House GOP’s top appropriator votes against Jordan 

Rep. Kay Granger (Texas), top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, voted against Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) Speakership bid Tuesday.

During the first round of floor votes to elect a Speaker on Tuesday afternoon, Granger raised eyebrows in casting her vote instead for Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who withdrew his bid for the chair last week amid opposition from hard-line conservatives. 

Granger wouldn’t explain her vote when pressed by reporters shortly after leaving the floor.

The Hill has reached out to her office for comment.

The news comes as some Republicans have come out against a plan pushed by Jordan to prevent a shutdown next month, by freezing funding through April.

The proposal, as GOP lawmakers have described, would stave off the threat of a shutdown next month — funding is set to expire Nov. 17 — by keeping the government funded at levels already hashed out in the previous Congress.

But defense hawks in both chambers have voiced displeasure with the idea, as lawmakers fear a Jan. 1 deadline to pass all of their 12 full-year government funding bills for fiscal 2024, or risk an across-the-board cut to defense and nondefense programs as penalty that would take effect later in the year. 

“No way. That destroys our military,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Tuesday, calling the idea “horrible.”