House Speaker John Boehner to resign from Congress

Pope Francis on Thursday became the first pontiff in history to address a joint meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Opposition among conservatives to Boehner’s leadership reached a fever pitch this summer, when Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, presented a motion to vacate the chair.

Entrenched in a fight with conservative lawmakers in his chamber who were plotting to have him tossed out as Speaker, today Boehner announced that he was quitting Congress altogether.

According to the New York Times, Speaker of the House John Boehner will resign from Congress at the end of October.

The embattled Republican told his fellow legislators on Friday that he would resign from both his speakership and his House seat.

A Republican aide says that Boehner believes “the first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution”.

“I can not hide my concern for the family, which is threatened perhaps as never before, from within and without”, he said at the end of his speech, delivered in slow, cautious English.

“The Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution”, the aide said in an email, asking not to be named. Republicans now plan to send President Barack Obama a measure to finance the government without defunding Planned Parenthood, he said. But he’s also invited Jerry Vanden Eyden, a childhood friend who went to Catholic school with Boehner and Teo Nowakowski, the mother of the late Paula T. Nowakowski, who was Boehner’s longtime chief of staff. As a young member in the 1990s, Boehner’s sole portrait in his office was of Nicholas Longworth, the last speaker from Ohio. Pope Francis called on Congress and the American people to remember the Golden Rule, and that simple guiding principle should be in our minds at all times.

An early favorite is House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican.

John Mica, a Florida Republican, after the meeting of House Republicans.