by tyler | Oct 18, 2023 | CNN, politics
US President Donald Trump has casually dumped five decades of US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying he won’t insist on a two-state solution and that he would simply “like the one that both parties like.”
His comments give fuel to growing interest in a one-state solution as negotiations to create a sovereign Palestinian state have stalled in recent years.
Trump also called for an Arab-backed peace process – an idea that’s been periodically revived over the past two decades without producing results. But such a process insists on a sovereign Palestinian state.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said he was “looking at two-state and one-state” solutions and that he could “live with either one.”
“I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two but honestly, if Bibi and if the Palestinians – if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best,” he said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
But Trump toed the line on previous US administrations’ stance on Israeli settlements, telling Netanyahu directly that he would like Israel to hold back on building more settlements homes “for a little bit.”
Trump emphasized that he and Netanyahu had known each other for some time, calling him a “smart man” and a “great negotiator.”
“I think we’re going to make a deal. It might be a bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand. That’s a possibility so let’s see what we do,” he said.
The idea of the two-state solution sounds simple enough – an Israeli state next to a Palestinian state, existing side by side in peace.
But progress on the goal has been far from easy and has stalled in recent years. The most recent round of negotiations fell apart in April 2014 with Israeli and Palestinian leaders blaming each other. The two sides have failed to come to an agreement over several issues central to the solution.
Both claim parts, if not all, of the holy city of Jerusalem as their capital. They dispute where to draw borders and they continue to clash over Israeli settlements in occupied territory. In addition, what happens to the Palestinian refugees who fled what is now Israel after the 1948 war is a point of contention. The UN estimates that there were about 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1950.
The two-state solution has been the goal of the international community for decades, dating back to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and many nations say that it is the only way out of the conflict.
It would recognize a 1967 demarcation line known as the Green Line to partition Palestinian and Israeli land, subject to land swaps based on negotiations, and it would divide Jerusalem between the two states.
ANALYSIS: Is the two-state solution dead?
Netanyahu endorsed the idea of two states in 2009 under pressure from the Obama administration, but on Wednesday he sidestepped questions about whether he still supports it.
He said instead he wanted to avoid “labels” and talk “substance” – the need for Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and the need for Israel to have overriding security control.
Many in his right-wing government are celebrating his comments, seeing it as an end to a future Palestinian state, calling for more construction of settlement homes and some even calling for a partial or full annexation of the West Bank.
From Israel’s perspective, a one-state solution means it would annex either part or all of the West Bank and Gaza.
But this forces Israel to make a decision, since there are approximately an equal number of Jews and Arabs throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. If Israel gives Palestinians a right to vote, then Jews would soon be a minority, since the Arab population is growing faster as a demographic than the Jewish population.
If Israel doesn’t give Palestinians the right to vote, Israel would remain a Jewish state but would no longer be a democracy. Israel’s critics say it would become an apartheid state, with one set of rights for Israelis and another set for Palestinians.
Recent announcements by the Israeli government of the expansion of West Bank settlements, made in the period since Trump became president, have put settlements back in the spotlight. The announcements came just weeks after the UN Security Council Resolution declared that settlements had “no legal validity.”
MORE: What you need to know about Israeli settlements
Settlements are Israeli cities, towns and villages in the occupied West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. They are considered settlements and not Israeli residential areas because Israel is widely considered to be an occupying force in the territories. It is land that Palestinians, along with the international community, view as territory for a future Palestinian state.
Just before finishing his term as US Secretary of State, John Kerry said Israel’s settlement policy was leading to a future of “one state and perpetual occupation” He slammed the arguments of right-wing Israeli officials who claim settlements are aimed at bolstering Israel’s security.
Virtually the entire international community supports a two-state solution. In the Middle East, most countries support the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, put forward by Saudi Arabia. The initiative was adopted unanimously by the Arab League.
But there are militant factions that reject Israel’s right to exist and support a one-state solution – but one called Palestine, not Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have both called for the destruction of Israel.
Many in Israel’s right-wing support a one-state solution – they envisage that state as a Jewish state. While some are willing to give the Palestinians full citizenship and equal rights, others would confer upon the Palestinians a lesser autonomy. Palestinians, who have their own national aspirations, criticize the latter system as akin to apartheid.
Many Israelis and Palestinians on the far-left – as well as far-left Europeans and Americans – also support a one-state solution, but in a very different form. They envision a secular state for all citizens, regardless of religion, culture or ethnicity. Most Israelis recoil at this idea because it’s seen as removing the Jewish character of the country and a way of eliminating the state of Israel by non-military means.
Some Palestinians who prefer the one-state solution are frustrated with the failure of the Oslo Peace Accords and see no hope in continued peace negotiations. They feel the international community is not taking concrete steps in changing the reality after nearly 50 years of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. They would rather force Israel to take full responsibility for security in the West Bank, as was the case before the Oslo accords.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correctly reflect the estimated number of Palestinian refugees following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
by tyler | Oct 18, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US government currently believes that Israel “is not responsible” for the blast at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, according to the National Security Council, following President Joe Biden’s comments that a Palestinian militant group was behind the strike.
A spokesperson for the NSC, Adrienne Watson, said the assessment is based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information.
“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Watson said in a statement on Wednesday.
Officials told CNN separately that the initial evidence gathered by the US intelligence community suggests that the hospital strike came from a rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
Among the evidence that’s been gathered is a blast analysis that suggests it was a ground explosion rather than an airstrike that hit the hospital, one of the sources said. There was no singular crater suggesting there was a bomb, but there was extensive fire damage and scattered debris that is consistent with an explosion starting from the ground level, according to the source.
That analysis is one datapoint that’s led intelligence officials to lean toward assessing that the attack on the hospital was a rocket launch gone wrong.
Still, the blast analysis is just one of the things being examined by the intelligence community, which has surged intelligence collection assets to the region. US intelligence officials have not made a final assessment and are still gathering evidence, the officials said.
In addition to the blast analysis, the initial US assessment was based on overhead imagery collected from US satellites and intelligence intercepts provided by the Israelis, according to officials.
Current and former law enforcement officials say US the assessment of the cause of the blast is being hampered because of the lack of access to the site and analysis of the bodies recovered. FBI teams can typically use samples from the scene to, within hours, identify the rocket fuel and explosives used, one former FBI official said. Without examining the scene, US officials are left to analyze signals and other intelligence that can help make a strong circumstantial assessment of the cause but is not definitive.
Not long after landing in Israel on Wednesday, Biden weighed in on who was behind the strike on the hospital. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday.
Asked what made him confident the Israelis weren’t behind the hospital strike, Biden said: “The data I was shown by my Defense Department.”
In his remarks later on Wednesday, Biden reiterated that based on the information the US has seen, the blast appears to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”
“The Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well – we mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives,” he said. “Like the entire world, I was outraged and saddened by the enormous loss of life yesterday in the hospital in Gaza. Based on the information we’ve seen to date, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza. The United States unequivocally stands for the protection of civilian life during conflict, and I grieve, I truly grieve for the families were killed or wounded by this tragedy.”
Authorities in Gaza have said Israel was behind the deadly blast at the hospital, while the Israel Defense Forces said its intelligence showed a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group was responsible for the explosion.
An IDF spokesman said Wednesday that imagery following the blast showed “no cratering and no structural damage to nearby buildings.”
“There are no craters here. The walls stay intact. This shows is it not an aerial munition that hit the parking lot” of the hospital, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference Wednesday. “Analysis of our aerial footage confirms that there was no direct hit of the hospital itself. The only location damaged is outside the hospital in the parking lot where we can see signs of burning.”
The US intelligence community has been reviewing different kinds of intelligence to try to reach an assessment, including overhead imagery from satellites as well as the blast analysis, the officials said.
“I’m not sure the IC is ready to make an absolutely conclusive attribution but what we’re hearing is consistent with what the president said,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said following a classified briefing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning.
House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner of Ohio and Himes issued a joint statement Wednesday, saying, “Based on information the House Intelligence Committee received from the administration regarding the hospital attack in Gaza, we believe this was not the result of Israeli military action.”
Israel has also provided the US with intelligence it has gathered related to the explosion, according to an Israeli official and another source familiar with the matter. The Israeli official said that Israel had passed signal intelligence on the explosion to US intelligence. Signals intelligence includes intercepted communications and other forms of data collected through various means.
“I believe the US intelligence community likely has enough imagery, communications intercepts, and other data to determine where the projectile originated that stuck in the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital and what the original statements of people on the ground were as to what they believed happened,” said Mick Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East and retired CIA officer.
“In addition, from the video released publicly, the explosion is consistent with a rocket that still had a lot of rocket fuel at the time of impact,” Mulroy added.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a CNN national security and military analyst, said the US military has overhead platforms that see “a missile burn when it takes off or when something explodes and comes out of the sky.”
The imagery released by the Israeli military of the explosion site was also “compelling,” Hertling said.
“It is very compelling, but when you also look at that aftermath, where’s the crater? When you’re talking about a crater from an Israeli bomb, there’s going to be a hole there,” he said.
British officials in public and private on Wednesday have not yet gone as far as the US. One official said it’s “not conclusive, but the Israeli assertion is not unfounded.”
“We’re not quite there yet,” another official said. “Not because we dispute what they’ve seen. We’re still at ‘Let’s look at all the facts.’”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday that British intelligence services were working “rapidly” to establish the facts behind the deadly blast.
“We should not rush to judgments before we have all the facts on this awful situation,” Sunak told lawmakers in the UK parliament.
Multiple officials said that the US intelligence community has surged intelligence collection assets to the region, primarily through overhead intelligence collection as well as some special operations support.
One military source described the move as “a major shift” and “lots of focus on this from across the IC,” though the source said it’s not clear how long this shift will last.
It’s not clear how helpful the additional resources will be when it comes to both hostage intelligence and Hamas planning in such a densely populated area, according to a US official – especially if most of the hostages are in the tunnels.
It might help a little bit with planning for potential ground clearance, and some of the signals intelligence collection capabilities could detect Hamas communications to help pinpoint hotspots of their activity. But the official noted that Hamas has been pretty smart about staying off communications – one of the reasons, sources say, the group was able to avoid Israeli detection during the planning of the October 7 attack in Israel.
Overhead surveillance would likely be much more helpful for keeping an eye on Hezbollah and Iran, according to two officials. The US would absolutely not want to be surprised by a Hezbollah attack, however unlikely, and could provide the Israelis with warnings and indications of any imminent operation.
by tyler | Oct 18, 2023 | CNN, politics
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan again failed to win the House speaker’s gavel in a second vote on Wednesday, drawing less support than in an initial vote the day before. The loss raises serious questions over whether the Ohio Republican has a viable path forward as he confronts steep opposition and the House remains in a state of paralysis.
During the first round of voting on Tuesday, 20 House Republicans voted against Jordan. On Wednesday, that number rose to 22, showing that the opposition against the candidate has grown. There were four new Republican votes against Jordan and two that flipped into his column. Given the narrow House GOP majority, Jordan can only afford to lose a handful of votes and the high number of votes against him puts the gavel far out of reach.
As pressure grows on Republicans to find a way out of the leadership crisis, some are pushing to expand the powers of the interim speaker, Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. Republicans are discussing the possibility of bringing forward a resolution to empower McHenry as soon as Wednesday afternoon, two sources told CNN.
Without a speaker, the chamber is effectively frozen, a precarious position that comes amid conflict abroad and a potential government shutdown next month.
Jordan dug in Wednesday morning, saying he is going to stay in the race and rejected the idea of empowering McHenry, saying the House needs a permanent Republican speaker.
“We got to get a speaker so we can open the House, so I’m going to get there,” he said.
A resolution to empower McHenry would need Democratic support since many Republicans oppose the idea. The move could give Democrats an opportunity to seek some concessions from Republicans in exchange for their votes.
Jordan is a polarizing figure in the speaker’s fight, a complicating factor in his effort to lock down votes. He is a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, has a longstanding reputation as a conservative agitator and helped found the hardline House Freedom Caucus. As the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, he has also been a key figure in House GOP-led investigations.
It took former Speaker Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds of voting in January to secure the gavel. But Jordan faces an uphill climb amid the deep divisions within the House GOP conference and the resistance he faces.
As the speaker battle drags on, tensions and frustration have risen among House Republicans.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s wife received anonymous text messages warning her husband to back Jordan. Bacon has been a vocal holdout against Jordan and was one of the 20 Republican members that did not back Jordan on the floor in Tuesday’s vote.
“Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappointment and failure he is,” read one of the messages sent to Bacon’s wife and obtained by CNN through Bacon.
Bacon’s wife responded to that text saying, “he has more courage than you. You won’t put your name to your statements.”
Opponents to Jordan’s bid so far have included centrist Republicans concerned that the face of the House GOP would be a conservative hardliner as well as lawmakers still furious at the small group of Republicans who forced out McCarthy and then opposed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s bid for the gavel.
Scalise initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference to become the speaker nominee, but later dropped out of the race amid opposition to his candidacy.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
Conservative Republican Rep. Jim Jordan failed to secure enough GOP support to win the House speakership on the first ballot, falling well short of what the Ohio Republican’s allies had hoped, with 20 Republicans voting against Jordan.
Now Jordan will try to sway the holdouts – a group of GOP moderates and allies of former speaker Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise – to change their votes, as the high-stakes chaos over the speaker’s gavel continues two weeks after McCarthy was removed.
The slim margin is what led to McCarthy’s removal at the hands of a band of eight GOP rebels – and a small group of House Republicans unhappy with Jordan could block his ascension, too.
The 20 Republicans who voted against Jordan included House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado and a quartet of New York Republicans in purple districts.
The anti-Jordan contingent cast six votes for McCarthy, seven votes for Scalise and three for former New York GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, among other alternatives.
Jordan and his allies felt they had made significant headway over the past several days, with the Ohio Republican pitching skeptical lawmakers one on one – and his allies outside Congress attacking the holdouts and threatening political consequences if they stand against a favorite of the Trump-aligned GOP base.
“I feel really good,” Jordan told CNN just before the vote. “Whatever it takes to get a speaker today.”
“We need to get a speaker today and we feel really good about where we’re at,” he added.
It’s been two weeks since McCarthy’s historic ouster. Until the House selects a speaker, the chamber is in a legislative paralysis, unable to consider legislation, such as passing additional military aid to Israel or government funding – with the threat of a shutdown just a month away thanks to McCarthy’s six-week stopgap spending deal that prompted the move against him.
Jordan’s allies believe the number of GOP opponents has shrunk from the 55 who voted Friday against supporting him on the floor to roughly eight-to-10 holdouts.
On Monday, several key holdouts said they would support Jordan, including Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri, who had previously called Jordan a “nonstarter.”
“I feel like he can bring together everybody, from the moderates to the ultra conservatives, and Republicans across the spectrum,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York. “The bottom line is we’ve got to get back to work. We don’t have any time here to waste.”
Even if Jordan doesn’t have the votes on the initial ballot, he could force additional votes, just as McCarthy did in the 15 rounds it took him to be elected speaker in January.
But there are still a group of lawmakers publicly opposing Jordan, including GOP lawmakers still angry that a small group of Republicans forced out McCarthy and then opposed the speaker nomination of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference, 113 to 99.
“I can’t get past the fact that a small group in our conference violated the rules to get rid of Kevin, and then blocked Steve,” said Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. “You don’t have a process where I play by the rules and these other people can’t and then they get what they want. That’s not American. Americans want fair play and rule of law.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said he planned to continue to support Scalise on the floor. “You can remember we had an election; the guy who won was the guy who I was with,” he said Monday, while warning that any attempts to pressure him would backfire.
Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, said he’s opposed to Jordan, noting Monday evening that he needed to hear Jordan publicly say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Jordan on Tuesday doubled down on objecting to the 2020 election certification.
Several Republicans – including from districts won by President Joe Biden – declined to say Monday evening whether they would vote for Jordan on the floor.
House Democrats have blasted Republicans for putting forward Jordan as the next potential speaker. “I was the last person on the floor January 6, and the idea that this guy is the Republican nominee to be speaker, a guy who aggressively agitated the activities that happened on January 6, I think is disgusting,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Jordan’s backers have urged the conference to unify around him – even those who went after McCarthy and opposed Scalise.
Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania argued that those angry shouldn’t take it out on Jordan because he supported both McCarthy and Scalise.
“Feelings are hurt,” Perry said. “But Jim didn’t have anything to do with that. So they need to assign their ire, if you will, to those who they think deserve it – but certainly not Jim Jordan.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
It’s been 14 days since eight Republicans were able to bounce former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the top position in Congress and hit pause on all legislative business on Capitol Hill.
Having moved on from McCarthy and his No. 2, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, lawmakers are voting Tuesday on whether to elevate their third choice, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom one Republican former speaker once labeled as among a group of “political terrorists” for the way he thought they worked to tear apart Washington. That’s assuming Jordan can perform the magic trick of uniting nearly every Republican behind him.
Here’s a look at what we know and what we can expect:
The House is essentially paralyzed until someone is chosen to preside over it. A placeholder, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, has the power to bring the chamber to order. But no legislation can pass until this is resolved. No government funding bills. No policy bills. To the extent that Congress is meant to address problems with legislation, that is not happening.
What legislation needs to pass and when?
First and foremost, the government essentially runs out of money in a month, on November 17. A speaker will need to be involved in negotiations with the White House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by Democrats. There is momentum for a bill to give further aid to Israel after it was attacked by Hamas this month. And Ukraine is said to be running out of munitions, although support has dropped in Congress for continued aid to Kyiv.
McCarthy was one of the shortest-serving speakers in US history. In order to get the job in January, he agreed to give any single Republican member the power to call for a vote to “vacate” him from the top spot. That was his undoing. Far-right members were frustrated that McCarthy relied on Democrats to pass a short-term spending bill and avoid a government shutdown late last month.
McCarthy’s replacement will now have a month to tackle the larger problem of a yearlong spending bill before the government again faces the prospect of a funding lapse.
Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary, was chosen Friday as the Republican nominee to be speaker ahead of a planned floor vote Tuesday. He got the support of a majority of Republicans in a secret ballot vote, but 55 Republicans voted against him.
He can now only afford to lose three GOP votes on the floor, assuming everyone votes, given Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol for a few hours on Tuesday until he returns in the evening, his office told CNN.
In the intervening days, Jordan has announced progress convincing some of the moderate holdouts to support him.
A founder of the far-right Freedom Caucus, Jordan made his name as somewhat of a flamethrower on Capitol Hill. A 2020 election skeptic, Jordan was among former President Donald Trump’s most vocal defenders in Congress, fealty Trump rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in his final days in office.
That such a conservative lawmaker would be elevated to the top spot in the House speaks volumes about how the GOP has evolved in the age of Trump. Jordan earned Trump’s endorsement earlier this month when it was a two-way race with Scalise. It could help him finally become speaker, but only because Scalise dropped out of the running.
Jordan has also faced scrutiny over his position as assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University at the time that a team doctor, Richard Strauss, was sexually abusing male students. Some of the abused have publicly argued Jordan heard and ignored their complaints in the 1990s. The Ohio Republican has vehemently denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of the abuse. CNN reported on the issue in 2020.
Jordan is among the conservative members whom one former speaker, retired Rep. John Boehner, described as “political terrorists” in his memoir.
“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together,” Boehner told CBS News of Jordan in 2021.
Jordan told CNN’s Manu Raju he can unite the party.
“I think we are a conservative-center-right party. I think I’m the guy who can help unite that. My politics are entirely consistent with where conservatives and Republicans are across the country,” he said.
Jordan has used his position as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to begin investigations into special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who are both prosecuting Trump.
There are 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House. Subtracting two vacant seats and Bilirakis’ absence from the normal total of 435 members means 217 is the current threshold for a majority. It is possible that Republican members who oppose Jordan could vote “present,” thus further lowering the threshold. Up to seven Republicans could vote “present,” bringing the total for a majority down to 213. But every other Republican would need to vote for the same person in that case. Democrats are unified behind their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
What happens if no candidate gets a majority?
They vote again. And again. And again, until either one candidate gets a majority or there is a recess. If this sounds familiar that’s because it took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting and multiple days to build a majority of Republicans in January.
The clerk of the House will gavel in the chamber and call a quorum. Democrats will place Jeffries’ name into nomination, and Republicans will nominate Jordan.
Then the clerk will call the roll and each member will state the name of the person whom they are voting for. If no one amasses a majority of votes cast, it goes to a second ballot.
There’s no rule that the speaker is a House member. Members can vote for anyone, and they can protest by skipping the vote or voting “present.” The vast majority will vote for their party’s leader.
Not at the moment, but it’s important to note that Jordan is far from their first choice. All but eight Republicans had backed keeping McCarthy, but because Republicans’ majority is so small, he lost his job.
Then, Republicans nominated Scalise, the House majority leader. But Scalise was far from a universal choice, and rather than work to change the minds of his doubters by horse-trading for their votes, the Louisiana Republican withdrew his name from contention.
Anyone will face a difficult task in unifying a party that includes far-right members such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who engineered McCarthy’s ouster, as well as 18 members who represent districts that would have voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 under redrawn lines.
It was McCarthy’s decision to give any Republican the power to call for a vote to remove the speaker at any time. There are voices in both parties who want to see that power controlled. A majority could change the rules Republicans adopted in January. Jordan has not taken an official position but made clear the first order of business is selecting a speaker. They can revisit whether a speaker should be removed at a later date.
In the 200-plus years since the first two-year Congress met in 1789, such floor fights have occurred just 15 times, according to the House historian.
All but two of those multi-ballot speaker elections took place before the Civil War as the two-party system was evolving. Back then, floor fights were routine.
Until it took McCarthy 15 ballots in January, a floor fight had taken place only once since the Civil War, exactly 100 years ago, when it took nine ballots for Rep. Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts to be elected speaker in 1923.
In 1855 and 1856, it took 133 separate votes for Rep. Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts to be elected, again by a plurality and not a majority.
The process stretched over more than a month and included a sort of inquisition on the House floor of the three contenders, who answered questions about their view of the expansion of slavery. Read more from the House historian’s website.
It’s also interesting to read about Banks; his official House biography notes he was elected to office as a Republican, an independent, a member of the America Party and as a Democrat.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday decried the gag order issued on him by the federal judge overseeing his federal 2020 election subversion case, claiming she “took away my right to speak.”
“We’re being railroaded. And I have other trials where we’re being railroaded. You saw yesterday where they took away my right to speak. I won’t be able to speak like I’m speaking to you,” Trump told reporters moments before he entered a New York courtroom to attend his ongoing civil fraud trial.
“I am leading Joe Biden and I’m being restricted. My speech has been taken away from me. I’m a candidate that’s running for office and I’m not allowed to speak,” Trump said, referring to the partial gag order issued Monday by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
The former president reiterated that his team plans to appeal the order.
The gag order restricts Trump’s ability to publicly target court personnel, potential witnesses or special counsel Jack Smith and his staff. The order does not impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, DC – where the jury will take place – or certain comments about the Justice Department at large, both of which prosecutors requested.
“This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses,” Chutkan said in court Monday as she announced the order. “This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice.”
Trump had already been placed under a gag order by the New York state judge overseeing his fraud trial, who last month said that all parties in the case must not speak publicly about any members of the court staff, after the former president attacked the judge’s clerk in a social media post.
“Personal attacks of any member of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them,” Judge Arthur Engoron said last month when he issued his order.
Tuesday’s proceedings in the New York civil fraud case will include more testimony from Donna Kidder, the Trump Organization’s assistant controller.
