House Republicans have picked Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to lead them in the minority. He beat Majority Leader Steve Scalise 106 to 73 in a closed-door vote Tuesday, sources told CBS News. It’s the biggest shake-up in the party since Republicans lost more than 40 House seats in last week’s midterms.
Speaker Mike Johnson is stepping down from leadership and has been noncommittal about his long-term future in Congress. That means when Democrats take over in January, the face of House Republicans will be Jordan, a hard-line conservative and close ally of President Trump.
Who is Jim Jordan?
Jordan helped start the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservatives that spent years fighting its own party’s leaders. He has chaired the House Judiciary Committee since 2023. He and Scalise both ran for speaker that year after Kevin McCarthy was ousted, and neither could unite the party. The job went to Johnson instead.
In his pitch to colleagues, Jordan called himself “battle-tested” and wrote, “For too long, we have operated without a clear plan to survive the hour or the day in front of us.” That approach, he said, “will not cut it against an emboldened and energetic Democratic majority.”
What does Jordan’s win mean for the next two years?
Expect a fight, not a truce. “Over the next two years, House Republicans will fight for American families,” Jordan said after the vote. “When Democrats offer more government, we’ll offer more freedom.” He said that fight will happen “in committee, on the floor and on the stump every single day.”
A minority leader can’t pass bills, but he sets the party’s message and decides how hard to resist. With Democrats promising hearings and subpoenas, and with Stephen Miller now running the White House staff, both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are staffing up for conflict. The rest of the team stays put: Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota remains whip and Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan remains conference chair.
Why did Republicans pass over Steve Scalise?
Scalise has been in leadership since 2014 and was the next in line. But after a week of Republicans blaming each other for the losses, a majority of the conference wanted someone new. “This is no doubt a challenging time for our conference,” Scalise wrote in his own pitch, “but overcoming adversity is nothing new to me.” It wasn’t enough.
The BeezLoop Take
Republicans lost more than 40 seats in an election about prices and the war, and their answer is the man best known for investigations and cable-news combat. Like the midterm result itself, it tells you where the party thinks its problem is. They’ve decided it wasn’t fighting hard enough.
Jordan is good at opposition, and opposition is the job now. But the voters who left the party last week weren’t asking for more fights in Washington. They were asking for cheaper groceries and gas.
The open question: does Jordan use the minority to offer an alternative on the cost of living, or to run two years of counter-investigations?
Sources: CBS News · CBS News (video)
