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
The Illinois governor JB Pritzker has denounced Donald Trump’s praise for Hezbollah, saying:
No true friend of Israel, the Jewish people, or of peace would praise Hezbollah just days after what President Biden and Jewish leaders have called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Right now is the time to stand with Israel as they confront unimaginable loss and the ongoing threat from terrorists seeking to harm their people.
Donald Trump’s comments are disgusting, dangerous, and underscore a simple fact: he is unfit to lead our country and would make the United States and our allies around the world less safe.
On Wednesday, Trump called the Iran-aligned and pro-Hamas militant group Hezbollah “very smart” amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, prompting widespread criticism, including from the White House.
Updated
Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on the Senate to expel New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez.
After Menendez was charged by federal authorities on Thursday with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, Fetterman said:
Senator Menendez should not be a US senator. 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.
He added:
We cannot have an alleged foreign agent in the United States Senate. This is not a close call.
Updated
Republican lawmakers leave closed-door meeting disgruntled
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.
🔥🔥 Rep. Mike Rogers leaves the meeting unhappy, says eight Republican “traitors” (he used the word four times) have “paralyzed” the House by removing McCarthy. He tells me Scalise has the same problems and GOP may NEVER get 217 votes for a Speaker. He says Dems must help.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 12, 2023
Other Republicans said Steve Scalise repeatedly refused to disclose what his plans were, with one telling Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman: “Just rambled and didn’t directly answer questions. No plan. Didn’t unify or inspire the conference.”
Republicans in the room said Scalise repeatedly wouldn’t tell members what his plans were, including whether he would seek a floor vote.
— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) October 12, 2023
“Just rambled and didn’t directly answer questions. No plan. Didn’t unify or inspire the conference.”
w/ @JakeSherman
Updated
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.
Cannon appeared furious, saying that prosecutors had suggested an “absolute bar” at the last minute – at the hearing itself – and had no case law authority from the southern district of Florida or eleventh circuit.
“We cannot proceed with this Garcia hearing,” she said, referring to the name of a hearing that addresses conflict of interest.
Updated
Here are the latest developments in the Donald Trump classified documents case in Fort Pierce, Florida, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:
Trump co-defendant and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira told a judge he wants to keep his lead lawyer, John Irving – who is being paid by Trump’s PAC.
De Oliveira was asked whether he understood Irving’s potential conflicts arising from his prior representation of three people the special counsel could call as trial witnesses, and he said he would move forward with Irving anyway.
De Oliveira, who did not complete high school and told the judge he could read English better than he could write, struggled to explicate the exact nature of the potential conflicts in his own words, though he affirmed repeatedly when the judge walked him through questions.
The defendant’s grasp of English has been an issue that the former Trump lawyers discussed among themselves previously – they had wondered whether he even understood the questions from the FBI during the interviews where he’s alleged to have lied.
New from the federal courthouse in Ft Pierce: Trump co-defendant and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira told a judge he wants to keep his lead lawyer John Irving — who is being paid by Trump’s PAC
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) October 12, 2023
Judge Aileen Cannon will run through the potential conflicts for Trump’s other co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta.
Updated
Summary
If the morning has been frantic for Steve Scalise and his supporters, as he tries to garner the Republican votes needed to become speaker of the House, for readers it’s been tense.
The Louisiana congressman is, so far, getting nowhere fast amid deep divisions among the House GOP conference.
Meanwhile, there’s court action involving Donald Trump. And overshadowing everything is the terrible conflict between Israel and Hamas in southern Israel and Gaza. We’re bringing you the main US developments in relation to the war here, but detailed live coverage is in our global blog, which is currently running around the clock and can be read here.
Here’s where things stand:
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hard-line Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy. His prospects at this moment look grim.
Texas Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who is chair of the House foreign affairs committee and on Sunday said the GOP conference was in a state of “civil war”, said today that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been further charged by federal prosecutors, this time with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said that his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
A federal judge was expected on Thursday to weigh whether the lawyers for Donald Trump’s two co-defendants charged with trying to obstruct the US justice department from retrieving classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago club had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
And, where we started today: Louisiana congressman and House majority leader Steve Scalise has a fierce battle on his hands among warring House Republicans as he tries to scramble enough support from his own party to be elected speaker.
Buckle in: House Republicans are going to be in turmoil and deadlock for a while longer.
Updated
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.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
“I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” the former president wrote on Wednesday on Truth Social, the reportedly struggling social media platform he set up after being expelled from mainstream platforms over the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Forbes released its Trump-free list last week, saying the his net worth was down $600m from a year before. Trump has been on the list since the 1990s, other than in 2021.
In response, Trump complained about “really dumb writers assigned to hit me hard” and bragged about huge leads in Republican presidential polling he holds despite facing 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats.
In that post from Monday, Trump concluded: “So much for Forbes!”
For the full story, click here:
According to Arkansas’ Republican representative Steve Womack, there are at least six hard no’s against Steve Scalise, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.
“Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t [think] there’s going to be a vote this week,” Womack said, adding that the six hard no’s are the only people who spoke up during the GOP closed-door meeting today.
“There are a lot of reasons for various members to be objecting to what the play call is for House Republicans. And the play call is Steve Scalise,” Sherman reports Womack as having said.
“Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t there’s gonna be a vote this week” https://t.co/fkbgGTZJhu
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 12, 2023
Updated
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.
If you’re in leadership … you talk to everybody. I’ve reached out numerous times to congressman Scalise and me reaching out and asking him for his guidance in leadership and him not reaching back out, that’s a dereliction of his duty as a leader so I’m not voting for him,.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) on why he will not be voting for Rep. Scalise (R-LA) as Speaker: "I'm not voting for someone who lacks fundamental leadership skills" pic.twitter.com/rrZvwq64cR
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 12, 2023
Updated
The conservative political advocacy group 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,” and went on to describe him as an “unapologetic defender of conservative principles from the moment he arrived in Congress.”
“We are grateful to our friend Jim Jordan for agreeing to nominate Speaker-designate Scalise as a gesture of unity. Now that Republicans have chosen a speaker-designate, it is time for the House to get back to work,” it said.
“Republicans need to unite behind Rep. Scalise so they can address the critical issues facing American families and our longtime allies. We strongly urge Republicans to vote posthaste to make Steve Scalise the next House speaker,” the group added.
Scalise appears to struggle to convince hardliners to support his speaker bid
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hardline Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy.
On Thursday, at least 19 Republicans, including Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, whom Scalise is reported to have flipped yesterday, appears to have indicated they won’t vote for him. Luna told CNN’s Annie Grayer:
Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now, again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party.
👀LUNA is back to NO per @AnnieGrayerCNN
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) October 12, 2023
She was one of the few SCALISE flipped yesterday… but not for long pic.twitter.com/OeQglCavqq
“Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party” Luna tells me. https://t.co/8UgbAv5ouv
— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) October 12, 2023
House GOP officials are continuing to meet behind closed doors to decide on the House speaker nomination.
Updated
Texas’s Republican representative Michael McCaul said that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.
Speaking to C-Span on Thursday, McCaul said:
It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching us. They need our help. I have my resolution condemning Hamas, supporting Israel. We can’t even vote on that until we put a speaker in the chair.
He went on to add:
If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need … We need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) on electing a House speaker: "It's a dangerous game that we're playing. It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn't work. Our adversaries are watching us." pic.twitter.com/eAxlE7OHi5
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 12, 2023
Updated
Democratic senator Bob Menendez charged with conspiring to act as foreign agent
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.
Last month, Menendez and his wife were charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting various gifts including gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the Egyptian government.
Since then, Menendez has faced resignation calls from across the aisle. Following revelations of the charges, the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “disturbed” by them and said that Menendez “fell way, way below the standard”.
Updated
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
“My poor mom, I told her to stop, you know, reading whatever. I said, ‘I promise you, we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s good,’” Kushner told the Lex Fridman podcast. “But you know, she’d call me [to] say … ‘Our friends on the Upper East Side were talking with Chuck Schumer, who says Jared’s going to jail.’”
Schumer, the senior senator from New York, was the Democratic minority leader in the US Senate during the presidency of Donald Trump, Kushner’s father-in-law and White House boss. Since 2021, Schumer has been the majority leader.
Married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner became his father-in-law’s chief adviser on the campaign trail and then in the White House.
Trump’s first two years in power were dogged by investigations and speculation over his links to Russia and interference by Moscow in the 2016 US election.
Kushner’s interactions with high-placed Russians were placed under the national spotlight.
For the full story, click here:
Updated
At the closed-door GOP meeting today, Steve Scalise is planning to deliver additional details on policy, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.
Scalise is said to also reiterate that he has not made any side deals with individual Republicans.
🚨🕑 NEWS: WHAT SCALISE WILL TELL HOUSE REPUBLICANS
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 12, 2023
SCALISE plans to lay out some more details on policy, invite lawmakers to ask him anything and reiterate he has cut NO SIDE DEALS in closed gop meeting starting at 12:15 https://t.co/b9whr7VI21
Texas’s Democratic representative Veronica Escobar announced that she would “welcome any Republican willing to join House Democrats to put our country ahead of petty politics.”
Escobar, who represents the Texas’s 16th district, added in a tweet on Wednesday:
“We don’t have time for this. The American people and the global stage are looking to us for leadership…
With just over half of his party supporting him for Speaker, the only way [Steve] Scalise will win is by making concessions to the extremists and holdouts.”
We don’t have time for this. The American people and the global stage are looking to us for leadership.
— Rep. Veronica Escobar (@RepEscobar) October 12, 2023
Conflict in Israel, a war in Ukraine, and an impending government shutdown call for swift action.
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
I agree with MTG. Let’s do the messy work of governing and leadership selection in front of the people,” Gaetz tweeted on Thursday.
I agree with MTG.
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 12, 2023
Let’s do the messy work of governing and leadership selection in front of the people.
Just like I voted against McCarthy time after time…in public…making my argument, others should have to reveal their thinking and be appropriately judged by their voters.… https://t.co/6QejvgxKqP
Earlier this month, Gaetz filed a motion to remove former House speaker Kevin McCarthy from office.
Gaetz’s motion came just days after McCarthy worked alongside House Democrats to pass a bipartisan bill at the eleventh hour that narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown.
Here’s a little more from South Carolina’s Republican representative Nancy Mace’s interview on CNN during which she said she would not vote for Steve Scalise as House speaker.
Mace, who has thrown her support behind far-right Ohio representative Jim Jordan, said that she “actually talked to Democrats who trust him at his word.”
Her comments took CNN host Jake Tapper by surprise.
“Jim Jordan?… The Jim Jordan from Ohio?” Tapper replied.
Mace doubled down on her words, saying, “Yes the Jim Jordan from Ohio!” She then claimed that said Democrats “trust him more than they trust the former speaker.”
Tapper went on to ask her to name one Democrat from Congress who trusts Jordan to which Mace replied, “I’m not going to name people off the record.”
For the full story, click here:
Former House speaker McCarthy says Scalise has 'big hill' to winning votes
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.”
MCCARTHY says it’s a “big hill” for Scalise.
— Mica Soellner (@MicaSoellnerDC) October 12, 2023
He said Scalise was telling people he could get 150 votes — which he obviously fell way short of in the closed-door election.
“He wasn’t there,” McCarthy said.
Updated
Republicans to hold another closed-door meeting at noon
Tweeting a screenshot of the meeting notice, the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – who said she will vote for Jim Jordan as House speaker – said:
“Let’s do this on the House floor instead of behind closed doors … Stop dragging it out.”
Let’s do this on the House floor instead of behind closed doors.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 12, 2023
Stop dragging it out.
If Kevin McCarthy had to go 15 rounds then the next Speaker should be able to do the same or more if they have to.
Our job titles are REPRESENTATIVES of the American People.
Let’s go. pic.twitter.com/yc4vGY66WB
Updated
South Carolina’s Republican representative Nancy Mace that she will not support Steve Scalise’s candidacy for House speakership, saying:
“I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke.”
“I personally cannot, in good conscious, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke.”
— The Recount (@therecount) October 11, 2023
— Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) says she won’t support Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) for Speaker, citing his past associations with white supremacists. pic.twitter.com/OERO3gO2zG
In the 1990s, the New York Times reported a reporter recalling a meeting with Scalise in which he allegedly said that he was like “David Duke without the baggage,” referring to the former leader of the white supremacist group KKK.
Donald Trump’s comments calling Hezbollah “smart” and criticizing Israel’s defense minister were “dangerous and unhinged,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said on Thursday and Reuters reports.
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.
Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run against US president Joe Biden in the 2024 election, in comments to supporters in Florida on Wednesday night, said Hezbollah was “very smart” and called Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant “a jerk.”
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group. Hezbollah has threatened to join the fray on the other side of its border to the south if an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is launched in the Israel-Hamas war that erupted on Saturday. The group has already claimed responsibility for rocket fire into Israel in the current conflict, and deadly clashes have erupted on the border. More from the Guardian’s Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum, here.
Updated
Trump's Mar-a-Lago criminal case back in federal court
A federal judge was expected on Thursday to weigh whether the lawyers for Donald Trump’s two co-defendants, who are charged with trying to obstruct the US justice department from retrieving classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago club, had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
The hearings – at 1pm and 3pm ET – are notable because an adverse decision by US district judge Aileen Cannon could have major ramifications: Trump’s lawyers are in an informal joint defense agreement with his co-defendants’ lawyers, which could be upended if new lawyers were to come in.
At issue is the fact that the lawyer for Trump’s first co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta, and the lawyer for Trump’s second co-defendant and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker, Carlos De Oliveira, have also represented people that prosecutors are considering using as trial witnesses.
Trump and Nauta were initially charged in an indictment alleging the former president retained national defense documents and conspired with Nauta to obstruct justice. Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira were then charged in July with additional counts in a superseding indictment.
You can read the full Guardian report here.
The Florida federal case is just one of Trump’s many legal woes. The civil fraud trial in New York involving his business empire is ongoing.
Updated
There is some swift walking-back going on from the direction of the White House after Joe Biden said as part of his impassioned remarks yesterday on atrocities by Hamas militants against Israelis that he saw photographic evidence of beheaded children.
During a round table with US Jewish community leaders, the US president said: “I never thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
Insider reported last night that: “Later in the evening on Wednesday, a National Security official told NPR that Biden was referring to media reports when he made that remark. CNN reported Wednesday night that a White House official said that neither Biden nor the administration had seen these images and that Biden was referring to comments from Israeli officials and reports in the media.”
Republican Steve Scalise is seen as a fighter, but becoming House speaker might require a brawl.
That’s the fascinating headline from The Associated Press this morning. Here’s some of their report, lightly edited for structure and length:
A narrow majority of House Republicans nominated Scalise as their next House speaker on Wednesday, following the unprecedented ousting of the former speaker, California Representative Kevin McCarthy.
Scalise, 58, and recently diagnosed with blood cancer, spent the rest of the day holed up in the stately Speaker’s office at the Capitol, vigorously working to secure the support he will need from his detractors to lead the divided Republican majority ahead of a full House vote to take the gavel.
As we’ve all witnessed, he is a fighter. He has proven against all odds he can get the job done and come back from adversity,” said Republican congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky.
Scalise was seriously injured in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game near Washington, one of four wounded in the attack. As he was being flown to hospital, he feared he could die.
Scalise was first elected to Congress in 2008, after more than a decade in the state legislature, and swiftly rose through the ranks in Washington.
Once Republicans took majority control in the 2010 election “tea party” wave of hardline lawmakers to Congress, Scalise soon became part of the House leadership team alongside McCarthy and others under the-speaker John Boehner.
An early rivalry developed between Scalise and McCarthy that punctuated their rise, and continues to this day.
The speaker’s job can be brutal and thankless, with busy travel across the country raising campaign cash and recruiting candidates for elections.
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would continue supporting Jim Jordan (who was defeated for the nomination) because she wants to see Scalise “defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health” in a demanding job.
Meanwhile, some Republicans are bothered that Scalise addressed a white supremacist group in 2002 founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Scalise apologized in 2014.
He has an uphill battle to get to the 217 votes he’ll need on the House floor to secure the speaker’s gavel for himself.
Here’s Guardian columnist Robert Reich’s take via X/Twitter.
Steve Scalise voted to overturn the 2020 election.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 11, 2023
He reportedly called himself "David Duke without the baggage."
And now he wants to be speaker of the House?
When I say the GOP is an extremist party, this is why.
Updated
Scalise to battle for votes to become House Speaker, as GOP hardliners hold out
TheLouisiana congressman and House majority leader Steve Scalise has a fierce battle on his hands among warring House Republicans as he tries to scramble enough support from his own party to be elected speaker.
House Republicans voted behind closed doors on Wednesday and chose rightwinger Scalise over his more hardline rival Jim Jordan of Ohio to be nominated for the speakership.
But the vote was pretty close, 113 for Scalise v 99 for Jordan, despite Jordan then endorsing Scalise. It’s unclear this morning whether the nominee can win enough support to get through the definitive vote of the whole House.
A small but decisive number of hardline holdouts within the Republican conference are currently blocking Steve Scalise’s passage to the top job.
With Republicans’ razor-thin majority over Democrats in the House, Scalise can only afford four defections within the GOP conference and still win the speakership, assuming all 433 current House members participate in the vote.
As of Wednesday evening, at least 11 House Republicans had signaled they would not support Scalise on the floor, with several more still undecided. A full report on this from the Guardian’s Joan E Greve is here.
Updated
House Republican divide sends Scalise scrambling for votes to become speaker
Hello, US politics liveblog readers. Another lively news day is unfolding in Washington and we’ll bring it all to you as it happens.
House Republicans may have picked the Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise as their nominee to become speaker, replacing Kevin McCarthy, who was abruptly ousted by hardliners in his own party eight days ago, but Scalise doesn’t yet have the support he needs in the bag and it’s unknown whether or when a full floor vote will happen today.
There’s action in the Trump Mar-a-Lago criminal court case in Florida and, in the crisis in Israel, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has been meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu there this morning. We’ll keep you up to speed, while suggesting that for more detail you follow all the news on the ground from Israel and Gaza in our global live blog here.
Here’s what’s afoot:
Steve Scalise, having beaten Trump favorite Jim Jordan to be nominated by House Republicans to become the next speaker of the lower congressional chamber, which the GOP narrowly controls, has much work to do to win enough support to be awarded the speaker’s gavel.
The House is still in recess and due to commence business at 12pm ET – if the GOP is ready to put House majority leader Scalise forward for a full floor vote on the speakership after his narrow victory over Jordan in closed-door voting on Wednesday.
Democrats will nominate the House minority leader and New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries to be their nominee for speaker. They don’t have the votes to elect him as speaker, of course, but it’s a strong signal of their unanimity and rejection of the GOP’s antics.
Republicans will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing spectacle in January where McCarthy had to menace and wheedle his way in real time through a record 15 rounds of voting.
Scalise can only afford to lose four of his own party’s votes to secure the 217 majority he needs, and right now there are too many hardliners shunning him and too many Jordan voters who haven’t committed publicly to know whether or how he can make it.
The Mar-a-Lago classified-document-hoarding criminal case against Donald Trump will be back in a Florida court today, where the federal judge is expected to weigh whether lawyers for two of the former president’s co-defendants had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
Updated
