News and updates

The latest development is that the resolution to empower Patrick McHenry has been pushed aside by the Republican conference as Jordan is insisting that he is still actively running for Speaker.  The members emerged after a three-hour meeting, still looking for clarity.

Read more about the developments here and here. 

Adding further intrigue to the current state of things in the House, Jim Jordan is set to pause his pursuit of the Speakership.  Instead, he is planning to endorse a plan to empower Patrick McHenry of North Carolina with additional authorities temporarily in order to allow the House to take up substantive matters.  A number of questions and issues with that plan remain, however, such as:

• Details about exactly how long McHenry would be elevated and the authorities he would have remain unclear.
• With McHenry in a temporary role and Jordan not officially abandoning his pursuit of the Speaker position, Jordan would still be the Speaker-designate.  This would allow him additional time to try to build additional support for his candidacy while McHenry presides over the House.  Whether Jordan seeks future votes on the floor for Speaker is uncertain.
• The question about a future vote on Jordan leads to another question, this one related to whether Democrats would support the move bestow additional authorities to McHenry.  A number of Republicans have publicly stated their opposition to giving the Speaker Pro Temp position additional powers.  Given that the proposal requires a majority to pass, those pushing the idea would need Democratic support.

Needless to say, things still remain very fluid.  Read more about the developments here, here, and here.

The House is currently scheduled to reconvene at noon today to vote for the third time on Jim Jordan’s nomination to be Speaker.  While several of his supporters have expressed confidence that he will ultimately prevail, other Members predicted after yesterday’s vote that the opposition will likely grow on this and any other future attempts.

At the same time, there is a push among some Republicans to provide additional authorities to Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry of North Carolina in an attempt to allow the House to move on a number of pending issues, such as FY2024 appropriations (the continuing resolution that currently funds the government expires at midnight, Nov. 18) as well as potential funding to Israel and Ukraine.  Details remain murky on the details.

After all the votes were cast and counted just a few minutes ago, the House was still in search of a Speaker.  Jim Jordan of Ohio fell short on the second round of votes, actually losing two votes between the first and second rounds.  Twenty-two Republicans voted for someone other than Jordan for Speaker, leaving him with 199 votes.  Democrats once again voted unanimously for Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

The House is currently in recess.

When yesterday’s initial vote on Speaker did not lead to a victory for Jim Jordan, questions arose about when we might see another floor vote.  Initially, a second round had been scheduled for later in the evening yesterday.  That was ultimately postponed, and was rescheduled to approximately 11 AM ET today.

Not surprisingly, a myriad different conversations have taken place between the 20 Republican holdouts and Jordan’s supporters in an attempt to win them over since yesterday’s vote.  In remains to be seen how successful the additional push was.

Read more about the recent developments here, here, and here.