What has the reaction been in Africa?Dave Clark is the chief operating officer at the Aurum Institute, a non-profit that works on HIV and tuberculosis (TB) projects in South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana, Lesotho and Eswatini.Aurum is a partner for Pepfar’s Dreams project which works towards an Aids-free future for girls and women aged 10 to 24 by providing HIV services, contraception and violence prevention support for women, adolescents and their sexual partners.One of the major strengths of Pepfar, Clark says, is that it’s a sure-fire source of carefully planned funding for global health in a world that is often more talk than action.He explains: “The debate in America should not throw us off saving lives. Pepfar is what it says on the label: president’s emergency plan for Aids relief. That’s its extraordinary power and legacy.” More

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      Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

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      It’s simple math: when the score reads 210 to 8, the side with the much tinier number should lose.Yet that’s not how it works in the US House of Representatives.On Tuesday, a mutiny led by eight hardline conservatives toppled speaker Kevin McCarthy and plunged the House into chaos. Rattled financial markets declined steeply and the prospects for a government shutdown six weeks from now rose dramatically. The 15-round, days-long speaker battle that McCarthy finally won in January might seem like a short dash compared to the marathon to come.The unforgivable sin that led Representative Matt Gaetz and a small band of Republican insurgents to move on McCarthy now? The six-week, bipartisan compromise that the speaker brokered this weekend to prevent a government shutdown that would have further shaken markets, made air travel more dangerous, and halted paychecks for millions of workers, including in the military.Eight members shouldn’t have this outsized power. Leaders who recognize the reality of compromise under divided government shouldn’t be ousted for working toward an accord. Yet our system incentivizes extremism and anti-majoritarianism. It will only get worse until we change the rules and stop punishing what a functional democracy would reward.It’s true that McCarthy all but sealed his fate when he agreed to allow just one member of his caucus – in this case, Gaetz – to call a vote to vacate the chair. This condition of earning the Gaetz faction’s support back in January contained the seeds of his demise; as the principle of Chekhov’s Gun holds, a weapon introduced in the first act always returns before the end of the play.It’s also true that Democrats – every one of whom voted against the speaker – provided the bulk of the votes that deposed McCarthy, as more reasonable voices within both parties failed to chart a path together that did not empower extremists.“Now what?” cried one frustrated Republican after the vote. It’s a great question. There’s obviously no bipartisan consensus candidate. But which Republican could gain the trust and support of the majority of the caucus, and also the victorious far right? Who would take the job under the conditions forced on McCarthy? Why would Gaetz and his allies now settle for anything less? The entire incentive structure has gone berserk.There’s more than enough blame to go around. Yet none of the partisan finger-pointing will solve the problem. Anti-majoritarian rules brought us to this ungovernable place. Fixing them is the only way out.The good news is that’s actually not so hard. If the House elected leaders with ranked-choice voting (RCV), this debacle could have been avoided from the beginning. Imagine how different this would have been. The Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries would have led after the first round. McCarthy would have been second. And the Republican Freedom Caucus protest candidate would have finished a distant third. No one would have earned a majority, so an instant runoff would have kicked in.The Republican rebels would have been forced to make up their minds. When the options came down to McCarthy or Jeffries, they’d have to make a choice. Rather than being obstructionist kingmakers and winning concessions disproportionate to their numbers, Gaetz and his crew would have been heard – and that’s it. Under RCV, a gaggle of Gaetzes don’t get to run the show. They have a voice in line with their actual numbers. And then majorities prevail.If the House used ranked-choice voting, McCarthy would not have been forced into a deal that allowed any one member to call for a vote to vacate the chair. Gaetz and his allies might have been furious that the Republican speaker went around them to win overwhelming bipartisan majorities to keep the government open. But they would not have had the power to destabilize the entire institution. Eight renegades could have criticized the deal all they wanted. They wouldn’t get to win.Now what, indeed. By early November, the House will need to pass a funding package that keeps the government open. The deal this past weekend reflected the reality of a divided government. Cooler heads found a way toward an imperfect deal that reflected the best winnable compromise. That’s how divided government works.The cost of compromise cannot be that the furthest extreme gets to manipulate the game to bring down those who dare make a deal. That’s a recipe for permanent dysfunction – and deepening minority rule.After all, Matt Gaetz didn’t even win office with a majority. Gaetz won his seat in Congress in 2016 with just 36% of the vote – and merely 35,689 votes – in a crowded Republican primary. He has won re-election since then thanks to the power of incumbency and a district wildly gerrymandered to ensure a Republican victor.Gaetz, in other words, represents the fringe of the fringe – a plurality winner in a district rigged to be uncompetitive from the get-go. This is yet another problem that a ranked-choice election would solve. The Gaetz Caucus wouldn’t be able to win election simply by appealing to a far fringe that values confrontation and chaos without any concern for the consequences. We have a Congress filled with members responsive only to a radical minority. If we want a different Congress, one responsive to majorities, one where the people rule and not the far fringe, we need to remake the rules.In that Congress, the fairer one America deserves, forging consensus that Americans desire would be rewarded, not repudiated. Matt Gaetz might be one of 435 members, but his caucus of eight wouldn’t hold power over the rest of us. And those 36,000 primary voters who cast a ballot for Gaetz seven years ago wouldn’t get to call the shots for all 300 million of us.
      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More

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      The McCarthy debacle barely scrapes the surface of how dysfunctional Congress is | Osita Nwanevu

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      While those who follow politics closely are busy parsing what the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker might mean for Congress, those who don’t ⁠– meaning the bulk of the American people ⁠– could be forgiven for tuning much of the drama of the last few weeks out. Ordinary Americans have little faith in Congress as it stands: as substantively or strategically consequential as they might be, the battles between members of our most reviled class, politicians, seem to most like juvenile squabbles.Here’s a detail that might incense them further. For generations, members of the US Senate have carved and scrawled their names into their desks. This rite, the stuff of summer camp and grade school, is, to the peculiar mind of a US senator, something more profound ⁠– yet another tradition, as though they needed another, signifying their membership in an august and noble fraternity.The same can be said of the Senate’s dress code, which was unanimously rescued and formalized this past week after Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer relaxed the chamber’s rules, seemingly to accommodate the defiantly casual Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. Men will be asked to wear full business attire from now on ⁠– a requirement that has its practical advantages. As Robert Menendez, the New Jersey senator, may allegedly know, a suit jacket is a fine place to stow wads of cash in a pinch and useful, in the abstract, for another reason ⁠– disguising, through costumes of respectability, how grubby, venal and unremarkable many of our politicians are.A group letter written in the defense of the dress code described the Senate as “a place of honor and tradition”. “The world watches us on that floor,” it reads, “and we must protect the sanctity of that place at all costs.” Of course, the world usually has better things to do than keep up with congressional proceedings on C-SPAN, but there are embarrassing exceptions, the latest dramas among Republicans in the House among them, though the fact that they’re taking place in the opposite chamber shouldn’t flatter the Senate and its defenders ⁠– “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is nothing more than the geriatric wing of one of the world’s most unserious legislatures.And while much due attention is given to the problem of money in politics and more and more conversations are being had about Congress’s structural defects ⁠– once the late Dianne Feinstein is replaced and California regains its full complement of senators, each of the state’s voters will still have just over one-sixtieth the representation in the chamber of a voter in Wyoming ⁠– we ought to have a conversation, too, about the culture of the place.The inescapable fact uniting so much that grates about Congress right now ⁠– Republican shenanigans in the House, the Democratic party’s sluggishness in handling an obviously corrupt, compromised and distracted Menendez, gerontocracy within both parties ⁠– is that we ask very little of our representatives. Being a member of Congress simply isn’t substantively demanding enough.The irony of all the talk about how elderly our leaders are, and the reality that, in fact, has allowed obviously infirm politicians like Feinstein and Mitch McConnell to retain their positions even as they go catatonic in public view, is that the halls and offices of the Capitol are absolutely teeming with unelected and invisible young staffers ⁠– many of whom are in their 20s and 30s, some of whom are constitutionally incapable of occupying the offices they serve ⁠– who do much of the actual work Americans believe our elected officials do themselves.Policy research, drafting and reviewing legislative language, authoring speeches, drawing up the questions senators and congressmen ask at hearings, writing tweets and statements that go out under their bosses’ names, preparing talking points for media appearances, relaying directives from party leaders about how to vote and why ⁠– as a practical matter, the average politician in Washington today needn’t be more than a warm body with a pulse ready to cast a given vote.Of course, the late Senator Feinstein did her level best to test even that. But the fact that she, as one New York Times headline put it, “[Relied] Heavily on Staff to Function” was only partially a function of her age ⁠– the same is true of all but a relatively small and wonky contingent of unusually hard-working legislators.That’s not to say the rest don’t have concrete and vital responsibilities of their own ⁠– in 2013, the Huffington Post obtained documents from Democratic congressional campaign committee recommending that freshmen members of the caucus spend at least four hours every day calling donors for campaign contributions, more than the total amount of time recommended for visits with constituents and working in committees or voting on the House floor combined, a figure probably comparable to the number of hours spent dialing for dollars on the other side of the aisle.“After votes in the House, a stream of congressmen and women can be seen filing out of the Capitol and, rather than returning to their offices, heading to rowhouses nearby on First Street for call time, or directly to the parties’ headquarters,” Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui wrote. “The rowhouses […] are typically owned by lobbyists, fundraisers or members themselves, and are used for call time because it’s illegal to solicit campaign cash from the official congressional office.”Once call time is done, we might find our representatives making canned speeches prepared by dutiful staffers before a mostly empty chamber, some of which might find their way into campaign ads and materials later.It can’t really be a surprise, given this, that Congress attracts so many who have little fundamental interest in doing the work of governing themselves ⁠– or that it sustains the careers of even those who do well after they’re personally capable of doing it. In either case, the legislator is little more than a cog in a vast machine influenced variously by donors, interest groups, major leaders and figures in both parties, the media, primary voters, and, yes, somewhere in the mix voters in the general electorate, though it should be said that most legislators don’t have to sweat much for their approval come election time.In the 2022 midterms, 84% of House seats were either uncontested or decided in races where the victor won by more than 10 points, with the average margin of victory in all races working out to about 28 points. Nearly 95% of incumbents won reelection. On the Senate side, Cook Political Reports rated nine of the 35 races as potentially competitive; ultimately, all incumbents won their seats back.Congress, all told, isn’t a place most are ultimately forced to leave either by elections or as a matter of their age. Term limits and age limits have been floated as solutions to all this, but another complementary remedy, if we dare to dream, might be party leaders taking it upon themselves to work our representatives harder.The tasks of legislating are now well beyond the capacities of individual legislators alone, yes, but setting the expectation that they should shoulder more of the burdens now foisted upon their staffers would discourage older legislators and incumbents from sticking around too long ⁠– Feinstein might have retired long ago if she’d actually had to do more of her job herself ⁠– and help dissuade layabouts and grifters from seeking office.We’ll never be fully rid of them, of course, and we’d scarcely recognize Congress without them. But making the work of politics feel like work seems worth a try.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump files motion to dismiss 2020 election subversion case – as it happened

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      From 3h agoDonald Trump has filed a new motion to dismiss the special counsel’s 2020 election subversion case.In a new filing on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers argue that he has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”The motion states:
      “Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the ‘outer perimeter,’ but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President.
      In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties.
      Instead, the prosecution falsely claimsthat President Trump’s motives were impure— that he purportedly “knew” that the widespread reports of fraud and election irregularities were untrue but sought to address them anyway.
      The full motion can be found here. As Republicans scramble to find a new House speaker, Donald Trump is mulling visiting the Capitol to weigh in on what the party should do next. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy’s staffers are reportedly working to secure support for judiciary chair Jim Jordan to replace him. It’s unclear why, but it could have something to do with another report saying majority leader Steve Scalise began his campaign for the speakership before McCarthy had even been formally ousted.Here’s what else happened today:
      Environmentalists are outraged after the Biden administration began constructing new border fencing. Joe Biden says he doesn’t think it will be effective, but federal law required him to do so. Meanwhile, his administration reportedly will resume deportation flights to Venezuela, a major source of migrants.
      Trump for speaker of the House? It could theoretically happen, and one Republican wants it to, but it would probably be a bad idea for the GOP.
      A Georgia judge rejected former Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s attempt to get charges against her related to trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election result dismissed.
      George Santos’s former campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to an unspecified felony. It’s unclear what his means for the congressman and admitted fabulist, who is under federal indictment.
      Alabama will get a second majority Black congressional district, despite the best efforts of state Republicans. A Democrat will likely represent it, bolstering their margins in the House.
      Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, is facing criminal charges over her involvement in a scheme to breach election systems in a rural Georgia county. Her case is on course to continue after a judge today turned down an attempt to dismiss the charges.Brian Rafferty, Powell’s attorney, argued in a 213 page motion filed last week that the case should be thrown out because prosecutors had presented misleading evidence to the grand jury that indicted Powell, and failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. The central thrust of Powell’s defense in the case is that she was not involved in the voting machine breach. Will Wooten, a prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office, strongly disputed those claims during a brief hearing on Thursday, saying they were “absurd and unsupported.”Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, said that he had not heard anything meriting dismissal ahead of a jury trial scheduled to begin later this month. “Just purely on procedural grounds, I don’t believe that this motion to dismiss for misconduct … I don’t see that as clearing just the procedural bar of being something under the court’s authority,” he said. “It’s the jury’s role to decide contested issues.”McAfee also pressed Rafferty to give a concrete list of items he wanted prosecutors to ensure they wanted to turn over. Wooten said all relevant evidence had been turned over to Powell’s team, but agreed to have his office again review special grand jury transcripts and other materials to double check.Powell, who was one of Trump’s key lawyers as he sought to overturn the 2020 election, faces seven criminal charges in Georgia, including racketeering, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, and conspiracy to commit computer trespass. She is alleged to have helped facilitate a scheme in which a team gained access to Coffee county’s election equipment and copied sensitive information.Powell and Ken Chesebro, another Trump attorney who was the architect of the fake elector scheme, successfully severed their trial from Trump and the 17 other defendants, and will have the first trial of the group.The Biden administration will restart deportations to Venezuela, as it faces rising pressure to curb surging migrant flows on the southern border, CBS News reports:Deportations to the South American country have been paused for years due to Washington’s strained relations with Caracas, but CBS News reports Venezuelans who have entered the US illegally and lack a valid basis to stay will now be sent home.Last month, the homeland security department extended temporary permission for about 472,000 Venezuelans to live and work in the US:The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a judge has rejected Sidney Powell’s attempt to dismiss the charges filed against her by district attorney Fani Willis related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.Powell acted as a lawyer for Donald Trump, during the period when he and his allies attempted to disrupt Joe Biden’s election victory in the swing state. She was indicted alongside the ex-president in August, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges:And in a taste of what the trials for the 19 defendants Willis charged will be like, an attorney for Powell’s co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro said he has been told nearly 180 witnesses who could potentially be called:Punchbowl News has obtained House Democratic whip Katherine Clark’s instructions to the party’s lawmakers ahead of the expected speakership election next week.There’s not much surprising here, and her instructions underscore that Democrats will do what they did in January, when Kevin McCarthy was elected as House speaker after a painful 15 ballots: repeatedly vote for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries:The big question thus remains: who will the GOP vote for?Should Donald Trump become the next speaker of the House? At least one Republican thinks so.Far-right fixture Marjorie Taylor Greene says she wants the ex-president and current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination to take the chamber’s top post:Legally, it’s possible – the House speaker does not have to be an elected member of the chamber.But as Punchbowl News’s John Bresnahan – a veteran chronicler of Congress – observes, appointing Trump would … well, maybe you should just hear it from him:There’s no saying how a judge will rule on Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, but the case has been slowly grinding towards trial. Here’s Hugo Lowell’s report from last week, when special counsel prosecutors asked the judge to issue a gag order against Trump:Special counsel prosecutors reiterated Friday to the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against Donald Trump the need to impose a limited gag order against the former president to curtail his ability to attack them and potentially intimidate trial witnesses.The sharply worded, 22-page filing, submitted before a hearing scheduled for 16 October in federal district court in Washington, accused Trump of continuing to make prejudicial public statements even after they first made the request three weeks ago.“He demands special treatment, asserting that because he is a political candidate, he should have free rein to publicly intimidate witnesses and malign the court, citizens of this district, and prosecutors. But in this case, Donald J Trump is a criminal defendant like any other,” prosecutors wrote.The prosecutors said the need for a limited gag order had only increased in urgency since their initial request, filed under seal to the US district judge Tanya Chutkan on 5 September, as they cited several threatening statements from Trump that could affect their case and potential jurors.In particular, the filing highlighted Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform that attacked his former vice-president, Mike Pence, saying without evidence that he had “made up stories about me” and had gone over to the “dark side” after he testified to prosecutors about Trump’s conduct.The filing also raised Trump’s post about Gen Mark Milley, the retiring chair of the joint chiefs of staff and another likely trial witness after he was cited in the indictment, that baselessly accused him of committing treason and suggested that he be executed.“No other criminal defendant would be permitted to issue public statements insinuating that a known witness in his case should be executed,” the assistant special counsel Molly Gaston wrote. “This defendant should not be, either.”Donald Trump has filed a new motion to dismiss the special counsel’s 2020 election subversion case.In a new filing on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers argue that he has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”The motion states:
      “Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the ‘outer perimeter,’ but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President.
      In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties.
      Instead, the prosecution falsely claimsthat President Trump’s motives were impure— that he purportedly “knew” that the widespread reports of fraud and election irregularities were untrue but sought to address them anyway.
      The full motion can be found here. Following federal judges setting a new congressional voting map in Alabama that could help Democrats achieve a majority in the US House next year, here is the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker and Sam Levine’s report on the story:The map was chosen from three proposals presented by the court-appointed Special Master Richard Allen. The new map adds a second congressional district to the state, allowing Black voters to choose their preferred candidate.Following the 2020 census, Republican lawmakers had enacted a congressional map that provided Black Alabamans with one majority district out of seven in the state. The three-judge panel found it violated section two of the Voting Rights Act, which bans race-based discrimination in voting procedures, and ordered lawmakers to create a map where Black Alabamans made up the majority of voters in two districts.For the full story, click here:Far-right Republican representative and staunch Donald Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that if Trump assumed the House’s vacant Speaker position, the “House chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday.”She added, “It would be the House of MAGA!!!”Earlier this week, following the ouster of former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, Greene announced that the only candidate she will support is Trump.“We can make him Speaker and then elect him President,” Greene tweeted. Here is video of president Biden’s full comments on Thursday in which he explains reasons why the Texas border wall construction has started after his administration waived 26 federal laws to allow for the construction.
      “The border wall money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t.
      In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” said Biden.
      As Republicans scramble to find a new House speaker, Donald Trump is mulling visiting the Capitol to weigh in on what the party should do next. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy’s staffers are reportedly working to secure support for judiciary chair Jim Jordan to replace him. It’s unclear why, but it could have something to do with another report saying majority leader Steve Scalise began his campaign for the speakership before McCarthy had even been formally ousted.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Environmentalists are outraged after the Biden administration began constructing new border fencing. Joe Biden says he doesn’t think it will be effective, but federal law required him to do so.
      George Santos’s former campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to an unspecified felony. It’s unclear what his means for the congressman and admitted fabulist, who is under federal indictment.
      Alabama will get a second majority Black congressional district, despite the best efforts of state Republicans. A Democrat will likely represent it, bolstering their margins in the House.
      Former Democratic presidential candidate and independent New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said Democrats should have done more to stop Kevin McCarthy from being removed from office.He characterizes McCarthy as a conservative who had at least some interest in actually governing, but is now set to be replaced with a hardliner who will be even more difficult to work with. Writing in the Washington Post, Bloomberg says:
      McCarthy’s failure to reach out to Democrats was inexcusable, of course. But so too was Jeffries’ failure to extend an olive branch. Not only has it empowered the Republicans’ extreme right wing, but it also squandered an opportunity for Democrats to increase their influence.
      Jeffries had a chance to use the crisis to push for a more bipartisan governing model in the House, one that would have given Democrats more involvement in crafting legislation and conducting oversight. It could have been a transformative moment for Congress and the country. But if any informal Democratic overture occurred, it was too little, too late.
      It’s true that McCarthy gave no indication he would have had the good sense to accept a serious peace offering by Jeffries. But even if he had rejected it, Democrats could have shown voters that at least one party in Washington is serious about finding common ground. Their failure to make a peace offering falls heaviest on the party’s moderates, who speak of bipartisanship but, when push comes to shove, don’t practice it.
      Now, with the House paralyzed, not only is Congress failing to do the people’s business, but aid to Ukraine has been indefinitely paused, helping Russia’s war effort and costing people their lives.
      “There has to be an adult in the room,” McCarthy said over the weekend, after keeping the government from shutting down with the help of Democrats. He was right. Sadly, in the end, neither he nor Jeffries could do the adult thing, by reaching across the aisle to prevent Congress from sinking even deeper into dysfunction.
      Joe Biden explained that his administration was moving forward with building a wall on the US border with Mexico because federal law required it – even though he does not believe it will work.Here are comments he made to the press from the Oval Office:Environmental advocates are furious with Biden for waiving federal laws in order to move forward with the construction, even though his own administration said in its early days in office that such a barrier would not be effective. Here’s the latest on this story:For a sense of how the GOP is trying to spin this week’s theatrics in the House, take a look at this tweet from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with winning seats in the chamber:All the Democrats you see there represent swing or red districts, and many won re-election only narrowly last year, when Joe Biden’s allies overperformed expectations thanks to factors like the downfall of Roe v Wade and successful warnings about GOP extremism.The Democratic caucus was unanimous in voting to oust Kevin McCarthy, arguing that they were merely keeping with the common practice of the minority party in the House refusing to support the majority’s choice for speaker.Donald Trump is considering meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol next week, a source familiar with the former president’s plans tells the Guardian, as his party works to elect a new speaker following Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow.Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination, and has been endorsed by several House lawmakers. He has denied involvement in congressman Matt Gaetz’s successful effort to remove McCarthy from power, and both lawmakers call themselves Trump allies.More hints of the dynamics of the speaker’s race within the House Republican Conference are emerging.The latest report is from the Messenger, which, citing unnamed sources, reports that Steve Scalise began campaigning to replace Kevin McCarthy even before he had been officially ousted.Scalise, the majority leader, is one of two major candidates who have declared their candidacy, along with judiciary chair Jim Jordan. Both are staunch conservatives, and the Messenger’s report may explain why McCarthy’s aides are reportedly encouraging lawmakers to support Jordan:
      Kevin McCarthy had just been ousted as speaker of the House. Republicans — and the entire Congress — were stunned. Yet McCarthy’s deputy, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., wasted no time, as he quietly launched a bid to become the next speaker, multiple sources tell The Messenger.
      Four Republican sources say Scalise started his campaign for speaker on Tuesday evening, moments after the House approved a far-right motion to vacate McCarthy from the speakership, before any other member had formally declared a candidacy.
      One House Republican who was lobbied by Scalise early Wednesday morning said the Louisiana Republican’s outreach was “was too early.”
      “The body wasn’t even cold,” the lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the speaker’s race, told The Messenger. “It was bullsh–.”
      The race to replace McCarthy has just two declared candidates so far: Scalise, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. There is also Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., who has fielded support from members but has not yet formally announced a bid.
      Another thing that could prove pivotal to determining control of the House next year: the revolt that ousted Kevin McCarthy from office.His ouster was unprecedented, and the GOP is still digesting its implications for their broader campaign to hold onto the House, and regain the senate and White House next year. One lawmaker, Ohio’s Max Miller, told CNN it set the party back: More

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      Kevin McCarthy is as responsible as anyone for his own downfall | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      This week, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker of the House of Representatives in history to be voted out of office. It was a fitting end to his speakership, one in which McCarthy had served only at the pleasure of a nihilistic bloc of far-right Republicans. It was little wonder, then, that he seemed almost jolly as he announced at a press conference that he didn’t intend to run for the office again.Far more galling was McCarthy’s attempt at the same event to present himself, in contrast to those who ousted him, as some sort of force for moderation and reasonableness. The truth is that McCarthy has been at the cutting edge of his party’s descent into madness, encouraging its worst instincts and indulging its most destructive personalities. People sometimes say that the congressional Republican party has become “ungovernable”. It’s more accurate to say that it has been deliberately radicalized – and that Kevin McCarthy played a key role in that process.Take a look down the list of recent Republican outrages and you’ll find McCarthy implicated at every turn. Flirting with birtherism? Check. Joking about physically attacking Nancy Pelosi, even after a violent mob stormed the Capitol to search for her? Check. Angrily demanding that other Republicans defend Donald Trump after the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump seemed to admit to committing sexual assault? Yep, that was Kevin.Perhaps most egregious have been McCarthy’s attempts to aid Trump in subverting the 2020 election, and then to minimize the January 6 insurrection which followed. Just hours after the deadly attack on the Capitol, McCarthy voted to reject Biden’s lawful election, citing spurious conspiracy theories. Although McCarthy briefly condemned the violence of that day, he soon moved to reconcile with Trump and became a firm opponent of imposing any sort of accountability on those responsible. In one of his most outrageous acts, he released thousands of hours of Capitol security video to Tucker Carlson, allowing the Fox News host to cherry-pick footage and spin the attack as merely a peaceful protest.McCarthy also defended and elevated the very worst members of his own caucus, declining to endorse their opponents in primaries or to marginalize them once they made it to the chamber. He was an early supporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who has supported QAnon conspiracy theories, called for prominent Democrats to be executed, and made racist and antisemitic remarks. Once she was seated, Greene emerged as one of McCarthy’s closest allies and his conduit to the Trumpian base. When Trump, Greene and other Republicans called for an inquiry into the possibility of impeaching Joe Biden over spurious allegations of corruption, McCarthy was happy to oblige.Even on the more mundane issues of taxing and spending which ultimately led to his ouster, McCarthy did nothing to quiet his party’s worst instincts. The speaker supports the practice of using the annual vote on raising the debt ceiling to hold the government hostage, threatening an economy-wrecking default in order to leverage policy concessions. After using that tactic earlier this year to force Democrats into a deal which would cut spending, he then reneged on it and sent the country hurtling towards a government shutdown. His management of the chaos which ensued proved to be his downfall.By actively working to radicalize the Republican party in so many different ways, McCarthy now bears as much responsibility as anyone else for the abject state in which the Republican party finds itself. Embittered and delusional, Republicans cannot pull themselves together enough to perform even the most basic tasks of governing. The speaker’s chair is vacant as the country heads towards another government shutdown, and Republican congressmen have gone back to their districts to nurse their wounds for a week. When they return there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to cohere around a new choice for speaker – or that whoever they pick will do a better job than McCarthy did.Nobody should welcome this paralysis in the nation’s legislature. But if there’s a bright spot in all of this, it’s the fact that Democrats are well-placed to make hay from the Republicans’ self-inflicted wounds. Voters’ rejection of the Republican party’s radicalization is one of the reasons that Democrats did so well in the 2022 midterm elections. For all of the schadenfreude currently directed at Republicans, it’s Democrats like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi who deserve credit for denying Republicans a bigger majority and putting them in this bind to begin with. The struggle against Maga extremism has proven motivational for many voters, and McCarthy only helped Democrats to make the case.Ultimately, though, a two-party democracy cannot survive and prosper if one of its parties becomes so consumed by nihilism. It’s no surprise that Republican attacks on democracy and the basic norms of common decency make it so hard for them to navigate any task requiring compromise or reasonableness. But the corrosion that is eating away at their own ranks is unlikely to stop there. It’s also threatening to damage the country, be it through a catastrophic debt default or another outpouring of violence. That threat will remain until a critical mass of Republicans and their leaders will stand up and say: no more. Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t. Will anyone else?
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      Biden calls to ‘change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington’; Trump denies involvement in McCarthy removal – as it happened

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      From 3h agoIn a speech at the White House, Joe Biden said that despite Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House, Democrats were willing to work with the GOP to pass spending bills and avoid a government shutdown that will otherwise occur in November.“We cannot and should not again be faced with 11th-hour decision of brinksmanship that threatens to shut down the government,” Biden said.“More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” he added. “You know, we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies, need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another.”Biden said he and the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, believe “our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. We were prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people”.Republicans in the House were reeling after far-right insurgents yesterday orchestrated the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The majority leader Steve Scalise and the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan have both announced they will run to replace him, while Donald Trump said he had nothing to do with McCarthy’s overthrow. At the White House, Joe Biden reiterated that House Democrats are willing to work with their GOP colleagues to prevent a still-looming government shutdown, while calling “to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington”.Here’s what else happened today:
      The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer warned the breakdown in the House threatens national security.
      At least one GOP congressman wants the architect of McCarthy’s overthrow, Matt Gaetz, to be kicked out of the conference.
      Will McCarthy’s downfall tip the scales of US politics ahead of next year’s elections? One analyst doesn’t think so, but warned it could nonetheless have unpredictable effects.
      Republicans are so angry Democrats helped remove McCarthy that they are kicking veteran lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their Capitol offices.
      Mitch McConnell says the next speaker of the House should change the rules so that what happened to McCarthy does not happen to them.
      In New York City, Donald Trump returned for a third day of trial.Judge Arthur Engoron is determining how much in damages Trump and his family must pay after finding they fraudulently inflated their assets for years. Yesterday, the judge imposed a gag order on the notoriously loquacious former president after he attacked Engoron’s clerk on social media.Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe with the latest on the trial:Donald Trump returned to his New York civil fraud trial on Wednesday a day after running afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.The former US president and Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race is voluntarily taking time out from the campaign trail to attend the trial. New York attorney general Letitia James’s lawsuit accuses Trump and his business of deceiving banks, insurers and others by providing financial statements that greatly exaggerated his wealth.Judge Arthur Engoron already has ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating the values of prized assets including his Trump Tower penthouse. The ruling could, if upheld on appeal, cost Trump control of his signature skyscraper and some other properties.Trump denies any wrongdoing. With familiar rhetoric, on his way into court Wednesday, he called James “incompetent”, portrayed her as part of a broader Democratic effort to weaken his 2024 prospects and termed the trial “a disgrace”.Trump has frequently vented in the courthouse hallway and on social media about the trial, James and Judge Engoron, also a Democrat.But after he assailed Engoron’s principal law clerk on social media on Tuesday, the judge imposed a limited gag order, commanding all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers. The judge told Trump to delete the “disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post”, and the former president took it down.Here’s a story to watch.Politico reports that one House Republican, Mike Lawler, thinks Matt Gaetz should be expelled from the party’s conference for engineering Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow:As Punchbowl News points out, Gaetz’s foes may be able to clear that bar:In the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell advised the next speaker of the House to “get rid of the motion to vacate”.As part of the deal he struck with far-right holdouts to end their blockade that prevented him being elected to the speaker’s post in January, Kevin McCarthy agreed to lower the threshold for any House lawmaker to make the motion to one. Matt Gaetz, one of those who objected to McCarthy’s initial election, took it upon himself to on Monday make a motion to vacate, leading to McCarthy’s ouster the next day.Here’s more from McConnell, who also indicated his party was ready to work with Senate Democrats on passing bills to fund the government over the fiscal year:A Texas Republican congressman said that he would nominate ex-president Donald Trump to assume the position of the next speaker of the House following Republicans’ ouster of Kevin McCarthy. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Troy Nehls said: “This week, when the US House of Representatives reconvenes, my first order of business will be to nominate Donald J Trump for speaker of the US House of Representatives.
      “President Trump, the greatest president of my lifetime, has a proven record of putting America first and will make the House great again.”
      The speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, though no speaker has ever assumed the role without holding a seat.Trump’s name has been floated before, including during the 15-vote marathon rightwingers put McCarthy through in January before allowing him to take up the gavel.On Tuesday, Nehls was not among the rightwingers who voted to remove McCarthy. Another congressman, Greg Steube of Florida, also said he would back Trump for speaker.For the full story, click here:Ohio’s far-right congressman Jim Jordan, who confirmed his run for House speaker, tweeted the following on Wednesday:“Secure the border. Get spending under control. Fix the institution. Unify the party,” he wrote.Jordan’s tweet follows his public plea for support for the House speaker position that he issued earlier today:
      We are at a critical crossroad in our nation’s history. Now is the time for our Republican conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans. The problems we face are challenging, but they are not insurmountable. We can focus on the changes that improve the country and unite us in offering real solutions. But no matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
      Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman who has confirmed a run for House speaker, is a celebrity on the far right of US politics – and a magnet for controversy whom 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.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.Joe Biden was asked what his advice would be for the next House speaker, to which he laughed before replying:
      That’s above my pay grade.
      Here’s House majority leader Steve Scalise’s full letter to colleagues announcing his decision to run to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker.Republicans in the House are reeling after far-right insurgents yesterday orchestrated the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The majority leader Steve Scalise and the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan have both announced they will run to replace him, while Donald Trump said he had nothing to do with McCarthy’s overthrow. At the White House, Joe Biden reiterated that House Democrats are willing to work with their GOP colleagues to prevent a still-looming government shutdown, while calling “to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington”.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer warned the breakdown in the House threatens national security.
      Will McCarthy’s downfall tip the scales of American politics ahead of next year’s elections? One analyst doesn’t think so, but warned it could nonetheless have unpredictable effects.
      Republicans are so mad Democrats helped remove McCarthy that they are kicking veteran lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their Capitol offices.
      The House majority leader, Steve Scalise, has officially announced that he will run to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker.The Louisiana congressman currently occupies the No 2 role among the chamber’s Republicans, and in a letter to colleagues, he cast himself as a leader who would rededicate the GOP to the work its lawmakers were elected to do.“We all came here to save this country from being taken down a dangerous path of destruction. We don’t sacrifice time with our families to come to Washington to fight over the small things – we are here because we care about our children’s futures and the kind of country they will grow up in. Under the failed leadership of President Biden, our country is being pushed to the brink,” his letter began.Scalise is a survivor of a 2017 mass shooting at a baseball game practice in Virginia, a fact he mentioned in his pitch to Republicans:
      God already gave me another chance at life. I believe we were all put here for a purpose. This next chapter won’t be easy, but I know what it takes to fight and I am prepared for the battles that lie ahead. I humbly ask you for your support on this mission to be your Speaker of the House.
      In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden said that despite Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House, Democrats were willing to work with the GOP to pass spending bills and avoid a government shutdown that will otherwise occur in November.“We cannot and should not again be faced with 11th-hour decision of brinksmanship that threatens to shut down the government,” Biden said.“More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” he added. “You know, we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies, need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another.”Biden said he and the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, believe “our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. We were prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people”.Larry Sabato, a prominent University of Virginia political analyst, has weighed in with some thoughts about the wider ramifications of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster.As dramatic as yesterday’s events may have been, Congress’s inner workings are not exactly the sort of thing most Americans pay daily attention to. When they cast ballots in November 2024 to decide whether Joe Biden gets a second term, and which party controls Congress, issues like the state of the economy and perceptions of crime and candidates’ fitness to serve are instead expected to be among the many things voters weigh.Thus, in Sabato’s crystal ball newsletter, he concludes that McCarthy’s removal won’t necessarily tip the political scales by itself, but could spark chains of events that affect the fortunes of both parties:
      We doubt there is much actual political fallout here, but one thing to monitor going forward is how much more dysfunctional the House becomes. The chances of a shutdown, which McCarthy narrowly avoided thanks to Democratic votes over the weekend, just shot up, as we are going to be doing the shutdown dance again in November and the new GOP speaker (assuming there is one) may need to take a harder line in an attempt to satiate his most insatiable members. It may be that this speaker gets a reprieve from some of the hardliners simply because he or she is not McCarthy. Democrats, meanwhile, declined to throw McCarthy a lifeline during the motion to vacate, opting en masse to vote with the Republican rebels. The Democrats seemed legitimately angry at McCarthy for offering them less than nothing for their support, which he clearly needed (or he just needed some Democrats to vote present on the motion to vacate, allowing loyal Republicans to deliver a majority of those voting).
      Democrats also will likely relish the continued turbulence on the Republican side. That said, there are risks to them, too. Yes, it would probably be easy to blame Republicans for a future shutdown, but an extended one that has an impact on the economy could have repercussions for the president, too, as Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher argued when he suggested that Democrats bail out McCarthy. The Democrats voting for the motion to vacate is somewhat reminiscent of how their campaign arms, and their associated PACs, backed weak MAGA candidates in GOP primaries last year — perfectly defensible politically but also not the sort of thing that is likely to elevate the more reasonable Republicans that Democrats often claim to want. That said, the readily apparent lack of discipline on the Republican side is not the fault of Democrats, and it’s natural for any political party to want to exacerbate the other side’s fissures and problems.
      One final point: Despite his rocky rise to the top and short tenure as Speaker, McCarthy had been a prodigious fundraiser for House Republicans. Over the last several cycles, Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC he was aligned with, emerged as one of the most formidable outside spending groups in House races. With McCarthy out, there may be some negative effects on GOP fundraising.
      A couple of other GOP old hands got into it over whether Democrats bore any responsibility for the downfall of Kevin McCarthy.It began when Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary under George W Bush, accused Democrats of collaborating with Matt Gaetz to remove the speaker:That prompted a riposte from Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, who is an outspoken Donald Trump foe. Steele noted that McCarthy’s problems became apparent at the start of the year when lawmakers from his own party blocked his election as speaker for days, and only relented when McCarthy made the concessions that led to his downfall:Here’s a view from within the GOP on what just happened yesterday.This CNN guest is Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant who has been involved for decades in Washington politics. He’s clearly not pleased with Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speaker’s chair, and raises the prospect that the effort’s architect, Matt Gaetz, could soon be revealed to have committed serious ethical infractions.McCarthy and his allies referenced the ongoing ethics investigation against Gaetz yesterday, about which few details are known, but the lawmaker denied it had anything to do with his campaign to remove the speaker.Here’s Luntz’s interview, on CNN:Donald Trump said he was not involved in rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz’s motion that led to Kevin McCarthy’s ejection as House speaker yesterday.Here’s what the former president had to say as he departed the courtroom in New York where a judge is considering what damages he and his family must pay after being found civilly liable for fraud:Trump is broadly popular among House Republicans, many of whom have endorsed his attempt to return to the White House in next year’s presidential election. Gaetz is among the many lawmakers who have made names for themselves defending Trump, while McCarthy is also seen as an ally. As House minority leader in 2020, he signed on to a baseless effort to get the supreme court to block Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden.Also speaking from the Senate floor, the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell gave something of a eulogy for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership: More

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      Republicans Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise launch House speakership bids

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      Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana announced Wednesday that they would seek to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House of Representatives, after the Californian was brutally removed by his own Republican party on Tuesday.Jordan is chair of the powerful judiciary committee, while Scalise is the majority leader. Both had been named as potential successors to McCarthy, and they confirmed their intentions to run for the top House job a day after the speakership was declared vacant.Pitching his candidacy in a “Dear Colleague” letter, Jordan pledged to unify his fractious conference, which has repeatedly stumbled under the weight of a razor-thin majority.“We are at a critical crossroad in our nation’s history. Now is the time for our Republican conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans,” Jordan said. “No matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for speaker of the House of Representatives.”But Scalise argued he had the experience needed to unite the conference, after serving as part of the House Republican leadership team for the past decade.“I have a proven track record of bringing together the diverse array of viewpoints within our Conference to build consensus where others thought it impossible,” Scalise said in his own “Dear Colleague” letter. “We have an extremely talented Conference, and we all need to come together and pull in the same direction to get the country back on the right track.”Weighing in on the speakership race, Joe Biden expressed concern over the “dysfunction” in the House and emphasized the importance of continuing funding to Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.Asked for his advice to the next House speaker, Biden laughed and said: “That’s above my pay grade.”Ukraine could become a central focus of House Republicans’ speaker candidate forum, which is scheduled for next Tuesday. Asked about his stance on approving more funding for Ukraine, Jordan said: “I’m against that … The most pressing issue on Americans’ mind is not Ukraine. It is the border situation, and it is crime on the streets.”Another sticking point for Republicans involves the mechanism that Matt Gaetz used to oust McCarthy, the motion to vacate. Under current House rules, any single member can force a vote on removing the speaker, and some of the more moderate House Republicans want to raise that threshold to avoid a repeat of Tuesday’s spectacle.“The ability for one person to vacate the speaker of the House will keep a chokehold on this body through 2024,” the Republican Main Street caucus, representing the the more centrist House Republicans, said in a statement. “Personal politics should never again be used to trump the will of 96% of House conservatives. Any candidate for speaker must explain to us how what happened on Tuesday will never happen again.”Jordan and Scalise are both hardline conservatives who may struggle to attract support from moderates – a fact not lost on observers after Gaetz and seven other hard-right Republicans chose to make McCarthy the first speaker ever removed by his own party.Scalise’s hard-right views – which have even seen him linked to the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke – and his personal health could pose challenges as he seeks the gavel. Scalise, 57, walks with a cane, having survived a shooting at congressional baseball practice in 2017. He is also in treatment for mutliple myeloma, an aggressive form of cancer. He has said the treatment is going well.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Republicans weigh their options, hard-right lawmaker Andy Harris of Maryland suggested Byron Donalds as the next speaker, but it is unclear whether the Florida congressman will throw his hat in the ring. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, chair of the Republican study committee, was named as another potential candidate.“I didn’t volunteer to do this,” Hern told reporters on Capitol Hill. “People have asked me about looking at an alternate choice. And so I’m going around talking about this issue with other groups of people and see if their votes are there.”Three House Republicans and Fox News host Sean Hannity have pitched a different wildcard option: elect Donald Trump as speaker. The speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, though no speaker has ever filled the role without holding a seat. But House Republican rules say anyone indicted and facing two years or more of prison time cannot hold a leadership role, which would render Trump ineligible.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump, who is in New York for a trial involving allegations of massive fraud at his company, said he was keeping his focus on his presidential campaign. He also denied encouraging Gaetz to push for McCarthy’s removal.In the Senate, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, urged the next speaker to embrace bipartisanship, even though hard-right Republicans will probably feel emboldened following McCarthy’s ouster.“You cannot allow a small band of [‘Make America Great Again’] extremists, which represent just a very small percentage of the views of the country, to tell the overwhelming majority of Americans what to do,” Schumer said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Maga extremism is a poison that the House GOP has refused to confront for years, and until the mainstream House Republicans deal with this issue, chaos will continue.” More

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      The Guardian view on Kevin McCarthy’s removal: dysfunction is the Republicans’ new normal | Editorial

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      Stunning. Unprecedented. Uncharted territory. A first in American history. Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday was a startling moment. But it only confirmed that the predictable thing about American politics is now its unpredictability. Chaos and dysfunction increasingly look not anomalous but characteristic. The Biden administration’s aura of calm stewardship can only go so far, because the saboteurs hold significant chunks of government machinery. The bitter divisions within the Republican party keep the rest of the country captive.A party once known for its ruthless discipline is obviously unmanageable; Donald Trump piously bemoaned the infighting of a party he has done more than anyone to break. Mr McCarthy’s removal by a handful of his own party’s lawmakers came on the same day that the former president, and likely Republican presidential nominee, was in court on fraud charges – only one of the multitude of civil and criminal cases bearing down on him, none of which have dented his popularity. Stories that would once have dominated the news for a week or more now jostle for coverage. In another courtroom, Hunter Biden became the first child of an incumbent president to be criminally prosecuted, pleading not guilty to federal gun charges.It is less than three years since an armed mob stormed the Capitol. Six in 10 Republicans still don’t believe that Joe Biden won legitimately in 2020. Last week, House Republicans launched a confected impeachment inquiry – equal parts fishing expedition and misinformation exercise. Threatening to shut down the government and leading the country to the brink of default on its debt has become almost routine for them.It took Mr McCarthy 15 roll-call votes to become speaker in the first place, and he only succeeded after agreeing to make it easier to remove him. He held the post for less than a year before far-right Republicans moved against him, apparently motivated largely by ego, spite and anger that he had worked with Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to avert shutdown. (It is, perhaps, another sign of the times that the ringleader, Matt Gaetz, is under investigation by the House ethics committee over allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of funds.) Mr McCarthy gave Democrats little reason to back him on Tuesday. Quite apart from a shameful record which includes voting to overturn the 2020 election results, he attacked Democrats for “trying to shut down the government” after relying on their votes for the funding bill, and offered them nothing.It is entirely possible that his successor may be worse. The frontrunners are Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, who reportedly once called himself “David Duke [the former Ku Klux Klan leader] without the baggage”. Whoever wins will have to contend with the same ultraconservatives. Partial government shutdown looms again, with a 17 November deadline to provide more money. And Mr McCarthy’s departure is felt far from Washington: Democrats backed the spending bill shorn of funding for Ukraine, believing he would help to see it through separately. Beyond Kyiv’s immediate need lies the necessity of firming up longer-term support in the west.Democrats may benefit from the infighting of the Republicans, who look increasingly self-obsessed and extreme. But voters could also conclude that the political class as a whole is failing – and perhaps, as Mr Trump must hope, that it will take a disruptive strongman to get things done. It’s their party, but the rest of the world has to live with it.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More