Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene says Speaker Mike Johnson should resign as Democrats signal potential support

Table Of Content

• California is building fewer homes. The state could get even more expensive
• Top Jordan ally says Scalise hasn't offered to give a nominating speech for the speaker designee
• With Johnson, Republicans are rallying behind one of the staunchest religious conservatives in the House.
• House Republicans are heading into another meeting
• McCarthy says Scalise faces a 'big hill' to secure enough votes
• Southern California home prices fell last month. Don’t expect them to plunge
• There's been a history of hard landings

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, said the meetings had been marked by “emotional” objections to voting for Scalise. Exasperated Democrats, who have been watching and waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out, warning the world is watching. But the math this time is even more daunting, and the problematic political dynamic only worsening.

California is building fewer homes. The state could get even more expensive

Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. The resolution that passed Saturday funds the government for about seven more weeks, delaying a potential shutdown until mid-November. The bill did not include funding for Ukraine, which President Biden has said he hopes to see in a supplemental measure. Republicans hope to hold a candidate forum next Tuesday and an election next Wednesday, Punchbowl News reported. Congress took up the motion Tuesday, and eight Republicans joined House Democrats in voting to dump the speaker.

Mike Johnson and the troubled history of recent Republican speakers - NPR

Mike Johnson and the troubled history of recent Republican speakers.

Posted: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 09:00:42 GMT [source]

Top Jordan ally says Scalise hasn't offered to give a nominating speech for the speaker designee

In a secret-ballot vote on Tuesday night, Mr. Johnson got 128 votes, with 44 Republicans voting for nominees not on the ballot, including 43 for Mr. McCarthy, whom many view as unfairly ousted. Still, in a separate vote afterward, only a few Republicans indicated they would not back Mr. Johnson on the floor, while about 20 Republicans were absent. The hold-outs argued that as majority leader, Scalise was no better choice, that he should be focusing on his health as he battles cancer and that he was not the leader they would support.

With Johnson, Republicans are rallying behind one of the staunchest religious conservatives in the House.

Pressure has grown with each passing day for McCarthy to somehow find the votes he needs or step aside. The incoming Republican chairmen of the House’s Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence committees all said national security was at risk. As night fell before the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election, Democrats said it was time to get serious. The divisive speaker’s fight only underscored the fragility of American democracy exposed by that assault.

House Republicans are heading into another meeting

A key plank of Mr. Scalise’s pitch to his colleagues is that he is a fund-raising powerhouse, second only to Mr. McCarthy. He has raised nearly $170 million over the course of his congressional career to help Republicans win elections. In the 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Scalise spent 112 days on the road campaigning for members and candidates. Over the past five years, his office said, he has given $7.2 million directly to Republican members and candidates and transferred $50 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Early in the day, Mr. Scalise gained ground after Republicans killed an effort to change their party rules for nominating a candidate for speaker by requiring a public roll call and a higher threshold that would have made it more difficult for him to prevail.

But that also means that in addition to Jordan and Scalise, no other candidates seem to have tossed their hats into the ring. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said he's not thrilled with either speaker candidate, Scalise or Jordan. The wrestlers’ decisions to weigh in adds a new dimension to the speaker race, bringing in a controversial part of Jordan’s past that continues to hang over the Ohio Republican and staunch ally of former President Donald Trump. Four of the former Ohio State University wrestlers who have accused Rep. Jim Jordan of failing to protect them from a sexual predator when he was the team’s assistant coach in the 1980s and ‘90s said Tuesday he has no business being the next speaker of the House. The Republican conference meeting has ended and the halls of the Capitol are quiet.

After his slender loss, Mr. Jordan met with Mr. Scalise privately and offered to nominate him on the House floor, according to a spokesman, but he made no public statement of endorsement, and his supporters did not appear swayed. “What we’re trying to do is make sure we can make this institution represent the people and not just represent the swamp,” Mr. Roy said. McHenry was spotted in an unusual area as he left the building — a staircase by the speaker’s lobby where video is restricted, which differs from the route McCarthy would take. Both Scalise and Jordan have been holding meetings with Congress members, various GOP factions and state delegations as they work to shore up support. Scalise is meeting with the Republican Governance Group, the moderate members who first met with Jordan today. It’s the first major piece of legislation introduced in the House in the wake of the war.

New US House speaker tried to help overturn the 2020 election, raising concerns about the next one

And the House, where the GOP holds a slim majority, has paused proceedings as he doesn't yet have the votes to get to 217. Now that House Republicans have chosen Scalise as their speaker nominee, Rep. Patrick McHenry, who has been acting as speaker pro tempore since McCarthy was removed, can bring the vote up on the chamber floor. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, of Florida, said yesterday that she would vote for Scalise to be speaker after holding a private meeting with him. Rogers, an ally of Scalise, expressed concern that the conference would never reach the necessary 217 votes to elect a new speaker without the help of Democrats. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., abruptly left the meeting with his Republican colleagues, blasting the "eight traitors" who "put this country in this situation" by voting to oust McCarthy.

There's been a history of hard landings

The fight, which began on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House GOP majority into chaos and undercut the party's agenda. Of course, members of the latter group don’t admit to the impossibility of their goals; that would ruin the con. They insist that with enough willpower, particularly among their leaders, they could impose their will on the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.

In a letter to colleagues earlier Wednesday, Johnson outlined his first priority will be trying to pass the remaining spending bills that have so far languished in the House one by one. After three weeks without a speaker, the House voted Wednesday to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Lesko, who announced earlier this week that she is retiring at the end of this Congress, said there was "a lot of tension between the members" at the closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference earlier today. The wide variation underscores the problem pollsters face in measuring Kennedy voters. His backers come from both the left and the right and disagree widely on many issues.

Meanwhile, one of the Republicans who voted against Jordan told members during a closed-door meeting today that they had to have a law enforcement officer stationed at their daughter’s school because of threats this member has been getting. The shift from Democrats is noteworthy given their lockstep support of the motion to vacate that led to the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in October, which ultimately resulted in Johnson’s getting the gavel. Members tried to remove speakers in previous congressional terms, but no motion ever reached the floor for a vote. Shortly after reconvening Wednesday night, the House voted to adjourn until noon Thursday — with still no speaker elected. Still, even if these negotiations prove successful and 10 lawmakers do flip to McCarthy's column — which is far from certain — that doesn't get McCarthy to the 218 votes to win the speakership, so he would still have more work to do. It's not at all clear whether McCarthy and his allies will be able to lock down the votes -- and the longer the fight drags on, the more imperiled his speakership bid has become.

Instead, he moved quickly to bring up a resolution expressing solidarity and support for Israel. His next order of business, he said, would be addressing what he called the country’s “broken border” with Mexico. He made no mention of the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, or of the impending government shutdown that will begin next month if Congress fails to pass legislation to keep the government funded. Mr. Johnson was only able to emerge as his party’s nominee for speaker this week after three other G.O.P. nominees before him were unable to rally enough support. 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.

If there was any hope that the GOP would steer toward sanity and distance itself from the Trump sideshow, that hope is gone with the election of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson then organized more than 100 House Republicans to sign onto an amicus brief filed in support of a lawsuit from Texas’ Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate Biden’s wins in four states that gave him his winning margin in the Electoral College — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

He summoned reporters to the Capitol to deliver remarks about the war unfolding in Israel in an event with all the trappings of his former position. Mr. McCarthy spoke from behind a lectern in the Rayburn Room, where the speaker often holds official ceremonies, and used the language of a party leader during a crisis. Not only is the House paralyzed until a new speaker is officially installed but the process of filling other positions in Republican leadership, such as majority leader and majority whip, are also largely on hold until the decision on speaker is finalized. Representative Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who is serving as temporary speaker at the moment, has kept a low profile the past few days.