Election in the US House of Representatives
Trump confidant Jordan fails again
October 18, 2023, 9:36 p.m
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After the failure the day before, it’s not enough for Jim Jordan today either: the ally of ex-President Trump loses the election as chairman of the House of Representatives again. Opposition to his candidacy also comes from within his own party. The Congress therefore remains unable to act.
The Republican Jim Jordan also failed in the second attempt to be elected chairman of the US House of Representatives. Due to dissenting votes from his own group, the confidant of former US President Donald Trump once again failed to achieve the necessary majority in the vote. The 59-year-old did not receive the required number of votes in the parliamentary chamber in the first round of voting on Tuesday.
Jordan got 199 votes from his group in the vote, one vote less than on Tuesday. It is unclear whether he will be able to win enough skeptics from within his own ranks to his side.
The House of Representatives remains largely silent for the time being. Until a new chairman is appointed, legislative work there is largely idle. Among other things, Congress has to decide on further possible aid for Kiev, as well as on a federal budget as a whole. For now, only a transitional budget has been agreed until mid-November, which does not include any support for Kiev.
The Republicans only have a slim majority in the House of Representatives. The group currently has 221 seats in the parliamentary chamber, while the Democrats have 212 seats. Jordan can therefore only afford very few deviations. He cannot count on support from the Democratic ranks.
The previous chairman of the parliamentary chamber, Kevin McCarthy, was voted out of the powerful post in a historic vote at the beginning of October. Radical Republicans had driven him out of office. It was the first time in US history that a chairman of the House of Representatives lost his job in this way. The office comes third in the United States’ hierarchy after the president and his vice president.