Saturday, April 27, 2024

House Speaker: Johnson Elected Speaker of the House, Ending Weeks of Chaos The New York Times

house of reps speaker

A bloc of Republicans had objected to the speaker bid of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, because of his role in helping lead Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. After three weeks without a speaker, the House voted Wednesday to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Biggs, who also eventually softened his opposition to Mr. McCarthy’s speakership bid enough to vote “present,” was involved in a range of organizational efforts in 2020, including meetings aimed at attracting protesters to Washington on Jan. 6, according to the House Jan. 6 committee. Other hard-right holdouts who for days have refused to vote for Mr. McCarthy were Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Harris of Maryland.

Biden Says Weapons Will Flow to Ukraine Within Hours as He Signs Aid Bill

He swore in the chamber’s members, ending days of paralysis at the start of Republican rule. In the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party regained control of the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

As Speaker, Johnson Advances What He Once Opposed, Enraging the Right

Final passage was expected sometime next week, which would clear the way for Biden to sign it into law. "When I make a statement that I’m praying about it, I am praying about it, and when I get a call from the speaker and he belittles that, to me, that shows another reason why we need a change in leadership,” Burchett told reporters on the way to the House floor Tuesday. A bipartisan committee, usually consisting of members from the home state of the chosen candidate, will then escort the speaker-elect to the chair on the dais where the oath of office is administered.

Democratic Caucus Vice Chair

It was the 127th U.S. speaker election since the office was created in 1789. Republicans have now spurned all three of their top leaders over the past few weeks. The chamber has been frozen for the better part of a month as Republicans feud over who should be in charge, even as wars rage overseas and a government shutdown approaches.

Kevin McCarthy is ousted as House speaker in historic vote. What happens next? - The Associated Press

Kevin McCarthy is ousted as House speaker in historic vote. What happens next?.

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

How the House of Representatives elects a speaker

On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson was toiling to help Republicans turn the page from the chaos of the past few weeks. He said there would be none of the typical celebrations that accompany the election of a new speaker. On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church speaking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump called. Mr. Johnson had been in touch with the president’s team on his myriad legal challenges seeking to overturn the results, “to restore the integrity of our election process,” according to a Facebook post by Mr. Johnson recounting the exchange. The podcasts, spanning 69 episodes, offer an extended window into Mr. Johnson's views and politics, as he co-hosts the program with his wife, a licensed pastoral counselor. In it, the man who has just been elected speaker, an evangelical Christian, talks at length about his vehement opposition to abortion rights, calls the Democratic agenda socialist, and rails against the prosecution of Mr. Trump for his efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.

Editorial: Only dictators have immunity from criminal acts while in power

Albert's successor, Democrat Tip O'Neill, was a prominent speaker because of his public opposition to the policies of President Ronald Reagan. O'Neill is the longest continuously serving speaker, from 1977 through 1987. Republicans made O'Neill the target of their election campaigns in 1980 and 1982 but Democrats managed to retain their majorities in both years.

Partisan role

One official briefed on that emerging compromise said if a lawmaker took issue with a certain earmark, they could force such a vote. Upon hearing that a speaker had not been elected, shouts of disappointment filled the air. Last call came, before the Republicans voted to go to a 15th ballot instead of adjourning — an unexpected opportunity for another viewing party. The speakership reached its apogee during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon (1903–1911). He determined the agenda of the House, appointed the members of all committees, chose committee chairmen, headed the Rules Committee, and determined which committee heard each bill. He vigorously used his powers to ensure that Republican proposals were passed by the House.

Kevin McCarthy voted out: first House Speaker to be ousted - The Associated Press

Kevin McCarthy voted out: first House Speaker to be ousted.

Posted: Tue, 03 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

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. And the hard-right Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, setting into motion the three-week stretch of chaos that left the House without a leader, said Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the top job made their decision to depose the California Republican worth it. Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana won election on Wednesday to become the 56th speaker of the House of Representatives, as Republicans worn down by three weeks of infighting and dysfunction turned to a little-known conservative hard-liner beloved by the far right to end their paralysis. The challenge for House Republicans is they still have eight more spending bills to pass including two that have been stuck in committee because of disagreements within GOP ranks. In his letter to colleagues, Johnson set out an aggressive time table for passing the bills, but the issue will be finding a way to pass the legislation in just a narrow GOP majority.

house of reps speaker

Johnson said Republicans would "dispense with all of the usual ceremonies and celebrations” and get to work. “You’re going to see an aggressive schedule in the days and weeks ahead,” he said. Representative Ken Buck of Colorado said that Mr. Johnson was not involved in postelection efforts to invalidate the results, even though Mr. Johnson was a critical player in those activities. “People can make mistakes and still be really good speakers,” Mr. Buck said. Mr. Johnson has opposed continued funding for the war in Ukraine, which has emerged as a bitter fault line in the G.O.P. and in the spending battles that he will have to navigate in the coming days. Exhausted from the feuding, which unleashed a barrage of recriminations and violent threats against lawmakers, both the right wing and mainstream Republicans finally united to elect Mr. Johnson, 51, in a 220-to-209 vote.

Rayburn's successor, Democrat John W. McCormack (served 1962–1971), was a somewhat less influential speaker, particularly because of dissent from younger members of the Democratic Party. During the mid-1970s, the power of the speakership once again grew under Democrat Carl Albert. The Committee on Rules ceased to be a semi-independent panel, as it had been since 1910. Moreover, in 1975, the speaker was granted the authority to appoint a majority of the members of the Rules Committee.

At other times, more junior members may be assigned to preside to give them experience with the rules and procedures of the House. The speaker may also designate, with approval of the House, a speaker pro tempore for special purposes, such as designating a representative whose district is near Washington, D.C. In 1997, several Republican congressional leaders tried to force Speaker Newt Gingrich to resign. However, Gingrich refused since that would have required a new election for speaker, which could have led to Democrats along with dissenting Republicans voting for Democrat Dick Gephardt (then minority leader) as speaker. After the 1998 midterm elections where the Republicans lost seats, Gingrich did not stand for re-election.

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. Representative Mike Johnson, a little-known social conservative from Louisiana, emerged on Tuesday night as the latest contender for the post after Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid only hours after securing the nomination. Mr. Emmer’s downfall followed a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, that left his candidacy in shambles and the G.O.P. as divided as ever.

In 1997, in his second Congress as speaker, he barely survived a largely covert challenge from within his own leadership team. And just shy of his fourth anniversary in the job, he was voted out by the full House Republican conference in December 1998. Johnson is the sixth Republican elevated to the speakership since 1994, the year the party won its first House majority and elected a speaker of its own for the first time in 40 years. The hard truth is that the five who preceded Johnson (McCarthy, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Dennis Hastert and Newt Gingrich) all saw their time in the office end in relative degrees of defeat or frustration. And to find a Republican speaker who left voluntarily in a moment of victory, moving on to another office, you have to go back to the mid-1920s.

He said, without the slightest hesitation, that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, shooting down Trump’s persistent lies about his defeat. He remains close to the many lawmakers he recruited and helped get in office and keeps in touch with a nationwide donor network built during years as one of the GOP’s top congressional strategists. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abbas Tajudeen, and the founder of the Kukah Centre, Bishop Mathew Kukah, have called on Nigerians to work towards building a united nation. The most important development for the party in all of this is that the rest of the caucus has realized that going along with the arsonists — all of whom have safe seats and would be happy to throw their bombs from the House minority — amounts to politically suicidal appeasement. During a news conference Tuesday, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy said he did not make a deal with the White House on supplemental aid for Ukraine. Gaetz also pushed back on McCarthy suggesting the eight who voted against him are not conservatives.

The opposition to the Israel aid represented a minority of Democrats, but reflected the deep resistance to unconditional aid and the divisions in the party on Gaza. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland represented a notable new “no” vote among Democrats, and other standouts included Representatives Donald S. Beyer Jr. of Virginia, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and John Garamendi of California. Eight Republican lawmakers joined 208 Democrats in toppling the former Bakersfield congressman, the first time in history a House leader has been voted out. First to be voted on was a bill including legislation on border security, which failed, as expected.

In that case, even though the 26th United States Congress convened on December 2, the House could not begin the speakership election until December 14 because of an election dispute in New Jersey known as the "Broad Seal War". Two rival delegations, one Whig and the other Democrat, had been certified as elected by different branches of the New Jersey government. The problem was compounded by the fact that the result of the dispute would determine whether the Whigs or the Democrats held the majority. Neither party agreed to permit a speakership election with the opposite party's delegation participating. Finally, it was agreed to exclude both delegations from the election and a speaker was finally chosen on December 17. The Republicans came out of the 2000 elections with a further reduced majority but made small gains in 2002 and 2004.

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