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Mr. Johnson came to Congress in 2017 with support from the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, though he has never joined the group. “The slates of electors were produced by a clearly unconstitutional process, period,” he said. In December 2020, Mr. Johnson collected signatures for a legal brief in support of a Texas lawsuit, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, that tried to throw out the results in four battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. “We will stop the socialist agenda, we will control the purse strings, and you will see some pretty vigorous investigations and oversight because that is a really important responsibility of the Congress in our constitutional system,” he said.
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
On Tuesday night, after he was nominated, Johnson declined to respond to a question about his role in the election objections. He unified the fractious Republican Conference, winning votes from right-wing detractors of McCarthy, R-Calif., as well as centrist Republicans who opposed Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Stefanik to deliver nominating speech for Johnson
“You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that,” Mr. Johnson said. The election on Wednesday of Mr. Johnson, 51, to the post second in line to the presidency has focused new attention on his behind-the-scenes role in trying to overturn the election results on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump. We’re seeing a little bit of that here, with his gracious words toward Jeffries, promising to work together and find common ground. “This affirms the path that we took,” Representative Bob Good of Virginia, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, tells reporters. “We went through a lot to get here, but we are ready to govern and that will begin right away,” Johnson says in his first news conference as speaker.
California Assembly
Some on the right opposed to Mr. Emmer cited his vote in favor of codifying federal protections for same-sex couples. Others railed against Mr. Emmer’s vote in favor of a stopgap spending bill put forward by Mr. McCarthy, the speaker at the time, to avert a government shutdown. Still others said he was insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump, because he voted to certify the results of the 2020 election won by President Biden. The speaker is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party.
From 1977 to 1995, three successive Democratic speakers – Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jim Wright and Tom Foley – reinvigorated the speakership. They enlarged the party leadership structure, creating wider networks of loyalty among members of the majority party while strengthening support for their priorities. The Speaker has always been a member of the majority party (the party with the most members) but does not have to be an elected member of the House (this has not happened yet). The job of the Speaker is to keep the House in order and to assign committee memberships and chairmanships. As House Republicans gathered earlier in the week to select their third nominee for speaker, Trump vowed to remain on the sidelines of the race. But hours after Emmer won the nod in a closed-door vote by the conference Tuesday morning, the former president lambasted the Minnesota Republican, writing on Truth Social that "voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake."
Another Republican joins effort to oust Johnson, putting the speaker in real peril - NBC News
Another Republican joins effort to oust Johnson, putting the speaker in real peril.
Posted: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
"Our mission here is to serve you well, to restore the people's faith in this House in this great and essential institution." Johnson was sworn in as the 56th House speaker soon after winning the vote and delivering a speech to lawmakers in the House chamber. Some hard-right Republicans consider themselves a distinct political party from their more mainstream, business-minded colleagues, whom they accuse of being in a “uniparty” with Democrats. Only hours later, Mr. Emmer told Republicans in a closed-door meeting that he was dropping his bid, according to a person familiar with his decision who divulged the private discussion on the condition of anonymity. He once shared the story with a mostly Democratic audience at a congressional hearing on slavery reparations, and he was surprised to hear boos as he spoke, he later recounted to the Council for National Policy, an assembly of conservative donors known for its strict secrecy.
The latest on the House speaker race
The exact dates of service for each individual speaker is shown in the Term of service column of the above table. John Boehner was elected speaker when the 112th Congress convened on January 5, 2011, and was subsequently re-elected twice, at the start of the 113th and 114th Congresses. Toward the end of the 19th century, the office of speaker began to develop into a very powerful one. At the time, one of the most important sources of the speaker's power was his position as Chairman of the Committee on Rules, which, after the reorganization of the committee system in 1880, became one of the most powerful standing committees of the House. Furthermore, several speakers became leading figures in their political parties; examples include Democrats Samuel J. Randall, John Griffin Carlisle, and Charles F. Crisp, and Republicans James G. Blaine, Thomas Brackett Reed, and Joseph Gurney Cannon.
He made no mention of the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, or of the impending government shutdown that will begin next month if Congress fails to pass legislation to keep the government funded. A bloc of Republicans had objected to the speaker bid of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, because of his role in helping lead Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. In the end, it was Mr. Johnson who was able to bring together both the party’s hard-right and mainstream flanks that had taken turns sinking speaker candidates. But the unity was in part a product of burnout among House Republicans, who in spite of their differences grew eager to put an end to the weekslong spectacle of mass dysfunction and paralysis that many said had left their constituents distraught.
What does the US Speaker of the House do? - BBC.com
What does the US Speaker of the House do?.
Posted: Tue, 03 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
“From an outside point of view these last few weeks probably look like total chaos, confusion, no end in sight," he said. "But from my perspective, this is one of the greatest experiences of the recent history of our republic." Democrats were scathing in their assessment of Mr. Johnson’s ascent to the speakership. Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the Democratic conference chairman, said that the speaker fight had devolved into a contest over “who can appease Donald Trump.” At that line, a handful of hard-right Republicans stood and applauded. The elevation of Mr. Johnson, 51, an architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election and a religious conservative opposed to abortion rights, homosexuality and gay marriage, further cemented the Republican Party’s lurch to the right. It came after a historic fight that began when the hard right ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3, and raged on as the divided House G.O.P. nominated and then quickly discarded three other candidates to succeed him. In the 111th Congress, Speaker Pelosi led the House passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to rescue the nation from the depths of the financial crisis, helping create or save millions of American jobs.
Ryan, then just 45, was the youngest speaker in nearly 150 years but had already been party's vice presidential nominee on the 2012 ticket. Once he had Boehner's job, however, he experienced much the same internal strife. Ryan also had a strained relationship with then-President Donald Trump, with whom he had a falling out during the fall 2016 campaign. In April 2018, Ryan said he would not serve another term and left as the party was losing its majority that fall. Johnson is the sixth Republican elevated to the speakership since 1994, the year the party won its first House majority and elected a speaker of its own for the first time in 40 years.
They claim that its major social problems are similar to those of all big cities and are perhaps even less severe there than elsewhere. In fact, some observers regard it as the most modern and quintessential American city. Johnson faces backlash from hard-right members of his party after he joined Democrats on Saturday to pass a critical foreign aid package that included $60.8 billion of aid for Ukraine.
Johnson has gained stature and won bipartisan praise for letting the whole House vote on the aid package. He also got strong support in the Senate, where even an outright majority of Republicans voted for the aid on Tuesday. Just such a "motion to vacate the chair" was filed against Johnson in March by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. But Greene has yet to make the motion "privileged," which under the rules would necessitate a vote within two days. There’s a reason none of the last three Republican Speakers ended their tenures on their own terms. House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan took the hint and exited early; McCarthy failed to read the room and was forcibly removed.
“While there are issues where we differ, we must get back to governing for the good of the country,” Mr. Lawler wrote on social media, posting a photo of himself and Mr. Johnson shaking hands. Evoking his evangelical Christian faith, Mr. Johnson repeatedly referred to scripture in his speech from the House floor. "This is not a dictatorship where one person gets to decide everything for the entire conference. ... So we saw it play out just as it should," De La Cruz told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday. The Texas Republican said that while "of course" lawmakers wanted to be sworn in on January 3, "you saw democracy play out over the last week and come to consensus in the wee hours of the morning, and now we're ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work."
To show support for racial equality, Mr. Johnson in the past has told audiences that he and his wife adopted a Black teenager they met through an evangelical youth group — like the movie “The Blind Side” but without the N.F.L. prospects, he has quipped. He also opposed legislation to mandate federal recognition for same-sex marriages — a bill that passed with strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. He said that millions of unborn children had lost their lives because of what he called a “legal fiction that the Supreme Court foisted upon this country” and said that “God will bless us” for the court’s decision. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in one such article in 2004.
But this time around several Democrats have indicated they would cross the aisle to support Johnson and frustrate Greene & Co. if it came to a vote. Democratic leaders have indicated they are open to this, and it essentially repeats the strategy that allowed Johnson to pass the Ukraine portion of the aid bill earlier this month. With less than seven years under his belt, Johnson has a shorter length of service in the House than past speakers in modern history. McCarthy was in the House for 16 years before he was elected speaker, Pelosi had 20 years of experience, Paul Ryan served for 16 years, and John Boehner had 20 years before he ascended to the top job. Johnson authored legislation called the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act of 2022, which "prohibits the use of federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10," his office said. Critics have dubbed it a federal "don't say gay" measure and argued that it's aimed at barring references to LGBTQ people.
Mr. Emmer’s downfall followed a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, that left his candidacy in shambles and the G.O.P. as divided as ever. House Republicans chose and then quickly repudiated yet another of their nominees for speaker on Tuesday and rushed to name a fourth, pressing to put an end to a remarkable three-week-long deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed. Mr. Johnson’s hallmark in Congress has been combining his hard-line views with a gentle personal style. That was on display on Wednesday, when he vowed to try to find common ground with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader.
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