Jim Jordan loses first vote for House speaker amid GOP defections

Conservative Republican Rep. Jim Jordan failed to secure enough GOP support to win the House speakership on the first ballot, falling well short of what the Ohio Republican’s allies had hoped, with 20 Republicans voting against Jordan.

Now Jordan will try to sway the holdouts – a group of GOP moderates and allies of former speaker Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise – to change their votes, as the high-stakes chaos over the speaker’s gavel continues two weeks after McCarthy was removed.