Good Morning!
Speaker Boehner just announced he will be retiring his seat and plans to quit the speakership. The embattled Speaker was facing yet another grueling fight over mundane financing issues from the radical right wing of his party.
Speaker John Boehner plans to resign from Congress in late October, he told member of his conference Friday morning in a closed door meeting, according to multiple reports emerging from the meeting room.
Boehner is second in line to the presidency, after Vice President Joe Biden. He was first elected to Congress in 1990. He has served as speaker since Republicans took control of the House in 2011.
Boehner was meeting with his conferenceto discuss plans to avert a government shutdown, looming next week. The speaker was under enormous pressure to keep the government open and satisfy conservative members of the conference who were refusing to vote for any bill that would provide funds for Planned Parenthood.
You’re in trouble when a member of your own caucus from your own state tries to find a candidate to primary you.
Republican sources say an ally of Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) has attempted to recruit a primary challenger against the GOP lawmaker who introduced a measure to oust the Speaker.
Three senior GOP sources told The Hill they’ve heard Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has reached out to Republicans in North Carolina’s 11th District to gauge their interest in launching a primary challenge against Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
Meadows is a Tea Party favorite who generated national headlines this summer after floating a plan to depose Boehner. McHenry is the chief deputy whip and a member of Boehner’s leadership team.
Boehner has been having his usual trouble with the party’s extremist religious right who is trying to defund Planned Parenthood and had threatened to shut down the government. The Senate has shutdown that possibility.
Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Thursday began advancing bills urgently needed to avoid federal agency shutdowns on Oct. 1 while navigating conservatives’ demands to punish Planned Parenthood over an abortion controversy.
The Senate defeated Republican efforts to use a funding extension bill to cut off money to Planned Parenthood, clearing the way for a version without that provision that extends all previous funding through Dec. 11.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has set the first procedural vote on that measure for Monday, two days before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
I’m posting this so we can follow up with some live updates as they happen. So far, no names to replace the Speaker have been mentioned in the media,
