Republicans have elected veteran congressman Jim Jordan as their new leader in the House of Representatives, putting a strident defender of Donald Trump at the helm of their conference as they navigate the fallout from sweeping losses in last week’s midterm elections.
Jordan will serve as minority leader under a new Congress that begins next year, where Democrats will have their largest margins in both the House and Senate in years. He will be responsible for shaping the party’s strategy against the waves of investigations Democrats have promised to open into Trump’s second term, as well as their vows of an ambitious legislative agenda, regardless of whether it has the president’s support.
The Ohio lawmaker is a longtime leader of the right wing in the US House, gaining gained national renown for standing up for Trump against earlier efforts by Democrats to hold him to account. In ۲۰۲۳, Jordan was briefly a candidate for speaker after dissident Republicans removed Kevin McCarthy as the chamber’s leader, but his bid collapsed after it became clear he did not have enough support.
House Republicans elected Jordan over Steve Scalise, who serves as majority leader in the current Congress. Following comprehensive defeats last week in the midterm elections, the current House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced he would not remain in leadership, and has thus far not committed to serving out the rest of his term.
Ahead of the meeting, several Republicans spoke of the need for a change in strategy, after two years spent trying to answer Trump’s demands with one of the smallest majorities in history, only to have voters decisively remove them from power.
“I want somebody that’s going to message and admit that … we made mistakes,” said Tim Burchett, a conservative lawmaker from Tennessee, who declined to say who he would be voting for.
Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna said she was backing Jordan, and blamed Scalise for not fighting hard enough to get rightwing priorities through the chamber.
“If you have a play and you get destroyed, you don’t put the same people back in charge that were part of running that failed play,” she said.
First elected in ۲۰۰۶, Jordan helped found the rightwing House Freedom Caucus in ۲۰۱۵, and served as its first chair. His profile rose during Trump’s first term, particularly after Democrats regained control of Congress’s lower chamber in the ۲۰۱۸ midterms. As the top Republican on the oversight and then the judiciary committees, Jordan, who distinguished himself by typically appearing in shirtsleeves, led energetic stands against efforts by Democrats to investigate Trump, and served as a member of the president’s defense team during his first impeachment.
Jordan echoed Trump’s false claims of fraud in the ۲۰۲۰ election, and championed the investigation of Hunter Biden during Joe Biden’s final two years in office. Since Trump returned to the White House, Jordan has used his role as judiciary committee chair to pursue allegations of judicial “weaponization” by prosecutors who investigated Trump, including Jack Smith, the special counsel who oversaw the cases.
Democrats decried Jordan’s appointment as sign that the party was doubling down on extremism, with Virginia congressman Don Beyer noting that Jordan’s election came days after Trump had named immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as his chief of staff.
“Republicans learned absolutely nothing from what happened a week ago, and are responding by elevating their most extreme voices to positions of power,” he said.
