The Republicans in the US House of Representatives have agreed on a candidate for the presidency of the Congress Chamber. In a closed-door vote on Wednesday, they nominated 58-year-old Steve Scalise.
According to some lawmakers, the full House of Representatives should vote on Scalise later today. This increased the chances that the de facto blockade of Congress could be overcome by the Republicans’ internal power struggle in the following hours. Work in the chamber is suspended until a new chairman is elected.
Accordingly, the USA cannot provide Israel with any additional help in the Gaza conflict. The previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was overthrown by ultra-conservative party colleagues on October 3rd in an internal power struggle. They punished him because he had relied on the support of President Joe Biden’s Democrats to avert a budget freeze.
Scalise has served in Congress since 2008. He narrowly survived a gun attack in 2017, but is still considered a strong advocate of liberal gun rights. Last year he was elected majority leader in the House of Representatives. He is currently being treated for blood cancer. Still, he was second only to radical Republican Jim Jordan, an ally of former President Donald Trump, who announced he would enter the presidential race after McCarthy was voted out. Scalise made headlines in 2002 with a speech to a white supremacist group, for which he later apologized. He has a clear profile as an opponent of abortions. However, some hardliners in the party still see him as too much part of the Washington establishment. “It is very, very important that Congress gets back to work,” he said recently.
It remained unclear whether Trump’s supporters would support Scalise in the actual vote. The Republicans have a comparatively small majority of 221 votes to 212 in the chamber. McCarthy was appointed in January after 15 rounds of voting.
However, the Republicans are not only under pressure because of the Gaza conflict. If the House of Representatives does not reach an agreement with the Senate on a new budget by November 17th, there will be a shutdown, which McCarthy had prevented with interim funding. Next year, not the president will be elected in the USA, but also the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate.