Minority Whip Katherine Clark and the House Democratic Caucus: NAJ screen shot

By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the world watches the devastating crisis of war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas on 24-hour cable news and social media, the federal government in Washington is still operating without a 2024 budget on a temporary continuing resolution that will expire on Nov. 17, the Friday before Thanksgiving.

This makes it impossible for federal agency leaders to plan spending for next year, including the National Park Service.

What is the majority party in the House doing about it? Still fighting over a Speaker, not working on a bill to fund the federal government.

House Republicans on Friday nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, the far-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to be their next speaker after failing to find the votes to approve Steve Scalise of Louisiana to replace Kevin McCarthy of California. But a floor vote to elect Jordon was postponed after a test secret-ballot vote came up short of the 217 votes needed.

Jordan, a favorite of former President Donald Trump and the co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, which we call the Dixie Caucus because of its similarity to the Confederates who succeeded from the Union in 1861, should probably be behind bars anyway, or at least banned from holding public office under the Insurrection Act of 1807.

“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States,” according to 18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said as much on Friday when she joined Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California in a press conference on the Capitol steps.

“With their nomination of Jim Jordan, they are choosing chaos,” she said. “They are choosing even more gridlock, even more inaction in [this] time of immense and urgent challenges at home and abroad. Instead of choosing the American people, they are once again choosing Donald Trump.”

She pointed out to people that what we’re witnessing is chaos and paralysis, and as an alternative, the Democrats nominated Jeffries as Speaker, even though the Democrats are in the minority.

“House Republicans have a choice on how to move forward,” she said. “They can join us … and choose bipartisanship and allow commonsense to win the day. Or they can double down on the extremism that has ground Congress and this House to a halt.”

She urged the American people to pause and think about who they are rallying behind.

“Jim Jordan’s own colleagues have called him a ‘legislative terrorist’,” she said. “He has voted to ban abortion nationwide with no exceptions for rape or incest. He has voted to shut down the government and force our troops to work without pay. He has voted to gut Social Security and Medicare. He was directly involved in the right-wing coup that sought to overturn the 2020 election.

“At every single turn, Jim Jordan has prioritized politics, power, fear, division, and hate over the American people,” she continued. “He has used his committee gavel to advance right-wing conspiracies while undermining the very institution that he serves – and he will inflict even more harm if he is allowed to have the Speaker’s gavel. Every Republican who casts their vote for him is siding with an insurrectionist against our democracy.”

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Republicans

While Jordan won the Republican nomination for speaker on Friday, the vote was far from the display of unity that he and his allies had predicted. An eye-popping 81 Republicans rejected Jordan in favor of a low-key backbencher, Austin Scott of Georgia, who decided to run just hours before the vote.

“We were shocked at the number of people who did not vote for him,” said Republican Daniel Webster of Florida. “There was nowhere else to go, and they still didn’t want to go there.”

Despite becoming more aligned with leadership over the past three years, many of Jordon’s colleagues still don’t trust him, according to Politico.

Lots of them worry he’ll embrace fiscal brinkmanship and steer the government into a shutdown, which could be disastrous for Republicans in the next election cycle. An even larger group is furious with how he treated Steve Scalise, after the House majority leader won the nomination Wednesday, and they aren’t keen on seeing the second-place finisher end up with the gavel.

It should come as no surprise, though, that Jordan and his allies are ready to fight in a way that Scalise wasn’t. Their strategy is simple: Smoke out the holdouts in a public floor vote and put them in a political pressure cooker.

“What is going to happen is, they are going to vote on the floor, and then they hear from the grassroots,” said Republican Tim Burchett of Tennessee, echoing the belief in Jordan world that his opponents will cave under pressure from the Republican base.

The theory certainly has merit, Politico says. On a secret-ballot revote Friday where members were asked if they’d support Jordan on the floor, opposition dropped from 81 to 55. And of those 55, only a handful have made their opposition public — suggesting there is indeed a fear of openly opposing Jordan.

But getting to 217 will require a scorched-earth whipping effort that goes against the entire pitch Jordan made to his colleagues in recent days — that he’s a changed man who will represent all Republicans, not just base-pleasing conservatives. And should he move to bulldoze his opposition on the floor, that would repudiate his position earlier this week — that the nominee needed to garner 217 votes inside the conference before waging a floor fight.

Despite the pressure, a group of Republicans are already privately coordinating an effort to hold firm against him. They include appropriators who don’t trust his judgment on government funding and defense hawks who don’t like that he has wavered on Pentagon funding increases.

Unlike Scalise, who faced pressure to drop out after one day, Jordon has more than three days to woo his opponents before Tuesday’s expected vote. And, frankly, many members are sick and tired of the drama, eager to pick a leader and move on.

A person familiar with Jordan’s whip effort rejected the notion that Jordan is trying to bully his way to the gavel. After securing the nomination Friday, Jordan encouraged skeptical members to call him with their concerns, and not a single lawmaker has since told him that he won’t vote for him on the floor.

“Chairman Jordan has made it clear that he wants to unite the conference in order to pass the bills that the American people expect by giving Israel the resources they need to destroy Hamas, securing the border, and reforming FISA,” Jordon spokesperson Russell Dye said. “He is looking forward to working with the entire conference to do so when he’s speaker.”

Related Coverage

House Votes To Remove McCarthy as Speaker as Dixie Caucus Creates Chaos in U.S. Government

Congress Narrowly Averts a Government Shutdown as House Democrats Help Pass Stopgap Funding Bill, Approved by the Senate

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