Chris jansing reports starts right now. Good day, i am Chris Jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. You have been following this step by step. Deja vu all over again on the house floor. A new vote for speaker once again ending in a deadlock as jim jordan comes up short. In fact, he actually lost ground when compared to the first round. 22 republicans opposing jordan this time compared to 20 yesterday. Two members, doug lamalfa and Victoria Sparts flipped and supported him. Four others went in the other direction, securing the defeat not just for congressman jordan but arguably for the far right as a whole. Now what . Joining us nbcs ali vitali on capitol hill, and steve kornacki, brendan buck an aid to former republican speakers paul ryan and john boehner whos an msnbc political analyst, and david drucker, Senior Writer at the dispatch. Okay, al what now . What are the conversations . What happens . Reporter once again, back to the drawing board, chris, and were waiting to see what happens next. Initially our understanding was that jordan knew he was going to lose votes on this balloting round, thats exactly what happened, even jordan allies were forecasting that. Now just in the last few minutes apparently he has left the chamber. People are of course asking him the obvious question, which is what do you do next . Do you drop out . Do you stay in . Initially our understanding was that jordan was willing to go through this for several balloting rounds. That very well may still be the case. As hes been dealing with all day and frankly over the last 24 hours, theres this new cross current from people who are just so fed up with the fact that they keep hitting the same brick wall over and over again when they try to elect somebody, anybody to be the new speaker that there might be a new push to empower the existing speaker, the speaker pro tem por ray in this case to actually be able to run the business of the house. Now, there are some people who interpret the speaker pro tempore role as one able to do those things. Its a pretty untested position in this modern era. Mchenrys interpretation is that he doesnt have the power to run things on the floor, to do Something Like move an aid package to israel, which of course is something of great urgency for many of these members in bipartisan fashion. And so what were likely to see here is at least one congressman try to move his resolution to empower mchenry. Ive spoken to democrats and republicans alike who say that they could get behind that as an idea, especially now that theyve seen jordan lose on this second ballot. Theres an open question of what the order will look like to get to that. Republicans might go back into what member called to me another Festivus Meeting where they go back Behind Closed Doors and air grievances, but nothing gets figured out. That could be something thats happened and thats something our sources are priming us for. Were sort of at a shrugy emoji, Question Mark, no one knows whats coming next. Well wait for them to gavel this vote. For those of them who actually watch the floor, nothings over until its fully gavelled. We are waiting for next steps here, chris. Brendan, you were on the hill for a long time, shrugy emoji is a wellknown technical phrase that they use in washington, d. C. But what a mess. I mean, when you look at what is at stake here, when you look at whats happening in israel, when you look at whats happening in ukraine, and when you consider we are now less than a month from not being able to fund the government, what do you see here . I think thats why the momentum is going to shift to this mchenry solution. Its not an easy solution is it a solution . It is a solution as much as one exists. Steve scalise couldnt get the votes. Jim jordan cant get the votes. I dont think theres anybody who can get the votes. Theres so many hurt feelings right now. Everybodys taking things out on their enemies within the conference, theres just no time for the wounds to heal to come to a resolution for any longterm solution. Well have to get a speaker at some point, but to your point, theres too much stuff to get done, so theyre going to have to go to mchenry. This gets ugly quick. If you allow me to geek out, theres two ways you can do this. One, as ali was talking about, the house can pass a resolution empowering Patrick Mchenry saying you now have the authority to bring up bills. That may not work. There are going to be a lot of republicans that say thats like voting for him for speaker. I dont want to do that. Democrats would have to come along. Theres been some things they want in exchange for that. It may be an inability for the house to even do that. The other option is mchenry can just start trying to move bills. This is untested, an unprecedented area. The parliamentarians dont believe he has that authority. The rules of the house are effectively whatever a majority of the body says they are. So mchenry could move to recognize someone to say bring up a less legal conclusion resolution condemning hamas. The parliamentarian can say thats out of order. The house could then vote, are we going to allow this resolution to come up. If the house says thats okay by us, at that Point Mchenry basically has authority to start doing things. Theres a number of ways this could go out. Weve never been in this situation before, so its all somewhat untested, but i think some kind of mchenry solution, whether the house votes to empower him or he takes it by himself is where we have to go. If he takes it by himself and lets say there is a resolution involving funding for israel, is that empowerment then only for that one thing . I think they could challenge each and every time something comes up. Thats where that bipartisan Governing Coalition is going to have to come together. Its not going to necessarily be Power Sharing where mchenry gives Hakeem Jeffries things. I think mchenry is the type of person who might be able to engender that kind of trust. Hakeem jeffries said he trusts him a bit. If you want to bring up funding for israel, if you want to bring up funding for ukraine, this may be the only way to do it. Im going to need democrats to help bring it up. All right, ali, youve been there, youve talked to a lot of folks. Weigh in, what would this look like for mchenry . Reporter well, look, in terms of getting through that vote, it would look a little different to go through a Resolution Vote that would empower him than it is to go through what weve seen now for two rounds around jim jordan and what were so accustomed to. A speakers vote looks different. We count to 217 in this instance, we watch each member alphabetically get taken down the list and they voice who theyre voting for. Thats what weve seen. Thats not necessarily what it would look like to vote on a resolution that would empower the speaker pro tempore. Its a simple majority likely done by electronic ballot, and its also something if we look at the resolutions as theyve been drafted at this point and ive seen two of them democrats are going to want some time to read and review them. Thats not them saying, oh, no, were not going to get behind this. In fact, in my conversations with Leader Jeffries, its clear hes more open to this now than ive heard him at any point over the last three weeks, but they do want to make sure they have time to review this. I think what we might end up seeing is something akin to what democrats did when they were trying to stall and just get a better sense of what was in the package that avoided the Government Shutdown a few weeks ago. We watched Leader Jeffries use something called the magic minute on the floor, which effectively means he can talk for as long as he wants, he can buy his lawmaker time to see whats in this bill. That could be a method they employ here to make sure they can get their ducks in a row. I dont think its outside the realm of possibility that at least some moderate democrats who ive been talking to could come to the table and say, ye, this seems right, even for a temporary period of time. One of the dates that i think has been thrown around for how long you would temporarily empower the speaker pro tempore for is until november 17th, which also happens to be the day that right now the government would shut down without congressional intervention. So certainly everyone is looking at the same dates and plot points on the calendar. Its just a question of what they do to get to them, and it may end up being that mchenry is the person i do think, this is going to be slow walked a little bit, and were not going to see them launch into whats next. Just so that we can get a sense of what they say happens next, but thats what it would look like if they did move and when they do move to actually consider a resolution that would empower mchenry. Its going to look a little different and its going to get them to maybe a different result or maybe theyll keep going around in circles. I want to go back to that, but steve, let me come to you. Lets get a lay of the land, lay out, break down the votes as they stood today for us, and what it tells us. The bottom line is we came into today looking at the 20 republicans who yesterday in the first ballot had voted against jim jordan. Was he going to show any progress in terms of flipping them and then the other question was are there going to be new republican who is had supported jordan yesterday who decided on this second ballot, i gave him one shot. Im moving away. What you see here first, these are all the republicans who were noes yesterday, and pretty much they stayed no. They stayed against him. They voted for a range of other candidates but they did not vote for jim jordan. You got to get pretty far down the list for Doug La Malfa from california. The other success that jordan had was Victoria Spartz from indiana whos been all over the place from january with all those rounds with mccarthy. She ended up flipping to jordan. 18 of the 20 who voted against him yesterday stayed against him today, and then four republicans who had voted for jordan yesterday flipped against him kind of an interesting list here, Veteran Buchanan from florida, Drew Ferguson from georgia, Marionette Miller Meeks from iowa. She had the closest congressional race in the country two cycles ago and Pete Stauberg from duluth, minnesota, he voted for Bruce Westerman, one of his colleagues from arkansas. Those are the four new ones. Those folks who maybe perked up at this possibility of a compromise involving extended powers for mchenry was their way of sort of moving in that direction expressing on interest of moving in that direction. Did they have other reasons as well. The bottom line is there were 20 who were against jim jordan on the first ballot, now there are 22 who are against him. They come from a range of places and a range of political motivations. I think thats the other interesting thing here, when you think back to Kevin Mccarthy and his long struggle to get the speakers gavel back in january, you generally were talking about cooped of a hard line group of very conservative members that he was trying to win over with various concessions, but the list here is a lot more diverse politically. Youve got folks from genuinely blue districts here like don bacon from nebraska, Anthony Desposito from new york, Laurie Chavez dreamer from oregon. Thats a district that voted for biden by nine points. Despositos voted for bidens by 14 points. It may simply be in their political interest in terms of surviving in the next election to align themselves against jordan. It might bolster their credentials with moderates with voters in districts that are pretty blue. You have plenty of folks from the list. Ken buck from colorado seems as dug in as anybody else. You had kay granger from texas chair the appropriations committee, safely republican district. She continues to be dug in on this as well. John rutherford from florida, simpson from idaho, womack from arkansas, and the bottom line here, you know, it took 15 rounds that mccarthy wore folks down, made concessions, and he just squeaked through getting six to vote present. If there are five on this list, if you can spot five who arent going to vote for jim jordan, then the math is never going to be there for him. After two days of this and looking at these motivations, its easy to see a lot more than five who might fall into that category. That brings us to david drucker, what our great and good friend here, brendan, says may be their only alternative right now, which is to consider the mchenry possibility. Said no to scalise. They said no to jordan in a big way. They said no to mccarthy. Is there an advantage to democrats to helping this along . Can they then say, look, we were the grownups in the room while the republicans were wallowing in their hurt feelings, while they were fighting internally, we decided to do something that was going to move things forward. Could you see this happening . Well, look, my sources tell me that its something that a lot of House Republicans and people that work with them are considering, and theyre trying to figure out how this would work, how long would they want to empower mchenry to essentially act as the speaker of the house. Would they want it just for, you know, a matter of weeks . Would they want it for a few months . Would they want it to work longer . Would it be a task, an acknowledgment that theyd rather have mchenry get Government Funding across the finish line in the form of legislation that a lot of them are not going to want to vote for, and it kind of washes their hands of things while avoiding a Government Shutdown. It takes care of crucial military aid to not just israel but ukraine and taiwan. The president has talked about putting Border Security money in a combined aid package like that. But i think that this is something republicans are going to have to come to on their own. The minute you Start Talking about working with House Democrats on a compromise solution, even if its somebody like Patrick Mchenry with Impeccable Conservative credentials who has always stuck with the party, this becomes a very big Messaging Problem back home for a lot of republicans. In other words, they can say that the disagreement im having is just which republican should lead us. But i am steadfast in supporting a republican to leave the house. The minute the minute conservative opponents of these republicans and others can come after you for working with democrats to dilute republican power, even though theyre doing it for themselves, then this becomes much more complicated. All right, there you saw mchenry with the gavel. The house will come to order. The tellers agree in their tallies that the total number of votes cast is 433 of which the honorable jim jordan of the state of ohio has received 199. The honorable Hakeem Jeffries of the state of new york has received 212. [ cheers and applause ] the honorable Kevin Mccarthy of the state of california has received five. The honorable Byron Donalds of the state of florida has received one. The honorable tom emmer of the state of minnesota has received one. Lee zeldin of the state of new york has received three. Steve scalise of the state of louisiana has received seven. The honorable mike garcia of the state of california has received one. Candace miller of the state of michigan has received one. John boehner of the state of ohio has received one. [ cheers and applause ] the honorable kay granger of the state of texas has received one, the honorable Bruce Westerman of the state of arkansas has received one. No person having received a majority, the whole number of votes cast by surname, a speaker has not been elected. Pursuant to clause 12a of rule 1, the chair declares the house in Recess Subject to the call of the chair. And so those numbers are now official, exactly what we knew probably close to an hour ago when they passed that golden number, there is not a speaker right now. Jim jordan does not have the votes. John boehner, your old boss i was trying to imagine him sitting at home watching this and getting a chuckle. Is. Big chuckle. Something tells me he may not even be watching. Probably not. Let me ask you what this tells us. Does tell us something about the power of the far right . Obviously they had the power to oust mccarthy, they did not have the power to install jordan or is this something completely different . Theyve always had power to stop things, and theyve been very good of stopping things. Now theyre getting a little bit of their own medicine. Now the centrists are saying were going to stop your guy. This was a decision by a lot of people that they are not going to reward bad behavior. Jim jordan lost the election in the conference for speaker, and what ended up happening is his folks, as they always do, ended up hijacking the plans of the conference. Theyd hijack Steve Scalises speakership and took him out. They can turn around and say now were going to give this to you, i think people saw that as a bring too far for a lot of people. To your conversation with david, if mchenry becomes empowered in some way as speaker, it is a very tenuous situation for him. There is not a Governing Coalition within the republican party, and you can only imagine that if they bring up something for ukraine, there are people going to