House Republicans elected two speaker-designates in the span of ten hours Tuesday, but they failed again to fully unite the conference around a new leader, leaving the House without a speaker for the 21st day in a row. Just four hours after House Republicans selected Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) as their third speaker-designate in three weeks, he removed himself from consideration following a forceful rebuke from former president Donald Trump that effectively sank Emmer’s candidacy. After spending two hours choosing among five candidates — including Representatives Byron Donalds (Florida), Chuck Fleischmann (Tennessee), Mark Green (Tennessee) and Roger Williams (Texas) — Republicans ultimately chose Representative Mike Johnson (Louisiana) as their fourth speaker-designate. Johnson has positioned himself on the far right of the political spectrum on most social issues, even within the current conservative Republican conference and led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states won by President Joe Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As the court challenges citing Dominion Machine vote-rigging continued to lose, Johnson trained his focus on the mail-in ballots. This, he proposed, gave Congress an opening to throw out the results and make Trump president.
Johnson has laid out laid out an ambitious schedule in a Dear Colleague Letter, for the Republican conference to pass appropriations bills before the November 17th deadline when the government will run out of money. Johnson said he would back a stopgap bill lasting to either January 15th or April 15th “based on what can obtain Conference consensus,” while Congress hashes out differences on the delayed 12 annual spending bills. The plan doesn’t mention aid to Israel or Ukraine but it does lay out a schedule for passing defense policy and farm bills. The House has passed just four of the 12 annual spending bills and failed to pass the Agriculture bill due to internal GOP disputes over spending levels and abortion. Many of the remaining bills are equally divisive. Johnson in his letter calls for passing the remaining spending bills in the House over the course of the coming weeks and working into 2024 to reconcile them with the versions from the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Senate this week is attempting to pass the first three of its 12 bills after months of procedural delays. The Senate may try to attach Ukraine and Israel aid to the next stopgap bill and Johnson could move to oppose that as he has been a skeptic of all aid to Israel and Ukraine, opposing a bill to send $300 million in aid to Ukraine last month. The federal government risks a shutdown in a matter of weeks if Congress fails to pass funding legislation by the November 17th deadline to keep services and offices running. More immediately, President Biden has asked Congress to provide $105 billion in aid — to help Israel and Ukraine amid their wars and to shore up the U.S. border with Mexico. Federal aviation and farming programs face expiration without action.
For today, the Senate just confirmed Jessica Looman 51-46 to be Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, Department of Labor. It will spend the rest of today working on H.R.4366 – Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024 (TEXT, White House SAP).
