Representative Nancy Pelosi

Table Of Content

• Goldberg: The latest sign that Republicans are abandoning even their most deeply held principles
• Johnson says he's never voted against Ukraine aid. That's not what his record says.
• Johnson
• Rep. Jim Jordan lost his first vote for House speaker Tuesday. Here's what you should know
• At a Capitol Hill bar, the prolonged fight for a speaker becomes a drinking game.

Probing “the weaponization of the F.B.I.” as McCarthy just mentioned, was a big priority of the hard-right flank of defectors. Chip Roy of Texas said earlier tonight that the defectors won an assurance that McCarthy would launch a select committee investigating the “weaponization of government” that would receive “the kind of budget and the kind of staffing” that the Jan. 6 select committee received. “I think the House is in a lot better place with some of the work that’s been done to democratize power out of the speakership, and that’s our goal,” he said. “What we’re seeing is the incredibly shrinking speakership, and that’s most unfortunate for Congress,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said as she entered the chamber on Friday afternoon. Mr. Gaetz refused to budge, and Mr. McCarthy’s allies moved to adjourn the House until Monday, crestfallen after a defeat they had not anticipated. Republicans quickly switched their votes to oppose the adjournment and proceeded to a 15th speaker vote, which ended well after midnight.

Goldberg: The latest sign that Republicans are abandoning even their most deeply held principles

However, despite having the right to vote, the speaker usually does not participate in debate and only votes on the most significant bills. The new speaker has been in Congress since 2017 and has no experience in the House leadership. The speaker presides over debate, appoints members of select and conference committees, establishes the legislative agenda, maintains order within the House, and administers the oath of office to House members. The individual in this office is second in the line of presidential succession, following the vice president.

Johnson says he's never voted against Ukraine aid. That's not what his record says.

Gingrich managed to restore many of the powers of the speakership but clashed repeatedly with Clinton and even with Republican leaders in the Senate. In 1997, in his second Congress as speaker, he barely survived a largely covert challenge from within his own leadership team. And just shy of his fourth anniversary in the job, he was voted out by the full House Republican conference in December 1998. In the weeks after an election, the Republican conference and the Democratic caucus hold an informal vote among their members to decide whom they want to nominate to lead their party in January.

Johnson

One faction, comprising an overwhelming majority of the House GOP caucus, is interested in accomplishing the possible. The other is more interested in aiming for the impossible and then complaining about falling short. For the last few years, congressional Republicans have been split into factions that are not ideological in the traditional sense.

America's House of Representatives finally has a speaker - The Economist

America's House of Representatives finally has a speaker.

Posted: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican and the first to be nominated for speaker following Mr. McCarthy’s ouster, was ultimately seen as insufficiently pro-Trump by too many of his colleagues. In the years before he arrived in Congress in 2017, Mr. Johnson worked as an attorney and spokesman for the anti-abortion-rights and anti-gay group Alliance Defense Fund — now called the Alliance Defending Freedom. During that time, he expressed some of his hard-line views in editorials in the local newspaper in his hometown of Shreveport, La. In Congress, Mr. Johnson has voted for a national abortion ban and co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban, earning him an A-plus rating from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. After the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June last year, he celebrated.

Partisan role

Jordan is now meeting with key chairmen and top Republicans in House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office as they try to lean on holdouts and make offers to win their support. He pointed to the fact on the first ballot he had a similar number of defections as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who was still able to win the gavel in January after 15 ballots. Jordan said the expected return of Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis, a Jordan supporter who missed the first vote to be at his mother-in-law’s funeral, should help him and insisted they are chipping away at the holdouts. And now, McCarthy has been counseling Jordan on his speaker’s race strategy, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation, a far more active role than he appeared to be playing when Scalise was the speaker nominee. Jeffries also said that conversations between senior Democrats and Republicans have “accelerated” in recent days and that it’s his hope they will continue to do so tonight. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries indicated that his caucus would be open to reaching some form of agreement with “traditional Republicans” to reopen the House, saying that informal conversations have “accelerated” the last few days and that it’s his hope they will continue.

Once the House is in a quorum — meaning the minimum number of members are present to proceed — the speaker nominee from each party will be read aloud by the respective leaders before a roll call vote to elect a new speaker. After winning their elections and weeks of preparation, Members-elect were sworn in as Members of the U.S. House of Representatives after the 117th Congress was gaveled into session at noon on Sunday, January 3, 2021. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, another Scalise supporter, told reporters after Johnson was elected speaker-designate that he believes Republicans are "back" and the conference's agenda "back on track." Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, who voted for Majority Leader Steve Scalise on each of the three ballots during House voting last week, said he plans to back Johnson when the lower chamber convenes to elect a new speaker. "Therefore, the Honorable Mike Johnson of the state of Louisiana, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress," McHenry, the interim speaker, announced after reading the final vote tally.

At a Capitol Hill bar, the prolonged fight for a speaker becomes a drinking game.

A majority of those opposed to Mr. Emmer were members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and loyal to Mr. Trump. The glimmer of consensus came only hours after Mr. Emmer’s abrupt exit made him the third Republican this month to be chosen to lead the party, only to have his bid collapse in a seemingly endless cycle of G.O.P. grievances, personality conflicts and ideological rifts. To show support for racial equality, Mr. Johnson in the past has told audiences that he and his wife adopted a Black teenager they met through an evangelical youth group — like the movie “The Blind Side” but without the N.F.L. prospects, he has quipped. He said that millions of unborn children had lost their lives because of what he called a “legal fiction that the Supreme Court foisted upon this country” and said that “God will bless us” for the court’s decision. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in one such article in 2004.

WASHINGTON — They helped lead the efforts to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. They spread lies that helped ignite a mob of Trump supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While it was long before the dawn of Twitter, super PACs and C-SPAN, things really haven’t changed all that much in Congress. WASHINGTON — The House was in an uproar, unable to settle on its new speaker, forcing roll call vote after roll call vote. The Senate had quietly slipped out of the city while insurgents in the House demanded more power as the nation watched anxiously.

The vote for a new speaker comes on the heels of the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, which took place days after he struck a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida introduced the motion to remove Mr. McCarthy, and along with seven other far-right Republicans and all the House Democrats, he succeeded. Failed to become speaker after three floor votes, facing increasing opposition from his own party in each vote. The former president noted that all of them have supported him "in both mind and spirit" since he won the White House in 2016 and said the five candidates "are beyond reproach and represent the absolute best there is in the Republican Party." "House Democrats believe that when members of the body voted to reject the results of the 2020 election, they forfeited their ability to lead this chamber," Aguilar said.

The speaker of the House is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The House elects its speaker at the beginning of a new Congress (i.e. biennially, after a general election) or when a speaker dies, resigns, or removed from the position intra-term. Since 1839, the House elected speakers by roll call.[1] Traditionally, each party's caucus or conference selects a candidate for the speakership from among its senior leaders prior to the roll call. In 1997, several Republican congressional leaders tried to force Speaker Newt Gingrich to resign. However, Gingrich refused since that would have required a new election for speaker, which could have led to Democrats along with dissenting Republicans voting for Democrat Dick Gephardt (then minority leader) as speaker. After the 1998 midterm elections where the Republicans lost seats, Gingrich did not stand for re-election.

The House is now voting to pass a resolution in support of Israel in the war against Hamas – the first measure to come to the floor to be passed after Speaker Mike Johnson was elected this morning following three weeks of a speakerless-House. The Speaker has always been a member of the majority party (the party with the most members) but does not have to be an elected member of the House (this has not happened yet). The job of the Speaker is to keep the House in order and to assign committee memberships and chairmanships. Many are skeptical that McCarthy will reach a majority to become speaker on the first ballot. Should he come up short, it is likely the clerk will repeat the roll call vote several times until he is able to garner a majority. McCarthy is expected to be making concessions and compromises with the holdouts until the moment he is able to grasp the gavel.