US Congress

The House of Representatives remained without a speaker on Thursday, as the fractious Republican majority refused to unite behind their party’s chosen nominee, congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana.A day after narrowly becoming House Republicans’ candidate for speaker in a secret ballot vote, Scalise appeared no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions imperiling his quest for the gavel.Expectations were low that the House would hold a floor vote for speaker on Thursday after an hours-long, closed-door meeting failed to sway Scalise’s many skeptics.Supporters of the congressman Jim Jordan, the chair of the judiciary committee, who challenged Scalise for the nomination, said they would continue to push for his candidacy, while other members fumed that their conference was once again consumed by the very chaos that led to the sudden and historic ousting of the former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy last week.“Time is of the essence,” McCarthy told reporters upon arriving at the Capitol on Thursday. He added that Scalise, his former deputy, still faced a “big hill” in his quest to secure enough votes to win the gavel.Although some of McCarthy’s allies had suggested he should run again for the speakership, the California Republican has said he would support Scalise and encouraged his colleagues not to re-nominate him for the post.Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who was part of a hard-right coalition that forced 15 rounds of balloting to elect McCarthy as speaker, left a meeting with Scalise on Wednesday night saying he had won her vote after promising that her committee would be empowered to pursue its investigations into Biden. Hours later, during a private meeting with Republicans on Thursday, she said it had become clear Scalise could not form a consensus coalition and “no longer” had her vote.Among Scalise’s other detractors are South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace, one of the Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy. On Wednesday, she pointed to Scalise’s past as a reason she would not vote for him on the House floor.“I personally cannot in good conscience vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she said in an interview on CNN Wednesday. “I would be doing an enormous disservice to the voters that I represent in South Carolina if I were to do that.Scalise apologized in 2014 for attending the conference, saying he was unaware of the group’s political views. He represents the Louisiana congressional district once held by Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said concerns over Scalise’s health were the reason she would not support him. Scalise is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for blood cancer, but has insisted his prognosis is good and that he is well enough to serve.“I will be voting for Jim Jordan on the House floor,” Greene said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress.”Meanwhile, embattled congressman George Santos, of New York, who is now facing expulsion from Congress, said he would not vote for Scalise “come hell or high water”.The chaos has infuriated many House Republicans who feel Scalise’s objectors have not stated a clear rationale for their oppositions.“Your vote is for your constituents, not your personal grievances,” said Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who plans to vote for Scalise.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a gesture of goodwill, Jordan has encouraged his allies to support Scalise and offered to give his nominating speech on the House floor. So far those entreaties have done little to help Scalise persuade his skeptics, many of whom say they plan to vote for Jordan.Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority, Scalise can only afford four defections within the conference and still win the speakership, assuming all 433 current House members participate in the vote. As of Thursday morning, more than a dozen House Republicans had signaled they would not support Scalise on the floor, with several more still undecided.The House gaveled into session midday on Thursday. With no clear path for Scalise to secure the 217 votes needed to claim the speakership, no votes were scheduled, and some members suggested the standoff could stretch into the weekend.The pressure is on for Scalise to show he has a viable path forward, and to do so quickly. Without a speaker, the House is effectively at a standstill. Democrats, many Republicans and the White House have implored the House GOP to move swiftly to elect a new speaker so Congress can resume consideration of pressing matters, among them providing support to Israel in its war with the Palestinian group Hamas, which has claimed thousands of lives on both sides, including 27 Americans.The minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Thursday that his caucus was willing “to find a bipartisan path forward out of the chaos and dysfunction”. But Democrats are unlikely to find either Scalise or Jordan palatable choices for speaker, as both voted against certifying the 2020 electoral college vote and are now using their House majority to pursue investigations into Joe Biden and his administration.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called the Republicans’ struggle to elect a speaker “shambolic chaos” and said the American people have never seen a majority party “behave this way”. The White House is expected to soon ask Congress to appropriate additional funds for Israel and Ukraine, while the threat of a government shutdown looms next month if lawmakers fail to act.Donald Trump, who had endorsed Jordan for speaker, also weighed in against Scalise on Thursday, arguing that instead of pursuing the gavel he should focus on recovering from cancer. More

The Republican US congressman Matt Gaetz claims it would not matter to him if he lost his seat in Congress for leading the ouster of his fellow party member Kevin McCarthy as US House speaker last week.Asked Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press whether McCarthy’s removal as House speaker would be worth losing his job over, Gaetz responded: “Absolutely. Look, I am here to fight for my constituents.”Gaetz, a Florida representative, on Tuesday followed through on months of threats to boot McCarthy from the speakership after the Republican congressman from California struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown at the beginning of October. Gaetz sided with seven other far-right House Republicans and all Democrats in the chamber to strip McCarthy of his role, making him the first speaker in US history to be removed.In response, some House Republicans have openly talked about kicking Gaetz out of their caucus. That manoeuvre would require approval of two-thirds of House Republicans.A more extreme option on the table is to move for Gaetz’s expulsion from Congress altogether, which would also require two-thirds of the House to vote in favor of it.“I don’t see how they can really be part of a conference when they come on the inside, listen to what is going on, and then [go] outside and lob bombs into the middle,” Republican congressman Dave Joyce of Ohio told CNN. Joyce, the Republican Governance Group’s chairperson, added: “It’s a waste of time having conversations with these people.”In his conversation on Sunday with Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, Gaetz said it was nonsense that House Republicans would consider kicking him out of either their caucus or the legislative body.“The voters of Florida’s first congressional district sent me here with about 70% of the vote,” Gaetz said, alluding to his comfortable margin of victory during his re-election run in last year’s midterms. “So I think that anyone trying to kick me out of Congress because they didn’t like me would have a bone to pick with them.“They want to expel me from Congress? That’s crazy.”Welker asked Gaetz whether it was irresponsible for him to successfully plot McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker without a clear replacement. Gaetz argued that Republicans – who hold a thin majority in the House – have “two men who are incredibly respected” ready to succeed McCarthy as speaker.The remark referred to the two Republican congressmen who have announced bids to run for the vacant speakership: Jim Jordan of Ohio and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, who is the House majority leader.Gaetz declined to endorse one over the other on Monday. He only said he was “heartened” to talk with both “on their specific plans on spending and single-subject appropriations bills” ahead of a House vote to select a new speaker that is tentatively expected to occur in the coming days.“If either of those men get the most support in the conference, I’m eager to vote for them on the floor,” Gaetz said. More

Republicans in Washington need to elect a new speaker “this week” and end the party’s “civil war” in the House that is sending a message to the world of dysfunction, especially amid the conflict unfolding in Israel, a senior GOP figure said on Sunday.The Texas Republican congressman Mike McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, urged his own party in the House to unify because “we have got to move quickly, we cannot paralyze democracy, especially when we have hotspots all over the world… and I’m just worried about the messaging this sends.”A small group of hard-right House Republicans last week managed to force out speaker and California Republican Kevin McCarthy, against the wishes of moderate colleagues, in an unprecedented move to punish him for allying with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown. McCarthy had only served in the post since January when he scraped through an unparalleled 15 rounds of voting.In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday morning, McCaul said it was important for the House, which cannot pass legislation without a speaker, to reboot “so that we can get things to the floor”, such as a bipartisan resolution condemning the attack by Hamas militants on Israel and action to help with Israel “replenishing” its Iron Dome anti-missile system.“It’s too dangerous a time right now to be playing games with national security,” he said, also expressing hope that the fighting in Israel does not escalate and spread.McCaul said of there were worries about an expansion of the crisis unfolding in southern Israel.“If this lights up into a larger jihadist war against the zionist, if you will, that’s always what keeps everyone up at night,” he said.Meanwhile, McCaul thought the House Republican conference was “ready to unify around one speaker and not have this civil war”. The rightwing congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has been backed by former president Donald Trump, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana are the current leading contenders to succeed McCarthy and votes are expected on Wednesday.“It was not my idea to oust the speaker, I thought it was dangerous…[considering] all the threats that are out there,” McCaul said in the CNN interview.“What kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we cannot govern, when we are dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House? I mean how does Chairman Xi of China look at that when he says democracy doesn’t work, how does the Ayatollah [of Iran] look at this, knowing that we cannot function properly?” McCaul said, referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping.He said he thought either Jordan or Scalise “can provide solidarity”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, also told CNN’s State of the Union that “it’s time for the GOP to end the Republican civil war…[because] we need to get things done” on Capitol Hill.Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, who instigated the ousting of McCarthy last week, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that there would be a new speaker this week and House Republicans would be “back on track” and “invigorated”.He called the crisis in Israel “horrifying” but said the situation in the House would not stop the US coming to Israel’s aid.The Republican presidential candidate for 2024 and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said on ABC’s This Week that even without the events in Israel the ousting of the speaker of the House by a small GOP faction was “wholly irresponsible”. More