U.S. – Speaker

Just over three weeks of power vacuum in the US Congress seems to be over. On Wednesday evening, 220 members of the House of Representatives elected Republican Mike Johnson as the new Speaker of the House, according to the vote count on C-SPAN. All 220 who voted for Johnson are his fellow Republicans. All Democrats present in the chamber voted for the party’s own candidate, Hakeem Jeffries. He received 209 votes.
     Mike Johnson, 51, who supports former President Donald Trump, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in Louisiana in 2016. As a result, he does not have the same political experience and clout as previous presidents. Johnson is best known for spearheading 126 Republican lawmakers’ efforts to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn election results in several states where Trump lost the 2020 election. /ritzau/