Tag: us republican party

Michele Bachmann Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a look at the life of former US Representative Michele Bachmann.

Birth date: April 6, 1956

Birth place: Waterloo, Iowa

Birth name: Michele Marie Amble

Father: David Amble, an engineer

Mother: Arlene Jean (Johnson) Amble

Marriage: Marcus Bachmann (September 10, 1978-present)

Children: Sophia, Caroline, Elisa, Harrison and Lucas

Education: Winona State University, B.A., 1978; Oral Roberts University, J.D., 1986; College of William and Mary, L.L.M., 1988

Religion: Lutheran

Bachmann, a conservative Republican, worked for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign.

Has said that she switched parties while reading Gore Vidal’s novel, “Burr.”

Bachmann and her husband Marcus own a mental health care practice.

1988-1992 – Tax litigation attorney.

2000-2006 – Minnesota state senator.

November 7, 2006 – Is the first Republican woman from Minnesota to be elected to the House of Representatives.

January 4, 2007-January 3, 2015 – Serves as Republican representative from the 6th District of Minnesota.

October 17, 2008 – Tells MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “I’m very concerned that he [US President Barack Obama] may have anti-American views.”

November 4, 2008 – Is elected to a second term.

July 2010 – Establishes the House Tea Party Caucus.

November 2, 2010 – Is elected to a third term.

January 25, 2011 – Delivers the Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.

June 13, 2011 – At a CNN-sponsored debate of Republican candidates, Bachmann announces that she has filed the papers necessary to run for president and will formally announce her candidacy soon.

June 27, 2011 – Formally announces her candidacy for president during an appearance in Waterloo, Iowa.

November 21, 2011 – Her memoir “Core of Conviction: My Story” is published.

January 4, 2012 – Suspends her presidential campaign after her sixth-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucuses.

November 6, 2012 – Wins reelection to the House of Representatives for a fourth term.

May 29, 2013 – Announces in a video posted to her campaign website that she will not seek reelection.

January 3, 2015 – Last day in office.

June 21, 2016 – Announced as an adviser on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board.

December 22, 2019 – Signs an open letter to Dr. Timothy Dalrymple, the president of Christianity Today, pushing back against an op-ed in the magazine that called for Trump to be removed from office. The letter, signed by nearly 200 evangelical leaders, praises Trump for seeking advice from “Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans.”

December 22, 2020 – Is announced as the dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, effective January 1, 2021.

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March 29, 2024
Mitch McConnell Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky.

Birth date: February 20, 1942

Birth place: Colbert County, Alabama

Birth name: Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr.

Father: Addison Mitchell McConnell

Mother: Julia (Shockley) McConnell

Marriages: Elaine Chao (1993-present); Sherrill Redmon (1968-1980, divorced)

Children: with Sherrill Redmon: Porter; Claire; Eleanor

Education: University of Louisville, B.A., 1964; University of Kentucky, J.D., 1967

Religion: Baptist

Contracted polio at age 2 and was not allowed to walk for two years while completing physical therapy.

His wife, Elaine Chao, served as secretary of the Department of Labor under President George W. Bush and deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation under President George H.W. Bush. Chao served as the secretary of the Department of Transportation under President Donald Trump.

1968-1970 – Chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook.

1974-1975 – Deputy Assistant United States Attorney for Legislative Affairs.

1975 – Acting Assistant Attorney General.

1978-1985 – Judge-Executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky.

1984 – Elected to the US Senate to represent Kentucky.

1990 – Reelected to the US Senate.

1996 – Reelected to the US Senate.

2002 – Reelected to the US Senate.

2003-2007 – Senate Republican Whip.

November 16, 2006 – Elected Senate Republican leader. McConnell replaces Bill Frist.

January 4, 2007-January 6, 2015 – Senate Minority Leader.

2008 – Reelected to the US Senate.

October 23, 2010 – During an interview with the National Journal, McConnell says, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President [Barack] Obama to be a one-term president.”

November 4, 2014 – Reelected to the US Senate.

November 13, 2014 – McConnell is reelected leader of the Republican party in the Senate. When Congress reconvenes in January 2015, McConnell will take over as Senate majority leader from Harry Reid.

January 6, 2015–January 20, 2021 – Senate Majority Leader.

December 12, 2016 – Announces he supports a congressional investigation into findings that Russian hackers attempted to influence the election.

June 12, 2018 – Becomes the longest-serving Republican leader in the Senate’s history, surpassing former Sen. Robert Dole’s record.

August 4, 2019 – McConnell fractures his shoulder after falling in his Kentucky home. “This morning, Leader McConnell tripped at home on his outside patio and suffered a fractured shoulder,” David Popp, McConnell’s communications director, says in a statement. “He has been treated, released, and is working from home in Louisville.”

August 15, 2019 – McConnell undergoes surgery to repair the fracture in his shoulder. “The surgery was performed without incident, and the Leader is grateful to the surgical team for their skill,” Popp says in a statement.

November 3, 2020 – Wins reelection to the US Senate, defeating Democratic opponent Amy McGrath and her massive fundraising efforts to unseat him.

November 10, 2020 – McConnell is reelected as a Senate party leader, but the party holding the Senate majority won’t be determined until two runoff elections in Georgia take place in January.

December 15, 2020 – Six weeks after Election Day McConnell finally acknowledges Joe Biden’s victory and refers to him as president-elect.

January 2, 2021 – Police report that McConnell’s home has been vandalized. The damage takes place after the Senate stalls on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000. The home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the other highest-ranking member of Congress, was vandalized the previous day.

January 20, 2021-present – Senate Minority Leader.

February 13, 2021 – McConnell directly blames former President Trump for instigating last month’s riot at the Capitol but votes to acquit him anyway of inciting an insurrection.

November 16, 2022 – Wins a secret-ballot leadership election, putting him on pace to become the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history. McConnell defeats Florida Sen. Rick Scott in a 37-10-1 vote, his first challenger in his 15 years atop his conference.

March 8, 2023 – McConnell is being treated for a concussion and is staying at a hospital for observation after a fall at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, DC.

July 26, 2023 – McConnell stops speaking in the middle of remarks at his regularly scheduled weekly news conference on Capitol Hill. After a 30-second pause, his colleagues crowded around to see if he was OK and asked him how he felt. He later tells reporters that he’s “fine.”

August 30, 2023 – Appears to freeze for about 30 seconds while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.

February 28, 2024 – McConnell will step down at GOP leader in November, a source tells CNN.

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February 28, 2024
Arizona fake electors led vocal campaign to overturn the 2020 election — they’re now part of a ‘robust’ state investigation | CNN Politics

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CNN
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They called it “The Signing.” Eleven fake electors for President Donald Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.

By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by less than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by the state’s Republican governor affirming that Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.

But in the weeks that followed, five of Arizona’s 11 “Republican electors,” as they called themselves, pushed an unusually vocal campaign, compared to other fake electors from states across the country, for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.

Instead, they called on Pence to accept them or no electors at all, according to a CNN KFile review of their interviews, actions and comments on social media.

Much attention has been drawn to the fake elector schemes in Georgia and Michigan where local and state authorities charged some participants for election crimes this past summer. But in no other state were there fake electors more active in publicly promoting the scheme than in Arizona.

Now those fake electors find themselves under new legal scrutiny as the Arizona attorney general announced a broad investigation into their actions and their public campaign that could open the electors up to increased legal liability, according to experts who spoke with CNN.

“They were more brazen,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an expert on constitutional law at Georgia State University told CNN. “There is no difficulty trying to piece together their unlawful, corrupt intent because they publicly documented their stream of consciousness bread trail for prosecutors to follow.”

Attorney General Kris Mayes, in an interview with CNN, said she has been in contact with investigators in Michigan and Georgia and the Department of Justice.

“It’s robust. It’s a serious matter,” Mayes, a Democrat, said of her ongoing investigation. “We’re going to make sure that we do it on our timetable, applying the resources that it requires to make sure that justice is done, for not only Arizonans, but for the entire country.”

All 11 electors took part in multiple failed legal challenges, first asking a judge to invalidate the state’s results in a conspiracy theory-laden court case and then taking part in a last-ditch, desperate plea seeking to force Pence to help throw the election to Trump. The cases were dismissed.

Of the 11 fake electors in Arizona, five were the most publicly vocal members advocating the scheme in the state: Kelli Ward, the chairperson of the state party and her spouse, Michael Ward; state Rep. Anthony Kern, then a sitting lawmaker; Jake Hoffman, a newly elected member of the Arizona House; and Tyler Bowyer, a top state official with the Republican National Committee.

Each of these five publicly pushed for the legitimate electors to be discarded by Pence on January 6, 2021. One of the fake electors, Kern, took part in “Stop the Steal” rallies and was photographed in a restricted area on the Capitol steps during the riot at the Capitol.

“The Arizona false electors left a trail here that will surely interest prosecutors,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who previously served as the special counsel to the general counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN.

Electors, a part of the Electoral College system, represent the popular vote in each state. When a candidate wins a state, the party’s designated slate of electors gets to participate in the Electoral College process. The electors meet in a ceremonial process and sign certificates, officially casting their vote for president.

CNN reached out to all of the electors, but only received comment from two of them.

The most publicly vocal of the fake electors, Kelli Ward called the group the “true electors,” and provided play-by-play updates on the Arizona Republican Party’s YouTube. Falsely saying the state’s electoral votes were “contested,” even though legal challenges to the count had been dismissed, she urged supporters to call on Arizona’s state legislature to decertify the state’s results.

“We believe our votes are the ones that will count on January 6th,” she said in one interview on conservative talk radio, two days after signing the fake documents.

Ward’s comments were echoed in tweets by her husband, Michael, also an elector and a gadfly in Arizona politics known for spreading conspiracy theories. In a post sharing a White House memo that urged Pence to reject the results from states that submitted fake electors, Michael Ward hinted at retribution for Republicans who failed to act.

“My Holiday prayer is that every backstabbing ‘Republican’ gets paid back for their failure to act come Jan 20th!” he wrote in a tweet on December 22.

Another prominent elector was the RNC Committeeman Bowyer, who on his Twitter account pushed false election claims and conspiracies.

“It will be up to the President of the Senate and congress to decide,” Bowyer tweeted after signing the fake electors documents.

In repeated comments Bowyer declared the decision would come down to Pence.

“It’s pretty simple: The President of the United States Senate (VP) has the awesome power of acknowledging a specific envelope of electoral votes when there are two competing slates— or none at all,” wrote Bowyer in a December 28 tweet.

“We don’t live in a Democracy. The presidential election isn’t democratic,” he added when receiving pushback.

A spokesperson for Bowyer said that he was simply responding to a question from a user on what next steps looked like and maintained that there was precedent for a competing slate of electors.

Bowyer urged action in the lead up to the joint session of Congress on January 6.

“Be a modern Son of Liberty today,” he said late in the morning of January 6 – a post he deleted following the riot at the Capitol.

The spokesperson for Bowyer said he had not directly been contacted by Mayes’s office or the DOJ.

Newly elected state representative Hoffman sent a two-page letter to Pence on January 5, 2021, asking the vice president to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state legislature.

“It is in this late hour, with urgency, that I respectfully ask that you delay the certification of election results for Arizona during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, and seek clarification from the Arizona state legislature as to which slate of electors are proper and accurate,” wrote Hoffman.

In interviews, Hoffman repeatedly argued no electors be sent at all because “we don’t have certainty in the outcome of our election,” and to contest Democrat electors if they were sent.

Then-state Rep. Kern, who lost his seat in the 2020 election, spent his final weeks in office sharing “stop the steal” content and participating in their rallies. He said he was “honored” to be a Trump elector.

“On January 6th, vice President Mike Pence gets a choice on which electors he’s going to choose,” Kern told the Epoch Times in an interview in December.

“There is no president elect until January 6th,” he added.

Kern hadn’t changed his tune in an interview with CNN.

“Why, why would you think alternate electors are a lie?,” Kern said.

Kern repeatedly promoted the January 6, 2021, rally preceding the Capitol riot. Kern was in DC that day and shared a photo from the Capitol grounds as rioters gathered on the steps of the Capitol.

“In DC supporting @realDonaldTrump and @CNN @FoxNews @MSNBC are spewing lies again. #truth,” he wrote in a tweet.

Later Kern was seen in a restricted area of the Capitol steps during the riot. There is no indication he was violent, and he has not been charged with any crime.

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November 10, 2023
Who is Rep. Mike Johnson, the new House speaker? | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Rep. Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and was a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Louisiana Republican was first elected to the House in 2016 and serves as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, as well as GOP deputy whip, an assistant leadership role. An attorney with a focus on constitutional law, Johnson joined a group of House Republicans in voting to sustain the objection to electoral votes on January 6, 2021. During Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020, Johnson, along with a group of other GOP lawmakers, served a largely ceremonial role in Trump’s Senate impeachment team.

Johnson also sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the longshot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from multiple states.

After the election was called in favor of Joe Biden on November 7, 2020, Johnson posted on X, then known as Twitter, “I have just called President Trump to say this: ‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’”

Although Trump said he wouldn’t endorse anyone in the speaker’s race Wednesday, he leant support to Johnson in a post on Truth Social.

“In 2024, we will have an even bigger, & more important, WIN! My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & GET IT DONE, FAST!” Trump posted.

Johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is also a former chair of the Republican Study Committee.

After receiving a degree in business administration from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Johnson took on roles as a college professor and conservative talk radio host. He began his political career in the Louisiana legislature, where he served from 2015 to 2017, before being elected to Congress in Louisiana’s Fourth District.

Rep. Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican who chairs the influential Republican Study Committee, dropped out of the race for speaker Tuesday evening and backed Johnson.

“I want everyone to know this race has gotten to the point where it’s gotten crazy. This is more about people right now than it should be,” he said. “This should be about America and America’s greatness. For that, I stepped aside and threw all my support behind Mike Johnson. I think he’d make a great speaker.”

Johnson’s win in the secret-ballot race for the House Republican Conference’s nominee for speaker followed Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer’s decision to drop out of the race hours after Republicans chose him to be the nominee following resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from Trump. Reps. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan have also dropped out after earlier seeking the speaker’s gavel.

Johnson joined the speakership race in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“I have been humbled to have so many Members from across our Conference reach out to encourage me to seek the nomination for Speaker. Until yesterday, I had never contacted one person about this, and I have never before aspired to the office,” he said in a posted letter. “However, after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”

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October 25, 2023
Mike Johnson set to take fight for speakership to House floor amid GOP leadership crisis | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Rep. Mike Johnson is set to take his fight for the speakership to the House floor on Wednesday, a pivotal moment for House Republicans that comes amid uncertainty over whether the Louisiana lawmaker can secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.

Johnson, who serves as the House GOP conference vice chairman, secured the nomination for the speakership late Tuesday evening. The vote capped off a chaotic day that started with Republicans picking Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer to be their latest nominee only for him to drop out hours later after facing stiff resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from former President Donald Trump. The day ended with a vote to elect a new nominee – this time, Johnson won out.

The GOP conference is under increasing pressure as the House remains paralyzed without a speaker. But Republicans have so far struggled to unite behind a successor to Kevin McCarthy following his historic ouster. The vote to push out McCarthy plunged the House into uncharted territory and it has remained unclear whether any candidate can win the gavel in the aftermath of the unprecedented move.

Following the nomination vote, House Republicans took another vote to gauge the nominee’s support within the conference. There were around 20 members absent for that vote and Johnson can only lose four votes on the floor, creating uncertainty over whether he will have the needed votes for the gavel.

“Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system,” Johnson said Tuesday evening. “The intention is to go to the House floor tomorrow and make this official. So we will be doing that.”

Emmer was the third Republican to win the GOP nomination only to then exit the race after failing to lock up the necessary votes to win the gavel, following Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise also of Louisiana.

After winning the party nomination, Emmer faced swift opposition from the right flank of his conference as well as a rebuke from Trump. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Emmer a “Globalist RINO,” and said that voting for him “would be a tragic mistake.”

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October 25, 2023
Tom Emmer drops out of speaker’s race, hours after being nominated | CNN Politics

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CNN
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House Republicans are once again scrambling for a path forward after Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer dropped his bid for speaker just hours after winning his party’s nomination.

The swift exit from the race is the latest sign that Republicans are still no closer to electing a new speaker three weeks after Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.

The House remains in a state of paralysis, and Republicans remain unable to govern as the conference has repeatedly failed to coalesce around a successor to McCarthy amid deep division within the ranks. The politically precarious situation has plunged the House into uncharted territory as it looks increasingly unclear whether any Republican can get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.

Emmer is now the third Republican to win the nomination of the GOP conference only to then exit the race after failing to lock up the necessary votes to win the gavel.

Earlier in the day, Emmer’s bid to be speaker appeared on the verge of collapse amid opposition from the right flank of his conference and fresh attacks waged by former President Donald Trump. Emmer could only afford to lose four Republicans in a floor vote, and 26 voted against him behind closed doors, an ominous sign for his speaker’s bid.

Emmer voted to certify the 2020 election, voted to keep the government open for 47 days, voted for the bipartisan law to avoid a debt default and voted to codify same-sex marriage – all issues that members of the hard-right had cited as issues for his candidacy.

In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump went after Emmer after House Republicans elected him as their latest speaker nominee, writing that voting for Emmer “would be a tragic mistake.”

Ahead of his exit, members of Trump’s team also called GOP members and urged them to oppose Emmer for speaker, two sources told CNN. One source said they’re “whipping hard.” The other source said more members were pulling their support because of it.

Despite a cordial phone call with the former president over the weekend, Trump reposted attacks against the House GOP whip on Truth Social Monday night and then followed up with his own attack after Emmer was nominated.

Leaving a GOP conference meeting Monday night, Emmer told CNN, “We have a good relationship,” when asked about Trump.

With multiple candidates in the running, members cast a series of successive secret ballots on Tuesday with the candidate with the fewest number of votes in each round dropped from the race. The other candidates who had been in the running were: Reps. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Byron Donalds of Florida, Austin Scott of Georgia, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pete Sessions of Texas.

Republicans gathered on Monday for the candidate forum also behind closed doors. Meuser, who had been in the running, dropped his bid at that meeting.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday, “It’s going to be very difficult, but we have to get there,” when asked how concerned he is that no candidate can get 217 votes on the floor.

And GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida warned that if the eventual nominee can’t get to 217 votes on the floor, the conference may have to work with Democrats.

“It’s, it’s not good. Because a lot of people are gonna want to – with a mind set out there, they don’t want to work with Democrats, but it might end up to be a point where that’s the only way,” Buchanan said. “We’ve got to get the government open. People are very angry, upset.”

This story and headline have been updated with updated with additional information and developments.

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October 24, 2023
House GOP scrambles to find path forward after voting to push out Jordan as speaker nominee | CNN Politics

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CNN
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House Republicans are once again scrambling with no clear path to elect a new speaker after voting to push Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan out of the race, the latest sign of the chaos and divisions that have engulfed the majority party and left the chamber in a state of paralysis.

In a dramatic turn of events, the House GOP conference voted by secret ballot on Friday to drop Jordan as their speaker designee after he failed to win the gavel for the third time in a floor vote earlier in the day.

The House remains effectively frozen as long as there is no elected speaker. The paralysis has created a perilous situation as Congress faces the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolds abroad. The battle for the speakership has now dragged on for more than two weeks with no end in sight.

Jordan’s exit from the race now sets the stage for more speaker hopefuls to emerge. Republicans are expected to hold a candidate forum Monday evening. But it appears increasingly uncertain whether any lawmaker can get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel while Republicans control such a narrow majority.

Jordan’s failure to win the gavel also highlighted the limits of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after he endorsed Jordan.

Speaking to reporters after the vote to push him out, Jordan said, “We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” and said he told the conference, “It was an honor to be their speaker designee.”

The move by Republicans against Jordan came after three failed floor votes for his speaker bid and vows from the Ohio Republican to remain in the race despite mounting opposition against him.

In Friday’s floor vote, 25 House Republicans voted against Jordan – a higher number than in the two prior votes and far more than the handful of defectors Jordan could afford to lose and still win the gavel given the GOP’s narrow majority.

When the vote count against Jordan increased to 25 House Republicans, there were three new GOP votes in opposition – Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Kean of New Jersey and Marc Molinaro of New York.

Kean said in a statement explaining his position, “it has become evident that Chairman Jordan does not and will not have the votes to become Speaker.”

Some Republicans who have oppose Jordan decried what they described as a pressure campaign against them by allies of the Ohio Republican. And several Republicans who opposed Jordan’s speakership bid have said they experienced angry calls, menacing messages and even death threats since casting their votes. Jordan has condemned the threats.

A closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Thursday turned heated, multiple sources told CNN. Some members encouraged Jordan to drop out of the race. There was also an emotional discussion over the threats some Jordan holdouts are facing. Later, members leaving the meeting described it as an airing of grievances with tensions running high.

Some Republicans looking for a way to break the impasse have suggested expanding the powers of interim Speaker Rep. Patrick McHenry – a controversial move that would put the House even further into uncharted territory. But there is widespread opposition within the Republican conference to the idea.

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October 20, 2023
Michigan AG drops charges against fake GOP elector after he agrees to cooperate | CNN Politics

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CNN
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One of the pro-Donald Trump fake electors charged in Michigan has agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in exchange for getting his case dismissed.

James Renner, 76, is the first defendant to strike a deal with prosecutors. Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, charged the group of 16 fake electors earlier this year.

This is the most significant development in the case since Nessel filed the charges in July. She was the first prosecutor in the nation to charge anyone in connection with the Trump-backed fake elector scheme.

As part of the deal, Renner agreed to provide “complete and truthful testimony whenever called upon” by prosecutors, at any hearings or trials related to the 2020 fake electors, according to court filings. This includes describing what happened in the room where he and others signed the sham certificate in December 2020.

Like all of the other defendants, Renner originally faced eight felony charges, including forgery and conspiracy to publish a false statement. If he provides misleading or false testimony at any future cases, prosecutors could refile the felony charges.

The fake GOP electors tried to subvert the Electoral College process in 2020 by signing illegitimate certificates falsely proclaiming that Trump won the presidential election in Michigan. This was part of the Trump campaign’s multi-state effort to overturn the election that he lost.

The remaining 15 defendants include current and former state GOP officials, a Republican National Committee member, a mayor from central Michigan and a Grand Blanc school board member. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Court filings indicate that Renner signed his deal with prosecutors on October 10. It only became public Thursday when Renner appeared at a brief hearing in Ingham County District Court.

“We are excited for this result,” Renner’s attorney Clint Westbrook said at the hearing.

Westbrook later told CNN in a statement that, “after conversations with the Attorney General’s office, all charges against our innocent client, Jim Renner, were dismissed.” A spokesperson for Nessel told CNN in a statement that, “we dismissed the case against James Renner under a cooperation agreement.”

According to documents obtained by CNN, Renner met with state investigators in September for a proffer interview, which is often a precursor to a plea deal or non-prosecution agreement.

Renner explained how he got involved in the post-election effort and identified eight of the other fake electors by name as attending the signing ceremony in December 2020, which could help prosecutors.

But some of his other comments could support the argument from defense attorneys in the case that their clients met as a legal “contingency” so Trump could continue contesting the election results.

He said the group of fake electors was “led to believe” that they needed to sign the faux Electoral College certificates because Michigan’s GOP-run legislature could still reject Joe Biden’s electors and recognize the pro-Trump slate instead. Some of the GOP officials running the meeting – which was conducted in private – also mentioned “ongoing lawsuits” related to the 2020 election, according to the document obtained by CNN.

Even though Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by more than 154,000 votes, Renner said “it was his belief Donald Trump may have the ability to win the election” when he signed the certificate, according to the document, which described Renner’s interview with state investigators.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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October 19, 2023
Jim Jordan loses second vote for House speaker amid steep GOP opposition | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Republican Rep. Jim Jordan again failed to win the House speaker’s gavel in a second vote on Wednesday, faring worse than he did during the first round of voting one day earlier. 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.

Despite the defeat, Jordan has vowed to stay in the race. The House is expected to hold a third speaker vote on Thursday at noon ET. Without a speaker, the chamber is effectively frozen, a precarious position that comes amid conflict abroad and a potential government shutdown next month.

The conservative Republican’s struggle to gain traction has also highlighted the limits of Donald Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after the former president endorsed Jordan.

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, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, though such a move would not be without controversy and has divided Republicans.

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.

Following his second defeat on the floor, Jordan indicated that he is dug in on pressing ahead.

“We don’t know when we’re going to have the next vote but we want to continue our conversations with our colleagues,” he said, adding: “We’ll keep talking to members and keep working on it.”

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 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. Some of the lawmakers who have voted against Jordan in the speaker’s race have railed against what they have described as a pressure campaign against them.

Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas derided what he called the “attack, attack, attack” tactics of Jordan allies against his Republican opponents.

“Frankly, just based on what I’ve been through – I can only speak to myself and what my staff has been through over the last 24 or 48 hours – it is obvious what the strategy has been: Attack, attack, attack. Attack the members who don’t agree with you, attack them, beat them into submission,” he said.

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.”

GOP lawmaker voted for a congressman he didn’t want to be Speaker. Hear why

Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa said in a statement that she has “received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after flipping her speaker vote Wednesday, instead casting a ballot for House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger.

Russell Dye, a spokesman for Jordan, condemned the threats against Miller-Meeks, saying: “This is abhorrent and has no place in civil discourse. No one should receive threats and it needs to stop. We have condemned these actions repeatedly. It is important that Republicans stop attacking each other and come together.”

And Jordan wrote on X that “no American should accost another for their beliefs.”

“We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. Stop. It’s abhorrent,” he added.

Opponents to the congressman’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.

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October 18, 2023
Senior House Republican says GOP members ready to block Jordan | CNN Politics

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A number of House Republicans are in talks to block Rep. Jim Jordan’s path to the speakership as the Ohio Republican tries to force a floor vote on Tuesday, according to multiple GOP sources.

One senior Republican House member who is part of the opposition to Jordan told CNN that there he believes there are roughly 40 “no” votes, and that he has personally spoken to 20 members who are willing to go to the floor and block Jordan’s path if the Ohio Republican forces a roll-call vote on Tuesday.

“The approximately 20 I’ve talked to know we must be prepared,” the member said. “We cannot let the small group dictate to the whole group. They want a minority of the majority to dictate and as a red-blooded American I refuse to be a victim.”

But another GOP source familiar with the matter says that Jordan has had positive conversations with members and believes by Tuesday evening he will be elected speaker of the House. The source said it was “likely” the vote would still happen on Tuesday and that Jordan may decide to go to multiple ballots on the floor if necessary.

Republicans are expected to meet behind closed doors Monday evening.

Yet there is still sizable opposition to Jordan. The GOP member says there are some Republicans who are critics of Jordan and not willing to back him – and there are others angry at the hardliners who took out Kevin McCarthy and sunk Majority Leader Steve Scalise and don’t want to reward those moves by electing Jordan, who is their preferred candidate.

“I know of many hard nos. …We can’t reward this behavior,” the GOP lawmaker said. “We can’t let a small group be dictators.”

The Republican conference nominated Jordan as speaker last week after Scalise dropped his bid for the role. Scalise had initially been selected by the conference as its nominee – after he defeated Jordan 113-99 in the conference’s first speaker vote – but more than a dozen Republicans said they would not vote for Scalise, forcing him to withdraw.

Now Jordan is facing the same problem from Republicans angry at McCarthy’s ouster and a small faction of the conference refusing to get behind Scalise after he won the first vote. After Jordan’s nomination, he held a second, secret vote in the conference on whether Republicans would support him on the floor. Fifty-five Republicans voted no.

To be elected speaker, a nominee must win the majority of the full House, which is currently 217 votes due to two vacancies. That means Jordan or any other Republican nominee can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor if every Democrat votes for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Some of Jordan’s allies have pushed for votes on the floor in order to try to call out the holdouts who aren’t behind the Ohio Republican. But Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas railed against his House GOP colleagues who plan on rallying support for Jordan’s speakership through a public pressure campaign, calling it “the dumbest thing you can do.”

“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan,” Crenshaw told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “As someone who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them.”

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October 15, 2023
Scalise faces a key math problem as he struggles to collect 217 votes for speaker | CNN Politics

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Majority Leader Steve Scalise is scrambling to lock down the votes to become the next House speaker, but protracted opposition to the Louisiana Republican inside the GOP conference and the numerical realities of the narrowly divided chamber could ultimately derail his bid.

Several senior Republicans see little path to 217 votes, after Scalise won just 113 votes in the GOP conference, which includes three delegates who don’t have a vote on the House floor. Making up that deficit in just a matter of days is an extremely tall order – plus a number of hard-right Republicans say they are dead-set against Scalise, when he can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor. At least 12 GOP lawmakers have said publicly they’ll oppose Scalise’s nomination and more have expressed frustration or skepticism about his leadership, more than enough to sink his bid.

House GOP members will huddle behind closed doors Thursday afternoon, according to two sources familiar. No phones will be allowed in the meeting.

Republicans are worried that Scalise is facing grim prospects of becoming speaker, an impasse that threatens to prolong the GOP’s leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed and unable to move on any legislation.

Late Wednesday, members of the conference were beginning to weigh how they would handle the potential collapse of his bid, with several GOP sources saying they believe they’d have to consider a new candidate who has yet to run for the speakership.

Scalise spent Wednesday after the vote meeting individually with GOP members as he and his whip operation tried to convince the holdouts to come around, the sources said. He found some success in the outreach, but it’s not yet clear whether he can win over enough Republicans to overcome the razor-thin GOP House majority.

Scalise or any other Republican candidate for speaker needs 217 votes to win the speaker’s gavel, a majority of the entire House, meaning they can only afford to lose four Republicans if every member is voting.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who lost the vote for speaker to Scalise on Wednesday, 113-99, said Thursday he wants Republicans to unite around Scalise. “I do and I’ve been clear about that since yesterday,” Jordan said.

But pressed on if he would rule out taking the job if Scalise can’t get there, Jordan didn’t give a clear answer. “I will nominate Steve on the floor and I hope we can unite around a speaker,” the Ohio Republican said.

The opposition to Scalise inside his party has thrown into doubt how Republicans will get out of their speaker conundrum that’s left them simply unable to govern.

While there was some belief on Capitol Hill that the brutal assault on Israel over the weekend might prompt Republicans to quickly select a leader – House lawmakers were given a classified briefing on Israel Wednesday before the conference vote for speaker – the deep divisions in the conference that led to Kevin McCarthy’s removal last week have now left the quest for a new speaker at a standstill.

Anger inside the conference is rising.

“These folks are destroying our conference and apparently want to be in the minority,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a swing Nebraska district. “They don’t respect the customs of the House that have gone on for over two centuries.”

The House gavels back in at noon Thursday, but there’s no indication Republicans will be ready to vote on a speaker.

Scalise is facing broad skepticism inside the far-right House Freedom Caucus, a key bloc of Republicans who mostly supported the Trump-backed Jordan for speaker, multiple sources told CNN, citing a general lack of trust with Republican leadership. Scalise has been in leadership years, although he is more conservative than McCarthy.

Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, threw his weight behind Scalise following Wednesday’s vote, saying he was encouraging his supporters to do the same. “We need a speaker and Steve is the guy for that. Like I said, I have offered to give a nominating speech for him,” the Ohio Republican told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

But there was a cohort of lawmakers who expressed staunch opposition to voting for Scalise on the House floor.

“Well, Leader Scalise won, and it’s not over. I’m still throwing my support behind Jim Jordan for speaker. I’m not going to change my vote now or any time soon on the House floor,” said GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio.

Scalise’s individual outreach did peel off at least one holdout. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who initially said Wednesday that she would vote for Jordan on the floor, met with Scalise and said afterward she felt “comfortable” enough to support his speaker nomination.

While she said he did not make specific commitments, he did assure her that he’ll allow her to “aggressively” do her job on the Oversight Committee, which is part of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

But Luna said she would only back Scalise for the speakership on the first ballot. If it went to multiple ballots, she said, “we must find a candidate” the conference can unite behind.

Still, a number of Republicans don’t think that Jordan could be a viable alternative given that he lost to Scalise in the nominating contest, and some Republicans were irritated when he didn’t immediately close ranks behind Scalise.

“If Scalise were not to make it, the next person got less votes,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said of Jordan. “And by the way, I think, more controversial. So that would not be a good thing for this place.”

Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana said she doesn’t know if “it will be Jordan or Scalise or even someone else at this point. … I think we’re in uncharted territory, and it’s gonna be very hard to predict.”

Another GOP member said that it would have to be a new candidate altogether, something that would take longer to sort out.

“Steve is nowhere near 217,” said the Republican member.

Leaving the floor without a vote Wednesday, interim Speaker Patrick McHenry tried to be optimistic the House GOP conference would solve the impasse soon.

Asked if there could be a floor vote Thursday, the North Carolina Republican said, “That’s the hope.”

Could anyone get the 217 votes required? He had the same response: “That’s the hope.”

This story and headline have been updated to include additional developments.

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October 12, 2023
House GOP gears up to pick speaker nominee, but it’s unclear if any candidate can get the votes | CNN Politics
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House Republicans are set to meet behind closed doors Wednesday to pick a nominee to be the next speaker – but it remains unclear whether any candidate will have enough the support to win the gavel following Kevin McCarthy’s abrupt ouster.

As of now, neither House Majority Leader Steve Scalise nor Rep. Jim Jordan – the two declared GOP candidates in the race – have locked down 217 votes, the necessary number to be elected speaker by a majority vote of the full chamber. The uncertain vote math has raised questions over how and when the GOP majority will be able to elect a new speaker, particularly as infighting continues to roil House Republican ranks.

Until a speaker is elected, the House remains effectively paralyzed following McCarthy’s ouster, an unprecedented situation that has taken on new urgency amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Raising the stakes further, the longer it takes Republicans to elect a new speaker, the less time lawmakers will have to try to avert a government shutdown with a funding deadline looming in mid-November.

Following a candidate forum Tuesday evening, Rep. Mike Garcia, a California Republican, said he thinks it’s “50/50” on whether the GOP will be able to elect a speaker Wednesday.

Asked whether anyone could get 217 votes, he said: “I think that’s a great question right now.”

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky rated the odds even lower. “I’d put it at 2%,” he said when asked by a reporter what the chances are there will be a new House speaker by Wednesday.

After his removal as speaker in a historic vote last week, McCarthy announced he would not run again for the post. But allies of the former speaker could still nominate him during Wednesday’s closed-door meeting, though McCarthy has said he has told members not to do so.

Currently, a candidate needs only a simple majority of the conference – or 111 votes – to win the GOP nomination for speaker, a much lower threshold than the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor.

A number of Republicans now say that threshold is too low because it does not ensure that the nominee will be able to win the floor vote for speaker.

As a result, there has been a push to raise the threshold to secure the GOP nomination from a majority of House Republicans to a majority of the full House in a bid to avoid a protracted floor fight like the one in January when it took 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to win the gavel.

House Republicans are expected to vote on whether to raise that threshold during Wednesday’s meeting.

Here’s how the meeting is expected to unfold:
Republican members will gather behind closed doors Wednesday morning.

First, they will vote on whether to change conference rules to raise the threshold to nominate a speaker and any other changes.

Then, members will stand up to formally nominate a candidate and give a short speech.

There will be a secret ballot and members can write in candidates. Results are counted by hand.

If there are more than two candidates, the candidate with the lowest number of votes gets knocked out. Republicans would then vote on the top two.
It’s not clear when the House will hold a vote of the full chamber to elect a new speaker. It could happen as soon as Wednesday – though only if Republicans pick a nominee for their conference first.

The timing of the House floor vote is technically up to Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, who is serving in the top leadership spot on an interim basis. However, he is expected to defer to whoever the GOP nominee is, and the timing of the vote will be their call.
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October 11, 2023
McCarthy will not run for speaker again after House votes to oust him | CNN Politics

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Kevin McCarthy will not run for speaker again after the House ousted him from the top leadership post in a historic vote on Tuesday, a move that threatens to plunge House Republicans into even further chaos and turmoil.

The House will now need to elect a new speaker. There is no clear alternative to McCarthy who would have the support needed to win the gavel, but the race for a potential successor is already underway.

The vote to oust McCarthy and his decision not to run for the speakership again marks a major escalation in tensions for a House GOP conference that has been mired in infighting – and it comes just days after McCarthy successfully engineered a last-minute bipartisan effort to avert a government shutdown. No House speaker has ever before been ousted through the passage of a resolution to remove them.

“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governing over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating. Our government is designed to find compromise,” McCarthy said at a wide-ranging press conference Tuesday evening.

Dozens of his staffers were in the room listening with many emotional and hugging each other.

McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju he “might” endorse a successor and did not say whether he would remain in Congress. “I’ll look at that,” he said when asked.

McCarthy also unloaded on his critics. Asked by Raju if there’s anything he would have done differently with regard to the eight House Republicans who voted to oust him, McCarthy joked, “Yeah, a lot of them I helped get elected so I probably should have picked someone else.”

A number of House Republicans are said to be considering jumping into the race for speaker. It’s a scramble as House Republicans do not have a plan nor are they unified behind a candidate.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who has been the No. 2 Republican, has started reaching out to members about a potential speakership bid, according to a source familiar.

Immediately following the vote, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, a top McCarthy ally, was named interim speaker and the House went into recess as Republicans scrambled to find a path forward. The House is expected to stay out of session for the rest of the week, and Republicans are expected to hold a speaker candidate forum in a week.

The effort to oust the speaker was led by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and comes as a bloc of hardline conservatives continued to rebel against McCarthy, voting against key priorities of GOP leadership and repeatedly throwing up roadblocks to the speaker’s agenda.

The vote was 216 to 210 with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the speakership. The Republicans voting to oust McCarthy as speaker were: Gaetz, Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

A number of House Republicans reacted with shock and frustration following the vote.

McCarthy ally and House Rules Chairman Tom Cole said, “Nobody knows what’s going happen next, including all the people that voted to vacate (they) have no earthly idea what, they have no plan. They have no alternative at this point. So it’s just simply a vote for chaos.”

House Democrats signaled ahead of the vote that they would not bail out McCarthy.

There is a significant amount of distrust and anger from House Democrats toward McCarthy, however, over his actions as speaker and the House GOP agenda.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to his caucus that leadership planned to vote in support of removing McCarthy ahead of the final vote.

“It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” he wrote.

Prior to the final vote, the House failed to table – or block – the effort to oust McCarthy by a vote of 208 to 218 with 11 Republicans voting against the motion to table. The GOP no votes were Gaetz, Crane, Biggs, Buck, Rosendale, Good, Mace, Burchett, Cory Mills of Florida, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Warren Davidson of Ohio.

McCarthy also told his members he will not cut a deal with Democrats, sources said.

Gaetz was directly pressed by his colleagues during a Tuesday party meeting for his grand plan, and who would replace McCarthy if he was ousted, sources said. Gaetz stood up and responded that there would need to be a new speaker’s election that plays out but didn’t name anyone he had in mind for the job.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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October 3, 2023
How the Senate GOP’s campaign chief is navigating Trump and messy primaries | CNN Politics

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Top Senate Republicans look at the prospects of a Donald Trump primary victory with trepidation, fearful his polarizing style and heavy baggage may sink GOP candidates down the ticket as their party battles for control of the chamber.

But Sen. Steve Daines doesn’t agree.

The Montana Republican, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has spent the past year working to ensure Trump and Senate Republican leaders don’t clash about their preferred candidates in key primaries, after the 2022 debacle that saw a bevy of Trump-backed choices collapse in the heat of the general election and cost their party the Senate majority. So far, the two are on the same page.

Daines argues that Trump is “strengthening” among independent voters and that could be a boon for his Senate candidates – even in purple states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The senator says that his down-ticket candidates should embrace the former president, even as he’s facing four criminal trials with polls showing that he remains a deeply unpopular figure with wide swaths of voters.

“What’s key is we want to make sure we have high-quality candidates running with President Trump,” Daines said. “Candidates that can again appeal beyond the Republican base – that’s my goal.”

In an interview with CNN at NRSC headquarters, Daines detailed his latest thinking about the GOP strategy to take back the Senate, saying his candidates need to have a stronger position on abortion, signaling he’s eager to avoid a primary in the Montana race and arguing that neither Sens. Kyrsten Sinema nor Joe Manchin could hold onto their seats if they ran for reelection in their states as independents.

And as Kari Lake is poised to announce a Senate bid in Arizona as soon as next week, Daines has some advice for the former TV broadcaster, who falsely blamed mass voting fraud for her loss in last year’s gubernatorial race in her state.

“I think one thing we’ve learned from 2022 is voters do not want to hear about grievances from the past,” Daines said. “They want to hear about what you’re going to do for the future. And if our candidates stay on that message of looking down the highway versus the rearview mirror, I think they’ll be a lot more successful particularly in their appeal to independent voters, which usually decide elections.”

Daines, who called Lake “very gifted” and said he’s had “positive” conversations with her, added: “I think it’s just going to be important for her to look to the future and not so much the past.”

Asked if Trump’s repeated false claims of a “stolen” election could be problematic down-ticket, Daines instead pointed out that Trump was the last GOP president since Ronald Reagan to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, though he lost those states in 2020.

“As we continue to watch the president strengthen, we’ll see what happens here in ’24, but I’ll tell you he provides a lot of strength for us down ballot in many key states,” said Daines, who was the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse Trump.

Daines’ assessment comes as he is benefitting from a highly favorable map, with 23 Democrats up for reelection, compared to just 11 for the GOP. Democratic incumbents in three states that Trump won – Ohio, Montana and West Virginia – are the most endangered, while the two best Democratic pickup opportunities – Texas and Florida – remain an uphill battle.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on Texas – the Ted Cruz race,” Daines said. “Just because he’s Ted Cruz he’ll draw a lot of money from the other side to try to defeat Ted Cruz.”

Beating incumbents is usually a complicated endeavor, plus Republicans are facing messy primaries that could make it harder to win a general election, including in Daines’ home-state of Montana. There, Daines has gotten behind Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who owns an aerial firefighting company. But there’s a possibility that Sheehy could face Rep. Matt Rosendale in the primary, something that Republicans fear could undercut their effort to take down 17-year incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.

Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, narrowly lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering another run in 2024.

“I’ve known Matt a long time. He’s a friend of mine. I like Matt Rosendale,” Daines said. “I think it’s best if he were to stay in the US House and gain seniority.”

Unlike in the last cycle when the NRSC stayed neutral under previous leadership, the campaign committee now is taking a much heavier hand in primaries, picking and choosing which candidates to endorse. While Daines declined to say how his committee would handle the Arizona primary, he indicated they would stay out of the crowded Ohio primary, arguing the three GOP candidates battling it out there are on solid footing in the race for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.

While West Virginia remains perhaps the best pickup opportunity for the GOP, the NRSC will have a much harder time if Manchin decides to run for reelection. In an interview, Manchin signaled that if he runs again, it may be as an independent – not a Democrat.

“I think everyone thinks of me as an independent back home,” Manchin told CNN. “I don’t think they look at me as a big D or a big R or an anti-R or anti-D or anything. They say it’s Joe, if it makes sense, he’ll do it.”

Daines said that wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“It’d be very difficult for Joe to get reelected in West Virginia based on looking at the numbers,” Daines said, pointing to Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Similarly, Daines said that if Sinema runs in Arizona, he doesn’t believe she can win as a third-party candidate, as she faces a GOP candidate and the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Ruben Gallego.

“I think Sinema will have a difficult path if she gets in the race,” he said.

In addition to facing weaker candidates last cycle, many Republicans continue to sidestep questions on their positions over abortion – a potent issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

But Daines says he doesn’t think abortion will be “as potent this cycle,” indicating he is pressing candidates to do a “better job” messaging on the issue to suburban women. He said that Republicans need to impress upon voters that they support limits on late-term abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, arguing that’s a “more reasonable position” in line with most Americans – all the while rejecting calls for a national ban on all abortions.

“I think we actually had candidates who just kind of ran away from the issue and kind of hoped it went away,” Daines said. “And when you do that, if you don’t take a position, the Democratic opponents there will define the issue for them. And that’s a losing strategy.”

Daines is also in the middle of another internal party war – between Trump and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men have been at sharp odds since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Asked if he believed the two could work with each other if Trump is president again and McConnell returns as Republican leader, Daines said: “It’d be a privilege to have a Republican president and a Republican majority leader working – that’d be a nice problem to have.”

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October 1, 2023
Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

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Federal agencies are making final preparations with the government on the brink of a shutdown and congressional lawmakers racing against Saturday’s critical midnight deadline – as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mounts a last-minute push to avert the lapse in funding.

McCarthy announced that the House will vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill Saturday, and it will include the natural disaster aid that the White House requested.

The bill does not include $6 billion in funding to aid Ukraine, a key concession that many House Republicans demanded and a blow to allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied Congress earlier this month for additional assistance.

Asked if he is concerned that a member, including Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, could move to oust him over this bill, McCarthy replied, “If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”

Infighting among House Republicans has played a central role in bringing Congress to a standoff over spending – and it is not yet clear how the issue will be resolved, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that a shutdown, if triggered, may not be easy to end.

Democrats in the House have been trying to slow down passage of the GOP-led continuing resolution throughout the day Saturday, objecting to being forced to vote on a bill just introduced and wanting to keep Ukraine aid. It’s unclear how long Democrats will stall the House from voting.

House Republicans met throughout Saturday morning, seesawing between options for how to proceed. Republicans including veteran appropriators and those in swing districts pushed to bring a short-term resolution to keep the government funded for 45 days to the House floor for a vote Saturday.

McCarthy has faced threats to keeping his job throughout the month if he works with Democrats as he endures a consistent resistance from the hardline conservatives in his own party.

A shutdown is expected to have consequential impacts across the country, from air travel to clean drinking water, and many government operations would grind to a halt – though services deemed essential for public safety would continue.

Both chambers are scheduled to be in session Saturday, just hours before the deadline. The Senate was expected to take procedural steps to advance their own plan to keep the government funded – GOP Sen. Rand Paul had vowed all week to slow that process beyond the midnight deadline over objections to the bill’s funding for the war in Ukraine. The Senate is now waiting to see how the House developments shake out before proceeding.

But Paul told CNN on Saturday afternoon that he won’t slow down the Senate’s consideration of the House GOP’s 45-day spending bill, if it passes the House and the Senate takes it up, allowing the Senate the ability to move the bill quickly – though any one other senator could slow that down beyond the midnight deadline.

House Republicans have so far thrown cold water on a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep the government funded through November 17, but they have failed to coalesce around a plan of their own to avert a shutdown amid resistance from a bloc of hardline conservatives to any kind of short-term funding extension.

“After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” McCarthy wrote on X. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

His late Friday night message came after a two-hour conference meeting in the Capitol, where McCarthy floated several different options – including putting the Senate bill on the floor or passing a short-term bill that excludes Ukraine money. But there is still no consensus on what – if anything – they will put on the House floor Saturday to avoid a government shutdown.

McCarthy suffered another high-profile defeat on Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill.

In the aftermath of Friday’s failed vote, McCarthy told reporters he had proposed putting up a “clean” stopgap bill, and said he was “working through maybe to be able to do that.”

“We’re continuing to work through – trying to find the way out of this,” McCarthy said.

The Senate’s bipartisan bill would provide additional funds for Ukraine aid, creating a point of contention with the House where many Republicans are opposed to further support to the war-torn country.

McCarthy argued on Friday that aid to Ukraine should be dropped from the Senate bill. “I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through. I think if the Senate puts Ukraine on there and focuses on Ukraine over America, I think that could cause real problems,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

The Senate, meanwhile, is working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill. The chamber is on track to take a procedural vote Saturday afternoon to move forward with the bill, particularly if the last-minute House bill falters. But it’s not yet clear when senators could take a final vote to pass the bill and it may not happen until Monday, after the government has already shut down.

Border security has also become a complicating factor for the Senate bill as many Republicans now want to see the bill amended to address the issue.

Senate Republicans said Friday that they were still discussing what kind of border amendment they would want to add to the bill, and were unsure if the chamber could even advance the bill in Saturday’s procedural vote without the addition of a border amendment.

“Nothing’s really coming together, too many moving parts at this stage,” said Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. “I think what I understand is we’re going to have a vote tomorrow … and other than that, there’s nothing that’s really crystallized in anything that probably would be palatable with the House.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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September 30, 2023
Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

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House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:

While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

“I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”

He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.

Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

“I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”

Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)

Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.

“On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”

House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.

House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.

The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.

At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

“You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

“I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”

Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.

“The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”

Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.

Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.

The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.

House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.

That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.

Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.

“I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”

In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”

Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.

The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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September 28, 2023
White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden and his top aides at the White House plan to hammer away at a blunt message as the US government inches closer to a shutdown this week: A handful of extremist Republicans are entirely to blame for the havoc that would be unleashed across the country.

For Biden, there’s a lot riding on that message getting through to Americans.

Biden’s advisers have been assessing for weeks how involved to get in lawmakers’ deliberations to fund the government ahead of the end-of-month deadline, and ultimately decided to take a hands-off approach. The expectation: Should the Republican-led House struggle to reach consensus, they would ultimately shoulder the blame for any disruption.

“Watch the GOP struggle and force them to govern or be blamed for shutdown,” a Biden administration official said, summing up the strategy.

The White House is planning to dispatch a number of Cabinet officials this week to help lay out the broad range of ramifications if the government were to shutdown – everything from flight delays to childcare centers shutting down.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appear at Monday’s White House news briefing to discuss how a government shutdown could hit everything from food programs to loans for farmers, a White House official said.

“This would stop us in our tracks,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday. “A shutdown that would mean service members wouldn’t get paid, coming back to transportation to air traffic controllers who would be working in the towers. They wouldn’t get paid.”

Over the weekend, White House officials continued to monitor for any signs of movement on Capitol Hill to extend funding for the federal government ahead of the deadline. How to handle a possible shutdown was a key agenda item when White House chief of staff Jeff Zients huddled with senior advisers in the West Wing on Saturday, according to people familiar. But heading into a new work week, Republican members had not put anything realistic on the table, officials said, leaving the White House bracing for what is to come.

In the days ahead, the president and his allies will repeatedly point to “who’s responsible” for the mess that could unfold, one senior administration official said simply.

The White House took a similar approach this spring during the debt ceiling negotiations, but not without a seeming hit to Biden. In a CNN poll conducted mid-May, 59% of respondents said the president was not acting responsibly as talks stalled and the government careened toward default. The difference then: Republicans had coalesced around a specific position, passing a bill in the House that reflected their priorities and catching the White House off guard. Negotiations escalated in the weeks that followed, resulting in a deal that set broad guardrails around federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year.

That deal was supposed to usher in months of in-depth appropriations work that would yield a full-year spending package and avert a government shutdown. Now, the White House says Republicans dropped the ball.

Speaking over the weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, Biden said it was “small group of extreme Republicans” that was refusing to “live up to the deal” that he had struck months ago with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“The president did his job,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked whether the White House would do anything to stave off a shutdown. “This is not something we can fix. The best plan is for House Republicans to stop their partisan political play and not do this to hurt Americans across the country. That’s the plan.”

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September 25, 2023
Dallas mayor switches parties to join GOP | CNN Politics

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Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Friday that he is switching parties and will serve as a Republican-affiliated mayor of the blue-leaning city.

While the Dallas mayoral office is nonpartisan, Johnson previously served as a Democrat in the Texas legislature. He slammed his former party in an op-ed for Wall Street Journal published Friday, blaming Democratic policies for “exacerbated crime and homelessness.”

“The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism,” Johnson wrote. “Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”

He added: “In other words, American cities need Republicans—and Republicans need American cities.”

Johnson’s announcement makes him the only Republican among the mayors of the 10 most populous cities in the US.

Johnson was reelected for a four-year term in May with 93% of the vote after being first elected in 2019. President Joe Biden won Dallas County by more than 30 points in the 2020 election.

The Texas Democratic Party issued a scathing statement Friday, accusing Johnson of being dishonest with Dallas voters.

“[T]he voters of Dallas deserved to know where he stood before he ran for reelection as Mayor,” the chair and vice-chair of the party said. “He wasn’t honest with his constituents, and knew he would lose to a Democrat if he flipped before the election.”

“This feeble excuse for democratic representation will fit right in with Republicans — and we are grateful that he can no longer tarnish the brand and values of the Texas Democratic Party,” they added.

On the other hand, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed Johnson’s new party affiliation.

“Texas is getting more Red every day,” Abbott said in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “He’s pro law enforcement & won’t tolerate leftist agendas.”

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September 22, 2023
GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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The House on Thursday has voted down a rule that would have advanced a Defense Department bill, another stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership ahead of a looming government shutdown deadline.

The final vote was 216-212.

While the specific legislation is separate from a proposal to keep the government funded beyond the present September 30 deadline, the defeat is another sign of divisions within the House Republican Conference, which has been negotiating for days to come up with a plan that can unify GOP House members. This is the third time House Republicans have bucked McCarthy and GOP leadership in a vote on a rule, a traditionally pro forma step that is taken to advance legislation.

McCarthy emerged visibly frustrated from the House floor while it was in total paralysis as House hardliners tanked another rule, slamming the group for just wanting to “burn the place down.”

“It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters.

Opposition from hardliners has plagued efforts by Republican leadership to unify behind a plan to fund the government. Days of negotiations have yielded a few apparent breakthroughs, but McCarthy’s Republican opponents have been quick to throw cold water on progress and openly defy the speaker’s calls for unity. McCarthy’s thin margin in the chamber means that in most votes he can only lose four members without any support from Democrats – and absences can raise and lower the majority threshold.

Late Thursday evening, McCarthy briefed his conference behind closed doors on a new plan to keep the government open – paired with deeper spending cuts and new border security measures – all in an attempt to win over wary members on his right flank. The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at a $1.471 trillion spending level, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

As part of the deal, Republicans told CNN on Thursday night that they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong Pentagon spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday, with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicating they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

But Thursday’s vote had five Republican opponents as well – as six Republicans total ended up voting against the rule. Reps. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Eli Crane of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia voted against the bill. House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma also eventually changed his vote, casting his vote against the Rule so he could bring it back up for reconsideration. It’s unclear when Republicans may try the vote again.

Republican leadership has alerted House members they plan to stay in session Friday and Saturday amid the standoff.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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September 21, 2023
McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy privately outlined to members a new GOP plan to keep the government open on Wednesday after a marathon two-and-a-half-hour GOP conference meeting.

The California Republican later told reporters that Republican negotiators made “tremendous progress as an entire conference,” following days of GOP infighting and less than two weeks before a government funding deadline.

“We are very close,” McCarthy said Wednesday evening when asked specifically what progress had been made on the GOP short-term bill. “I feel like just got a little more movement to go there,” he added of the new GOP plan. When asked specifically about the topline numbers, he wouldn’t get into details but said: “We’re in a good place.”

The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at $1.471 trillion spending levels, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

The levels are also far lower than what senators from both parties and the White House are willing to accept, meaning it’s unclear how such a deal would avert a government shutdown. With just 10 days left to fund the government, the new plan sets up a standoff with the Senate over how to keep the government open.

As part of the deal, Republicans now believe they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday.

GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California said after Wednesday evening’s conference meeting there is now “a little more clarity” on the path forward.

“We have a little more clarity as to a potential plan moving forward,” Garcia said, adding, “We are still negotiating that final number and trying to figure out exactly what we can do.”

Some of the people that were previously opposed now signaled they are supportive. Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicated they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

“Sounds like we’ve got the votes for the rule,” Garcia said, pointing to Buck and Norman as having committed to changing to a “Yes.”

With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposal – Republican leadership has been negotiating for days to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.

When asked about struggling to make progress earlier Wednesday, McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.

“I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”

However, an additional potential complicating factor emerged Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, coming out in opposition to a short-term funding bill as he called on lawmakers to defund the DOJ and the investigations into him.

McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far-right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached.

Amid that impasse with conservatives, moderates in the bipartisan House Problem Solver’s Caucus are close to finalizing their own framework on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government for several months at current levels and include Ukraine aid and disaster assistance, according to two sources. Even with Democratic support, that plan would still likely face major challenges – not the least of which is how it would get to the floor before the government runs out of money.

There are already signs that this alternative plan could face its own strong headwinds – not just with Republicans but with Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, told CNN on “Inside Politics” that she wants a “clean” continuing resolution of funds, a sign that progressives may not back some of the border security provisions that the Problem Solvers Caucus members are eyeing.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the House Problem Solvers Caucus earlier Wednesday, and said afterward that they need a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package.

“We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

House GOP leadership announced Wednesday night that the House will be in and voting on Friday and Saturday, making official what was expected as the majority struggled to reach an agreement all week.

The House is expected to pass a rule for the defense appropriations bill Thursday. Assuming the rule passes, the House will then start consideration of the defense bill with final passage expected Friday.

The thinking would then be to pass the new GOP stopgap plan on Saturday, which is expected to be a full day.

Members were advised on Tuesday to keep their schedules flexible as weekend votes were possible. Members filtering in and out of Whip Emmer’s office the past two days are insistent that they are making progress, but Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN earlier Wednesday that while they are getting closer, they are not close yet.

Rep. Garrett Graves from Louisiana, who has been in the room for negotiations, had echoed that schedule change and projected Friday and Saturday work.

“I think we’re going to be here this weekend,” he said.

When pressed on what exactly they’d be up to and if they’d be able to vote by Saturday, Graves said, “Well, we won’t be having Mardi Gras parties,” indicating they’d be voting.

Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the hardliners, calling it a “breach of duty.”

“We’ve got a handful of people that are holding the rest of the conference, the majority of our conference kind of held hostage right now and in turn, holding up America,” he told CNN.

Womack also said this will likely extend into the weekend and that “either it’s gonna be good or it’s gonna be bad.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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September 20, 2023