What you need to know about the House speaker election
CNN
The 119th Congress will begin on Friday, ushering in a new era of Republican control in Washington that will start with a high-stakes leadership fight to pick the next House speaker.
The 119th Congress will begin on Friday, ushering in a new era of Republican control in Washington that will start with a high-stakes leadership fight to pick the next House speaker. Mike Johnson is vying to retain the gavel and has President-elect Donald Trump’s endorsement, but he faces tough vote math with the narrowest House majority in nearly 100 years, leaving little room for error. Johnson can only afford a single GOP defection if every lawmaker shows up and votes, and one House Republican - Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky - has already said he won’t vote for him, while roughly a dozen more have not committed to supporting him. Looming over the race is the question of what happens if the House has not yet elected a speaker by Monday, January 6, the day lawmakers are supposed to count electoral votes and finalize the results of the presidential election – a scenario that would put Congress into unprecedented territory. To be elected speaker, a candidate must win a majority of votes out of all votes cast. If all 435 members of the House vote, then a majority is 218 votes. There is expected to be one vacancy when the House convenes for the vote. Former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has said he won’t take the seat he was elected to in the new Congress.
President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to dust off a series of centuries-old laws and legal theories to drive his first-year agenda – particularly on the border and birthright citizenship – hoping history will be on his side when the inevitable legal challenges make their way to the Supreme Court.
Jason De León spent seven years shadowing smugglers who guide migrants through Mexico to the US. Their work, he argues, is dangerous and far more complicated than typical media portrayals suggest.
Early in his presidency, in May 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter gave a commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame that outlined a new approach to America’s role in the world: Carter said human rights should be a “fundamental tenet of our foreign policy.”
The man who exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas wrote of “political grievances, issues about conflicts elsewhere” as well as “domestic issues” in the days leading up to his suicide, officials said Friday.
The State Department has informally notified Congress that it intends to sell $8 billion in arms to Israel, a US official and another source familiar with the matter told CNN.
A group of security forces from Guatemala and El Salvador arrived in Haiti on Friday to reinforce a multinational police force tasked with tackling the country’s rampant gang violence, the Haitian National police announced.
With two Republican lawmakers standing between Mike Johnson and the speaker’s gavel, President-elect Donald Trump picked up the phone.
Despite the symbolism that might be associated with exploding a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, law enforcement officials said Thursday they were still trying to piece together why a five-time Bronze Star recipient and new father would orchestrate the New Year’s Day blast.
A New York judge on Friday upheld Donald Trump’s conviction in the hush money case, rejecting the president-elect’s effort to throw out the jury’s verdict because of his reelection in November and set his sentencing for January 10.
With the start of the 119th Congress on Friday, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott will become the longest-serving Black Senator in the United States. Scott will also serve as the first Black Chairman of a Senate standing committee, leading the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, where he previously served as Ranking Member.
President Joe Biden and his family were given tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from foreign leaders in 2023, according to an annual accounting published by the State Department on Thursday, with first lady Jill Biden receiving the single most expensive present: a $20,000 diamond from India’s leader.