2023-10-20 04:41:40
The US House of Representatives will vote for the third time on Friday on the candidacy of arch-conservative MP Jim Jordan for speaker. According to Jordan’s spokesman, the vote is scheduled to take place on Friday at 10 a.m. local time (3 p.m. CET). The Republicans have given up their plan to overcome the blockade in the congressional chamber that has been ongoing for more than two weeks with the help of an interim chairman.
“I’m still running for speaker and I plan on going to the chamber and getting the votes to win this race,” Jordan told media earlier in the day. The Republican had met with some of the 22 Republican colleagues who voted against him in the first two votes. But it was apparently difficult to change their minds, as Vern Buchanan told reporters. “We all told him we were strongly against it. That was the discussion. Now he has to make a decision,” said Buchanan.
There were not enough votes for the plan to expand the powers of provisional chairman Patrick McHenry so that Congress as a whole can work again, Republican MP Byron Donalds reported to CNN. Referring to the US Constitution, he explained that you can’t just “place new powers in someone’s lap.” The Republicans only hold a comparatively small majority in the House of Representatives and are therefore dependent on the votes of a group of ultra-conservative representatives. They overthrew the previous Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on October 3rd.
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