As you no doubt know, we have been without a Speaker of the House for two weeks now.  At a time of great uncertainty and challenge, the House needs a Speaker.  The inability of House Republicans to elect a Speaker bespeaks a much deeper problem—an inability to govern.

This week, House Republicans nominated Jim Jordan, founder of the House Freedom Caucus whose entire tenure in the House has been about impeding rather than advancing responsible governance, as their Speaker nominee.  Two hundred House Republicans voted to elect him.  Fortunately for the country, more than 20 of them did not.

Many people know of him because of his dangerous, destructive, and divisive approach to his service in the House that has made headlines for years.  His obstruction forced harmful government shutdowns in 2013 and again in 2018.  One fact that I learned this week speaks to this lack of seriousness (and demonstrates his lack of preparedness for the job): Jordan has not introduced a single bill that has become law in his 16 years in Congress.

Jordan has not only failed to demonstrate any interest in governing, he has demonstrated hostility to the House of Representatives and to its fundamental purpose.  He was one of the leaders of Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.  And the same election denial and strongarm tactics we saw then are appearing in the Speaker elections now.  At least one member of Congress has even reported receiving death threats for voting against him this week.  We cannot govern this way.  And we don’t have to.

House Democrats have conveyed our commitment to finding a bipartisan path forward to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.  We understand that we are not in the House majority and that we cannot expect to have a Democratic Speaker of the House right now—that is, until we take back the House after the 2024 elections.  But House Republicans have a choice: they can vote to hand the Speaker’s gavel to Jim Jordan and the extremists that have dominated the House, or they can work with Democrats to govern responsibly and deliver for the American people.

In Congress, we will continue to reach across the aisle to find common ground when possible and to stand up to extremism when necessary.

In our community, our team will continue to do everything we can to win our race, help win back the House, and put our country back on a path to progress.

We did it in 2018, and we absolutely must do it again in 2024.  Thanks for all you have done and will do to make that happen.

Together, we can do anything,