By Charlie Mahtesian

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) arrives to speak with reporters after he was nominated by House Republicans to be Speaker of the House today. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

SOUTHERN MAN — Republicans finally have a nominee for House Speaker: Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). He won a secret-ballot GOP vote today over Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), though that doesn’t necessarily guarantee him the gavel. Scalise must still win a House floor vote that’s far from a lock because of the fractured nature of his party and its thin margin of control.

As Nightly went to press, it was unclear when the nomination would move to the House floor for a vote.

If Scalise does become the next Speaker, it will mark an important moment — he’ll be the first Southerner to lead the House in decades. In the last 30 years, essentially the modern era of competitive House politics, just one Southern lawmaker has served as Speaker — Georgia’s Newt Gingrich, for a brief and stormy two terms in the mid-1990s.

Lawmakers from California, Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin have held the speakership but the South has been shut out, despite the role it plays as the center of gravity for the Republican Party and its status as the nation’s most populous region.

Senate Republicans have adjusted to and recognized the new role the South plays both in the party and in the national balance of power — think Trent Lott, Bill Frist and Mitch McConnell. But the House has been a curious holdout, failing to reflect the fact that the South is where the bulk of the GOP House majority is located, and is home to two of the three largest delegations in the House.

Unlike the Pennsylvania-born Gingrich, who moved to suburban Atlanta as an adult, Scalise is a true son of the South. He represents a suburban district not far from where he was born in New Orleans. While his conservative politics better explain his rise than his Southern background, Scalise’s red-state roots have undoubtedly been an asset.

Back in 2014, when he sought the third-ranking House Republican leadership position, Scalise leaned on a regionally-oriented argument to win the post. In 2018, amid the jockeying to succeed then-Speaker Paul Ryan, an Oklahoma Republican lawmaker said publicly what a number of his GOP colleagues were thinking. “You have a lot of the Southern states who are looking to shift leadership back to that part of the country.”

Read more about the still-unfolding election for House Speaker from our POLITICO colleagues:

Scalise wins Round 1. What’s next?: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has won the GOP’s nod to become the next speaker, completing a decade-long climb up the ranks of Republican leadership. But it remains unclear whether he can muster the votes needed to win the speakership on the floor, given the Republicans’ tiny margin of control and the deep rifts in the GOP conference.

Scalise’s moment of unity on pause: After Steve Scalise clinched House Republicans’ nod for speaker today, he did not deliver a victory speech. He didn’t hold a news conference for cable TV, and champagne was not delivered to his leadership suite. Instead, within hours, some House Republicans openly doubted that Scalise could ever get elected on the floor. The House GOP’s hoped-for moment of unity never materialized. Scalise secured just 50.7 percent of the conference’s support, an illustration — as if one were ever needed — of how divided House Republicans remain after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last week.

Jordan throws his support to Scalise: After losing the House GOP’s speakership nod, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) vowed to support Scalise on the floor and encourage his supporters to do the same, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. Jordan’s pledge to help Scalise — which included an offer to deliver a nominating speech on his behalf — comes as multiple House Republicans who didn’t support Scalise initially have suggested they will continue to oppose him on the House floor.

Scalise’s rise kickstarts battles for other top House GOP posts: Steve Scalise’s nomination for speaker is starting a scramble among other top House Republicans to fill the job of majority leader, which will come open should he keep rising. Scalise still needs to secure the requisite majority vote on the House floor, but colleagues looking to fill his former No. 2 spot in GOP leadership aren’t wasting time. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) announced today that he’ll run for majority leader, setting up a contest with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the current majority whip.

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— Supreme Court likely to side with South Carolina GOP in racial gerrymandering case: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared likely today to uphold a Republican-drawn congressional district in South Carolina that a lower court found was racially gerrymandered. The case — Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP — tests the legal limits of partisan gerrymandering when it intersects with race. The NAACP is accusing Republican lawmakers of drawing the state’s 1st District, represented by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, by shuffling Black voters in and out of the district to make it reliably Republican. But the GOP insists it ignored race and only considered partisanship when it drew a district that was more favorable to Republican candidates.

— Conservatives target Ohio to end their losing streak on abortion votes: Anti-abortion groups are banking on Ohio to end the movement’s run of state-level losses and create a blueprint for battles in 2024 and beyond. In four weeks, voters in the Buckeye State will decide whether to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution or be the first to reject an abortion-rights measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Ohio has the only state referendum on abortion this year, meaning national anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life can focus their resources. Ohio conservatives also had more time to plan and fundraise than their counterparts in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Montana last year.

— U.S. politicians escalate rhetoric against Hamas: As Washington sends military support and plots more assistance for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks, U.S. lawmakers are escalating their rhetoric to call for extreme actions to “eliminate,” “eradicate” and “level” the militant group — no matter what it takes. “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News Tuesday night. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said on Fox News this morning: “This is sick, and we have to treat sick people the way they deserve to be treated and eliminate them.” Such statements backed by powerful people from Israel’s most powerful ally raise concerns for civilians in the region: Israeli airstrikes demolished entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip today, with upwards of 1,000 Palestinians killed.

THE AGE QUESTION — The most pressing political challenge confronting President Joe Biden as he drifts uncontested toward renomination is that which he can do the least about: voters’ profound misgivings about his age and fitness to serve another full term, writes POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin.

Yet what’s striking, and to his allies increasingly unnerving, is Biden’s unwillingness even to try to fully address questions about his capacity to run for reelection next year, when he’ll turn 82.

Biden takes an exacting interest in the mechanics of his nascent campaign, insisting on approving advertisements and interviewing would-be staffers. He is, however, less willing to be handled, which makes it difficult for his advisers to raise such a sensitive matter.

Biden has conducted little polling on how to reassure voters about his age, complains bitterly about his intra-party critics who raise the issue in public and is unwilling to consider hearing aids, according to Democrats close to him.

Rep. Hillary Scholten, who represents a historically Republican slice of Western Michigan, said Biden could be helped by an intraparty challenge because he’d be able to demonstrate his fitness. “Only positive things could come from an open and competitive primary in the presidential election,” said Scholten, who wants Biden to run again. “It is a detriment to all of us if we are ignoring the concerns of the public around the president’s image.”

U.S. forces patrol in the town of Tel Maaruf in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province, on Dec. 15, 2022. | Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images

NEW RISKS — The Pentagon is concerned about the potential for new attacks on American troops stationed in the Middle East from Iran and its proxy forces as the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants escalates in an already tumultuous region, according to Defense Department officials, writes Lara Seligman.

DOD officials are specifically worried that Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Syria, or Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf, could take advantage of the instability in the region to attack American or partner forces operating in those two countries — as they have done in the past, two DOD officials said.

“That presents an opportunity,” said one of the officials, who like others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive operations matters.

U.S. military forces in the Middle East are “aware of malign actors who may seek to capitalize on conflicts and instability in the region,” said Maj. Geoffrey Carmichael, the spokesperson for the American military operation to counter ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

“We will not let nefarious actors pull us into engagements that detract from our mission,” Carmichael said. He did not mention Iran by name, but said: “Make no mistake, we reserve our inherent right to self-defense whenever faced with threats that place our forces in harm’s way.”

The U.S. military has stationed roughly 900 troops in Syria since the Trump administration, focused on countering ISIS terrorists with the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the Syrian Kurdish militia. And while the U.S. ended its combat mission in Iraq in 2021, about 2,500 U.S. troops remain in the country advising the Iraqi military. Iranian proxy groups have periodically attacked U.S. troops in both countries over the years, including in March.

THE INFORMATION BLENDER — Seemingly from the first moments that members of Hamas began their attacks over the weekend, the internet erupted into a state of informational chaos, writes Ben Schreckinger.

Different posts and platforms offered competing versions of what was happening on the ground. Horrific images and videos proliferated. Seemingly authoritative sources disagreed about what happened and who was responsible. The CEO of one Israeli social media monitoring company told POLITICO’s Joseph Gedeon that the conflict has generated three to four times more online disinformation than any other event his firm has encountered.

Much of that content is proliferating on Elon Musk’s X, formerly called Twitter, which has loosened content restrictions and cut resources used to police the platform since the mogul took it over last year. On Monday, the Information reported that the company had recently stopped using software it previously employed to track coordinated information campaigns being conducted on its platform.

Former employees panned the platform’s performance. “X has failed miserably at the basic job Twitter used to excel at — keeping people informed,” the platform’s former vice president for global communications, Brandon Borrman said. “If they were looking to build the world’s most efficient market for misinformation, it seems they succeeded.”

But the confusion of the past few days goes far beyond Twitter, and offers a glimpse of something bigger, and perhaps more unsettling, about how the most momentous and contentious global political events could play out from now on.

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THE CONFIDENT MAN RANCH — About 90 miles north of Denver, there’s a ranch called Sylvan Dale that’s become colloquially known as the “confident man ranch.” Over 3,000 acres and home to retreats for mostly older men who are interested in reconnecting with their masculinity, the ranch housed men who mostly had success in their careers and then felt adrift. And it’s not a cheap retreat — it runs attendees $3,600. But as the spate of male-focused retreats popping up around the United States suggests, people are willing to pay. For GQ Magazine, Rosecrans Baldwin participated in a retreat on the Confident Man Ranch and came back with a story about modern American masculinity.

On this date in 1984: Then-Vice President George Bush makes a point during a vice presidential debate with Rep. Geraldine Ferraro in Philadelphia. | AP Photo

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