Who Will Be the Next Speaker of the House?

Those differences will become more pronounced with new House leadership eager to take on President Barack Obama and their Senate counterparts, setting up high-profile fiscal showdowns over the debt limit and budget.

Republicans weigh in on the continuing fight over funding for Planned Parenthood and the possibility of a government shutdown. The Speaker convened a little-used body, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), and sought to intervene in court challenges to the statute in the First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits.

On Friday, an upbeat Boehner declared that he’d made a decision to spare the House, and himself, the chaos such a vote would bring. “But that’s my mission”, he said. “It’s up to him to figure out how big he wants to go and what kind of legacy he wants to leave”. Notice he said he’s going to stay a month.

Referring to his recent encyclical letter on the environment and humanity’s integral link to it, Francis said, “In Laudato Si’ [“Praise be to you”], I call for a courageous and responsible effort … to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity”.

So no shutdown for now.

Even bipartisan initiatives such as a highway bill will be stuck.

But it was Francis who, in his address to Congress, gave deeper meaning to why Boehner could no longer be the public servant he wanted to be with the no-compromise caucus over which he presided. Well, Mr. President: Only YOU can shut down the government! They also have been angry at the leadership for being willing to work with Democrats in the House and Senate and with the Obama administration to keep the government operating. But though he is also known as a strong conservative, his tactics were never confrontational enough to satisfy the most conservative faction.

Boehner’s announcement that he will resign at the end of October was unexpected, although it’s not hard to see why he would be ready to walk away.

A number of conservative lawmakers cheered the news. We need to stop governing by crisis. and start solving problems.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif. smiles after…

At a meeting of the Values Voters Summit in Washington where religious conservatives were gathered to hear from GOP presidential candidates, attendees and a few candidates alike erupted in extended applause and cheers at the news Boehner was stepping aside. You know, people look to Republicans, but we were doing our work. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked the crowd.

Boehner’s impending resignation has emboldened the right-wingers in the House, who have been harshly critical of the speaker for not making the defunding of Planned Parenthood the centerpiece of a must-pass bill to fund the federal government. Y’all come to town and somehow that changes.

McCarthy will have to be not just pretty good, but masterful if he is to succeed at managing a renegade group of GOP congressmen whose definition of “conservative” does not include him. In one respect, however, Boehner might well be remembered as the initiator of meaningful institutional change. And Jon Ralston discussed how the partisanship that defined Boehner’s term as Speaker has spread to state legislatures. “His preference was not to show division within his own party but, in this case, he doesn’t have much of an alternative”. In that, he followed the example of his Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, who was able to avoid emulating the overly centralized regimes of Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich, or the weak leadership of Tom Foley and Denny Hastert.

Coming on the heels of Ben Carson’s criticism of Muslims, Donald Trump’s repudiation of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and a presidential race where personal insults are flying, the sudden resignation of House Speaker John Boehner is creating an unease the party establishment has not experienced in years. He was ousted from his leadership role after the GOP’s disappointing performance in the 1998 midterms but eventually climbed back to the top.

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Deb Riechmann, Stephen Ohlemacher, Steve Peoples and Andrew Taylor contributed.