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by
Karen Ben-Moyal
in Current Affairs Posted on
10/25/2023 07:00 PM
On Wednesday, the GOP-led House of Representatives voted to elect Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker of the House after the sudden ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) several weeks earlier, when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) decided to lead the movement to expel McCarthy from the seat by fueling angst amongst fellow lawmakers and the American people in general.
According to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Gaetz found his chance to finally turn the House floor upside down because of an alleged “personal vendetta,” Gaetz has had against McCarthy that may have begun before or after Rep. McCarthy was originally elected into the Speaker of the House seat after a grueling 15 rounds of ballots cast over the course of over four days had finally taken its toll on the exhausted House members, with the majority of Congress finally agreeing on something, and that agreement favored Kevin McCarthy over Matt Gaetz, who had been a hopeful nomination to the same position prior to McCarthy securing his seat as speaker. However, Rep. Gaetz continues to allege his reasonings for leading the historical ousting of Speaker McCarthy were brought about upon a single decision made by his fellow diplomat, in which Kevin McCarthy had to make the tough decision to negotiate with both sides of the House in order to gain enough favor on both sides to agree on passing the recent infamous government shutdown deal, just hours before Congress’s midnight deadline was up. Bringing in enough support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass the last minute deal, in which former Speaker McCarthy made the choice to govern rather than remain stagnant, which is not something Congress is used to.
In sum, Gaetz claims that his decision to file the motion to oust former House Speaker McCarthy was due to his leadership in maneuvering a last-minute continuing resolution (CR) which required significant support from Democrats to keep agencies’ doors open for 45 extra days, and allocated $16 billion in federal disaster aid to hard-hit American communities. In addition, the former House Speaker would go against the wishes of the White House in specifically blocking out or preventing the implementation of any further proposed foreign aid deals which would allow more funds to go towards assisting Ukraine in their war against Russia. This deal, however, landed him in hot water with Gaetz and his allies. Rep. Johnson won the speaker nomination on Tuesday night after receiving 128 votes during the Congressional GOP conference election. According to the final vote tally, Rep. Johnson, vice chair of the House GOP conference, lost to House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) on Tuesday, but Rep. Emmer eventually dropped out of the running for speaker due to rising opposition from 26 Republicans, which would have ended his election bid for him. This final vote comes after over three weeks without any governing coming out of Congress, whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorists and Hamas soldiers have begun a full-blown, merciless, and bloody war against the State of Israel, or, “America’s greatest ally.” Although, we have yet to see any sort of tangible resolve, from Congress at least, regarding some sort of action to initiate assistance in Israel’s valiant efforts to defend itself in fighting back against our common enemies of peace, as the IDF continues on in its own attempts to rescue all Israeli and foreign hostages who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza since the start of Hamas’ first attack on Israeli civilians. The ongoing armed conflict between Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups and Israel began on October 7th of 2023, during the end of the Sukkot Jewish holiday, exactly 50 years after the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Photo Credit: Steve Scalise via Twitter