JUST IN: Rep Mike Johnson voted new House speaker

Table Of Content

• He has Trump's stamp of approval, sort of
• The 2024 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Keri Russell, Chris Pine plus more
• Johnson says he's never voted against Ukraine aid. That's not what his record says.
• Johnson enters speaker’s office for first time since being sworn in
• January 7, 2023 updates on Speaker Kevin McCarthy

“The motion to vacate is accountability,” he added, referring to the measure allowing a snap vote to remove the speaker. Mr. McCarthy agreed to allow a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that he had previously refused to accept, regarding it as tantamount to signing the death warrant for his speakership in advance. “What we’re seeing is the incredibly shrinking speakership, and that’s most unfortunate for Congress,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said as she entered the chamber on Friday afternoon. Mr. Gaetz refused to budge, and Mr. McCarthy’s allies moved to adjourn the House until Monday, crestfallen after a defeat they had not anticipated. Republicans quickly switched their votes to oppose the adjournment and proceeded to a 15th speaker vote, which ended well after midnight. 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 has Trump's stamp of approval, sort of

At one point, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama, had to be restrained after stepping toward Mr. Gaetz. Jeffries now leads the minority party in the House, succeeding California's Nancy Pelosi, who served as speaker in the prior session of Congress when Democrats held the majority. In addition to being the first Black lawmaker to attain such a position, Jeffries is also the first person elected to lead House Democrats to be born after the end of World War II. 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.

The 2024 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Keri Russell, Chris Pine plus more

One was Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who led the party in the House during two brief interludes of majority status after World War II. Both lasted only the minimum two years, the first ending with Democratic Harry S. Truman's surprise White House win in 1948. Martin was back four years later when Eisenhower was first elected president in 1952, but that tour at the top was cut short by his party's sharp losses two years later. But this time around several Democrats have indicated they would cross the aisle to support Johnson and frustrate Greene & Co. if it came to a vote. Democratic leaders have indicated they are open to this, and it essentially repeats the strategy that allowed Johnson to pass the Ukraine portion of the aid bill earlier this month.

Johnson says he's never voted against Ukraine aid. That's not what his record says.

But in accepting the Democratic nomination for speaker, Jeffries rattled off moments when America's democracy was tested, including when thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to stop Congress' certification of Biden's victory. Stefanik made the argument that Johnson is the best candidate as "we live in perilous times and the American people are hurting." "Hakeem Jeffries has not turned his back on the will of the American people. The son of two social workers, he's always stood by the side of working families. The most pressing needs of everyday Americans are his north star." Voting will be done verbally with members called by name alphabetically and then stating their choice for speaker. If a member doesn’t vote, they will get a chance to vote at the end of the roll call. Before the vote Wednesday, numerous members of Congress said they knew little about Johnson, with some Republican senators saying they had never even met him.

In 1989 Speaker Jim Wright of Texas resigned under pressure following revelations about a book deal the House Ethics Committee saw as circumventing fundraising rules. Longworth's successor, John "Cactus Jack" Garner of Texas, left the office after just over a year to be Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president. Gingrich managed to restore many of the powers of the speakership but clashed repeatedly with Clinton and even with Republican leaders in the Senate. 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. Becoming speaker of the House has been a career ambition for McCarthy, who served as a House staffer and a minority leader of the California Assembly in Sacramento before being elected to the House in 2006.

Newly sworn-in congresswoman says House speaker vote unfolded "just as it should"

In April 2018, Ryan said he would not serve another term and left as the party was losing its majority that fall. 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.

January 7, 2023 updates on Speaker Kevin McCarthy

Johnson was able to unite the fractured conference through a combination of good timing, his conservatism and his reputation for having a pleasant demeanor. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, was up next, but after three failed floor votes, he, too, bowed out of the running. The party next selected Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the No. 3 Republican, as their pick, but he realized he couldn't amass 217 votes either after Trump came out against him, and he quit just hours after winning the nomination. Republicans first nominated the No. 2 leader, Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who dropped out less than 36 hours later after opponents blocked his path to 217 floor votes.

Mike Johnson's evolution on Ukraine aid as House speaker - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

Mike Johnson's evolution on Ukraine aid as House speaker - The Washington Post.

Posted: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 15:51:00 GMT [source]

GOP Rep. Bice considering running for Johnson's former leadership role

House Speaker Mike Johnson entered the speaker's office for the first time after being sworn in, with his new name plate hanging above the door. The members who ousted McCarthy also told reporters that they have no regrets now about ousting McCarthy. This marks a clear departure from how those same members viewed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision earlier this month to put a short-term spending bill on the floor, which ultimately led to his ouster.

House passes resolution in support of Israel in war against Hamas

He has also 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 any new speaker will have to navigate in the coming days. Instead, he moved quickly to bring up a resolution expressing solidarity and support for Israel. His next order of business, he said, would be addressing what he called the country’s “broken border” with Mexico.

While Jean-Pierre isn’t going anywhere, the issues that brought about Dunn’s failed machinations remain — with both sources saying the press secretary is too reliant on notes to provide the pushback and quick-thinking repartee needed to effectively champion Biden’s cause. Jean-Pierre’s predecessor, Jen Psaki, was press secretary for one week shy of 16 months before leaving to take a job as a host and analyst at MSNBC. “There were a number of people she asked to engage Karine,” said one source who heard of the strategy directly from Dunn, whose role as senior adviser has been filled during the past three presidencies by Jared Kushner (Donald Trump), Valerie Jarrett (Barack Obama) and Karl Rove (George W. Bush).

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. Mainstream conservatives who backed Mr. Johnson said they hoped to quickly move to pull the House out of its funk. Almost immediately after Mr. Johnson was elected, lawmakers began debating a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel and condemning Hamas, which passed overwhelmingly. The vote put him second in line to the presidency, capping an extraordinary period of twists and turns on Capitol Hill. It marked a victory for the far right that has become a dominant force in the Republican Party, which rose up this month to effectively dictate the removal of an establishment speaker and the installation of an arch-conservative replacement. Moments earlier, McCarthy himself had walked from his seat, down the center aisle to Gaetz and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., to try to flip their present votes to yes; that would have secured the speaker’s gavel for McCarthy.

When Chester A. Arthur took office in 1881, he ordered renovations to the White House to take place as soon as the recently widowed Lucretia Garfield moved out. Over twenty wagonloads of furniture and household items were removed from the building and sold at a public auction.[57] All that was saved were bust portraits of John Adams and Martin Van Buren.[58] A proposal was made to build a new residence south of the White House, but it failed to gain support. "Look, you all know Matt Gaetz. You know it was personal," McCarthy said during a news conference on Tuesday following his ousting. Prior to the GOP's 40-year sentence as the minority party, several of its speakers had risen to the top rung largely on their personal popularity among their colleagues.

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. Both Democrats and Republicans made strides in diversifying their congressional ranks in the November midterm elections, with several historic milestones reached and a record number of women elected. As GOP Conference vice chairman, a post he has held since 2021, Johnson is the seventh-ranking Republican on the leadership team.

Who is Mike Johnson, the new US Republican House speaker? - Al Jazeera English

Who is Mike Johnson, the new US Republican House speaker?.

Posted: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Friday night, Mr. McCarthy remained one vote short of what he needed to seal the deal. Representative-elect Eli Crane of Arizona and Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana — the two holdouts who seemed most likely to move — both voted against him, leaving his fate in the hands of his lead tormentor, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. "This is not a dictatorship where one person gets to decide everything for the entire conference. ... So we saw it play out just as it should," De La Cruz told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday. The Texas Republican said that while "of course" lawmakers wanted to be sworn in on January 3, "you saw democracy play out over the last week and come to consensus in the wee hours of the morning, and now we're ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work."

Like Johnson an era later, Hastert was a relatively quiet member of the leadership who enjoyed goodwill generally in the rank and file. Hastert was speaker through the last two Clinton years and first six of the George W. Bush presidency. But he voluntarily resigned after the GOP lost badly in the 2006 midterms, a defeat Bush called "a thumpin' " at the time. Just such a "motion to vacate the chair" was filed against Johnson in March by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.