Republicans have at long last elected a House speaker: Representative Mike Johnson, a fundamentalist Christian who was also once called a key “architect” in Congress’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
Johnson finally secured the speaker’s gavel after Republican infighting left the House without a speaker for 22 days. He secured 220 votes.
Johnson is a four-term congressman representing Louisiana. His win also represents the rise of the MAGA front in the Republican Party. Earlier Wednesday morning, Donald Trump endorsed Johnson as House speaker—after quickly killing Mike Emmer’s nomination the day before.
Via the same rule through which McCarthy was removed. After years of a Motion to Vacate the speakership requiring much more than a single vote, the GOP demanded that it be reverted to an older, single vote rule before McCarthy would be considered for speaker. This is before the first vote was ever cast, and that rule still stands. It was written into the 118th Congress rules and has not been rescinded.
In other words, the GOP can do this over and over and over again, as many times as they get a call from Putin to do so. They can oust any and every speaker at will, keeping Congress at a standstill and the government in chaos as long as they can get a simple
GOPmajority vote.But they won’t have to, because this asshole is one of the Rs that voted against the continuing resolution that is the only thing keeping government open right now. When that 45-day clock runs out in November, the new Speaker is going to stonewall just like he did before, and will likely keep his seat throughout any government shutdown he succeeds in creating.
They don’t need a GOP majority vote. They need a house majority vote. And unless dems have some compelling reason to keep the republican speaker (unlikely), it only takes a handful from the GOP to oust the speaker. I think McCarthy only lost 8 republican votes.
Quite right. Thank you for the correction.