Republican members' phones confiscated for hours while voting for new House speaker: Report
Steve Scalise
The Republican members of the House of Representatives had their mobile phones confiscated hours before nominating the new speaker.
On Wednesday (Oct 11), Republicans named House Majority Leader Steve Scalise the party's choice for speaker of the House. The voting was necessitated after Kevin McCarthy was suddenly ousted last week.
In order to maintain the secrecy of the whole nomination process and prevent the information of the result from leaking out to the public, the Republican lawmakers were told to leave their phones with the staffers, who placed each phone in an envelope and gave each lawmaker a note card with a number, Business Insider reported.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents Georgia, said that she was "happy with" the decision, as it would cut down on "live tweeting of what's being said in our conference meetings."
"Not of fan of snitches," she said.
Phones put in envelopes
Several photos circulated on social media X showed envelopescontaining lawmakers' phones and members standing in a long queue to get phones back.
When the meeting was over, the lawmakers had to wait in long queues as they presented their respective note cards to staff.
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Meanwhile, Scalise, despite being nominated as the Republican’s choice for the speaker, has another major hurdle to pass.
He now has to secure a majority of votes from the entire House, which is currently in recess, to officially become the Speaker. He needs at least 217 votes out of 435 to win the job.
Task cut out for Scalise
Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry said that Scalise had the right to “put his votes together for the floor and make sure the timing is right” and that he did not know when the House would reconvene for the final vote.
Before selecting Scalise, Republicans rejected a proposal that would have required their nominee to secure 217 of their 221 votes.
That allowed Scalise to win the nomination quickly, but left open the question of whether he would face a repeat of the battle in January for the role of speaker, which played out over four days.
Scalise said his first action as speaker would be to schedule a vote on a resolution making clear that the United States stands with Israel in its war with Hamasmilitantsin Gaza.
(With inputs from agencies)
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