If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like.
– Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University.
Welp.
The House of Representatives in the 118th United States Congress has no speaker— a first in the history of Congress.
(Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina has been named interim speaker under a law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, in the event of a vacancy in the office. There is no defined timeframe for finding a new speaker. And the interim speaker can only do basic housekeeping functions, and not bring legislation to the floor, for example).
