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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) reacts following the passage of spending legislation to avert a government shutdown, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on Dec. 20, 2024.
Speaker showdown could delay election certification and more
Donald Trump is backing Johnson, whose path to the gavel is narrow. The would-be returning speaker needs the support of all Republicans but one to win, assuming Democrats unite to back Hakeem Jeffries. Trump’s backing of Johnson should help him, but it may not be sufficient. At least one Republican congressman, Chip Roy, of Texas, says Johnson lacks the votes as GOP members are divided; some back Johnson, but others were frustrated over his handling of the recent funding bill battle and are uncertain he’s the man for the job moving forward.
Should Johnson be unable to secure a win, there are Republican contenders waiting in the wings. Some Republicans, including Rand Paul, are consideringElon Musk – the speaker doesn’t have to come from the sitting Congress – while others back Vivek Ramaswamy. More likely candidates, currently serving in the House, include Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer, the majority whip. While other names might be getting more fanfare, Emmer seems to be the most likely second choice.
The looming showdown could drag on and make for Congressional chaos. The House can’t do anything until it elects a speaker – including certifying the election, which is scheduled for Jan. 6. In 2023, it took Kevin McCarthy15 ballots to win the speakership, and he was out less than a year later. A divided Republican side and a close seat count in the House could again make for a rough start to the new Congress and a portent of future impasses.House Speaker Mike Johnson
Johnson avoids government shutdown, sidesteps Trump’s demands
But Donald Trump is unlikely to thank him, as the deal came at the cost of Republicans dropping the SAVE Act, an immigration proposal that included new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. Trump has told Congress not to pass a spending plan without “every ounce” of the proposal and has yet to comment since it was dropped.
Beyond the presidential election, Johnson was also likely motivated to protect Republicans in down-ballot races in November.
The agreed-upon plan includes “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary” besides an additional $231 million to boost Secret Service protections for the candidates during the upcoming presidential election and into next year.
The deal extends government funding through Dec. 20, all but ensuring that the lame-duck period between the election and the inauguration of a new Congress is engulfed in spending disputes. Just in time for the holidays!
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer
House Republicans will vote yet again
For three weeks, the US House of Representatives has failed to function as Republicans fight over who should serve as speaker. The government will shut down in less than one month unless someone can win the 217 votes needed to lead the House and then advance a bill to fund the government, a bill that passes the Senate and earns the president’s signature. Bipartisan calls for aid to Israel and Ukraine are also held up until the majority of Republicans elect a speaker.
Later today, House Republicans will vote by secret ballot on eight new candidates from among their members. In alphabetical order, they are:
- Jack Bergman (Michigan)
- Byron Donalds (Florida)
- Tom Emmer (Minnesota)
- Kevin Hern (Oklahoma)
- Mike Johnson (Louisiana)
- Gary Palmer (Alabama)
- Austin Scott (Georgia)
- Pete Sessions (Texas)
Of these, Emmer, Donalds, Hern, and Johnson appear to have the best chance to win.
Emmer, who currently serves as majority whip, looks to have the broadest support, but former president/front-running GOP candidate Donald Trump adamantly opposes him. (Emmer voted to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Of the other eight candidates, only Austin Scott joined him.)
In each round of voting, the lowest vote-getter will be dropped until there’s just one left. But as Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio have discovered, the winner of this process must go on to secure 217 of the 221 total Republican House members to become speaker.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) presides over the House Judiciary Committee
Speaker race: Jordan might get there
As the week began, it seemed unlikely Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican nominee for Speaker of the House, could win the near unanimous support within his party he needed to win the job. But on Monday, his fortunes appeared to shift.
Endorsements from three crucial members – Mike Rogers of Alabama, Ann Wagner of Missouri and Ken Calvert of California – sharply raised expectations that House Republicans can get to yes and end their crisis.
Those are not the only three converts Jordan appears to have won, but they’re especially significant because they’re influential lawmakers that most analysts considered beyond the reach of Jordan, a man known mainly as a partisan flamethrower and loyal Donald Trump lieutenant. Rogers and Calvert, in particular, were thought to be holding out for larger commitments on defense spending.
Two big questions remain. Can Jordan win over all but four of the 221 Republican members? That’s still not a done deal as of this writing. And what did Jordan promise Rogers, Wagner, Calvert and others in exchange for their unexpected backing?
The next vote for speaker is set to take place Tuesday at noon. Jordan will continue to campaign up to and through the vote. Even if he wins, he’ll find himself trying to lead an increasingly fractious Republican majority with much more infighting to come. The problem that brought down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy remains: A single disgruntled Republican can bring House business to a halt.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, speaks to reporters after departing from a GOP caucus meeting working to formally elect a new speaker of the House.
Speaker snafu hobbles House
The US House of Representatives has now gone 14 days without an elected speaker. After Republican Steve Scalise of Louisiana abandoned his bid due to lack of support, Jim Jordan of Ohio became the second Republican nominated in the past week to run for House speaker, beating Rep. Austin Scott, of Georgia, in a closed-door vote on Friday. Democrats, meanwhile, support House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York.
A vote may be held on Tuesday, but Jordan is not expected to have enough support to take the gavel. With Republicans deadlocked for two weeks, it now appears that moderates are seeking a bipartisan deal – one that Jeffries says would aim to prevent "extremists" from dictating the House agenda.
A group of centrist Democrats have also said they would support temporarily expanding the authority of Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., which would allow the chamber to take up urgent bills, including government funding and foreign aid.
Whoever does end up with the gavel will find it difficult to get Congress to agree on a full-year funding deal, and failure to do so, according to the June debt limit agreement, will dictate set spending cuts.
"The only clear lesson of the speaker's race,” says Clayton Allen, US director for Eurasia Group, “is that the internal divisions within the Republican conference mean that whoever wins will be drastically limited in their ability to govern over the next 15 months. Jordan’s decision to push forward on a floor vote seems unlikely to succeed, but even if a more moderate choice ends up in the speaker's chair, Jordan's band of conservative backers will make it hard to negotiate a deal that avoids triggering the 1% across-the-board cuts next year.”
A collage showing the US Capitol, former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Washington chaos rings alarm bells in Ukraine and Europe
You’ve heard the news. Rebel Republicans and unsympathetic Democrats ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his job yesterday. That post is now officially “vacant.” For now, Patrick McHenry (R-NC) holds the post of Speaker Pro Tempore to ensure there’s someone there to keep the lights on and the process moving toward the election of a new speaker.
Americans (and the world) are now trying to figure out what it all means. But keep in mind, this has never happened before. The only previous attempt to fire a speaker of the US House of Representatives failed, and that was 113 years ago. The cliché “uncharted waters” fits perfectly here.
But … you’ve got questions, lots of questions, and I’m here to give you the best available answers.
We just survived a shutdown threat last weekend. Should we expect more of these congressional showdowns?
Absolutely. Current funding for the government runs out on Nov. 17, and we may not have a speaker to make a deal by then. Even if the House is able to elect a new speaker well before then, that person may feel obliged to continue this game of legislative chicken well into next year by continuing to offer only short-term government funding deals in exchange for concessions from Democrats. In short, the “shutdown showdowns” have only just begun.
Who will be the next speaker?
Get ready for a potentially bloody fight among Republicans. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), conservative Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) have already made moves to enter the race, but there will be more names. For now, Scalise has the most friends with votes, so he’s the early favorite.
Can McHenry, the temporary speaker, get stuff done while we wait?
Again, we’re in uncharted waters. McHenry, McCarthy’s hand-picked successor, has an open-ended ability to preside over House business. There are no rules that prevent him from holding the job indefinitely.
But because this has never happened in American history, the limits of McHenry’s authority aren’t clear. The House parliamentarian is the person with the responsibility to tell us what the rules say. (Be glad you don’t have that job.) Whatever the rules-interpreter/rules-keeper decides will create a precedent.
What does all this chaos mean for Ukraine?
It’s bad news for Volodymyr Zelensky, to be sure. It’s possible that Congress will approve new money for Ukraine before the end of the year, but it’s looking a lot less likely now than it did a few days ago. There are a sizeable number of House Republicans who don’t want the US to send more money to Ukraine, certainly not the additional $40 billion that President Joe Biden wants.
Step back for a moment to last weekend, when most of us were breathing a deep sigh of relief that the shutdown had been averted. To get that deal, pro-Ukraine Democrats had agreed (at least temporarily) to pull new Ukraine funding from the budget deal. They fully intended to fight over that another day, but they set a precedent that Ukraine aid was a bargaining chip they were willing to put on the table.
Anti-Ukraine-aid Republicans saw that, and now they’ll want that concession every time they bargain with Democrats to keep the government open.
OK, so why didn’t Democrats save McCarthy yesterday? They could have done that, right?
Yes, they could have. But the Dems felt McCarthy had backed away from too many promises to deserve saving. From the Dems’ point of view, McCarthy went from condemning Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and calling for an investigation of his responsibility to backing Trump and then to launching an impeachment process against Biden. Democrats made clear early yesterday they had no intention of bailing out a speaker they neither liked nor trusted.
But the Democrats do want to support Ukraine, right? Haven’t they left Ukraine in a precarious place?
Yes, they have.
Here are the scenarios that could protect near-term US aid for Ukraine …
- Republicans could elect a speaker who’s willing to defy dozens of his fellow Republican members of Congress to pass a bill that includes billions more for Ukraine.
- Or Democrats in the Senate could refuse to compromise on Ukraine aid and dare Republicans to shut down the US government.
Neither is all that likely.
By the way, it’s not that all US financial help for Ukraine has stopped. The Pentagon still has $5 billion in additional aid and drawdown authority in its budget. That will meet some of Ukraine’s needs in the coming months.
So, what’s the lasting damage from all this?
Ukraine’s leaders now know the US isn’t a reliable long-term backer, even with a supportive president and the backing of most members of Congress. And they know they’ll have to fight their war differently now. They’ll have to keep more firepower in reserve to be sure they don’t run out of weapons and ammo at a time when new supplies aren’t coming.
They knew that was a risk tied to Trump and next November’s US election. But now, Kyiv must deal with this risk immediately.
Washington’s chaos is also ringing alarm bells across Europe, where leaders know that, particularly on the weapons front, they can’t backfill what will be lost if supplies from Washington begin to run dry.
And the Europeans have to think about their own security. What, they wonder, does all this mean for NATO if this is the future of the Republican Party in America?
In short, a lot of trust has been lost, and it takes much longer to rebuild trust than it does to lose it.
Ousted U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy is ousted as House speaker. What comes next?
In a historic first, the most powerful Republican has been ousted.
After just nine months on the job, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was booted on Tuesday when Democrats joined eight Republicans in backing a vote calling for his ouster. Crucially, the vote was brought by the right flank of McCarthy’s party.
How’d we get here? A handful of anti-establishment, far-right Republicans have opposed McCarthy’s speakership from the get-go, but the immediate trigger was the speaker’s decision to work with Democrats over the weekend to pass a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Though that stopgap measure, which will expire on Nov. 17, did not include more aid for Ukraine, McCarthy did agree to introduce a separate measure to dole out more funds to Kyiv, infuriating far-right members of his caucus.
The House is now in uncharted territory. The bruised and battered McCarthy, who appeared to relish the job he fought tooth and nail for back in January, said late Tuesday that he would not put his hat back in the ring, and it's unclear who might replace him. Going forward, the tear-it-all-down wing of the party, though small, likely won’t be inclined to back any lawmaker they consider to be part of the GOP establishment they despise, and so it’s unclear who – if anyone – will be able to reap the 218 votes needed to become speaker.
The repercussions are huge. As Congress controls the purse strings, the House and Senate must pass appropriation bills to fund the federal government before the current measure lapses in mid-November. Failure to do so could cause major losses for the US economy (more on that here).
Given the unprecedented nature of the situation, it’s unclear how long it’ll take to vote on a new speaker and whether the temporary speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a McCarthy ally, will bring bills to the floor for a vote.
While this chaos dims the chances of the House passing a spending bill before the mid-November deadline, it also makes the future of US aid to Ukraine increasingly murky. That’s because the right flank of the GOP vehemently opposes ongoing aid to Ukraine, and a new speaker might not want to push the matter given how it panned out for McCarthy.
Despite the fact that a majority of US lawmakers support ongoing aid for Ukraine, it’s the speaker of the House who decides which bills come to the floor for a vote.
A sign of the depths of disarray? When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked a GOP lawmaker on Tuesday evening whether he anticipates a new speaker will be tapped soon, he replied: “I have no earthly idea, brother.”
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in DC, shares his thoughts on what’s likely to come next after McCarthy’s ouster. Tune in here.
U.S. House Speaker McCarthy talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Debt ceiling deal comes down to the wire
There was much relief after President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Saturday night that they’d agreed to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default in the world’s largest economy by June 5, the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the US will run out of money to pay back its debts. But it’s clear that the ongoing crisis will come down to the wire. (For more on what’s in the proposed bill, see here.)
On Tuesday night, the bill narrowly passed in the House Rules Committee – a procedural step required before any legislation can be brought for a vote in the House. Two ultraconservative GOP lawmakers on that committee (out of nine) voted against the bill’s advancement. House lawmakers are now expected to vote on the bill this afternoon.
Yet again, McCarthy is experiencing the perils of presiding over a razor-thin majority in the lower chamber as he tries to corral Republican support for the bill that several dozen lawmakers from the far-right Freedom Caucus say gives too much away to the Dems. McCarthy needs a majority of 218 votes to get the bill through, meaning that dozens of Dems will need to back the legislation to move it along to the Senate for a vote. And making matters harder, he needs a majority of the majority – aka Republicans – to back the deal so as not to lose the confidence of his caucus and GOP leadership and risk being ousted from the job.
Meanwhile, progressive House Dems, many of whom are furious at the Biden administration for raising some work requirements for needy families receiving food benefits, are playing their cards close to their chests.