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      ‘Ha, ha, ha’: Mitt Romney laughs off Trump’s ‘total loser’ attack

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      Confronted with Donald Trump’s abuse, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said: “Ha, ha, ha. He’s such a whack job.”Romney’s view of the former president and current Republican presidential frontrunner was communicated to McKay Coppins, author of a new biography, Romney: A Reckoning, written in co-operation with its subject.Romney once flirted with joining Trump’s cabinet but has since emerged as a chief antagonist, voting to convict at both Trump’s impeachment trials.Earlier this week, responding to reporting about Coppins’ work, Trump called Romney “a total loser that only a mother could love”, erroneously said the senator “just wrote a book”, and said it was, “much like him, boring, horrible, and totally predictable”.Trump also claimed to have forced “this left-leaning Rino [Republican in name only] out of politics”, a reference to Romney’s announced retirement next year.On Thursday, Coppins spoke to Brian Stelter, the former CNN anchor now host of Inside the Hive, a Vanity Fair podcast.Coppins said: “I sent [Trump’s] statement to Mitt and … I’ll just pull up the text. He wrote back, ‘Ha, ha, ha. He’s such a whack job.’ So Mitt kind of enjoyed Trump’s response.”Coppins also discussed how he came to write Romney’s biography – in part because, as he writes in his book, Romney decided not to write a traditional memoir.Coppins said: “When I first approached him, it was just a couple months after January 6. I remember our first meeting was in his Senate hideaway, which is this little cramped windowless room that the senators get near the chamber in the Capitol building. And there was still barbed wire fence around the building because the riots had just happened.”On 6 January 2021, Trump sent supporters to the Capitol to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win. They failed but nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. Thousands have been arrested and hundreds convicted, some for seditious conspiracy.Coppins said Romney’s “initial decision to cooperate with this book was just born of … extreme frustration and disappointment with the leaders of his party and fear for the country. I think he thought of this book as a warning.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges, for state and federal election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments. He also faces civil threats including a fraud trial regarding his business and a defamation trial arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Nonetheless, he leads by huge margins in national and key state polling regarding the Republican presidential nomination.Coppins told Stelter that Romney was now “looking back at the moments in his pursuit of the presidency that he sort of flirted with the more extreme elements of his party.“I think he realises now that the mistake he made, and the mistake that a lot of the Republican establishment made, was thinking that they could basically harness the energy of the far right without succumbing to it.”In 2012, Romney accepted Trump’s endorsement.“He wishes he didn’t do it,” Coppins said. “And I think that that’s emblematic of a lot of these these small ethical compromises that he and a lot of his party leaders made, not realising the kind of Pandora’s box they were opening.” More

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      ‘I ask for forgiveness’: Maine lawmaker who opposed gun ban – video

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      After a gunman killed 18 people in Maine this week, the Democratic representative, Jared Golden, said he was changing his stance on gun legislation and would now support banning assault weapons. At a news conference in Lewiston, where the mass shooting occurred, Golden said he had previously opposed a ban on what he described as ‘deadly weapons of war’ out of fear for the lives of his family members. Announcing his new position, Golden said he would work with any colleague to achieve gun legislation during his time left in Congress More

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      Trump accused of witness threats after Meadows reportedly granted immunity

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      The special counsel Jack Smith accused Donald Trump of trying to “send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness” in the federal election interference case against him, after it was reported that Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows had been granted immunity.The claim from Smith came in a court filing late on Wednesday seeking a limited gag order. The judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, issued such an order last week but suspended it when lawyers for Trump appealed.Trump faces four federal charges related to his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.He also faces 13 state charges related to election subversion in Georgia; 34 charges in New York related to hush-money payments; 40 federal charges concerning his retention of classified information after leaving office; and civil threats including New York cases concerning his business affairs (a case in which Trump has been fined for violating a gag order) and an allegation of rape a judge deemed “substantially true”.Denying all accusations of wrongdoing, Trump enjoys huge leads in national and key state polling regarding the next Republican presidential nomination.ABC News reported the Meadows immunity grant on Tuesday. As the Guardian previously reported, Meadows appeared in March before the grand jury in the case after being forced to testify under court order. Such immunity orders typically see witnesses provide only limited statements, which the justice department promises not to use against them.A Trump spokesperson said: “Wrongful, unethical leaks throughout these Biden witch-hunts only underscore how detrimental these empty cases are to our democracy and system of justice and how vital it is for President Trump’s first amendment rights to not be infringed upon by un-constitutional gag orders.”But Trump himself used Truth Social, the platform he set up after being thrown off Twitter for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress, to address the Meadows story.“I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen [sic] 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!) by Deranged Prosecutor, Jack Smith,” Trump wrote, in typically idiosyncratic style.“BUT, when you really think about it, after being hounded like a dog for three years, told you’ll be going to jail for the rest of your life, your money and your family will be forever gone, and we’re not at all interested in exposing those that did the RIGGING – If you say BAD THINGS about that terrible ‘MONSTER’, DONALD J TRUMP, we won’t put you in prison, you can keep your family and your wealth, and, perhaps, if you can make up some really horrible ‘STUFF’ a[b]out him, we may very well erect a statue of you in the middle of our decaying and now very violent Capital, Washington DC.“Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows?”As special counsel, Smith was appointed by but operates independently of Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. Trump has regularly claimed political persecution by Garland and Smith, supposedly at the direction of Biden.In their court filing on Tuesday, lawyers for Smith said a gag order needed to be reinstated in the federal election interference case because Trump “has a demonstrated history of using inflammatory language to target certain individuals in a way that pose[s] a significant and immediate risk that witnesses will be intimidated or otherwise unduly influenced by the prospect of being themselves targeted for harassment or threats; and attorneys, public servants, and other court staff will themselves become targets for threats and harassment”.Trump, the filing said, had “capitalised on the court’s administrative stay to, among other prejudicial conduct, send an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case”.On Wednesday, Jonathan Turley, a conservative George Washington University law professor who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans considering impeaching Biden, called Smith’s gag order filing unconstitutional, adding: “Smith is, again, dismissing free speech concerns.”Looking to the Republican primary and perhaps the presidential election beyond, Turley said voters would “have to weigh the merits of these charges and the veracity of witnesses. The gag on Trump will not diminish that chatter and debate.” More

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      Trumpist Mike Johnson is the House speaker. There’s plenty to fear | Margaret Sullivan

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      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.This, of course, follows weeks of chaos for the House Republicans, who put up three better-known nominees – Steve Scalise, another Louisianan, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Tom Emmer of Minnesota – before Johnson.In a historic display of arrogance (not to mention the inability to actually count votes), Jordan tried and failed three times. For this, I suppose, we can be mildly grateful since Jordan is an especially awful person who, as Ohio State wrestling coach, reportedly looked away from credible abuse allegations by the team doctor.The failed efforts by Scalise, Jordan and Emmer came after the ousting of Kevin McCarthy of California – no stalwart for democracy, either – who, in the end, acted a little too responsibly to satisfy the extreme right flank of his party. Those extremists were outraged by McCarthy’s decision to prevent a government shutdown by passing a stopgap funding resolution.All told, it’s been quite a month for Republicans who – with their ever-helpful media allies – enjoy describing the opposing party as “Democrats in Disarray”. In fact, there was quite a bit of actual array over the past month as Democrats stayed unified and voted, time after time, for Hakeem Jeffries of New York.Jeffries was never going to be speaker of this Republican-controlled House but he very likely would have been a fine leader of the chamber. He is someone who apparently understands how elections and the peaceful transition of power are supposed to work, and someone who could competently step in as president, should that need arise.What’s the worst that can happen with Johnson at the helm? There’s no way of knowing but it could be ugly as next year’s presidential election looms.Shortly after Johnson’s election, a reporter asked President Biden if he is worried about whether, if he wins re-election next year, Johnson might try to overturn the election.“No, because he can’t,” Biden responded. “Just like I was not worried that the last guy would be able to overturn the election.” He added: “They had about 60 lawsuits … and every time they lost.”But American democracy has edged ever closer to the brink since then.There’s no guarantee that the guardrails that held fast in 2020 would do so again four years later. And, let’s face it, if Trump is re-elected, they never will again.As for Johnson himself, he wouldn’t address his shameful history of trying to overturn the election, according to the Hill newspaper.“Next question,” he insisted.His Republican colleagues booed the reporter who asked the very question that most needed asking, and told her to shut up.October’s absurd drama in the House may be over, but with Mike Johnson at the helm, there’s nothing to celebrate.And despite Biden’s confident assurances, there’s plenty to fear.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture 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 speaker hopeful Tom Emmer spoke to Trump to ease tensions as race to replace McCarthy drags into third week – as it happened

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      Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who is seen as a frontrunner in the race for speaker of the House, spoke with Donald Trump over the weekend, Punchbowl News reports:As the party’s whip, Emmer is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, but Politico reports that since announcing his candidacy, he’s been attacked as disloyal to Donald Trump – even though he repeatedly voted for Jim Jordan, the failed speaker candidate who won the former president’s endorsement for the job.Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon referred to Emmer as a “Trump Hater,” while Boris Epshteyn, a current aide to the former president, attacked him for not endorsing his presidential campaign.“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.After days of dysfunction and bickering that culminated in rightwing lawmaker Jim Jordan abandoning his bid to become speaker of the House despite winning the GOP’s nomination for the post, the party is again gearing up to elect a new leader in Congress’s lower chamber. This time, Republicans have nine candidates to sort through, and we’ll get an indication of who they are leaning towards this evening, when the party holds a forum for the aspirants.Here’s a rundown of what we learned today about the race:
      Tom Emmer, who is considered a frontrunner for the post, reportedly spoke over the weekend with Donald Trump. The former president’s advisers have criticized the Minnesota lawmaker as not sufficiently loyal, which could pose a problem to his bid for speaker. Fellow candidates Kevin Hern and Pete Sessions also said they got on the phone with Trump.
      Trump seemed to indicate he thought only Jesus Christ could win enough votes to become speaker of the House.
      Hern, who leads the large and influential Republican Study Committee, delivered his pitch to become speaker along with McDonald’s hamburgers.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus said lawmakers should not leave Washington DC until a new speaker is appointed. Some of their members were behind the effort to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.
      Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator who last month was indicted for accepting bribes in return for political favors, has pleaded not guilty to a new charge of acting as an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, the Associated Press reports.Menendez made the plea during a New York City court appearance, after which he departed without answering shouted questions:Here’s more on the latest charges:More Republican House speaker aspirants say they’ve spoken to Donald Trump ahead of this evening’s candidate forum.This includes the chair of the influential Republican Study Committee Kevin Hern, CNN reports:As well as Texas lawmaker Pete Sessions, who voted for objecting to Arizona and Pennsylvania’s results in the 2020 election:Donald Trump has been campaigning in New Hampshire today, where he was asked about the race for speaker of the House.It’s a little unclear, but appears to say that only Jesus Christ could manage to win election in the fractured chamber. See his comments for yourself:Progressive senator Bernie Sanders has come out against the Biden administration’s request for a funding package aimed at providing Ukraine and Israel with military assistance: Sanders is an independent who caucuses with the chamber’s Democratic majority, and it’s unclear what impact his opposition will have on the fate of the package. The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he was partial to the request, meaning it may receive bipartisan support in that chamber.Its prospects in the House are less clear. Besides the fact that the chamber has no speaker and cannot pass legislation, a growing number of Republicans there have said they do not support further aid to Ukraine.Oklahoma congressman Kevin Hern just said in the corridors of the House that he hopes the Republican conference will be able to pick a nominee that they can coalesce around for speaker tomorrow night.The House is far into record breaking territory on its 20th day without a speaker while Congress is in session.Hern told CNN that he favors a roll call vote of GOP-ers behind closed doors – in hopes of having a nominee that the conference can unite behind sufficiently to have that person elected as speaker after the decision goes to a vote of the full House floor.The Biden administration wants to see safe passage for people out of Gaza ahead of a potential ground invasion by Israel, particularly for US citizens, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said moments ago at the regular briefing in the west wing, Reuters reports.
      We still want to see safe passage out and particularly for the several hundred American citizens that we know are in Gaza and want to leave,” Kirby said.
      Kirby said the US agrees with the Israeli government that “the top priority has to be going after Hamas.”
      There is no daylight there,” between Israel’s and the US position, Kirby said.
      We are on Israel’s side, here.”
      Kirby said that the US has sent some military advisers to Israel to advise the Israelis.Our global blog on the Israel-Gaza crisis can be read here.The White House is keeping information very tight on what it’s doing to try to speed the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Pressure has intensified on Israel to negotiate the release of more than 200 people, including chiefly Israelis but also some Americans and other foreigners, taken by Palestinian militants after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7.Meanwhile, Kirby said it would “certainly be helpful” if House Republicans could produce a speaker for the chamber. This a day after Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said he endorsed Joe Biden’s $106bn aid proposal to Israel and Ukraine, which won’t get anywhere while the House is paralyzed.After days of dysfunction and bickering that culminated in rightwing lawmaker Jim Jordan abandoning his bid to become speaker of the House despite having the GOP’s nomination for the post, the party is again gearing up to elect a new leader in Congress’s lower chamber. This time, Republicans have nine candidates to sort through, and we’ll get an indication of who they are leaning towards this evening, when the party holds a forum for the aspirants.Here’s a rundown of what we’ve learned today about the race:
      Tom Emmer, who is considered a frontrunner for the post, reportedly spoke over the weekend with Donald Trump. The former president’s advisers have criticized the Minnesota lawmaker as not sufficiently loyal, which could pose a problem to his bid for speaker.
      Kevin Hern, who leads the large and influential Republican Study Committee, delivered his pitch to become speaker along with McDonald’s hamburgers.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus said lawmakers should not leave Washington DC until a new speaker is appointed. Some of their members were behind the effort to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.
      Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who is seen as a frontrunner in the race for speaker of the House, spoke with Donald Trump over the weekend, Punchbowl News reports:As the party’s whip, Emmer is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, but Politico reports that since announcing his candidacy, he’s been attacked as disloyal to Donald Trump – even though he repeatedly voted for Jim Jordan, the failed speaker candidate who won the former president’s endorsement for the job.Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon referred to Emmer as a “Trump Hater,” while Boris Epshteyn, a current aide to the former president, attacked him for not endorsing his presidential campaign.“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.Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician to Barack Obama and Donald Trump who is now a Republican congressman, endorsed Byron Donald’s candidacy for speaker.Here’s the Texas lawmaker’s announcement:Speaker candidate Kevin Hern is the chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest ideological caucus in the House, which is geared towards advancing conservative policy goals.Below is the “Dear Colleague” letter he sent out to announce his candidacy for the chamber’s top job. The Oklahoman is also a former McDonald’s franchise owner, and sent the letter to Republican lawmakers along with the chain’s signature burgers:While the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell is partial to Joe Biden’s request for a joint Ukraine-Israel aid package, speaker candidate Dan Meuser told CNN he opposes it.He’s just one man, and faces a crowded field of eight others to win the gavel, but is unlikely to be alone in his views. Here’s what he had to say: More

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      Jim Jordan says he’s ‘going back to work’ after losing secret ballot for House speaker candidacy – US politics live

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      Jim Jordan lost a secret ballot held by House Republicans which removes him as speaker designate, said the Republican Florida representative Kat Cammack.Steve Scalise of Louisiana said that Republicans will start over on Monday.Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports that the vote margin was large, according to sources familiar with the vote.The Supreme Court on Friday kept a Missouri law on hold that bars police from enforcing federal gun laws, rejecting an emergency appeal from the state.The Associated Press reports:The 2019 law was ruled unconstitutional by a district judge but allowed to remain in effect. A federal appeals court then blocked enforcement while the state appeals the district court ruling.Missouri had wanted the law to be in effect while the court fight plays out.Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to side with Missouri on Friday.The law would impose a fine of $50,000 on an officer who knowingly enforces federal gun laws that don’t match up with state restrictions.Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include registration and tracking requirements and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.The court expanded gun rights in a 2022 decision authored by Thomas. It is hearing arguments next month in the first case stemming from last year’s ruling. An appeals court invalidated a federal law that aims to keep guns away from people facing domestic violence restraining orders.Long-shot Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson has announced his decision to suspend his presidential campaign.On Friday, the Michigan businessman released a statement, saying, “With no oppurtunity to share my vision on the debate stage, I have decided at this time, suspending my campaign is the right thing to do.”Johnson criticized the Republican National Committee and its “corrupt leaders” with “authoritarian powers.”“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the people should decide the next president of the United States, not the head of the RNC and her cronies,” he added.Johnson said that he is only suspending his campaign, rather than withdrawing entirely and plans to keep a small political team on staff “in the event the dynamics of the race change.”Tennessee’s Republican representative Mark Green is not runnning for speaker, Green’s office told Punchbowl News.With Jim Jordan out of the speaker race, here is an explainer by the Guardian’s Sam Levine on why he lost and what happens next:Why did Republicans oppose Jordan?Several of the members who are opposed to Jordan are members of the House appropriations committee, who are reportedly opposed to the way Jordan has embraced a hard line on spending cuts and shutting down the government.There is also reportedly bad blood over the way Jordan and his allies treated Steve Scalise. Scalise previously beat Jordan to win the conference’s nomination to be speaker, but withdrew his bid after it became clear he couldn’t get enough votes to win in the House. Some Scalise allies think Jordan didn’t do enough to rally Republicans around Scalise.What happens next?No one knows. Even as it was clear that Jordan had no clear path to becoming the speaker, no Republican emerged to seriously challenge him. Republicans currently have a Sunday noon deadline to announce their candidacy ahead of another round of speakership talks.For the full explainer, click here:Mike Pence has called on House Republicans to “decide what team you want to be on” as Republicans revert back to square one following their inability to decide on a speaker.Speaking on SiriusXM, the presidential candidate said:
      “Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined eight Republicans partnering with every Democrat in Congress to throw out a Republican speaker of the House. All roads lead back to the eight members of what I call the chaos caucus who set all this into motion.”
      “With everything that’s happening in the world … the American people are looking to Republicans in the Congress to stop fighting with each other and start fighting for them.”
      House Republicans have set Sunday 12pm as the deadline to file as a speaker candidate.A candidate forum for the speaker will be held on Monday at 6.30pm and a secret ballot leadership election will be held on Tuesday at 9am.It remains unclear when a floor vote for speaker will be.Texas’s Republican representative Chip Roy said that it was a “mistake for the Republican conference to just walk away from arguably the most popular Republican in the Republican party.”Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju, Roy said, “We shouldn’t have done that,” adding, “I think having the American people be able to see how we are wrestling with the tough decisions and what we’re trying to do, and doing it with intensity and doing it because we care about this country.”Former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is throwing his weight behind GOP whip Tom Emmer’s bid to replace him, Punchbowl News reports:It’s a boost for Emmer, but not necessarily a decisive one. McCarthy also supported Jim Jordan, and look how that turned out. Meanwhile, Punchbowl reports that Emmer is among a fairly sizable group of Republicans running for the House speaker post, or considering it:They’ll be having a busy weekend.The judge overseeing Donald Trump and his family members’ civil fraud trial in New York City fined the former president $5,000 for a post he determined violated a gag order, but did not order him to jail – yet.Here’s more on that, from the Associated Press:
      Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt, for now, but reserved the right to do so – and possibly even put him in jail – if he continued to violate a gag order barring parties in the case from personal attacks on court staff.
      Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage” but decided on a nominal fine because Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post was inadvertent and was a “first-time violation”.
      Earlier, an incensed Engoron said the failure to delete the post from the website was a “blatant violation” of his 3 October order, which required Trump to delete the offending message.
      Trump lawyer Christopher Kise blamed the “very large machine” of Trump’s presidential campaign for allowing his deleted social media post to remain on his website, calling it an unintentional oversight.
      Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, wasn’t in court Friday. He’d returned to the trial Tuesday and Wednesday after attending the first three days in early October, but skipped the rest of the week.
      Speaking of people who are running for office, Donald Trump has made it clear he won’t be at the third Republican primary debate in Miami on 8 November.But he will be in the city in his role as spoiler, hosting an open-air rally at the same time that his rivals for the party’s presidential nomination are taking the stage.Trump’s campaign announced Friday that the former president would be appearing at Ted Hendricks stadium in Hialeah, 10 miles from the Adrienne Arsht performing arts center in Miami where the Republican National Committee debate will take place.The former president is the runaway leader for the nomination, despite his worsening legal problems. He skipped the first debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August, and last month’s second event in Simi Valley, California, although he still emerged as the most-talked-about candidate despite his absence.Trump has called for the RNC to cancel the Miami debate, arguing that he’s so far ahead of his challengers as to make it meaningless, and that a failure to do so would be an admission that “national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden”.Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman who is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, will run for speaker, Punchbowl News reports:Before Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speaker’s post, the Washington Post reported that conservative hardliners were in favor of nominating him for the chamber’s top job.Jim Jordan started out the day by hinting that the House would have to stick around through the weekend to vote on his candidacy for speaker.Hours later, the GOP stripped him of the party’s nomination in a closed-door meeting. No more weekend votes for them.As CNN reports, the next phase of the speaker’s race will play out starting Monday with a candidates’ forum, but you can bet that Kevin Hern and other Republicans who throw their hat into the ring will spend this weekend campaigning within the party:Republican majority leader Steve Scalise, who was briefly the party’s nominee for speaker before withdrawing when he concluded he would not win majority support, will not run for the post again, Punchbowl News reports:Oklahoma’s Republican representative Kevin Hern has announced he will run for House speaker.Hern, the chair of the Republican study committee (the House’s largest caucus among Republicans), said:
      I just voted for my good friend Jim Jordan to stay as our speaker designate, but the conference has determined that he will no longer hold that title. We just had two speaker designates go down. We must unify and do it fast.
      I’ve spoken to every member of the conference over the last few weeks. We need a different type of leader who has a proven track record of success, which is why I’m running for speaker of the House.
      Following the secret GOP ballot, Jim Jordan said on live TV, “I’m going to go back to work.”In reference to who the next speaker would be, Jordan said, “Let’s work out who that individual is,” and added, “It’s time to unite.”White House spokesperson Andrew Bates has commented on the latest House speaker vote, urging House Republicans to “end their chaotic infighting and their competitions to out-extreme one another.” “While Joe Biden fights to advance bipartisan legislation that will protect our national security interests – including in Israel and Ukraine – provide humanitarian assistance for innocent civilians in Gaza, deliver critical border funding, compete with China, and grow our economy, House Republicans are somehow still fighting with each other,” said Bates.He went on to call upon House Republicans to “join President Biden in working on urgent priorities for American families shared by both parties in Congress.”The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy said that Republicans will now “have to go back to the drawing board”.“I’m concerned where we go from here,” added McCarthy. More

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      A high-stakes diplomatic mission for Biden – podcast

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      This week, Joe Biden travelled to Israel – becoming the first US president to visit the country at war. He set out to show United States support for Israel, ease the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, win the freedom of hostages held by Hamas, and prevent a wider regional conflict that might draw in the US. So with stakes this high, how did he perform? And what does this mean for Biden politically?
      This week Jonathan Freedland is joined by Julian Borger, the Guardian’s world affairs editor, who is in Jerusalem and has been following the trip and the reactions to it.

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More