Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, who made history as the first speaker to be ousted from the post, announced on Wednesday that he would leave the House at the end of the year but said he planned to remain engaged in Republican politics. “I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest […]
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At an emotional evening news conference immediately after he was removed as speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy gave an inconclusive answer about whether he would remain in Congress. “I’ll look at that,” he said then. Over the past two months, Mr. McCarthy has given the life of a rank-and-file member a hard look […]
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Moments after House members cast a historic vote to expel Representative George Santos of New York, Speaker Mike Johnson banged the gavel with a grim look on his face. “In light of the expulsion of the gentleman from New York, Mr. Santos, the whole number of the House is now 434,” he announced gravely to […]
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Former President Donald J. Trump was “really depressed” in the days after losing re-election and leaving office in January 2021, so much so that he was “not eating.” At least that is what Kevin McCarthy told Liz Cheney in trying to explain why he had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, an act […]
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Ah, Thanksgiving. That magical time when friends and family gather round the table to share the love, reminisce — and bicker endlessly about politics and the state of the nation. If your clan is anything like mine, the conversation bends toward the grim and angsty: President Biden’s advanced age, Donald Trump’s legal dramas, Ron DeSantis’s […]
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Speaker Mike Johnson struggled to defend himself at a recent private party meeting on Capitol Hill when some House Republicans confronted their new leader asking for any evidence that he was leading them in a new direction or taking hits on their behalf. “Just Google my name and you’ll see,” was Mr. Johnson’s reply. He […]
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The former G.O.P. speaker elbowed one of the Republicans who had voted to oust him. A Republican senator rose to challenge an organized labor leader to a brawl during a hearing. Across the Capitol, the chairman of a different panel compared a member of his committee to a cartoon character. Tensions ran high on Capitol […]
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Two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, a little-known congressman named Mike Johnson took the stage at Christian Center Shreveport to celebrate. “This is a day we’ve been waiting on for a half-century,” he told the ebullient congregation, adding that there was no place he would rather be than with […]
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Just days before winning the race for speaker of the House last week, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana sent a letter to colleagues laying out a plan to complete the budget process by bringing 12 individual appropriations bills to the floor. Mr. Johnson billed his plan as a way to “allow us to demonstrate good […]
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The decision to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker and replace him with a little-known congressman, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has left a glaring financial gap for House Republicans headed into 2024 when the party has to defend its narrow and fragile majority. Mr. McCarthy’s political operation brought in more than 100 times the amount of […]
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Republicans didn’t have a speaker for 40 years until Newt Gingrich finally reclaimed the gavel for the party in 1995 after decades in the wilderness. But hanging on to it has proved extremely challenging for Republicans in the years since — a potential object lesson for incoming Speaker Mike Johnson. From Newt Gingrich to John […]
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The three-week battle to choose a House speaker may be over, yet the fallout for the United States and its reputation as a sound government and a beacon of democracy will be long-lasting and profound. The Republicans in the House unanimously voted for a man who made it his mission to try to overturn the […]
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Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana had just survived a closed-door vote to end a tumultuous period of paralysis without a House speaker on Tuesday night and was celebrating with smiling and exhausted Republican colleagues. “Democracy is messy sometimes,” he said, “but it is our system.” But moments later, Mr. Johnson was confronted at a news […]
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In the end, Republican hard-liners got their man. He wasn’t the person whom the most extreme element of House Republicans really wanted — that was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the godfather of the far right in the House who ultimately was too toxic to ascend to the top post and fell short. But the […]
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The position of speaker of the House has been vacant since early October amid Republican feuding that has left the chamber paralyzed. House Republicans have elected two nominees for the job since a hard-right clutch of lawmakers toppled Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But both men — Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, and […]
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House Republicans are meeting on Tuesday to vote — yet again — on a nominee for speaker, as the party feud that has paralyzed the chamber enters its third week. Seven Republicans are now vying for the post, reflecting the deep divisions within the House G.O.P. The party began meeting at 9 a.m. and was […]
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When Casey Stengel had the misfortune to be the manager of the historically inept 1962 New York Mets, his famous plaint was, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” The question for House Republicans, mired in a weekslong demonstration of their internal dysfunction, is: Does anybody here want to play this game? It is tempting to […]
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When it comes to Congress, Americans have come to expect a certain baseline of dysfunction. But I think most of us can agree that the current House Republican majority is something special. Overthrowing a speaker for the first time in history. Rejecting multiple nominees to replace him. Members publicly trashing one another. One faction’s supporters […]
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Kevin McCarthy, the ousted speaker, was making his way through the Capitol when reporters asked what he thought of the chaos consuming House Republicans, who for nearly three weeks have been trying and failing to replace him. His answer veered into the existential. “We are,” he said on Friday, “in a very bad place right […]
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Representative Jim Jordan was brought down by the revolt of the rule followers. Withstanding intense pressure, a solid bloc of more mainstream Republicans, many with military and executive experience and a desire to legislate rather than blow things up, pulled the party in their direction. They believed that installing Mr. Jordan, a hard-right Ohioan and […]
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Leaving the House floor shortly after delivering the opening prayer on Friday morning, the House chaplain, Margaret G. Kibben, turned to the sergeant-at-arms flanking the entrance and whispered, “Godspeed.” It was a barely audible plea that could not hold back yet another day of chaos and uncertainty, of sniping and of death threats, as House […]
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Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio made it clear on Friday morning that he was not giving up in his faltering campaign to be House speaker just ahead of a 10 a.m. vote in which he was expected to fail for a third time. At a brief news conference, Mr. Jordan emphasized the need for the […]
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President Biden was on his way back from a high-stakes diplomatic mission to Israel on Wednesday night when a reporter on Air Force One asked him if he had any thoughts about Representative Jim Jordan’s predicament in the House. “I ache for him,” Mr. Biden said, putting his hand on his heart. Really? “Noooo,” he […]
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Oops, they did it again. On Tuesday the House Republican gong show once again failed to choose a new speaker of the House. This time it was one of the conference’s most belligerent hard-liners, Jim Jordan, who got smacked down, falling a whopping 17 votes short of a majority on the first round of voting. […]
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As he left the floor Tuesday afternoon after Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was soundly rejected for House speaker, Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky and a strong Jordan backer, spoke for many in their embattled party: “I don’t know what to think.” While it was impossible to determine how, when or even if Republicans […]
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Representative Jim Jordan, the ultraconservative hard-liner from Ohio, lost a bid to be elected speaker on Tuesday and put off a second vote until Wednesday, prolonging a two-week fight that has paralyzed the chamber and exposed deep G.O.P. divisions. Mr. Jordan, the combative co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of former […]
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No problem in the American system at this moment is as acute and disruptive as the one posed by the Republican Party. Yes, of course, there are any number of structural problems facing American politics. Our system of elections — first-past-the-post voting, the Electoral College, single-member districts and partisan gerrymandering — feeds into and amplifies […]
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The House is set to return to Washington on Monday with no speaker, and no solution in sight to the Republican feuding that has left the post vacant and the chamber paralyzed for nearly two weeks. Representative Jim Jordan, the hard-right Ohio Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, became his party’s latest speaker-designate on […]
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Representative Jim Jordan and his allies have begun a right-wing pressure campaign against Republicans opposed to electing him speaker, working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in the way of his election. Even after Mr. Jordan, the hard-right Ohio Republican, won his party’s nomination for the post on […]
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The House speaker had been unceremoniously dumped by colleagues unhappy with his performance and overly optimistic political predictions. Those who would typically be considered next in line had made too many enemies to be able to secure the necessary numbers to take his place. The House was in utter chaos as bombs fell in the […]
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Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right Republican who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was poised on Friday to make another bid for the speakership, toiling to unite a Republican Conference in chaos after deposing one speaker and blocking another in line for the job. The bid by Mr. Jordan, the co-founder of […]
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