Heal the World, by Hiske Bain

Back in the U.S., House Republicans are still trying to figure out what to do about finding a new Speaker. It’s not looking good at the moment. The choice so far is between two deeply flawed candidates: Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. Jordan is tainted by a sexual abuse scandal when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State; Scalise once referred to himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” He’s also being treated for an aggressive form of cancer.

Former student wrestlers are speaking up about Jordan. The Guardian: Ex-Ohio State wrestlers say Jim Jordan unfit for speakership for ignoring sexual abuse scandal.

Former Ohio State wrestlers who accuse Jim Jordan of ignoring sexual abuse when he was a coach said the hard-right Republican should not be elected speaker of the US House.

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” Mike Schyck, one of hundreds of wrestlers who say they were assaulted by a team doctor, told NBC News. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”

Another former wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, told NBC: “He doesn’t deserve to be House speaker. He still has to answer for what happened to us.”

Jordan, 59 and a founder of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, is competing for the speakership with Steve Scalise, the majority leader from Louisiana, after the historic ejection of Kevin McCarthy by disgruntled right-wingers last week. Jordan has secured the endorsement of Donald Trump, the presidential frontrunner whose supporters orchestrated McCarthy’s defenestration.

Before entering politics, Jordan was an assistant OSU wrestling coach from 1986 to 1994. Former athletes have said he ignored rampant sexual abuse by Richard Strauss, a team doctor who died in 2005.

A bit more:

Jordan has long denied helping orchestrate a cover-up. On Tuesday, a spokesperson told NBC: “Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it.”

But Jordan also refused to co-operate with an official investigation which found Strauss’s abuse was an “open secret”, and that “coaches, trainers and other team physicians were fully aware of Strauss’ activities, and yet few seemed inclined to do anything to stop it”.

Healing from the Inside, by Kathryn Rutherford

At one hearing, another former wrestler, Adam DiSabato, said: “Jim Jordan called me crying, crying, groveling, on the Fourth of July … begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for half an hour. That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on here. He’s a coward. He’s a coward.”

Yetts has previously said: “If Jordan says he didn’t know about it, then he’s lying.”

Speaking to NBC, another former wrestler, Rocky Ratliff, said Jordan “abandoned his former wrestlers in the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal and cover-up”….

Schyck told NBC he was himself a Republican, and Jordan “was somebody I revered, somebody I looked up to.

“If early on he jumped in on our side and validated what we were saying, what everybody knew about what Dr Strauss was doing to us, then this wouldn’t be happening. But he decided early on, for reasons I still don’t understand, that he was going to deny knowing anything about this.

As everyone here knows, Jordan is also not very bright and a lying MAGA conspiracy theorist.

House Republicans were expected to meet this morning at 10:00, and they are voting now. Neither candidate is believed to have the votes to be elected.  Financial Times: House Republicans begin voting on nominee for Speaker.

House Republicans have started voting for their nominee for Speaker, amid a growing sense of urgency to determine who will lead the lower house and address pressing issues on the US’s domestic and international agendas.

Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, and Jim Jordan, who chairs the judiciary committee, made their cases to colleagues in a closed-door forum on Tuesday evening, although neither candidate was in a position to claim the upper hand ahead of Wednesday’s conference vote. The two rival candidates are vying for support on the private ballot, after eight rebels led an unprecedented revolt against Kevin McCarthy last week. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, told the FT he voted “present” for Speaker after neither Scalise nor Jordan adequately answered his question on Tuesday about who won the 2020 presidential election. “It’s a yes or no question,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody has 217 [votes],” Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Tuesday night. “If it comes out that neither one of them can get there, then yes, we’re going to have to produce another candidate.” For Republicans, the lack of a clear outcome risks a replay of events in January, when it took a record 15 rounds of voting for the party to elect McCarthy as Speaker. More broadly, the abrupt downfall of the former Speaker last week has created chaos in the House. The lower chamber is at a standstill, unable to pass legislation, as the US weighs whether to provide additional aid to Israel and Ukraine in their respective conflicts with Hamas and Russia. Lawmakers must also pass a spending bill by November 17 to avoid a US government shutdown.

One more bit of news from the House. NBC News: Embattled Rep. George Santos hit with additional charges, including identity theft.

Federal prosecutors hit Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., with 23 additional charges Tuesday, including allegations of identity theft and that he charged a supporter’s credit card in excess of the supporter’s contribution and then transferred the money to his personal bank account.

Prosecutors said Santos faces “one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud” in a superseding indictment filed Tuesday.

Keith Morant, Requiem

“As alleged, Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement….

Prosecutors said in a news release that the scheme included falsely claiming that relatives of Santos and his then-campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, had donated big bucks to his campaign to make it appear that he was raising more money than he actually was in order to qualify for assistance from the national party.

“To create the public appearance that his campaign had met that financial benchmark” for additional funds from the Republican Party “and was otherwise financially viable, Santos and Marks agreed to falsely report to the FEC that at least 10 family members of Santos and Marks had made significant financial contributions to the campaign when Santos and Marks both knew that these individuals had neither made the reported contributions nor given authorization for their personal information to be included in such false public reports.”

He is also alleged to have been involved in a credit card scheme in which the campaign would charge contributors’ credit cards repeatedly and above FEC individual contribution limits.

Some Republicans are finally talking about expelling Santos. NBC News: Republican lawmakers to introduce resolution to expel Rep. George Santos from Congress.

A group of House Republicans from New York are introducing a resolution to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress.

“Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster George Santos,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., said in a post on the social media platform X.

He said the resolution will be co-sponsored by fellow New York House Republicans Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy and Brandon Williams.

Booting Santos would require a two-thirds vote of the entire House.

The move comes a day after federal prosecutors issued Santos a 23–count superseding indictment alleging he committed identity theft, fraud and other offenses. Santos, who was first indicted in May, has said he plans on fighting the charges. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in the original 13-count indictment earlier this year.

Those are the top stories today. What are your thoughts? What other stories are you following?