Who is popular today?

Tom Emmer current frontrunner as candidates due to present themselves in forum on Monday eveningGood morning, US politics blog readers. It has now been 20 days since the House of Representatives last had a speaker, and the Republican majority is no closer to figuring out who should lead Congress’s lower chamber than they were when Kevin McCarthy was booted out of the job by the far-right and Democrats. On Friday, conservative firebrand Jim Jordan’s candidacy collapsed after failing to win the speaker’s gavel in three rounds of voting, and we now have nine, yes nine, Republicans running for speaker.We will run through all the candidates later, but Minnesota’s Tom Emmer is viewed as the frontrunner at this point. He’s the Republican whip, the third-highest-ranking position among the House GOP, and has received McCarthy’s endorsement. But if there’s one thing Republicans have proven over the past three weeks, it’s that they are not afraid of shutting down their own lawmakers, no matter how prominent, and Emmer could be as summarily rejected as McCarthy and Jordan were. We’ll get signs of how things are going this evening at 6.30pm eastern time, when the GOP holds a forum for their candidates. The first votes on a new speaker as supposed to follow tomorrow.Joe Biden is stumping for his economic successes with a speech on “Bidenomics” at 2.15pm. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will take reporters’ questions at 1pm.Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican, came out in favor of a Biden administration request for $106bn in aid for Ukraine and Israel as well as border security funds. But Congress cannot pass anything without a speaker of the House.Andy Beshear is the unlikely Democratic governor of red state Kentucky, and is fighting for another term in office. He’ll debate his Republican opponent Daniel Cameron at 8pm. Continue reading...