Jordan Won’t Force Third Vote and Endorses Empowering Temporary Speaker

Representative Jim Jordan, the hard-line Republican from Ohio, does not plan to force a third vote on Thursday on his bid to become speaker after running headlong into opposition from a bloc of mainstream G.O.P. holdouts, according to two people familiar with his decision.

Instead, Mr. Jordan will endorse a plan to empower Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina — the temporary speaker whose role is primarily to hold an election for a speaker — to carry out the chamber’s work through Jan. 3. In the meantime, Mr. Jordan will continue trying to build support to become speaker.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity in advance of Mr. Jordan’s announcement.

After he failed to win a majority on Tuesday, Mr. Jordan was defeated again on Wednesday when the number of Republicans refusing to back him grew. With little hope of making up the lost ground, Mr. Jordan called for a closed-door meeting of Republicans on Thursday morning to discuss his next steps.

The roadblock Mr. Jordan has encountered is a rare instance of the party’s more mainstream wing — normally those who seek compromise and conciliation — breaking with their Republican colleagues in defiance of the ultraconservative faction led by Mr. Jordan. It also underscored the seemingly intractable divisions among Republicans — as well as the near-impossible political math — that led to the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California as speaker two weeks ago and that have so far thwarted the party’s attempts to choose a successor.

As the infighting continues, the House remains without an elected speaker with wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine. And on the domestic front, Congress faces a mid-November deadline to pass a spending measure in order to avert a government shutdown.

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at The Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. More about Luke Broadwater

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent. She was previously a White House correspondent. Before joining The Times, she covered the White House and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign for Politico, and spent a decade covering local politics for the New York Post and the New York Daily News. More about Annie Karni