Gym’s roll call vote fell short by 17 votes, as 20 Republicans voted against him. That’s a bigger margin than what McCarthy lost by on his first vote, I believe. It’s unclear what’s going to happen next. I take it Gym expected to either win outright or be short by a much smaller margin. The bullying tactic failed. So Gym and his supporters are off huddling somewhere deciding what to do next. Some sources are reporting that Jordan supporters want to try another roll call today. There are “renewed discussions” of empowering temp Speaker McHenry with more power until the Republicans get their act together.
I’m not familiar enough with all of the GOP House members to know if the not-Gym votes are all from a particular faction or not. The NY Times is reporting that among the holdouts are senior GOP members of the Appropriations Committee and a bloc of Long Island Republicans.
In other news, there are reports that an Israeli air strike hit a Gaza hospital and killed hundreds of people. Israel cannot afford to do things like that. There are also reports of Israeli bombs dropping in the area in south Gaza where Palestinians were told to flee. Again, Israel needs to take care. We may learn these reports aren’t accurate, but I’m seeing the hospital story all over the place. President Biden is heading there tomorrow.
The text of Judge Tanya Chutkan gag order on Trump has been released. Trump’s lawyers have “launched” a notice they will appeal, it says here. The notice of appeal does not include any legal arguments. The lawyers probably are still trying to find some.
Update: Some analysis of the not-Gym Jordan Republicans by Philip Bump at WaPo:
There was a pattern to those rejections. If we consider the House GOP caucus on two measures — ideology and 2020 presidential vote — you can see that the cluster of opponents to Jordan overlapped more with the less-conservative, less-Republican range. (Ideology is measured using Voteview’s DW-NOMINATE score, which ranges from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative). 2020 vote by district calculated by DailyKos.)
The outlier in the opposing group was Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who we’ll come back to in a second. His district was less friendly to Donald Trump in 2020 than was Jordan’s, but they are rated similarly on the ideological score.
If we run averages, the point is more obvious still. The opponents of Jordan averaged an ideology score of 0.348; his supporters landed at 0.529. His opponents represent districts that supported Trump over Joe Biden in 2020 by an average of 8.5 points. Jordan’s supporters represent districts that backed Trump by an average of 21.6 points.
Update: They’re saying on MSNBC that the House Republicans have called off holding another vote today. They may give Gym another shot at the speakership tomorrow.
Update: The Israeli military said its intelligence indicated that a misfired rocket from an Islamist group aligned with Hamas was responsible for the explosion.
Update: The Jersusalem Post is reporting that the Gaza hospital was destroyed by rockets fired from factions in the Gaza strip.