199. The honorable Hakeem Jeffries of the state of new york has received 212. [laughter] trumps pick to lead the house goes down again. No amount of election denying is going to take away from those vote totals. Tonight, the excruciating failure of the maga candidate, the democratic push for a bipartisan solution, and what we know about a timeline for a resolution. The time for democracy in our country that an insurrection was rejected by the republicans again, as their candidate for speaker. And tensions soar in The Middle East after that deadly hospital blast. There is new hope for humanitarian aid flowing into gaza, as the president meets with families of hostages in israel. The call for caution continues. Justice must be done. While you feel that rage. Dont be consumed by it. One all in starts right now. Good evening from new york, im chris hayes. Today, republican congressman jim jordan of ohio is even further from being speaker of the house than he was yesterday. In a second floor vote, jordan ended up with 199 supporters, a net loss from yesterdays tally, as paul cain of the Washington Post noted, jordan sent a modern record. Nice work, jim. Earning the lowest vote tally for a majoritys nominee to be speaker. Now, jordan did pick up three new supporters today, but he lost four members who flipped away from him this time around. In total, 22 republicans voted for someone other than jordan and he can only afford to lose for. So, the congressman from ohio has a lot of work ahead of him if hes going to convert enough votes to win the gavel. Jordan is not giving up. Tonight, he told reporters, the house will vote again tomorrow afternoon, and will keep voting as long as necessary. Mr. Jordan, is the plan to vote tomorrow . Yeah. We [inaudible] how many rounds are you going to do this . [inaudible] but is it going to be you . [inaudible] in the an, the house remains paralyzed on its 15th day without a speaker. The longest vacancy of more than half a century and that last gap in 1971 only occurred because Congress Actually convened rather late in january. Of course, we are stuck in the current debacle because of the fundamental deepening chaos in the House Republican caucus. At this point, it really does feel like theyre a Mental Malfunction Roomba vacuum cleaner, hopelessly stuck in the corner, ramming into The Wall Over and over again, its sensors have gone haywire. But they keep going, i mean, the current path is pretty clearly not working. Jim jordans 18 votes away from majority. The thing is, not exactly a unifying figure. Hes an extreme farright flutter and the politics are voting for someone like that are not going to change in 24 hours from the people that hold out from voting for him and are in vulnerable seats. Now, the Pressure Campaign to bully those members into voting for him, from jordan, from donald trump, from fox news, has not worked. It has failed so far. If the Republican Party does not want to keep ramming into the wall, embarrassingly, in front of the entire nation of the world over, and over, and over again, they need to change direction. They can find someone else to be the nominee for speaker, although choosing a nominee at the caucus can get behind, obviously, easier said than done, as we are seeing. Or they could compromise with democrats. It would only take five republicans meeting with democratic leadership to craft some sort of deal and elected Minority LeaderHakeem Jeffries to the speakership. Or if they dont like that, which they probably dont, choose someone else, even a republican, under some kind of agree to power sharing pact. So far, they dont seem willing to do that. Another option that some people have been flipping would be to expand the role of the temporary speaker, Patrick Mchenry. At the moment, under the current house rules, his powers are essentially ministerial. Basically limited to gaveling in and out until a permanent speaker is elected. But the New York Times reports, republican david joyce of ohio has been circulating a bipartisan plan that would give mchenry the power to run the house floor through early january. Members of the bipart problem solvers caucus, made up of senator leading members from both parties have also been involved in talks. Two former house speakers, interestingly, Newt Gingrich and john boehner, endorsed the plan last night. Now, to be clear, first of all, no one even knows how this would work precisely. That would change rules. Elevating mchenry would be completely unprecedented, as far as anyone can tell. It also would not solve the underlying problem of Republican Party set on sowing chaos, as Hakeem Jeffries laid out this afternoon, after a Democratic Caucus meeting. Can you talk to me about the point of this caucus meeting . Is it just to take the temperature on mchenry . There are two things that were important for us to accomplish this week. First, stop jim jordan, who is a Clear And Present Danger to our democracy and the poster child for republican extremism. The second is to reopen the house, so we can do the business of the american people. And our preference is to reopen the house in a bipartisan way, so we can govern in an enlightened way, moving forward. Does that mean mchenry is the path . This conversation will not be about any one individual because we are concerned about two things, the institution of the congress and the best interests of the american people. Ive got to say, the Patrick Mchenry plan speaks so perfectly to the trajectory of the Republican Party. Back in 2005, mchenry was a freshman congressman. He was a firebrand, one of the furthest right members of the party. He was profiled in magazines as such. 18 years later, mchenry is being floated as the institutional savior to rescue the republicans from their latest iteration of hard right rebels. And this time around, that faction is so dangerous to american democracy and so strong within the Republican Party, they are threatening to bring the entire institution down on their own heads. Nbc news capitol correspondent ryan nobles joins me now with the latest. Ryan, i mean, you dont want your second vote to go backwards. What do they do now . Great question, chris. I really do not know what the next step is and it seems, at least at this stage, where we are right now, at 8 00 eastern on wednesday night, that jim jordan is prepared to plow ahead. He has been given us every indication that hes going to attempt tomorrow to bring another vote to the floor. His aides tell me that he is working to try and win over these 22 people that voted against him, trying to hold on to the group of 199 republicans that voted for him, and just play this out as long as it takes, you know . His louder supporters here on capitol hill, i will point out that Kevin Mccarthy required 17 rounds to become speaker of the house. So, this would only be around three for jim jordan and there is no reason to stop now. But there is a lot of fundamental differences between the experience Kevin Mccarthy had and the one that jim jordan finds himself in. First of all, the most obvious being that Kevin Mccarthy had a period of time after republicans won the majority, up until the speaker vote. There are a couple of months there where he had the opportunity to whip votes. Jim jordan hasnt had that luxury. And also, the fundamental reasons behind why people are opposing jim jordan are very different than the ones for the reasons that people oppose Kevin Mccarthy. And they are not all the same. If you talk to the republican delegation in new york, they have very different concerns than those that supported Steve Scalise and were upset that Steve Scalise was unceremoniously booted from his opportunity to get a vote on the floor. So, all these fundamental problems make it very difficult to see a path for jim jordan to become the next speaker of the house and if you talk to some of these holdouts, i was in a gaggle earlier with steve womack who said, he believes that there are going to be more people that vote against jim jordan if it comes to the floor again. So at this point, i really dont know what the path is for jim jordan or for that many matter, any republican, in becoming the next speaker of the house. I heard that is well from steve womack, a few others that basically, theres a deliberate strategy here for some of the people that do not want jordan to vote for him in early rounds and actually switch against him, precisely to create a direction, the wrong direction to send a signal. This is what john rutherford, whos also opposed to jordan, said. Its time for representive jordan to understand there is this race is over. I suggt u either go to conferences showman back to the floor to show it in public. Filling while the world is on fire, so that no votes want successive votes over and over, to sort of make this clear. So, as of now, were going to come back and try this again tomorrow, that is the plan . Well, i want to be clear, chris. Nothing is scheduled, right . At this point, the only thing that we have heard is a warning, i guess, to members of congress to be prepared to vote as soon as noon tomorrow. Now, that does not mean that a vote is scheduled. It just means that theyre holding out the right to vote at around noon, then nothing is going to happen before noon tomorrow. So, theres a lot that could happen here over the next 12 hours, you know . Maybe jim jordan does get that Reality Check and, you know, what i think is interesting about this, and i think its important to point out to your viewers, is that the jim jordan strategy here was that he knew that he didnt have enough votes to start. But what he expected, what many of us expected, was that when they went to the house floor, these moderates are more Establishment Republicans is probably a better way to describe them, would cave under the pressure of the institution, crumbling. That they would blink, essentially. That isnt whats happening. In fact, their position is getting stronger. So, if that was his only path to the speakership, its not clear what, where he goes from here, if thats not going to work. Right, ryan nobles, thank you so much, ryan, for your reporting tonight. Congressman pete aguilar is a democrat in california. He served on the january six committee, hes now chair of the house Democratic Caucus and leadership, and he joins me now. Congressman, i know that you, obviously, folks in the democratic side are not being, you know, the plan here, this is sort of a partisan affair or has been up until now. Do you have an understanding of what tomorrow will bring . Well, im learning from ryan nobles there to. We know what has been made public, which is we may have votes tomorrow and that jim jordan is dead set on making his colleagues vote. And just as the reporting has mentioned, and we are, you know, were feet from the House Chamber right now, and he keeps losing votes. He cannot count to 217. And so, you know, we are in this position, in this holding pattern, because jim jordan is the most extreme member of that side of the aisle. He is the leader of the insurrection caucus over there and its just terribly unfortunate that this is the position that we are in, and that republicans have elevated. I just think it says a lot about the group that 199 of them still say, yeah, that is our guy. You have made of some sort of bipartisan resolution. Hakeem jeffries, Minority Leader, has. But i cant tell if this is, like, rhetoric or you are seeing, it would be nice, or is there any active conversation, plan, back channels happening right now with any republican members about some bipartisan resolution . There are always active conversation with members on the other side of the aisle. After 15 days without a speaker, i would hope that there are conversations happening, and i know that they are. And so, you know, our hope is leader jeffries laid out our first primary responsibility this week was to make sure the head of the maga circus, jim jordan, did not become speaker or second objective is to make sure that we open up the peoples house, so we are having conversations, private conversations, with our colleagues to make sure that that happens. They control the votes here. And so, its up to them to see what the path forward looks like, but this is more than just, you know, empty rhetoric and talking points. This is a real desire to want to make this place function, make the congress, make the House Function again, and to make sure that we are caring about other peoples business, because we have such urgent priorities. We have to make sure we avoid government shutdown, we have to make sure we are providing aid to israel and ukraine. Those are the things that, by the way, have 300 votes plus in congress. Lets just make sure that we have an opportunity to deliver for the american public. Yesterday or i think it was yesterday, maybe the day before, Hakeem Jeffries explicitly reference the current speaker Patrick Mchenry as someone that he respected, that democrats respect. There is clearly some plan being circulated to extend the powers of the speaker pro tem, you know, through the end of january to basically run the house like the speaker. It was interesting to me that both Nude Gingrich and john boehner endorsed that plan, not that they have any say in it, either way. What do you make of that . What do you think of it . Well, this is not just about one person. I think a lot of us have respect for Patrick Mchenry and how hes trying to conduct himself, and organize this election that cant be an easy job that he was elevated to. You know, our primary responsibility is to make sure that the House Functions. So, its not about one person. We will wait to see if a republican introduces a resolution to do that. Ive read the public reporting that you have as well, but the details matter. For house democrats, the language of these policies and proposals matter, and so, we will see what it says. Can i ask . This is, like, super in the weeds and you may not know, and i dont know if anyone knows. But how does that even work under the rules . Like, are the rules that every recess, you come back and vote for speaker . Or can someone introduce a resolution . Like, i dont even actually understand, procedurally, this liminal space in which you currently exist. Sure. Potentially, this could be, right now, the highest order of business is electing a speaker. And so, someone could offer a privilege resolution to move to an election, just like elise to phonic as done to have the republicans nominate jim jordan again, or someone else could offer a resolution that does this. And there is precedent for it. There used to be a speaker pro tem designated, at times, when the speaker was out of session for a week or month, that has not been done for us since the 90s. But that individual would function just as the speaker does for a limited time period, until a speaker came back from vacation. And this is, you know, precedent from years ago. All right, congressman pete aguilar, thank you very much. Thank you. Claire mccaskill is a former democratic senator of missouri. Tim miller, a former rnc spokesman, now writer of they join me now. Clare, you have seen a lot in politics, but i will, in my political career, have truly never seen anything like this. It really does, they do seem stuck. Am i miss reading . What do you think . Oh no, they are stuck. And by the way, this is a plot that the people would laugh at that was pitch to somebody in hollywood. I mean, lets take a wide lens here. We are talking about a handful of extremists troubling a speaker out over the objection of 90 of the Republican Party. Then they gather and vote secretly to nominate a new speaker. That guy gets one vote and then the radical extremists say, im sorry, you dont get any more votes, we are done, you are out. We are going to put our radical extremists in their. And by the way, it radical extremist who doesnt play well with others, chris. And they all know this. Hes never passed a bill in 16 years. Can you imagine . Being in congress 16 years and never managing to get a bill across the finish line . Because he just likes to blow stuff up. So, and then he recruits a Cable News Star on their network, sean hannity, to be his whip. And whip votes, and go after the holdouts with hammer and tongs. And that clearly, i mean, i dont know where they found their backbones, but there clearly 20 odd republicans have found a backbone today, and i have a feeling that number will be bigger tomorrow. Yeah, that number bigger tomorrow, its like you say stop, its like when youre trying to get a car out of the mud or the snow and you can see that its getting worse. Like, youre wearing down further into the mud. I feel like that little sense of panic as i watch this, sort of threw osmosis. And here is something thats much less funny, but part of this has well, tim. An undercover, underappreciated aspect of the forces of conformity towards the maga wing of the party is the fear of violence and threat, and disruption to life. Even if its not violence, its like, the security youre going to have to get and all of that. Representative Mariannette Millermeeks of iowa reported that after voting against jordan, shes received credible Death Threats and a barrage of threatening calls. Other people have talked about, i think, don bacons wife talked about getting people threatening her, not physical violence, but threatening her. What do you think of that