The US House of Representatives is getting ready to vote on a new Speaker. This comes after the previous candidate, who was criticized by Donald Trump, decided to withdraw.
The entire group of lawmakers will decide on Wednesday whether Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson should be in charge.
Mr Johnson was selected as the candidate after three rounds of voting within the party on Tuesday evening.
The House has been without a leader and has not been able to pass bills since Kevin McCarthy was removed on 3 October.
Elise Stefanik, who is in charge of the House Republican Conference, announced that Mr. Johnson, who is 51 years old, has been chosen.
He was chosen as a replacement shortly after the last nominee, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, quit because he didn’t get enough support.
It is still not clear if Mr. Johnson can get the 217 votes he needs to win.
If he does not succeed, Republicans will have to start over and come up with a new plan.
In the earlier voting on Tuesday, he came in second place to Mr. However, the Minnesota representative decided to withdraw from the race after former President Trump criticized him on social media, calling him a “Globalist”.
According to Politico, Mr Trump made a phone call to someone just before Mr Emmer withdrew from the competition and said: “He’s finished. ” It’s finished or It’s the end. I caused his death.
But when Mr. Trump arrived at a New York court for his trial about fraud, he expressed confidence in Mr. Johnson’s chances and said “it seems like it will occur”.
“He said nobody has said anything bad about him. ” “Everyone enjoys his company, and everyone has a lot of respect for him. ”
In the last voting round on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson got 128 votes and Byron Donald, a Florida Republican, got second place with 29 votes.
The party has a slightly bigger number of members than the Democrats in the lower house of Congress. This means that their chosen candidate can only lose a small number of votes from their own party and still win.
“Sometimes democracy can be untidy, but it is the system we have,” said Mr. Johnson on Tuesday evening.
Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, said to reporters: “It’s difficult to believe that someone can be elected right now. ”
Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas, expressed his disappointment in the current state of governance by saying, “It’s really unfortunate how things are being handled right now. ”
But Ralph Norman, a very conservative Republican from South Carolina, said, “This is how democracy appears. ”
Mr Johnson is a lawyer and used to host a talk radio show. He has been a member of the House since 2016. He used to be the chairman of the Republican Study Committee and is seen as a good friend of Mr. Jordan
In 2020, people saw Mr. Johnson as an important person in the effort to disagree with President Joe Biden’s win in the election.
A group of conservative lawmakers, led by some right-wing politicians, removed the previous Speaker, Mr McCarthy. The reason for their action was that he made an agreement with President Biden to ensure that the government had enough money to function.
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