(NewsNation) — About two weeks after the historic ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, members of the House of Representatives are set to begin voting at noon Tuesday for who they want to be their next speaker.
While Republicans are set to try and elect Rep. Jim Jordan, there are at least a handful of GOP members who are holding out as they see the ally of former President Donald Trump as too extreme. The Ohio representative was more than 50 votes short of clinching the speaker title during an internal party vote last Friday.
Jordan needs almost the full majority of Republicans to back him, as Democrats will support their own nominee: Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a representative from New York.
Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the party’s first nominee to replace McCarthy, decided not to vie for the speakership after Jordan’s allies refused to vote for him.
Before the vote, Jordan wrote a letter to his fellow House GOP colleagues, asking for unity around him as speaker, saying Republicans can’t spend any more time fighting among each other.
“We may not always agree on every issue or every bill, and that’s alright. We don’t march in lockstep like our Democrat colleagues,” Jordan wrote. “The country and our conference cannot afford us attacking each other right now.”
McCarthy himself weighed in on the House speaker race on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
“My prediction → @Jim_Jordan will be the 56th Speaker of the House,” McCarthy wrote.
Trump agreed with this assessment of Jordan’s chances. He told reporters during a break in court proceedings in his fraud trial that Jordan is a “fantastic young man.”
“I think he’s going to be confirmed sometime soon,” Trump said.
It’s a critical time for Congress — since they’ve been without a permanent speaker, all House business has ground to a halt, and lawmakers were only narrowly able to avert a threatened government shutdown by voting to keep agencies open until Nov. 17.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina) is currently acting as a temporary speaker.
NewsNation’s Courtney Han and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story is developing. Refresh for updates.
The post House speaker vote set for Tuesday; Jordan still faces opposition first appeared on The News And Times – thenewsandtimes.com.