As the House gears up to vote for its new speaker, all eyes are on Jim Jordan, a founder of the hard-right Freedom caucus. But while the Ohio congressman and his allies say they will have the votes soon, Jordan also has a long history of controversial views that many of his own party members and constituents are not aligned with.
Here are some of the key things to know about Jordan as a politician – and a look into how he might act in the role of speaker.
Jordan was closely involved in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election
Jordan was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. As early as November of 2020, he was part of discussions with Trump campaign and White House officials examining whether Mike Pence could overturn the election. Immediately after the election, he met with Trump campaign and White House officials at the campaign’s headquarters to help develop a strategy of repeatedly, and falsely, saying the election was fraudulent, the New York Times reported.
On 2 January 2021, Jordan led a conference call with members of Congress and the White House in which they discussed urging Trump supporters to march to the Capitol. The day before the January 6 attack, Jordan texted the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pass on advice that Pence should “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all”.
After the violence at the Capitol, Jordan was one of several members of Congress to whom the White House reached out to try to delay counting of electoral votes. He received five calls from Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s closest allies, that night, according to the January 6 committee. The two men spoke at least twice that night. Jordan later said he spoke with Trump on January 6, but could not recall how many times.
Given his staunch efforts to spread misinformation, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Jordan was one of 147 House Republicans who voted to overturn the election. He also signed on to an unsuccessful lawsuit Texas filed at the supreme court seeking to get electoral college votes thrown out in key battleground states.
Jordan helped seed the lie that the election was stolen
Jordan has been one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation about the election. Weeks before election day, Jordan accused Democrats of “trying to steal” the election. After election day, he continued to claim that something was amiss in Pennsylvania, one of the key states that swung the election for Biden and repeatedly and falsely tied mail-in voting to fraud. He quickly called for congressional investigations into claims of fraud and supported outlandish investigations by Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani into voting equipment.
Jordan blocked efforts to find out more about his involvement in the plan to overturn the election
The January 6 committee subpoenaed Jordan and four other congressmen after the group refused to voluntarily cooperate with the panel. Jordan refused to comply with that subpoena, calling it “an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives”. The committee referred Jordan to the ethics committee for investigation.
Jordan was accused of engaging in a cover-up of widespread sexual abuse at Ohio State University
Between 1987 and 1995, Jordan served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. During that time, he worked alongside Richard Strauss, a team doctor who was accused of sexual abuse. A 2019 independent report commissioned by OSU concluded that Strauss “sexually abused at least 177 male student-patients he was charged with treating as a university physician”.
Jordan has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Strauss’s actions, but former wrestlers have attested that Jordan was directly informed of the doctor’s misconduct. Earlier this month, four former OSU wrestlers publicly denounced Jordan, saying his inaction rendered him unqualified to become speaker of the House.
“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” the former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC News. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”
Jordan is known for disrupting the House – but not getting much done
John Boehner, the former Republican House speaker, repeatedly criticized Jordan for pressuring Republican leadership to advance his hard-right agenda. Speaking to Politico Magazine in 2017, Boehner described Jordan as a “legislative terrorist”.
Jordan was part of a coalition of archconservative lawmakers that antagonized Bohener, repeatedly threatening to remove him from the speakership. Though they never followed through, the constant pressure and threats ultimately drove Boehner to early retirement.
“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together,” Boehner told CBS News in 2021.
According to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking, Jordan consistently ranks among Congress’s least effective lawmakers. In the last Congress, Jordan ranked 217th out of 222 House Republicans.
Jordan was behind many recent shutdowns
Since arriving in Congress 16 years ago, Jordan has played a central role in several of the most consequential government shutdowns. In an attempt to undermine Barack Obama’s healthcare law, Jordan led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. It lasted 16 days and nearly drove the US to the brink of default.
Two years later, in 2015, he and his conservative allies in Congress used similar tactics, threatening a shutdown in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, though an agreement was reached and a closure was averted in time.
Again in 2018, Jordan was one of the architects of the 2018 government shutdown that lasted 35 days, the longest in US history. Jordan urged Trump to shutter federal agencies in an attempt to force Congress to fund his border wall. It backfired and Congress and Trump eventually agreed to reopen the government without providing any funding for Trump’s wall.
Congress recently passed a stopgap funding measure, part of a deal the former speaker Kevin McCarthy struck with the support of Democrats to avert a government shutdown on his watch. The move enraged conservatives, who then moved to oust him.
The next speaker will have to move quickly to address federal funding, set to expire in mid-November, or again risk another shutdown.
Jordan has already indicated he will block more aid to Ukraine if he becomes speaker
Jordan has consistently voted against aid packages to assist Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia, which have become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.
As he launched his speakership bid earlier this month, Jordan told reporters that he was “against” providing more funding to Ukraine.
“The most pressing issue on Americans’ minds is not Ukraine,” he said. “It is the border situation, and it’s crime on the streets. And everybody knows that. So let’s address those.”
Foreign policy experts have warned that, without additional US aid, Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia will falter and more Ukrainian citizens will die.
Jordan is a fixture on Fox News, a platform that he has used to elevate Trump and attack the Biden administration
According to the left-leaning group Media Matters, Jordan has appeared on Fox News at least 565 times since August 2017, making him the network’s most frequently interviewed member of Congress.
Jordan has capitalized on those appearances by consistently touting the virtues of Trump, even as the former president faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.
“I am 100% for President Trump,” Jordan told Fox News back in April. He added: “No one has demonstrated that they will do what they said and get things done like he did.”
That sycophancy has paid dividends, as Trump has now endorsed Jordan’s speakership bid. Jordan has also used his Fox appearances to elevate his work, as chair of the House judiciary committee, to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the justice department, accusing federal officials of giving the president’s son “preferential treatment”.
Jordan supports a nationwide ban on abortion
Jordan, an evangelical Christian, is a staunch abortion opponent. In fact, he has said the desire to restrict access to the procedure was one of the reasons he entered politics. On his congressional website, Jordan boasts that the first piece of legislation he ever co-sponsored was a bill that would extend protections to fetuses under the 14th amendment.
He also introduced a “Life at Conception” act that would ban all abortions nationally. After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Jordan claimed on social media that the story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped was “another lie”. He later deleted the tweet after authorities charged a man in connection with the case and refused to apologize.
Additionally, he opposes same-sex marriage. According to his website, Jordan says he is “committed to defending the sanctity of marriage and the family” and “oppose[s] all attempts to redefine marriage”.
