Closing summary
It is now 6pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
“I’m not cutting any deals. I want to meet in front of all our members, answer every question,” Steve Scalise said following a closed-door meeting with GOP officials. “The good news is our support continues to grow.”
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been charged by federal prosecutors with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government. “The new charge was included in a revised indictment filed against the Democratic senator for New Jersey in federal court in Manhattan. His trial on corruption charges will begin in May,” Reuters reported on Thursday.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on the Senate to expel Menendez. After Menendez was charged by federal authorities on Thursday with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, Fetterman said: “He should have been gone long ago. It is time for every one of my colleagues in the Senate to join me in expelling senator Menendez.”
It appears that Republicans have left today’s closed-door meeting unhappy as they continue to decide on the House speakership nomination. Alabama’s Republican representative Mike Rogers is reported to have left the meeting unsatisfied, saying that eight Republicans were “traitors”, a word NBC’s Sahil Kapur said he used four times.
The conflict-of-interest hearing on Stanley Woodward, the lawyer for Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, in the classified documents case has been postponed. US district judge Aileen Cannon admonished prosecutors after they suggested Woodward should be precluded from making a closing argument to a jury, based on his prior defense of a trial witness.
Donald Trump has demanded an apology from Forbes magazine after it removed him again from its list of the 400 richest people in the US. “I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” the former president wrote on Wednesday on Truth Social.
New York’s Republican representative George Santos said he will not vote for Steve Scalise as speaker, telling C-Span that he isn’t voting for someone “who lacks fundamental leadership skills”. “It’s never Scalise. We’re going to have to find someone else in leadership that comes forward that’s going to be a compromise candidate,” he said.
The conservative political advocacy group the Faith and Freedom Coalition has issued a statement announcing its support for Steve Scalise’s House speakership. The group called Scalise “a solid champion for life, the family, religious liberty, and sound fiscal policy throughout his public life”.
The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy is reported to have said that “it’s possible” for Steve Scalise to get 150 votes but “it’s a big hill”. According to Punchbowl News’s Congressional reporter Mica Soellner, McCarthy also said that Scalise “told a lot of people he was going to be at 150. He wasn’t there.”
Donald Trump’s comments calling Hezbollah “smart” and criticizing Israel’s defense minister were “dangerous and unhinged”, the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said on Thursday, Reuters reported. “Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged. It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organization as ‘smart’,” Bates said.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.
Updated
“I’m not cutting any deals, I want to meet in front of all our members, answer every question,” Steve Scalise said following a closed-door meeting with GOP officials.
“The good news is our support continues to grow. We’re continuing to work to narrow the gap and that’s going on and we’re going to continue the meetings. There are some other members that want to meet as a group, individually,” Scalise said.
“I’ve asked that we convene those groups as well as members who expressed individual concerns on the floor so that we can deal with those before we go to the floor…. I took every question that everybody brought and we’re going to continue to go through this process as we grow our support,” he added.
Rep. Scalise on the ongoing party battle to secure 217 votes and become speaker: "Our support continues to grow. We're continuing to narrow the gap." He shared that he wanted to answer all questions in front of the conference rather than have individual meetings and cut deals. pic.twitter.com/qfBwHCBwlG
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 12, 2023
