GOP leadership vote: Jim Jordan takes House reins while John Thune holds Senate

Beaten at the polls, Republicans reached for change in the House and continuity in the Senate. After their worst congressional loss in more than half a century, House members passed over the establishment on Tuesday. Speaker Mike Johnson had said he would step aside rather than seek a leadership post. Behind closed doors, lawmakers rejected his deputy, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and chose Ohio's Jim Jordan as minority leader by a secret ballot, 106 to 73. Senate Republicans met the same day and re-elected John Thune.

The margin matters as much as the result. Scalise had been in leadership since 2014 and was seen as a close ally of Johnson. He embodied the establishment. Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman and a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, built his career as an outsider who prized combat over management. The conference, it seems, wanted a fighter for the lean years ahead.

Jordan did not disguise his intent. He promised to take the fight to Democrats in committee, on the floor and on the stump. His brief is twofold: shield the Trump administration from the investigations that a Democratic House will surely launch and lay the groundwork for winning back the majority in 2028. In effect, the party has appointed a chief congressional defender of the president.

The choice carries risks. Moderate Republicans, particularly those in swing districts, worry in private that his incendiary rhetoric will repel the very voters the party needs to regain. Critics also recall a controversy from his years as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, when it was alleged that he turned a blind eye to complaints of sexual assault. Jordan has long denied those charges. The conference weighed these concerns and moved on. Elsewhere on the ballot, it favoured continuity: Tom Emmer kept his whip's post by 103 votes to 76 over August Pfluger, and Lisa McClain stayed as conference chair.

Across the Capitol, the mood was different. Senate Republicans re-elected John Thune as leader by acclamation, with no challenger. Senator Ron Johnson objected to the speed of the vote and walked out, but the wider conference showed little appetite for a quarrel. Thune is a measured figure, and his style is the opposite of Jordan's. His priorities for the lame-duck session are plain: confirm as many conservative judges and executive nominees as possible before Democrats take control. Beyond that, he pledged to use the 60-vote filibuster to stall progressive initiatives.

The result is a division of labour that may prove deliberate. The House will fight in the open. The Senate will resist through procedure.

If the leadership contests revealed what Republicans want from the future, the day's other drama revealed what they still fear in the present. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an outgoing Republican who lost his primary after breaking with Donald Trump, introduced an impeachment motion against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. The charges were sweeping. They cited unauthorised military strikes in Iran and Yemen, the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, and the killing of suspected drug traffickers at sea. They also cited the bombing of an elementary school in Minab, Iran, and alleged retaliation against Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.

Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Speaker, and other senior Democrats rallied behind the measure and called Hegseth reckless. Hegseth, at a Pentagon briefing, dismissed the effort as a political stunt.

The Republican leadership then chose not to debate the charges at all. Instead of allowing an up-or-down vote, it moved to refer the impeachment articles to the Judiciary Committee, a procedural route that all but buries them. The motion passed 211 to 204. Massie was the only Republican to vote against it. Trump called the outcome an exoneration, and the Pentagon claimed a complete victory for its chief.

A referral is not an acquittal. No member was asked to defend Hegseth's record on the record. Republicans avoided a vote that would have forced them to choose between the president and their own misgivings about the Iran war, and the party line held. Even after an electoral beating, the fear of crossing Trump remains the most reliable discipline in the Republican conference.