If the United States did not face the threat of a shutdown and aid to Israel and Ukraine were not in the balance, the situation would be almost comical. Faced with endless and dead-end negotiationsthe Republican candidate as head of the House of Representatives American gave up on Thursday evening to run, leaving Congress to sink deeper into crisis.
Louisiana elected representative Steve Scalise, leader of the Republican group, narrowly won an informal election last Wednesday to replace Kevin McCarthy, dismissed on October 3, as “speaker” of the House. But due to lack of sufficient support within his party, devoured by fratricidal quarrels between moderate elected officials and Trumpist troublemakers, he announced that he had thrown in the towel.
“It’s been quite an adventure and there’s still work to do. I have just told my colleagues that I am withdrawing my name as a candidate for the post of Speaker,” he said. Scalise to journalists. His opponent Jim Jordan did not make a statement.
Paralysis
With this announcement, the search for a new leader for the American Congress, paralyzed for more than a week, looks increasingly thorny. Congress has two chambers: one, the Senate, is won by Joe Biden’s Democrats, but it is the other, the House of Representatives, in the hands of the Republicans, which is in an unprecedented impasse.
The vast majority of the powers of this institution were suspended by the surprise dismissal of “speaker” Kevin McCarthy, which exposed the gaping fractures running through the camp of American conservatives, one year before the 2024 presidential election.
Faced with their inability to agree on his successor, this chamber, supposed to be one of the most powerful in the world, is in incredible paralysis.
The United States is currently unable to vote for any new aid to Israel, a historic ally in the midst of war with Hamas. Nor even an additional envelope for Ukraine invaded by Russia, under discussion for weeks.
Without a “speaker”, the third political figure in the United States, the American Congress cannot vote on a new budget for the federal state either. The latter expires in a few weeks, once again placing the world’s leading economic power in danger of paralysis of its public administration.
Will Jim Jordan, supported by Donald Trump, succeed in reassuring the centrists? Will moderate Tom Emmer try his luck? What about Kevin McCarthy, who has not ruled out a return? Will the blockage last a few more days? A few weeks ? Confusion appears to reign at all levels of the party.
2023-10-13 02:00:22
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