House Chamber Gasps as GOP Rep. Makes Very Unexpected Dip Into Jordan’s Résumé

Representative Elise Stefanik might have thought she was offering a stoic show of support while nominating Jim Jordan for House speaker on Wednesday, but instead she was met with a cacophony of boos from her colleagues when an unexpected turn in her speech nodded to Jordan’s alleged role in a collegiate sex abuse scandal.

“Jim is the voice of the American people who have felt voiceless for far too long,” Stefanik said on the House floor. “Whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room, Jim Jordan is strategic, scrappy, tough, and principled.”

It was an odd detail to highlight amid what is arguably the highlight of Jordan’s already explosive political career.

Jordan, who served as an assistant coach to Ohio State University’s wrestling team between 1986 and 1994, has faced severe blowback for allegedly participating in a coverup of the rampant sex abuse by team doctor Richard Strauss.

Strauss committed 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes against at least 177 male student-athletes during his tenure with the team, according to a 2019 university report.

After Representative Steve Scalise lost the GOP nomination last week, former OSU athletes spoke out en masse against the possibility of a Jordan speakership, arguing that the ultraconservative politician failed to protect them from the serial predator and “doesn’t deserve to be House speaker.”

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”

A Jordan spokesperson, Russell Dye, denied that the Trump-endorsed congressman knew of the abuse during his time at OSU. “Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it,” Dye said in an email to NBC.

It appears that even Fox News is sick of Republican infighting.

Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade was caught fuming on a hot mic during the speaker vote on Tuesday, snubbing Representative Don Bacon as a “dumbass” after the Nebraska Republican voted against Jim Jordan.

Kilmeade may have been reaching the end of his rope with the divided caucus. Earlier in the day, the testy Fox & Friends host called the House GOP a “carnival of idiots” for floundering amid the party’s leadership crisis.

Off the floor, other members of Fox seemed equally tired of the charade.

“We wouldn’t be here if every single Democrat didn’t vote with eight Republicans to shut this place down,” former speaker Kevin McCarthy told a press huddle moments after Jordan lost the House vote.

“There’s 16 Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan today on the floor, including two votes [for] somebody who’s not even a member anymore,” Fox News’s Chad Pergram lashed back. (In reality, 20 Republicans voted against Jim Jordan.)

The frustration is palpable from a network that actively attempted to rally support behind Jordan. One of the station’s highest-rated anchors, Sean Hannity, was exposed over the weekend for conducting a pressure campaign against undecided party members in an attempt to push the Ohio Republican past the 217-vote finish line, reported The Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell.

Meanwhile, moderates are beginning to question if the ultraconservative Republican is the only option, openly floating the idea of keeping Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry in the position with expanded powers until November 17, when government funding expires.

On Tuesday, a strike on a hospital in Gaza killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinian doctors, patients, and people seeking shelter. Joe Biden is expected to visit Israel in a show of his support tomorrow.

Palestinian officials say hundreds have been injured due to a suspected Israeli airstrike on the Al Ahli Hospital in the middle of Gaza City Wednesday evening. A Gaza civil defense chief said that more than 300 people were killed, while a Gaza Health Ministry official estimated that at least 500 people were killed and wounded. Many victims are still trapped under rubble.

Hospitals in Gaza have become places of refuge for those seeking shelter amid massive displacement and continued airstrikes on the occupied territory. According to the Associated Press, if this report is confirmed, this attack would be the deadliest Israeli airstrike in the five wars fought since 2008.

The Israeli military has denied involvement and says the attack was due to a misfired rocket from Hamas.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps and a U.N. school in Gaza housing displaced people. At least 18 people were killed and more injured, Palestinian officials said.

The bombing comes a day before Biden was set to arrive in Israel to show solidarity with the country. This complicates that mission enormously, and people will be paying close attention to what Biden has to say.

This article has been updated.

The House of Representatives’ first floor vote to plant Representative Jim Jordan as speaker has, unsurprisingly, failed.

Jordan received only 200 votes, with double-digit “no” votes from his own party. Meanwhile, all 212 Democrats voted for their nominee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The next House speaker needs a majority of the chamber, or 217 votes, to win the coveted position. That requires a herculean effort to rally the divided Republican caucus, which holds a slim majority with just 221 seats in the House.

The 20 Republican representatives who voted against Jordan are Don Bacon, Ken Buck, Lori Chavez-DeRember, Anthony D’Esposito, Mario Diaz Balart, Jake Ellzey, Andrew Garbarino, Kay Granger, Carlos Giminez, Vicente Gonzales, John James, Doug LaMalfa, Mike Lawler, Mike Kelly, Jen Kiggans, Nick Lalota, John Rutherford, Mike Simpson, Victoria Spartz, and Steve Womack. The margin is far worse than initially expected.

The Freedom Caucus founder was a peculiar choice for unifying the party, given his controversial past and inability to inspire a strong backing after two rounds of closed-door GOP nominations. Jordan, perhaps most notably, hasn’t been able to turn a bill into law since he was first elected in 2006. He also drew ire for refusing to recognize the 2020 presidential election results, for his role in the January 6 insurrection, and long ago, for allegedly turning a blind eye to a sex abuse scandal at Ohio State University.

Since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the seat two weeks ago by a far-right faction led by Representative Matt Gaetz, House Republicans have sought to avoid the 15-ballot spectacle that gave him the gavel. Though if Jordan’s first vote serves as any indication, the House may be in for another wild ride.

Republicans are using the war between Israel and Palestine as fodder to push for a new wave of deportations at home.

On a campaign stop in Iowa on Monday, Donald Trump announced that if reelected, he would reinstate and expand his “Muslim ban,” a series of executive orders issued in 2017 that prohibited travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, calling for a “strong ideological screening of all immigrants to the United States.”

Trump also criticized pro-Palestine protests on U.S. college campuses, conflating the support for Palestinian freedom from Israeli apartheid with support for Hamas, the militant group behind more than 1,400 Israeli deaths.

The former president said he would also take the opportunity to revoke student visas from “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners” at universities and would “proactively” send ICE officers to what he described as “pro-jihadist demonstrations.”

“If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified; if you support Hamas or the ideology behind Hamas, you’re disqualified; and if you’re a Communist, Marxist, or fascist, you are disqualified,” he said.

Senator Marsha Blackburn joined the deportation chorus on Tuesday, announcing her co-sponsorship of a bill by Senator Marco Rubio that calls for a vote on the expulsion of “individuals who stand with and back Hamas.”

Over the weekend, Rubio called on the Biden administration to cancel the visas of foreign nationals supporting Hamas and announced that he would pursue legislation to restrict federal funding to college campuses that host protests supporting Palestinian liberation.

Senator Tim Scott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also took to the airwaves to vocalize their support for the growing GOP initiative.

“Anyone who stands up and says they want to kill Jews, they support terrorism, they should have that visa revoked,” Scott said on a podcast episode of The Sean Hannity Show.

DeSantis backed the Rubio proposal, noting on an airing of The Guy Benson Show that if someone supports Hamas, they “don’t have a right to be studying in the United States.”

On its face, proposing to deport or limit Hamas supporters’ entry into the country is not outrageous. After all, the State Department deemed Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997. But support for foreign terrorist organizations is already screened for in people seeking entrance into the U.S., so the new language utilized by Rubio and his compatriots achieves no policy gains but instead provokes fear and whips people into a frenzy at a time of historic tension and divisions. And at a time when lawmakers and the media alike keep confusing being pro-Palestinian with being pro-Hamas, it’s all but guaranteed such a proposal would be used in a very dangerous way.