US Republicans on Thursday rallied behind US Representative Paul Ryan to elect him to the powerful post of US House of Representatives speaker as the splintered party turned to the youthful, but battle-tested lawmaker to mend its self-inflicted wounds and craft a conservative message to woo voters in next year’s elections.
Ryan — a former Republican vice presidential candidate — became the 54th speaker of the House with 236 Republicans calling out Ryan in a roll call vote, putting him second in line to the presidency and atop a chamber that has been awash in tumult ever since defiant conservatives hounded US Representative John Boehner into announcing his resignation as House speaker last month.
Just nine hard-line conservatives voted against Ryan, instead backing a little-known Florida lawmaker. Most of them, including members of the rebellious House Freedom Caucus, backed Ryan, though it was clear that future tensions between them and Ryan could not be discounted.
Photo: AFP
“The House is broken,” Ryan said in his first remarks to the chamber, seemingly referring as much to a Republican civil war between hard-liners and pragmatists as to the House’s usual partisan divisions. “We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean.”
Conservatives complain that Boehner has been excessively powerful, forcing bills to the House floor without rank-and-filed input, dictating committee chairs and punishing rebels. One leader of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, US Representative Raul Labrador, said conservatives expect Ryan to alter that.
“We’re going to have his back for the next few months and make sure that we give him the opportunity to show that he can be the leader that we hope he can be,” Labrador said.
Amiable and just 45, Ryan has been in Congress 17 years and has strong ties with all wings of the Republican Party.
As the former chairman of the House Budget Committee and current head of the Ways and Means panel, he has put his imprint on deficit reduction, tax, health and trade legislation — prime subjects that have raised his stature and put him at the center of many of Congress’ highest profile debates.
Many Democrats like Ryan, but none hesitate to attack him as a symbol of Republican policies they consider harsh.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS