WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Steve Scalise has ended his bid to become House speaker after failing to secure the votes to win the gavel.
Scalise told GOP colleagues at a closed–door meeting late Thursday of his decision.
Next steps are uncertain a the House is now essentially closed while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job.
The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function, and the political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress.
Action is needed to fund the government or face the threat of a federal shutdown in a month. Lawmakers also want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House. The White House is expected to soon ask for money for Israel, Ukraine and the backfill of the U.S. weapons stockpile.
The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far–right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall.
But the math this time is even more daunting. Scalise, who is seen by some colleagues as hero for having survived a 2017 shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice, won the closed–door Republican vote 113–99. But McCarthy, R–Calif., noted that Scalise, a longtime rival, had indicated he would have 150 votes behind closed doors, but missed that mark.
Exasperated Democrats, who have been watching and waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out, warning the world is watching.
“The House Republicans need to end the GOP Civil War, now,” Jeffries said.
“The House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,” he said, urging that the House reopen and change GOP–led rules that allowed a single lawmaker to put in motion the process to remove the speaker.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nominated to be House speaker, Rep. Steve Scalise on Thursday ran straight into a familiar, intensifying Republican problem: Skeptical GOP colleagues are refusing to give their support, denying him the majority vote needed to win the gavel.
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