The Republicans disavowed on Friday October 20 an ally of Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, who is no longer the party’s designated candidate for the presidency of the United States House of Representatives, further plunging this parliamentary institution into crisis.
Republican elected officials withdrew their support for Mr. Jordan in a secret ballot and announced that they would meet on Monday to nominate a new candidate for the post of speaker. “We need to come together and figure out who our leader is going to be,” Jim Jordan said after the vote. This member of the most conservative fringe of the party and close to Trump has confirmed that he will not run again.
A few hours before, 25 Republicans had voted against the elected official from Ohio, who suffered his third failure in four days to get elected from the perch. The position has been vacant since the historic impeachment of Kevin McCarthy on October 3, following divisions between moderate Republicans and Trumpists.
For almost three weeks, the lower house of the American Congress, supposed to be one of the most powerful parliaments in the world, has not been able to vote on any bill. And this at a time when American President Joe Biden has just asked Congress for a huge budget increase of more than $105 billion (€99 billion) to help allies Israel and Ukraine and stand up to China and respond to migrant arrivals at the southern border of the United States. “We’re in a really bad place,” admitted Kevin McCarthy.
A “danger to democracy”
On Thursday, parliamentarians asked Jim Jordan to give up. And some Republican elected officials assured that they would not vote for him, even if he persisted in running. “It has become clear that elected Jordan does not have and will not obtain the votes necessary to be speaker,” Tom Kean, elected Republican from New Jersey, said in a press release.
It is in this context of blockage in the House and political chaos that Joe Biden requested a budget extension of 105 billion on Friday. “We need to unblock the House. I expect the Senate to begin work on President Biden’s national security package as soon as possible,” Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives, told reporters.
“If the House is not cleared, it will be bogged down unnecessarily and lives will be put at risk. “It’s a serious situation,” he insisted. To get out of the crisis, Mr. Jeffries called for finding a speaker who results from a choice coming from both political sides. He said Jim Jordan was a “danger to democracy.” “There are still reasonable Republicans on the other side of the House, men and women who want the House to return to service,” he assured.
