“We are in a very bad situation.” Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker of the American House of Representatives, recognizes it: the American Congress is sinking a little deeper into crisis. Republican elected officials, who have a majority in the lower house, no longer support Jim Jordan as their party’s candidate for the presidency of the House.
During a secret ballot on Friday, October 20, the parliamentary group disavowed this lieutenant of Donald Trump, who suffered his third defeat in four days to be elected to the perch. In detail, 25 Republicans voted against the elected official from Ohio.
The day before, parliamentarians had asked Jim Jordan to give up. Around twenty moderate Republicans still criticize this pugnacious elected official for positions that are too extreme, which is why they refused to elect him. “It has become clear that elected Jordan does not have and will not obtain the votes necessary to be a ‘speaker'”, Republican Tom Kean had also underlined in a press release. Some elected officials, after their vote against Jim Jordan, also claimed to have received death threats.
A new meeting on Monday
The Republicans have announced that they will now meet on Monday October 23 to nominate a new candidate. But the 221 parliamentarians cannot agree on the figure of the new president. “We need to come together and determine who our leader will be,” said Jim Jordan after this vote, who confirmed that he would not run again.
According to the New York Times, a dozen elected officials said they wanted to run, or were seriously considering doing so. These include Tom Emmer (Minnesota), Byron Donalds (Florida), Kevin Hern (Oklahoma), Austin Scott (Georgia) and Jack Bergman (Michigan).
A paralyzed Congress
The position of “speaker” has been vacant since the historic dismissal of Kevin McCarthy on October 3, following divisions (already) between moderate Republicans and Trumpists. Since this dismissal, the Lower House has not been able to vote on any bill. As a result, Congress finds itself paralyzed.
This blockage comes at a time when American President Joe Biden has just requested a huge budgetary increase of more than $105 billion to help allies Israel and Ukraine, and to respond to the arrivals of migrants at the country’s southern border.
“We need to unblock the House. I expect the Senate to start working on President Biden’s national security package as soon as possible,” Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters. House of Representatives.
“Palace intrigues”
“If the Chamber is not unblocked, it will get bogged down needlessly and lives will be put in danger. It is a serious situation,” he insisted. To get out of the crisis, Hakeem Jeffries called for finding a “speaker” who results from a choice coming from both political sides. According to him, Jim Jordan was a “danger to democracy”. “There are still reasonable Republicans on the other side of the House, men and women who want the House to return to service,” he assured.
In an institution still marked by the assault on the Capitol, the Democrats denounce the ambiguous position of Jim Jordan on the 2020 presidential election, an election that Donald Trump still describes, without proof, as “stolen”.
In front of journalists, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis accused Republicans in the House of Representatives on Friday of engaging in “palace intrigues” instead of “delivering results,” reports the New York Times. “It is regrettable that they cannot get their act together,” said the Republican, a 2024 presidential candidate.