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      New House speaker Mike Johnson praised ‘18th-century values’ in speech

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      Before entering elected office, Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the US House, praised “18th-century values” and told an audience that Americans should live by them when it came to morality and religion.In video footage of a forum hosted in 2013 by Louisiana Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, Johnson, a devout Baptist and then an attorney for rightwing groups and causes, is asked about the “condition of conscience” in Europe and Canada regarding abortion policy.Saying he has just given “a seminar … to a bunch of high school kids in Shreveport”, Johnson quotes George Washington and John Adams, saying the first two presidents and other founders “told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today”.Johnson, 51, became speaker on Wednesday, as Republicans’ fourth candidate for the job since Kevin McCarthy was ejected by the far right of the party.Having maintained a low profile since entering Congress in 2016 (a year after he became a state representative in Louisiana), his arrival on the national stage has led to widespread examination of his political record and views.As well as his work in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his work against abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights has been widely noted.In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Maine on Wednesday night, in which 18 people were killed and 13 wounded, a clip circulated of Johnson blaming mass shootings on 20th-century American reforms. Listing “no fault divorce laws”, “the sexual revolution”, “radical feminism” and “government-sanctioned killing of the unborn”, he said had liberals had created “a completely amoral society” in which young Americans were “taught there is no right and wrong”.He covered similar ground in his 2013 comments to Louisiana Right to Life, claiming religious motivations for those who declared independence in 1776 and wrote the constitution thereafter – regardless of their care to erect, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, the third president, “a wall of separation between church and state”.Johnson said: “Washington said in his famous farewell address: ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ And Adams said: ‘Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.’”He added: “The founders warned us. They said if you … do not maintain religion and morality, the right of conscience being the most fundamental bedrock principle of them all, then the republic is not going to stand. This will not work.”Johnson’s own predictions of American decline have been widely noted. In 2004, he called same-sex marriage a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic”.In his 2013 remarks, Johnson said the US was “still an experiment on the world stage. We’re only 237 years old, youngest form of government known to man. It’s a great model. The founders were divinely inspired … They set it up in accordance with biblical principles.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“… But the point is that the religion and morality had to be maintained and now we’re being led from the White House on down to reject and marginalise religious values … to just erase all of our moral codes and look down upon those who would try to stand up and say, ‘No, we have to maintain those.’”Barack Obama was then president. To Johnson, America under Obama had become a “post-modern culture … defined by the absence of truth”.“That makes the claims of the Bible inherently intolerant,” he said. “You know, truth has been replaced as the greatest virtue in society by tolerance. Well, we’re the inherently intolerant ones who say, ‘Wait a minute, life is sacred because we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.’ We have to stand up for those.”Assuming the voice of an opponent, he said: ‘Oh, you bigot. Can’t you be a little more open-minded? Come on, that’s so like 18th-century, you know?’“Well, [the founders] told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today.” More

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      Special counsel accuses Trump of threatening Mark Meadows after he testified in election case – as it happened

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      Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, accused the former president of threatening his former chief of staff after he spoke to investigators, ABC News reports.Smith’s team cited posts Trump made on Truth Social after reports emerged that Mark Meadows, his chief of staff in the final months of his presidency, spoke to investigators about his attempts to stop Joe Biden’s election victory.Trump’s comments “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case,” Smith’s team wrote in a Wednesday filing.Here’s more from ABC:
      In a filing Wednesday night to the judge presiding over Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, Smith’s team said Trump’s “harmful” post on Truth Social was trying to “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case.”
      Smith’s team argued to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan that the alleged threat is just one more example of why a limited gag order in the case is needed as soon as possible.
      Chutkan had issued such a gag order early last week but then temporarily suspended it after the former president’s legal team appealed the judge’s order to a higher court.
      …
      In their filing Wednesday, Smith’s team argued that Trump is now trying to “use external influences to distort the trial in his favor,” and that “These actions, particularly when directed against witnesses and trial participants, pose a grave threat to the very notion of a fair trial based on the facts and the law.”
      Trump has a “long and well-documented history of using his public platform to target disparaging and inflammatory comments at perceived adversaries,” and “When the defendant does so, harassment, threats, and intimidation foreseeably and predictably follow,” Smith’s team wrote.
      Washington is adjusting to the new reality presented by Mike Johnson’s ascension to the speaker’s podium in the House of Representatives. The Louisiana lawmaker is a staunch but low-profile conservative who wants abortion banned, doubts the scientific consensus regarding climate change and has promoted Donald Trump’s baseless fraud claims over the 2020 election. But as much as they are likely to seize on those positions next year to argue Republicans are too extreme to govern, Democrats must first work with Johnson and his party on legislative business. In remarks on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged the new speaker to embrace bipartisanship and avoid “the Maga road”.Here’s what else happened today:
      Federal prosecutors accused Donald Trump of threatening Mark Meadows, his former White House chief of staff who spoke to them about the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
      Joe Biden and Johnson met at the White House to discuss the president’s request for more aid to Israel and Ukraine.
      A federal judge ordered Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature to draw new congressional maps with another majority Black district, potentially offering Democrats an opportunity to gain a seat in the US House.
      The president cheered better-than-expected economic growth data that undercut forecasts of a looming US recession, and warned Republicans against sparking a government shutdown.
      Patrick McHenry dished on what it was like to be acting speaker of the House for three weeks.
      It’s still too soon to say what kind of speaker of the House Mike Johnson will be, but the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports all signs point to him acting zealously in trying to roll back abortion access:The day after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June last year, Mike Johnson of Louisiana celebrated his home state’s new penalties for abortion providers. “The right to life has now been RESTORED!” the Republican crowed on X, formerly known as Twitter, on 25 June. “Perform an abortion and get imprisoned at hard labor for 1-10 yrs & fined $10K-$100K.”Opposition to abortion is virtually a job requirement for Republicans these days. But Johnson, the newly minted speaker of the House, is a committed abortion opponent even by the standards of his fellow conservative colleagues.Johnson ascended to the speakership after the sudden ouster of Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, and weeks of tumult in the House. A member of the House since 2016, Johnson is a loyal supporter of Donald Trump – to the point that he served on Trump’s legal defense team during Trump’s first impeachment – and a social conservative fueled by his evangelical Christian faith.And, at a time when many Republicans in Congress are trying to quietly ignore abortion, wary of the backlash from their constituents over proliferating abortion bans, Johnson has continued to champion an array of anti-abortion bills.At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden had invited Mike Johnson to meet shortly after he won election as House speaker last night.She said the Louisiana Republican was with the president for “a bipartisan briefing with leadership and relevant committee chairs and ranking members on the president’s supplemental national security package”.In a primetime television address from the Oval Office last week, Biden called on Congress to approve billions of dollars in aid to Israel and Ukraine. While the former is a popular cause with both parties, a growing number of Republicans is against further funding Kyiv’s defense against the Russian invasion. Here’s more on that:We are learning more about Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House who Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just said is currently attending a meeting at the White House. As the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports, he has a history of channeling taxpayer funding to conservative Christian causes:Mike Johnson, the newly-elected Republican speaker of the US House, won taxpayer funding for a Noah’s Ark amusement park while working as a lawyer, in a graphic illustration of his uncompromising rightwing Christian beliefs.Working for Freedom Guard, a non-profit proclaiming a commitment to defending religious liberty, Johnson was hired by Answers in Genesis, a creationist ministry, in 2015, after the state of Kentucky rescinded an offer of tourism tax incentives for the project in Williamstown, citing discrimination against non-Christian believers.The state retracted an offer of tax breaks after the then-governor, Steve Beshear, said the ministry reneged on a commitment to refrain from hiring based on religious belief.“It has become clear that they do intend to use religious beliefs as a litmus test for hiring decisions,” Beshear said.Johnson, who would win a seat in Congress from Louisiana in 2016, was among a team of attorneys engaged to press a federal lawsuit described by the Answers in Genesis president and chief executive, Ken Ham, as involving “freedom of religion, free exercise of religion, freedom of speech in this great nation of America”.Johnson accused the state of “viewpoint discrimination”, adding: “They have decided to exclude this organisation from a tax rebate programme that’s offered to all applications across the state.”Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell on the news that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had spoken to special counsel Jack Smith as part of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election:Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows testified to a federal grand jury earlier this year about efforts by the former president to overturn the 2020 election results pursuant to a court order that granted him limited immunity, according to two people familiar with the matter.The immunity – which forces witnesses to testify on the promise that they will not be charged on their statements or information derived from their statements – came after a legal battle in March with special counsel prosecutors, who had subpoenaed Meadows.Trump’s lawyers attempted to block Meadows’ testimony partially on executive privilege grounds. However, the outgoing chief US district judge Beryl Howell ruled that executive privilege was inapplicable and compelled Meadows to appear before the grand jury in Washington, the people said.The precise details of what happened next are unclear, but prosecutors sought and received an order from the incoming chief judge James Boasberg granting limited-use immunity to Meadows to overcome his concerns about self-incrimination, the people familiar with the matter said.That Meadows testified pursuant to a court order suggests prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith were determined to learn what information he was afraid to share because of self-incrimination concerns – but it does not mean he became a cooperator.Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, accused the former president of threatening his former chief of staff after he spoke to investigators, ABC News reports.Smith’s team cited posts Trump made on Truth Social after reports emerged that Mark Meadows, his chief of staff in the final months of his presidency, spoke to investigators about his attempts to stop Joe Biden’s election victory.Trump’s comments “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case,” Smith’s team wrote in a Wednesday filing.Here’s more from ABC:
      In a filing Wednesday night to the judge presiding over Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, Smith’s team said Trump’s “harmful” post on Truth Social was trying to “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case.”
      Smith’s team argued to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan that the alleged threat is just one more example of why a limited gag order in the case is needed as soon as possible.
      Chutkan had issued such a gag order early last week but then temporarily suspended it after the former president’s legal team appealed the judge’s order to a higher court.
      …
      In their filing Wednesday, Smith’s team argued that Trump is now trying to “use external influences to distort the trial in his favor,” and that “These actions, particularly when directed against witnesses and trial participants, pose a grave threat to the very notion of a fair trial based on the facts and the law.”
      Trump has a “long and well-documented history of using his public platform to target disparaging and inflammatory comments at perceived adversaries,” and “When the defendant does so, harassment, threats, and intimidation foreseeably and predictably follow,” Smith’s team wrote.
      Sam Levine, our dedicated voting rights reporter, has more on the federal ruling today which says Georgia Republicans must redraw congressional and state legislative maps to give Black voters a fair shot at electing the candidate of their choice, a decision that could result in an additional Democratic seat in Congress.When Georgia Republicans drew the state’s 14 congressional districts last year, they placed the lines in such a way that they weakened the influence of Black voters in the west metro-Atlanta area, violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, US district judge Steve Jones ruled on Thursday.Jones gave Georgia lawmakers until 8 December to draw an additional majority-Black district in the west metro-Atlanta area, and said the court would draw a map if the legislature could not come up with a new plan by then.Georgia is likely to appeal the ruling and to try and drag out the redrawing process as long as possible. A lengthy legal dispute is to the state’s advantage because federal courts have been hesitant to intervene when elections are close.Republicans currently have a 9-5 advantage in Georgia’s congressional delegation. Since voting in the south of the US is often racially polarized, any district that gives Black voters a chance to elect the candidate of their choosing is likely to favor Democrats.Republicans also have a 102-78 advantage in the state House of Representatives, where Jones ordered the addition of five majority-Black seats. They also have 33-23 advantage in the state senate, where Jones ordered two additional majority-Black seats.Georgia gained an additional seat in Congress last year after significant population growth over the last decade. Almost all of that growth was due to a surging minority population in the state, Jones noted in a 516-page opinion, but the number of majority-Black congressional and legislative districts remained the same. Jones wrote:
      “The court reiterates that Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting. However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”
      The ruling is the latest in a series from federal courts in recent months finding that Republicans, who dominate state legislatures in the south and control the redistricting process, discriminated against Black voters when they drew district lines.Judges have also ordered Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana to reconfigure their maps to add districts that give Black voters adequate power. There is also ongoing litigation in South Carolina and Florida claiming district lines illegally minimize the influence of Black voters.Our columnist Margaret Sullivan thinks the installation of the Republican Mike Johnson as House speaker bodes ill not just for Democrats – but perhaps for democracy, in the sense of the prospects of a more peaceful election next year than in 2020, when the Louisianan was at Donald Trump’s side as he attempted to cling onto power…The process was appalling, and the outcome even more so, as Republicans in the House of Representatives finally found someone they could more or less agree on.That agreement, though, may be more accurately described as simple exhaustion after three weeks of embarrassing misfires.And who is it they have managed to elect speaker of the US House, the person in line to lead the nation just after the president and vice-president?It’s Mike Johnson of Louisiana who, as one example of his profound unsuitability, brags that he doesn’t believe that human beings cause the climate crisis, though his home state has been ravaged by it. He is against abortion, voted against aid to Ukraine and stridently opposes LGBTQ+ rights.Perhaps most notably, Johnson had a leading role in trying to overturn he 2020 election.That means that the official second in line to the presidency “violated his oath to the constitution and tried to disenfranchise four states”, as the writer Marcy Wheeler neatly put it.Johnson certainly has his Trumpian bona fides in order. In 2020, he helped lead a legal effort to reverse the results of the election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and he hawked Trump’s lies that the election had been rigged.Whatever his shortcomings, we know that Johnson excels at one thing: pleasing Donald Trump, the autocrat wannabe and Republican party leader who loves nothing more than a good yes man.Read on…Before the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, won election to Congress in 2016, he worked as an attorney for rightwing Christian groups. Here, Robert Tait reports on events in Kentucky in 2015, when Johnson successfully fought the corner of builders of a Noah’s Ark-themed amusement park, who were seeking government support despite the separation of church and state outlined in the US consitution…Mike Johnson, the newly-elected Republican speaker of the US House, won taxpayer funding for a Noah’s Ark amusement park while working as a lawyer, in a graphic illustration of his uncompromising rightwing Christian beliefs.Working for Freedom Guard, a nonprofit proclaiming a commitment to defending religious liberty, Johnson was hired by Answers in Genesis, a creationist ministry, in 2015, after the state of Kentucky rescinded an offer of tourism tax incentives for the project in Williamstown, citing discrimination against non-Christian believers.The state retracted an offer of tax breaks after the-then governor, Steve Beshear, said the ministry reneged on a commitment to refrain from hiring based on religious belief.“It has become clear that they do intend to use religious beliefs as a litmus test for hiring decisions,” Beshear said.Johnson, who would win a seat in Congress from Louisiana in 2016, was among a team of attorneys engaged to press a federal lawsuit described by the Answers in Genesis president and chief executive, Ken Ham, as involving “freedom of religion, free exercise of religion, freedom of speech in this great nation of America”.Here’s more on Johnson’s own beliefs and previous work…Washington is adjusting to the new reality presented by Mike Johnson’s ascension to the speaker’s podium in the House of Representatives. The Louisiana lawmaker is a staunch but low-profile conservative who wants abortion banned, doubts the scientific consensus regarding climate change and has promoted Donald Trump’s baseless fraud claims over the 2020 election. But as much as they are likely to seize on those positions next year to argue Republicans are too extreme to govern, Democrats also have to work with Johnson and his party on legislative business. In remarks on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged the new speaker to embrace bipartisanship and avoid “the Maga road”.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Joe Biden cheered better-than-expected economic growth data that undercut forecasts of a looming US recession, and warned Republicans against sparking a government shutdown.
      A federal judge ordered Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature to draw new congressional maps with another majority Black district, potentially offering Democrats an opportunity to gain a seat in the US House.
      Patrick McHenry dished on what it was like to be acting speaker of the House for three weeks.
      Back in the House, Patrick McHenry, who was the acting speaker for three weeks during the Republican civil war over finding a replacement for Kevin McCarthy, shared some details of his brief term leading the chamber.The Associated Press reports that McHenry was given advance notice that McCarthy had named him as a temporary replacement before the then speaker was removed from office:McHenry also made a point of noting his continued ill feelings towards those who removed McCarthy:A federal judge has ordered Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature to draw another majority-Black congressional district, arguing that the state’s current lines violate the Voting Rights Act.The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports the legislature will have to convene for a special session to make a new map, which could present Democrats an opportunity to pick up another House seat from the state, since African American voters tend to support the party:Meanwhile, Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman insisted he was not trying to disrupt Congress last month when he pulled a Capitol complex fire alarm amid fervent negotiations aimed at passing a government spending bill:The New York lawmaker is moving to resolve the issue today by entering a not guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge and paying a fine. Here’s more on that: More

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      The Guardian view on America’s new speaker: the right gets its man | Editorial

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      With the election of Mike Johnson of Louisiana as the new House speaker, the US has now got its federal government back. Without a speaker, Congress cannot function. For the past four weeks, the House of Representatives has been a phantom legislature. It has been absent without leave at a time of global crisis. The return to business is therefore better than a continuation of the paralysis on Capitol Hill.But it has been obtained at a very high price. In September, the former speaker Kevin McCarthy made a deal with House Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. In revenge, eight implacable Republicans voted for Congressman Matt Gaetz’s motion to oust him, which passed with Democrat support. The Republican caucus then immobilised Congress through several failed attempts to elect a new speaker. Mr Johnson has now succeeded as he has accumulated fewer enemies, because pragmatists want an end to the impasse and because the right thinks that he is their man.In other words, Mr Gaetz has won. He has orchestrated the removal of an establishment Republican House leader who was prepared, up to a point, to work with Democrats to keep government alive and to pass legislation, in favour of a relatively little-known rightwing Conservative who may not be. With a 17 November deadline looming for the renewal of government funding, Mr Johnson’s readiness to make the deals that a narrowly divided Congress like this one normally relies on will be put to the test soon. But making deals is not the culture of the Republican party today. And Mr Johnson knows that Mr Gaetz will be watching his every move.Mr Johnson’s profile may be less confrontational than that of other possible candidates. But his record is the opposite of encouraging. He has strong religious conservative views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. He does not believe that human beings cause climate change. He has voted against aid to Ukraine. Above all, he supports Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election being rigged and stolen. He helped lead legal efforts to reverse the results of the election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He opposes attempts to bring Mr Trump to justice.The speakership is powerful, but Mr Johnson is relatively inexperienced and there are big issues that need to be decided very quickly. They include the terms for the continuation of government funding, aid to Ukraine and military support for Israel. With Mr McCarthy now gone, it is possible that the right will cut Mr Johnson some slack. Certainly, the US cannot afford another month like this one. If nothing else, it should end the system that gives a single member of Congress, like Mr Gaetz, the power to bring the system to a halt.Yet an even larger question stalks the coming months. The shambles of the last four weeks has been the exclusive responsibility of a dysfunctional Republican party, in hock to its dysfunctional former leader, and which no one can grip effectively without risking their career. At national level, the Republican party is now the institutional abnegation of good government. It will take more than Mr Johnson to change that. More

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      Jamaal Bowman calls Republicans who compared him to Capitol rioters ‘crazy’

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      Pleading guilty to a misdemeanour charge and pledging to pay a fine for pulling a fire alarm in a congressional building as a crucial vote loomed, the Democratic New York congressman Jamaal Bowman hit out at Republicans for making “crazy” comparisons to rioters who attacked Congress on January 6.“That’s crazy,” Bowman told reporters outside court in Washington on Thursday, laughing as he did so.“Yeah, that’s crazy, immediately likening me to insurrectionists, what happened on January 6. I mean, this is what they do. They weaponise any opportunity they can … so we don’t focus on their own dysfunction and destruction of their own party.”Kevin McCarthy, then speaker of the House, and the extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene were among Republicans to make the January 6 comparison after the 30 September incident, in which Bowman was captured on camera pulling the alarm in the Cannon office building as a vote on a stopgap funding measure, which ultimately staved off a government shutdown, drew near.Claiming Bowman had reached “a new low”, McCarthy said: “We watched how people have been treated if they’ve done something wrong in this Capitol. It would be interesting to see how he is treated and what he was trying to obstruct when it came to the American public.”On 6 January 2021, a mob told to “fight like hell” by Donald Trump attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win. The effort failed but nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. Thousands of arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions have been secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached.Bowman immediately denied seeking to delay the vote, saying: “As I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologise for any confusion this caused.”This Wednesday, the office of the DC attorney general confirmed that Bowman would “plead guilty and has agreed to pay the maximum fine”. A spokesperson said: “Congressman Bowman was treated like anyone else who violates the law in the District of Columbia. Based on the evidence presented by Capitol police, we charged the only crime that we have jurisdiction to prosecute.”In a statement, Bowman said he was “thankful for the quick resolution from the District of Columbia attorney general’s office on this issue and grateful that the United States Capitol police general counsel’s office agreed I did not obstruct nor intend to obstruct any House vote of proceedings.“I am responsible for activating a fire alarm, I will be paying the fine issued, and look forward to these charges ultimately being dropped.”He also predicted that Republicans would “attempt to use this to distract everyone from their mess”, a reference to the three-week standoff over electing a speaker to succeed McCarthy which finally ended on Wednesday with the installation of Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a Trumpist hardliner.Summoned to court on Thursday, Bowman spoke to reporters.“You remember that day,” he said of 30 September. “It was like, it was a lot going on. It was difficult to keep the government open. There was a motion to adjourn. So I was just in a rush, man, you know, trying to get downstream. I was actually running to the Capitol at one point. So I was just in a hurry and … so that was all my bad.”As a leading and combative progressive, Bowman, a former school principal in the Bronx in New York City, has often being a target for Republican invective.On Wednesday, Lisa McLain, a Michigan Republican, introduced a resolution to formally censure Bowman and “remove him from all committee assignments for the remainder of the 118th Congress”.Bryan Steil, the Republican chair of the House administration committee, called for an ethics investigation. Bowman’s excuse “does not pass the sniff test”, Steil said, adding: “After pulling the fire alarm, Representative Bowman fled the scene, passed by multiple Capitol police officers and had every opportunity to alert USCP of his mistake.”Bowman said: “I look forward to putting this behind me and to continue working hard to deliver for New Yorkers.” More

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      The Maga-fication of congressional Republicans is now complete | Lloyd Green

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      On Wednesday, House Republicans rallied around Mike Johnson, a little-known Trump-loving congressman, and propelled him into the speakership. The Magafication of the congressional Republican delegation is complete.After three weeks of infighting and internal bloodletting, so-called Republican moderates waved the white flag of surrender. The line between Republican and neo-Confederate grows dimmer by the day.Johnson is more than just a garden-variety election denier and social conservative. Rather, he actively recruited his fellow Republicans to sign a legal brief asking the US supreme court to overturn the 2020 election. Apparently, the will of the people meant little to Johnson and his comrades-in-arms. Sixty per cent of them fell into line.But it didn’t end there. Johnson peddled the same garbage about voting machines that got Fox into trouble. In the end, Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing network shelled out $787m to settle Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation suit.“The allegation about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with the software by Dominion – look, there’s a lot of merit to that,” Johnson told Louisiana radio hosts less than two weeks after the election.As Johnson sees things, the US is not a democracy. Rather, it is a biblically modeled republic.Hours before Wednesday’s vote, Donald Trump returned the favor, and gave him an unqualified endorsement. “Everybody likes him,” Trump told cameras waiting outside a Manhattan courtroom.Two decades ago, Johnson supported the criminalization of same-sex relationships. “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse,” Johnson wrote in a 2003 op-ed. “By closing these bedroom doors, they have opened a Pandora’s box.”In Johnson’s eyes, privacy is a limited right, if it is a right at all. Coupled with his staunch opposition to reproductive freedom, Johnson looms as a turn-off to swing voters and suburban moms.Given time, he may yet morph into a political poster child. More than seven in 10 Americans support legal recognition of same-sex unions, including 78% of independents and college graduates. As for abortion, lockstep Republican opposition and the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs probably cost the Republican party its much-anticipated red wave in the 2022 midterm election.Ask Kevin McCarthy, the hapless and desperate deposed ex-speaker; he can tell you.The election of Johnson follows the rejection of his fellow Louisianan Steve Scalise and the Ohio firebrand Jim Jordan, and the abortive candidacy of Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman loathed by Trump & co.Emmer had the temerity to support the certification of Joe Biden’s win and marriage equality. In Magaworld, those are cardinal sins.Johnson’s win is also a win for Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon. Gaetz stuck a figurative shiv into McCarthy. He labeled Johnson a “transformational leader” who was “broadly respected in the caucus”. In the shadow of the scramble for the speakership, Gaetz also took a very public victory lap with Bannon looking on.“Maga is ascendant,” Gaetz told the convicted Trump White House exile. Expect both men to possess outsized influence among the party faithful from here on out. The bomb-throwers are in charge.Practically speaking, Johnson’s election is a blow to aid to Ukraine, and increases the likelihood of a government shutdown. The current continuing resolution led to the downfall of Kevin McCarthy, and expires in a matter of weeks. What comes next is anyone’s guess. McCarthy’s fall is now a cautionary tale.A letter sent on Wednesday by Johnson laid out his legislative agenda. He anticipates passing a follow-up continuing resolution that expires in either January or April 2024. The letter also prioritized the condemnation of Hamas even as it omitted any mention of aid to Israel.Hours later, the House adopted a resolution condemning the Iran-backed terror group, 412-10, with six members voting present. It was the first vote taken in weeks that had nothing to do with the operation of the House or the speakership.Kentucky’s Thomas Massie was the sole Republican to vote nay. Predictably, “the Squad” channeled the sentiments of the unvarnished and unbowed left. Mainstream opinion meant little to any of them.Then again, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much to the new speaker. In July 2020, Johnson voted against renaming military bases named after dead Confederate officers. Years earlier, Steve Scalise referred to himself as “David Duke without the baggage”.In that same spirit, Scalise also spoke in 2002 at a white supremacist confab sponsored by Duke, the former Klansman and failed Louisiana Republican gubernatorial candidate. Two years later, in 2004, Scalise opposed making Martin Luther King’s birthday a Louisiana state holiday.During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump only reluctantly distanced himself from Duke’s endorsement. In the aftermath of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump defended the “very fine people” on both sides. He even heaped praise upon Robert E Lee, the defeated Confederate general.Johnson condemned the rally, to be sure, but gave Trump breathing space. “I cannot and do not speak for the president or the White House,” he said at the time.Old embers still glow. It is unlikely that Johnson or the party of Trump has any intention of extinguishing them.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Conservative Mike Johnson wins House vote to become next speaker – as it happened

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      House Republicans have voted for Mike Johnson to be the newest speaker.The vote came out to 220-209 with every House Republican voting for him.The vote marks a breakthrough in a three-week limbo after House Republicans voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the seat earlier this month.Following the vote, House Republicans erupted into cheers and applause as the Louisiana representative was elevated to one of the highest offices in the US government.After weeks of political infighting and unsuccessful speaker nominations, the Louisiana Republican representative Mike Johnson has become House speaker.The vote came out to 220-209 with every House Republican voting for him. The vote marks a breakthrough in a three-week limbo after House Republicans voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the seat earlier this month.
      Johnson has already faced questions over his history of supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election
      Groups advocating for human rights, including LGBTQ+ and womens’ rights have said that Johnson’s speakership is a threat, condemning his far-right views and voting record.
      Democrats believe Johnson’s central role in refuting the 2020 election results and his conservative views on many social issues could help them win back the House next year.– Chris Stein, Joan E Greve, Maanvi Singh
      Now that the House has a speaker, it’s right onto business. Once the speaker is sworn in, the House will consider a resolution to stand with Israel.The broad resolution affirms Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. It also calls for sanctions and aid. It will be interesting to see how Johnson and other Republicans land on the issue.Last month, Johnson was among 93 Republicans who supported an amendment to cut off military assistance to Ukraine, proposed by hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz.The progressive advocacy organization Stand Up America has called Johnson’s speakership “a threat to our democracy”.Following Johnson’s win, Stand Up America’s founder and president Sean Eldridge said:
      “Today is a dark day for American democracy. Mike Johnson’s record of election denial and his attempts to overturn the will of the people make him totally unfit to be second in line to the presidency. Those who have spent years trying to undermine our democracy cannot be trusted to lead it.
      Entrusting the House of Representatives to a man the New York Times called ‘the most important architect of the electoral college objections’ is proof of House Republicans’ contempt for our freedom to vote. The American people deserve a speaker who will stand up for our democracy and our fundamental freedoms, but sadly, House Republicans have embraced Maga extremism instead.”
      The Democratic Women’s Caucus has also condemned Mike Johnson’s win, citing his history of supporting legislation that targeted women’s rights including the 2022 US supreme court overturning of Roe v Wade.
      House Republicans’ new speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, is a MAGA extremist through and through. While Democrats have worked to lower costs for working women, Mike Johnson has opposed efforts to make child care more affordable, and wants to cut Medicare and Social Security and ban abortion nationwide,” the caucus said.
      “The Democratic Women’s Caucus unanimously voted no – because a vote for speaker Johnson was a vote against women,” it added.
      Johnson has previously voted against the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Pump for Nursing Mothers Act, bipartisan legislations that offered to give expecting and new mothers increased workplace protections.He also voted against bipartisan legislation to protect victims of sexual assault and harassment, including the Speak Out Act and the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harrassment Act.The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, has condemned Mike Johnson’s new House speakership position.In a statement released on Wednesday, the president of HRC, Kelley Robinson, said:
      “The Maga House majority has selected the most anti-equality speaker in US history by elevating Mike Johnson – this is a choice that will be a stain on the record of everyone who voted for him.
      Johnson is someone who doesn’t hesitate to express his disdain for the LGTBQ+ community from the rooftops and then introduces legislation that seeks to erase us from society. Just like Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson is an election-denying, anti-LGBTQ+ extremist, and the lawmakers who appeared to stand on principle in opposing Jordan’s bid have revealed themselves to be just as out-of-touch as their new leader.”
      Joe Biden has congratulated Mike Johnson on becoming the House’s newest speaker and called for lawmakers across the aisle to move quickly to address national security needs.In a statement released on Wednesday, Biden said:
      “Jill and I congratulate Speaker Johnson on his election.As I said when this process began, whoever the Speaker is, I will seek to work with them in good faith on behalf of the American people …
      We need to move swiftly to address our national security needs and to avoid a shutdown in 22 days.Even though we have real disagreements about important issues, there should be mutual effort to find common ground wherever we can.This is a time for all of us to act responsibly, and to put the good of the American people and the everyday priorities of American families above any partisanship.”
      In other news, Minnesota representative Dean Phillips is expected to launch a 2024 Democratic presidential primary challenge against Joe Biden.Phillips, 54, will reportedly launch his campaign on Friday, Fox News reported, citing people familiar with his campaign.From there, Phillips will travel to New Hampshire and file his name for the state’s primary ballot.Several Democrats have discouraged Phillips from running, in response to the expected announcement.“He ought to go home to Minnesota,” Democratic senator Peter Welch said to the Huffington Post.“It’s a distraction and he’s going to be hounding on the president not because of policies – the Democrats support the policies and accomplishments of Biden – so he’s going to try to unravel that. It’s not helpful,” Welch added.The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren told the Post that she also disapproves of Phillips’s run.“It just doesn’t make sense,” Warren said to the Post. “I’m all for President Biden getting re-elected. He has delivered for America’s middle class and he’s going to win.”Despite the ire, Phillips’s campaign seems all the ready to launch. A tour bus for Dean Phillips was spotted in Ohio, CBS News reported.The bus reading, “Dean Phillips For President”, was seen driving through Ohio on Tuesday, presumably headed towards New Hampshire. The bus also featured Phillips’s slogan: “Make America Affordable Again”.Johnson is now delivering remarks in his first speech to the House after being elected as the 56th House speaker on Wednesday.After walking up to the podium, Johnson and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, hugged as Jeffries handed Johnson the House speaker gavel.During his speech, Johnson vowed to decentralize power in the House and have members more involved in the process, the Hill reported.“We owe that to the people,” he said.Johnson has also said that the first bill he will bring to the floor on Wednesday is a resolution in support of Israel.From Punchbowl News’ Mica Soellner:More reactions are pouring in after Mike Johnson becomes the 56th House speaker, following weeks of House electoral chaos.The Congressional Integrity Project (CIP), a liberal activist group, said those who supported Johnson “voted For Election Denial and Radical Extremism”.“All of the House Republicans who supported Mike Johnson for Speaker voted for election denial, a national abortion ban, and gutting Social Security and Medicare,” CIP said in a statement.“Johnson will use the Speaker’s power to continue to undermine our democracy, restore Trump to power, and pursue a Maga Republican agenda that throws working families under the bus,” the group said.CIP was relaunched by Democrats in 2022 as a counterpoint to House Republicans, particularly following the January 6 insurrection and the belief in the Republican party that the 2020 election results were falsified.Mike Johnson has published a statement to social media following his win as the House’s newest speaker. In a statement posted to X, Johnson acknowledged the “arduous” House speaker election process that has dominated the Republican party for weeks.“It has been an arduous few weeks, and a reminder that the House is as complicated and diverse as the people we represent,” Johnson said.“The urgency of this moment demands bold, decisive action to restore trust, advance our legislative priorities, and demonstrate good governance,” he said.Johnson further said that, as House speaker, he will work to restore “trust” in the House and “sanity” within the government more broadly.“We will restore trust in this body. We will advance a comprehensive conservative policy agenda, combat the harmful policies of the Biden Administration, and support our allies abroad,” Johnson added.“And we will restore sanity to a government desperately in need of it. Let’s get back to work,” he said.The Republican National Committee has congratulated Mike Johnson as the House’s newest speaker.In a statement released following the House vote, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said:
      “Congratulations to the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson! In eight months, the Republican House majority passed bills to lower energy costs, secure the border, defend parents’ rights, improve public safety, and more. When Republicans come together, we deliver results, and that’s what we need to showcase ahead of 2024. We delivered this majority to bring solutions to the American people. It’s time for Republicans to unite behind speaker Johnson and get back to work.”
      House Republicans have voted for Mike Johnson to be the newest speaker.The vote came out to 220-209 with every House Republican voting for him.The vote marks a breakthrough in a three-week limbo after House Republicans voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the seat earlier this month.Following the vote, House Republicans erupted into cheers and applause as the Louisiana representative was elevated to one of the highest offices in the US government.Steve Scalise, once a top contender of the House speaker race only to then drop out, has voted for Mike Johnson.As with Kevin McCarthy and Patrick McHenry’s votes for Johnson, Republicans stood up and applauded the Louisiana Republican for his vote.Patrick McHenry, the House speaker pro tempore, has cast his vote for Mike Johnson as the next House speaker.Republicans stood and applauded the North Carolina Republican representative.Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy has voted for Mike Johnson as the next House speaker.In response, House Republicans stood up around him and clapped.The Democratic National Committee has criticized Mike Johnson’s House speaker nomination, calling the Louisiana representative the “new Maga speaker-designate”.In a statement released on Wednesday, a DNC spokesperson, Sarafina Chitika said:
      “Many Americans are waking up this morning wondering – who is Mike Johnson? We’re here to help: Maga Republicans’ new speaker-designate supports extreme nationwide abortion bans. He led the charge for Donald Trump denying president Biden’s legitimate election win and tried to overthrow the votes of 81 million Americans.
      He’s a leading proponent of slashing Social Security and Medicare. Mike Johnson is a carbon-copy of the Maga extremism that is deeply unpopular with Americans across the country. House Republicans will have to answer for their support for their new Maga speaker next November. Make no mistake: the American people will hold them accountable for this choice.” More

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      Tom Emmer drops out of House speaker race amid significant Republican opposition and Trump attacks- US politics live

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      It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.House Republicans’ long search for a leader is far from over. Tom Emmer, the latest member vying for the speakership, announced he was dropping out of the race just four hours after his peers designated him as a nominee.Like Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan before him, Emmer couldn’t unite House GOP members to back him. His detractors on the far-right cited his stance on same-sex marriage and government spending bills, and his willingness to certify the 2020 election in Congress.In other news:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified that the former president was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to report from ABC. This is the latest, and perhaps most damning evidence yet in the federal government’s case against Trump .
      Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, spoke with the special counsel investigating the former president several times, testifying that Trump was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to ABC.Per ABC, which sites unnamed sources familiar with the matter:
      The sources said Meadows informed [special counsel Jack] Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump’s prolific rhetoric regarding the election.
      Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.
      Such testimony would be among the most damning evidence yet in special counsel’s case alleging that Trump tried to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.On Fox Business, far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she couldn’t support Tom Emmer because he hadn’t supported a ban on trans people serving in the military, and because he supported the “voting rights … national voting movement that was completely against what we stand for”.It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.Punchbowl News reports that Republicans are returning to a Capitol complex meeting room for behind-closed-door discussions that could decide whether they move forward with Tom Emmer’s candidacy as speaker:The Minnesota congressman, who, as the party’s whip is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, won the GOP nomination for speaker this afternoon, but now faces opposition from perhaps 26 of his counterparts – which means defeat in a floor vote.We’ll be looking out for details on what Republicans decide at this meeting.Earlier in the day, House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar weighed in on congressman Dean Phillips’s attempt to make a deal with Republicans.The Minnesota Democrat had suggested he would be willing to vote “present” and lower the threshold for Republican Tom Emmer to win election as speaker on the House floor in exchange for policy concessions around aid to Ukraine and Israel, among other things.That would represent a break from Democrats’ tactics ever since Kevin McCarthy was ousted, which have generally involved sitting back and doing nothing while the GOP fights among themselves. But with perhaps 26 Republicans willing to oppose his candidacy as speaker, it would not be enough to save Emmer, and Aguilar made clear the rest of the party is not on board.Here are his comments:The ranks of Tom Emmer’s detractors appear to be growing.Rightwing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna is not among those reported to have voted against Emmer behind closed doors, but now says she would oppose him on the House floor:That could mean his opponents number 27, which would guarantee his defeat.Wondering who exactly is this Tom Emmer fellow, emerged from the (figurative) wilds of Minnesota to be the latest Republican congressman (all men, so far) to attempt to grasp and keep hold of the gavel of the speaker of the US House? Let the Guardian’s Sam Levine enlighten you:The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer will now be the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids to be House speaker.It remains unclear if Emmer will be able to get the 217 votes he needs to be speaker, but – for the moment at least – he is in the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government.Emmer was elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right figutr who was one of the earliest Tea Party stars. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0”, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key.Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative: Donald Trump carried it in 2020 by more than 17 points.Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election.“Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said.He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.Read on here:Courtesy of Politico, here is a full list of all of Tom Emmer’s opponents among the House GOP, and who they voted for.As you can see, many cast ballots for Jim Jordan, a prominent rightwing lawmaker and 2020 election denier who last week abandoned his bid for speaker after concluding he could not win a floor vote:CNN, meanwhile, heard from Indiana’s Jim Banks, who had no problems pillorying Emmer:Tom Emmer’s issues with Donald Trump and his allies are well known, and it appeared the Minnesota congressman had moved to address them.While campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, the former president batted away a question about whether he was opposed to Emmer becoming speaker – video of which was posted by the congressman, as a sign he had Trump’s support:It was apparently all for naught, since Trump has now put out a strongly worded statement against Emmer.Politico had a good rundown over the weekend of why Trump is opposed to Emmer, who is notable for not supporting attempts to certify election results in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, as some of the other speaker candidates had. Here’s more from Politico:
      The former president’s top allies are already working to thwart Emmer’s candidacy. Trump supporters have begun passing around opposition research on the congressmember, and the pro-Trump “War Room” podcast on Friday afternoon turned into an Emmer bash-fest. During an appearance on the program, top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn noted that Emmer had yet to endorse Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
      “If somebody is so out of step with where the Republican electorate is, where the MAGA movement is, how can they even be in the conversation?” Epshteyn said. “We need a MAGA speaker. That’s what it comes down to. Because if you look at the numbers, if you look at the energy, if you look at the heat, this is the Trump party, this is the MAGA party. It is no longer the old-school khaki establishment Republican Party.”
      Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser and the “War Room” host, chimed in to call Emmer a “Trump hater.”
      Others close to Trump said Emmer as speaker would open a breach between House Republicans and their likely presidential nominee. Emmer “has no relationship with Trump,” one adviser said.
      And … Donald Trump hath spoken. And … he isn’t a fan of Tom Emmer, the current choice of the Republican party to be speaker of the US House.
      I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors. RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them. He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA – MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He fought me all the way, and actually spent more time defending Ilhan Omar, than he did me—He is totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters. I believe he has now learned his lesson, because he is saying that he is Pro-Trump all the way, but who can ever be sure? Has he only changed because that’s what it takes to win? The Republican Party cannot take that chance, because that’s not where the America First Voters are. Voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!
      That word salad brought to you by Truth Social, of course. Whether Emmer has “fought Trump all the way” or not is, to put it mildly, doubtful. He didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election but he did sign on to a lawsuit seeking to throw out results, and so forth.Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is a Democratic representative from Minnesota – Emmer’s state – a migrant from Somalia, both one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress and a leading progressive, part of a so-called “Squad” of left-leaning Democratic women.In July 2019, a crowd at a Trump rally in North Carolina targeted Omar with chants of “send her back”. Amid condemnation (Omar said: “I believe [Trump] is fascist”), Emmer said: “I didn’t watch the rally last night, sorry, but there’s no place for that kind of talk. I don’t agree with it.”Trump – who at the time said himself he was “not happy” with the crowd and claimed to have tried to stop the chants – may now wish to consider that in the same session with reporters, Emmer both said he didn’t think Trump had a “racist bone” in his body, and tried to explain Trump’s attacks on Omar.“What he was trying to say he said wrong,” Emmer said. “What he was trying to say is that if you don’t appreciate this country you don’t have to be here. It has nothing to do with your race or gender, or your family history. It has to do with respecting and loving the country that is giving you the opportunities that you have.“I had somebody say to me recently: ‘You know when Ilhan talks, Ilhan makes it look like she lets people believe she hates America.’ Now I don’t know if that’s true, but as somebody said to me back at home, they said to me: ‘How about a little gratitude with that attitude?’”Sidney Blumenthal’s Guardian column today – on the short-lived candidacy for speaker of Jim Jordan, the end of which precipitated today’s votes and the rise of Tom Emmer – is worth your time, starting from the opening lines about the necessity of counting votes and proceeding through Jordan’s unique political career:Jim Jordan’s march to seize the Capitol began as a beer hall putsch but veered into Sesame Street. Vote after vote, he has missed the sagacity of the Count, the puppet Dracula who teaches children the number of the day. Former speaker Nancy Pelosi wryly remarked that the Republicans should “take a lesson in mathematics and learning how to count”.After the second round, Jordan threw in the towel from his stool in the corner: no más! He endorsed instead extending the tenure and power of Patrick McHenry, the speaker pro tempore, until someone could figure something else out. But Jim Jordan the consensus builder was a short-lived phenomenon. The spirit of violence swirled around him.Read on:Steve Scalise, the majority leader, emerges to talk about the talks (and discuss the discussions) going on behind closed doors. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Scalise, of Louisiana and a previous candidate for speaker, says of the 20 or more holdouts against Emmer: “There’s some conversations, some are moving.”From the top: “First of all, I want to congratulate Tom Emmer on being selected our speaker designate with strong support. We are working right now through some questions still and we just continue our conversations.“Obviously we want to work to make sure when we get to the floor we have 217 [votes, to make Emmer speaker] and that’s something that Tom has said he wants to do before we go to the floor. So we’re gonna have some more conversations, but this is an ongoing process. We like to wrap this up today, but we’re still talking to some individual members.”Asked about the likelihood of Emmer (from Minnesota) making it to the floor today, Scalise says: “There’s some conversations, some are moving. You got to continue having these conversations. That’s what we’re doing right now.”Emmer, Scalise says, is “hearing everybody in those conversations going on as we speak. So that’s the first thing that Tom’s doing, is hearing people out, and that’s what, frankly, this whole process has been about. And so he’s got to hear people out. Ultimately, work to to move them over. And we’ve got to keep working until we get to 217. And I’m gonna do what I can to help Tom.”Matt Gaetz of Florida, who started this whole mess by prompting the ejection of Kevin McCarthy, then appears and stalks off, followed by the media scrum.Some reading to pass the time while we wait for Tom Emmer to speak – or not – concerning the last person to actually be speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and his relationships with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two anti-Trump Republicans who sat on the House January 6 committee and subsequently left Congress, Cheney defeated in Wyoming and Kinzinger retired in Illinois.Kinzinger will next week publish a book: Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country.Inside, he says McCarthy dismissed Cheney’s warning about January 6 on a party conference call five days before.Kinzinger also details two occasions on which, he says, McCarthy shoulder-checked him, physically, in the House chamber.Those moments, Kinzinger says, made him think: “What a child.’”In a passage written before McCarthy’s historic ejection by Matt Gaetz of Florida, the catalyst for the current mess, Kinzinger adds: “I just chalked it up to the immature behaviour that [McCarthy] favoured and that had become more and more common inside the chamber.”Full story:House Republicans have nominated Tom Emmer to become the next speaker of Congress’s lower chamber, but their long search for leadership is far from over. As many as 26 members of the party signaled they will not vote for him on the floor, more than enough to sink his candidacy. This is the exact same position Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan found themselves in, and highlights just how disunited the GOP has become and what an absolute mess that ouster of Kevin McCarthy created. Emmer has reportedly vowed to continue polling Republicans behind closed doors until he gets the support he needs to win. We’ll see what becomes of that.Here’s a rundown of today’s news so far:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Emmer’s detractors cite his stance on same-sex marriage and on government spending bills.
      Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman who is mulling challenging Joe Biden in the primary, said he would be willing to vote “present” when Emmer’s nomination is considered in exchange for policy concessions.
      Tom Emmer is pressing on in the face of the significant GOP opposition to his candidacy for speaker.CNN reports that he wants to continue holding roll call votes behind closed doors until he has the numbers he needs to win. But if he is not successful, congressman David Joyce says he will offer a resolution to give acting speaker Patrick McHenry the full powers of the job. Joyce made the same proposal last week, when Jim Jordan’s candidacy was flailing:Up to 26 Republicans may oppose Tom Emmer becoming speaker of the House, enough to stop him from getting the gavel, Punchbowl News reports:Assuming all Democrats vote against him, Emmer can only afford to lose four of the 221 Republicans in the House – a goal he appears to be well short of.The nominees who came before him, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, faced the same problem, and ultimately had to drop out. House Republicans have not yet announced when they will convene the chamber to hold a floor vote on making Emmer speaker. More

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      House still without speaker as Republicans fail yet again to unify

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      After three weeks of the House having no speaker and mere hours after Tom Emmer of Minnesota won the nomination, the House still did not have a speaker on Tuesday when Emmer dropped out after just hours.Again, Republicans have failed to unify after the historic removal of Kevin McCarthy.Ahead of the Tuesday vote, seven House Republicans had launched speakership bids: Emmer, Jack Bergman of Michigan, Byron Donalds of Florida, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Austin Scott of Georgia and Pete Sessions of Texas. Two other declared candidates, Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania and Gary Palmer of Alabama, announced before the Tuesday vote that they would withdraw from the race.Sessions, Bergman, Scott and Hern were eliminated after the first four ballots, while Donalds dropped out following the fourth round of voting. On the fifth and final ballot, Emmer and Johnson were the only two candidates, and Emmer pulled off the win, becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in three weeks.The final vote was 117 to 97, underscoring the significant challenge that Emmer faced in attempting to unify his deeply divided conference. An internal roll call vote taken after Emmer won the nomination indicated that more than 20 Republicans intended to oppose him on the floor, members told reporters. Although Emmer tried to allay those members’ concerns, he was unable to sway enough of his detractors to advance to a floor vote.Of the declared candidates, Emmer was arguably the best known within the conference, because of his position in House leadership. But Emmer has shown an occasional willingness to clash with Donald Trump, which raised issues with some of his House colleagues. For example, Emmer is one of just two speaker candidates, along with Scott, who voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election despite the former president’s false claims of widespread fraud in battleground states. However, Emmer also signed an amicus brief urging the US supreme court to invalidate the election results of four key swing states, which would have voided Biden’s victory in the presidential race.Emmer’s mixed record on election denial was not enough to assuage the concerns of Trump, who urged House Republicans to oppose the speaker nominee on Tuesday. Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump warned that a vote for Emmer would be “a tragic mistake”.“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Trump said. “Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them.”Emmer’s nomination came four days after Jim Jordan of Ohio abandoned his speakership bid due to entrenched opposition among more moderate Republicans.The House has now been without a speaker for three weeks, since McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month. Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, any speaker candidate can only afford four defections within the party and still secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.As the House remains at a standstill, the chamber is unable to advance any legislation. Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass a supplemental funding package providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, but the House cannot consider such a bill until a new speaker is elected.Despite the high stakes, House Republicans have been unable to unify around a single candidate. Following McCarthy’s removal, the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, won the conference’s speaker nomination, but he dropped out days later amid fierce backlash from hard-right lawmakers. Jordan then won Republicans’ speaker nomination, but he was forced to withdraw after three failed floor votes.“Chaos and dysfunction continue to be the order of the day in the House Republican majority,” the House Democratic caucus chair, Pete Aguilar of California, said Tuesday. “The American people and our allies abroad can’t afford any more delays. Every day of this Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] madness is another day of not sending aid to Israel and Ukraine, not taking meaningful steps to fund our government and not making sure that we’re looking out for working families across this country.”In a potentially grim sign for Republicans’ hopes of quickly reaching a resolution to the deadlock, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus has demanded that members remain in Washington DC until a new speaker is elected, jeopardizing the chamber’s planned recess starting next week.“We must proceed with all possible speed and determination,” the caucus said in a statement released on Monday. “Intentional and unnecessary delays must end. It serves only the lobbyists of the swamp and defenders of the status quo to continue to drag out this process.” More