Marjorie Taylor Greene will not drop threat to oust House speaker, aide says Marjorie Taylor Greene

Table Of Content

• At a Capitol Hill bar, the prolonged fight for a speaker becomes a drinking game.
• Elections
• Mike Johnson elected House speaker with unanimous GOP support, ending weeks of chaos
• Rep. Mike Johnson voted new House speaker
• With Johnson, Republicans are rallying behind one of the staunchest religious conservatives in the House.

The removal threat against him now puts any votes to help Ukraine in potential jeopardy and could also empower Democrats to make demands since their votes might be needed to save his job. Republicans unanimously chose Johnson late last year to replace McCarthy after several candidates for the job failed to gain enough support. Johnson’s conservative bend was seen as a welcome departure by the most extreme members of his party who had accused McCarthy for years of being too moderate, including when he worked across the aisle last year to fund the government and raise the nation’s debt limit. Once the motion is introduced, the lawmaker can walk onto the House floor and request a vote.

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

It is presently unclear when the ceremonial swearing in, at which Garcia will use the comic, will take place. President Joe Biden spoke with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to congratulate him on winning the gavel in a call Saturday afternoon, according to the White House. "We actually interacted more this week than we have in the last four years. And if anything, that relationship-building is where it was at." Mr. Emmer had attempted to mollify Mr. Trump by calling him over the weekend and praising him, according to the former president. 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.

Elections

On the other hand, when the speaker and the president belong to opposite parties, the public role and influence of the speaker tend to increase. As the highest-ranking member of the opposition party (and de facto leader of the opposition), the speaker is normally the chief public opponent of the president's agenda. In this scenario, the speaker is known for undercutting the president's agenda by blocking measures by the minority party or rejecting bills by the Senate. Sources say Jordan tapped former New York GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin – who is close with the freshman New York Republicans — to help lean on the holdouts, some of whom named Zeldin on the floor during speaker votes this week.

Mike Johnson elected House speaker with unanimous GOP support, ending weeks of chaos

"We're going to dispense with all the usual ceremonies and celebrations that traditionally follow a new speakership because we have no time for either one," Johnson said. "The American people's business is too urgent in this moment. The hour is late. The crisis is great." Johnson now faces a daunting list of challenges, with a fast-approaching government shutdown chief among them. The House is staring down a deadline of Nov. 17, when current government funding expires. In his blueprint for the next few months, Johnson said a stopgap measure extending funding until January or April may be needed to approve more spending and avoid a shutdown.

The Speaker of the House’s Constitutional Role - National Constitution Center

The Speaker of the House’s Constitutional Role.

Posted: Wed, 04 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Rep. Mike Johnson voted new House speaker

Still, a large contingent of the crowd hung on, with a mixed but visible reaction to Representative Lauren Boebert, who had been a hard holdout, voting “present.” Some booed, and one yelled “sellout! ” Later on, after some key votes for Mr. McCarthy, applause and cheers filled the bar. Mr. Trump’s call into the chamber came on the two-year anniversary of the riot by his supporters to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win over Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump called Mr. Gaetz, according to two people briefed on the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. CNN reported that Mr. Trump also called Representative Andy Biggs, who switched from voting against Mr. McCarthy to voting “present” on the 15th round.

The list of the 10 speakers who served in the job longest includes just one Republican (and in the ninth slot at that). That speaker was Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, notorious as the autocratic "Czar Cannon" during three two-year tours as speaker that ended with his party's historic defeat in 1910. Prior to that, the last Republican speaker had been Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, who died in 1931.

He opted to resign from the House, despite being urged to stay on by House Democratic leader Gephardt. The speaker is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party. In pursuing this goal, the speaker may use their influence over the Rules committee, which is in charge of the business of the House. As the office has developed historically, however, it has taken on a clearly partisan cast, very different from the speakership of most Westminster-style legislatures, such as the speaker of the United Kingdom's House of Commons, which is meant to be scrupulously non-partisan. The speaker in the United States, by tradition, is the head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, outranking the majority leader. However, despite having the right to vote, the speaker usually does not participate in debate and only votes on the most significant bills.

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, had declined yet again to vote for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California on a 14th ballot, helping sink McCarthy’s chances at speaker that round. Even by the heated standards of the tensions that flared among House Republicans during their four-day push to elect a speaker, what happened on the House floor around 11 p.m. So much of what House Republicans want to do legislatively will go nowhere in the Democratic Senate, but the Republican majority will be able to conduct the investigations it has promised and McCarthy is emphasizing that point. This is the first time Hal Rogers of Kentucky swears in the speaker, following the death of Don Young of Alaska in 2022. After days of a bare stone wall, the Speaker McCarthy sign has been hung outside the office. Mr. McCarthy’s supporters have bemoaned the drawn-out process and even praised Democrats for staying united despite their ideological differences.

Ouster threat looms as Speaker Johnson returns to Congress

Johnson's voting record has earned him a lifetime rating of 92% from the American Conservative Union and 90% from Heritage Action. Third, the speaker oversees everything from accounting to procurement for the House. The Speaker of the House is third in line for the Presidency of the United States. If the President of the United States dies or steps down, the Vice President of the United States becomes President. If there is no vice president, the Speaker of the House automatically becomes acting president. Theodore M. Pomeroy served as Speaker of the House for one day after Speaker Schuyler Colfax resigned to become Vice President of the United States; Pomeroy's term as a Member of Congress ended the next day.

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. The dissidents praised the protracted debate that spotlighted their party’s rifts, made it impossible for legislative business to be conducted and threatened the timely issuance of paychecks on Capitol Hill.

The floor fight dragged on for the better part of a week, the longest since 1859, and paralyzed the House, with lawmakers stripped of their security clearances because they could not be sworn in as official members of Congress until a speaker was chosen. Hakeem Jeffries made history as the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress, addressing the 118th Congress for the first time in the early hours of Saturday morning. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark assumed her role as House minority whip in the early hours of Saturday morning, becoming the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the chamber. Mr. Emmer’s demise was the latest evidence of the seemingly unending Republican dysfunction. He began the day with a scant victory, winning an internal party nominating contest by a vote of 117 to 97 over Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson’s hallmark in Congress has been combining his hard-line views with a gentle personal style. That was on display on Wednesday, when he vowed to try to find common ground with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader. 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. On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, Mr. Johnson had honed his arguments undermining the election to be more palatable. He presented colleagues with arguments they could use to oppose the will of the voters without embracing conspiracy theories and the lies of widespread fraud pushed by Mr. Trump.

Scalise had been the party's first nominee after McCarthy was ousted, but withdrew his name one day after winning the internal GOP vote. Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida, who supported McCarthy over Jordan, called Johnson a "straightforward leader" who can unite the Republican conference in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Gimenez, former chief of the City of Miami Fire Department, highlighted that both Johnson and McCarthy are the sons of firefighters. "Mike Johnson and I both represent two of the poorest districts in the country, but the richest in the values held by the great people of #TX23 & #LA04. I look forward to working with him to help SECURE the southern border as OUR next Speaker of the US House," he wrote on social media. GOP lawmakers who withheld their support for Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio during his three rounds of voting on the House floor are beginning to line up behind Johnson. Democrats will nominate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and they are being urged to vote for him, according to a notice from Democratic whip Katherine Clark's office.

After a spectacle of arm-twisting on the House floor, Kevin McCarthy won over just enough of the far-right rebels he needed to become speaker. He swore in the chamber’s members, ending days of paralysis at the start of Republican rule. Clark’s ascension to a top House leadership position comes less than 10 years after she entered Congress representing Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold outside Boston.

Pressed by reporters on Tuesday night about his efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Johnson smiled and shook his head, saying, “next question,” as Republicans beside him booed. The views are sharply at odds with those of most Americans, according to opinion polls that have found the public is broadly supportive of gay rights. Mr. Johnson’s abrupt rise to the speaker post this week in the depressed and divided House Republican conference underscores the rightward lurch of the G.O.P., which dumped his more mainstream predecessor, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church speaking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump called.