The House speakership drama enters a new week under increased urgency as Israel declared war Sunday following unprecedented surprise attacks by Hamas.

Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster as speaker leaves the House in uncharted legal territory regarding what it can do under acting Speaker Patrick McHenry. When Congress lawmakers return to Washington, they will be under pressure to elect a new speaker swiftly amid the crisis in Israel, which has prompted calls from within the Republican Party to speed up their timeline given the national security implications of keeping the role vacant.

As the Biden administration looks to provide additional assistance to Israel, officials were unsure Saturday about what could be accomplished without a sitting speaker. While McHenry is serving as speaker pro tempore, he has little power outside of recessing, adjourning or recognizing speaker nominations, and it’s unclear whether he can participate in intelligence briefings on the crisis in Israel.

    • @meco03211@lemmy.world
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      161 year ago

      And this is exactly why electing crazy attention whores is bad. Now Gaetz and the GOP antics leave us in a worse position to address this world issue.

      • Optional
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        91 year ago

        The people who most need to know that will not know that because corporate news has abdicated their responsibility.

        Abdicated it, spat it out, and flushed it. And here we are.

      • JJROKCZ
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        81 year ago

        A substantial portion of GOP voters don’t want to help Jews anyway. As someone that grew up in red country, those racist fucks just want to glass the Middle East with nukes, then have our poor go over and extract the oil for their F750s to drive back and forth from Applebees and Sams Club

        • TechyDad
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          31 year ago

          As an American Jew, the right has two reasons why they support Israel. Neither is “help the Jews.” (Though, this is the public reason they give to try to convince Jews to vote for them.)

          The first reason is Jesus returning. Evangelicals think that, for Jesus to return, Jews have to be controlling Israel. Then a huge attack has to happen and suddenly Jesus will come back. They’ve got the first part so Jews losing control of Israel would be a step backwards from Jesus returning.

          But the way, this view also goes against peace in the middle east. If some magical diplomat were to forge a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians tomorrow, the chances of a huge attack on Israel would plummet. Evangelicals actively support things (like the settlers) that they know will inflame tensions. They toss lit matches and additional kindling on the tinderbox in the hopes of igniting a huge explosion - all while they are safely outside the radius of the potential explosion.

          The second reason is because the right thinks Jews = Israelis. If they get their wish of being able to get rid of all the American Jews, they like the idea of being able to just ship us off to Israel. Nevermind that many of us have, at most, tenuous connections with Israel. We’re Jewish and thus the right thinks we should be in Israel and not in America.

          If shipping us all over makes the previously described tinderbox explode, killing a bunch of Jews, well the right will just consider that two birds with one stone.

  • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    GOP: “Why should we care about wars and thousands of deaths when we have an insane political position to defend against the future of humanity?”

  • NegativeNull@lemm.ee
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    31 year ago

    Republicans jizz their pants at the thought of war in Israel, but they are too disorganized now to capitalize it.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    11 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The House speakership drama enters a new week under increased urgency as Israel declared war Sunday following unprecedented surprise attacks by Hamas.

    When Congress lawmakers return to Washington, they will be under pressure to elect a new speaker swiftly amid the crisis in Israel, which has prompted calls from within the Republican Party to speed up their timeline given the national security implications of keeping the role vacant.

    “I do anticipate that we’ll have the opportunity to have a secure briefing at some point next week,” Jeffries told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    McCarthy announced shortly after his ouster that he would not seek the speakership again, making room for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan to launch their bids for the seat.

    It’s unclear when the speaker floor vote will happen, and the timeline is contingent on whether moderate GOP lawmakers can rally around Scalise or Jordan, who are among the hardliners of the party.

    “We have to get a speaker elected this week so we can get things on the floor like replenishing the Iron Dome,” McCaul told Bash on Sunday – referring to Israel’s rocket defense system, which was developed with help from the US.


    The original article contains 734 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!