Congress
Meet the Republican who wants to be the next Jim Jordan
Rep. Brandon Gill, the youngest Republican in the House, has a role model he’s trying to emulate — and it’s not Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln.
It’s former champion wrestler, proto-MAGA stalwart and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan who the 31-year-old Texan is seeking to follow. Gill is consciously replicating the formula that made Jordan a household name among conservatives — landing seats on the combative Ohio Republican’s committees, Judiciary and Oversight, and quickly earning a similar reputation for bare-knuckle partisan brawling.
“I’d like to be as close to Jim Jordan as possible,” Gill said in a recent interview. “I’d love to sit in there and just watch him do his committee hearings and learn from him, and get his advice on things.”
Gill, in fact, might have learned from Jordan all too well: His latest crusade — pushing for impeachment of a federal judge who sought to block President Donald Trump’s deportation plans — has put him at odds with Jordan, who is allied with House GOP leaders in counseling a less aggressive approach to confronting the federal judiciary.
In essence, Gill is playing the role Jordan used to occupy earlier in his career — the rabble-rouser pushing party leaders to do more, political headaches be damned. And his explanations ring pretty familiar for anyone familiar with Jordan’s “follow-the-voters” rhetoric.
“Not everybody is where I am” on judicial impeachments, Gill said. “I’d like to push us in that direction because I think that’s what the American people want. Very, very clearly, that’s what Republican voters want.”
Gill, who has gathered the backing of more than 20 colleagues in his effort to impeach U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, said he’s dead-set on promoting a more “muscular conservatism,” much in the same way Jordan has urged Republicans to fight harder over his nearly two-decade congressional career.
Jordan, meanwhile, is now helping fellow Republican leaders keep GOP hard-liners at bay, floating judicial overhaul legislation as a less risky proposition than impeaching judges.
The impeachment campaign has failed to pick up steam among old-guard conservatives who see it as an ill-fated distraction — despite Trump publicly voicing support for using Congress to wipe the bench of judges he perceives as hostile.
“The likelihood that you’re going to impeach people for maladministration, as it’s called, is just low,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a former Oversight chair whose bill addressing national injunctions is poised to come for a vote on the House floor Wednesday. “And even if you did, should we be second-guessing the decisions of the [judiciary]? The answer is no.”
There’s no small irony in Jordan now occupying the role of elder statesman urging his younger colleagues to exercise prudence. The 61-year-old came to prominence on Capitol Hill as a thorn in the side of former Speaker John Boehner, who stepped down in the wake of pressure from hard-liners like Jordan, whom he called a “legislative terrorist.” Years later, Jordan sought the speaker’s gavel himself, losing after more moderate colleagues held out and denied him the nod in an internal GOP vote.
Gill said he doesn’t fault Jordan for pursuing a more restrained approach now in regard to judges, and he has so far refrained from trying to force a vote on his impeachment resolution on the House floor. “We’re all on the same team here,” he said.
Jordan, in an interview, praised Gill as “a sharp young man” with a strong work ethic and said Gill didn’t need his advice.
To be sure, Jordan remains a darling of the MAGA right. A co-founder and former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, he’s a frequent guest on conservative media, has Trump’s ear and controls a panel with jurisdiction over marquee issues like law enforcement, immigration and gun rights.
Now Gill is looking to fashion himself as someone who embodies Jordan’s rabble-rousing past with his current establishment clout. In addition to assignments on Judiciary and Oversight, Gill is also a member of the new Oversight subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency — a complementary effort to the Department of Government Efficiency initiative headed up by Elon Musk, with whom Jordan has a longstanding relationship.
Gill has even deeper ties to hard-right conservatism. A former Wall Street investment banker, he married the daughter of conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza in 2017. He has since ridden a far-right wave among young men into a conservative media career and then into Congress, where he says he continues to be motivated by growing up in a world where young conservatives like himself “were belittled and insulted for being a white male constantly.”
Much like his father-in-law — the activist behind a film promoting discredited conspiracies about election fraud that’s widely popular with the far right — Gill has sought online viral fame by embracing the offensive and outrageous. In one recent case, he suggested Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, should be deported to Somalia for advising people on how to engage with immigration enforcement.
“Brandon Gill’s claim to fame is peddling race-baiting conspiracy theories and pushing the big lie with the 2020 election to gain clout within the Republican Party,” Omar said in a statement. “He is nothing more than a xenophobic fame-chaser, nepo-baby that never had to work for anything in his life.”
Gill is used to making enemies. He described being radicalized toward conservatism while attending Dartmouth College, where his wife was allegedly excommunicated from her sorority house after the 2016 election for what she claims was her support for Trump.
“I’ve always been conservative, but the more you’re around rabid leftists, that’s what red-pills you,” Gill said.
Gill recalled that one of his first memories of meeting Jordan was on the set of his father-in-law’s movie “Police State,” a 2023 film alleging that the federal government weaponized its law enforcement. Jordan later campaigned for Gill in what at one point was an 11-person Congressional primary, arguing that the Texas Republican was needed in Washington to “protect conservative values from Washington elites.” Trump endorsed Gill in that primary, too.
Gill spoke effusively about Jordan in a recent interview, calling him “the best of the best” among House Republicans in terms of his performances at hearings and in the media. After the Oversight hearing last week with leaders of PBS and NPR, where Republicans threatened to withhold the media networks’ future government funding, Gill said he texted Jordan to pick his brain on how he prepared for the proceedings.
Gill and the other Republicans on the DOGE subcommittee later wrote to Johnson to demand that lawmakers defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the public entity that in turn funds NPR and PBS.
On public media, Gill is hardly out of step with top GOP leaders, who have also voiced support for zeroing out congressional support for the networks. But when it comes to picking fights with an anti-Trump judge — and in the eyes of his critics, potentially provoking a constitutional crisis — he said he’s more than willing to push boundaries.
“All of this boils down to a basic question of, are we going to allow the Republic to survive or not?” said Gill of his political motivations. “And if it’s going to survive, we’ve got to start being a lot more aggressive with how we play politics. The left plays to win. They play for keeps.”
The Senate Saturday confirmed Todd Blanche to be attorney general, following a weeks-long struggle with a handful of wary Republicans.
The Senate voted 50-49 to approve him, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining with Democrats in opposition.
Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s ouster in April. Questions about Blanche’s potential conflicts of interest from representing Trump, as well as his role in the creation of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of Trump’s settlement this spring with the IRS, created headwinds to his confirmation among a key group of Senate Republicans.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost re-election after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, helped Blanche clinch his 50th vote Friday. He said Blanche wasn’t perfect but that he wasn’t sure Trump would pick someone better to lead the Justice Department.
“The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”
Cassidy’s support came after Blanche had already spent weeks negotiating with Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who vetted his nomination as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cornyn struck an agreement with Blanche Sunday for the DOJ to curtail the payout fund and rein in a deal to exempt Trump from IRS audits.
Cassidy’s support came hours after Murkowski announced that she would oppose Blanche’s nomination, putting it on the brink of potential failure. Between unified opposition from Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence for health reasons, Blanche could only lose two Republicans and still be confirmed.
Hours before Friday’s vote, Murkowski told reporters she spoke with Blanche multiple times but that she was “good with where I am.” She said there was no “one” thing that motivated her decision.
“If there was one thing, we might be able to go back to the White House and say ‘Hey, can we work on this one thing,’” she said. “But for me it was a compilation.”
She added that she believed the anti-weaponization fund is “pretty dead” but “what is not so clear” are the audit immunity provisions of Trump’s IRS agreement, “which I just think are viewed by so many in this country as kind of a special and sweet deal for the president and his family.”
The Senate passed a bill Saturday to fund the government beyond the midterm elections, putting the onus back on the House to head off a shutdown looming Oct. 1.
The Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 90-6 vote, with Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina voting present. The bill would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Senate leaders sped up consideration of the legislation as part of an agreement reached Saturday morning to allow members to leave for August recess.
The House and Senate have now each passed different bills aimed at averting a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. The House bill would fund the government through Dec. 4.
The Senate legislation sets up a year-end standoff over the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. The bill would block the administration from finalizing that rule during the length of the stopgap — and lawmakers are already expecting a December brawl over the issue.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week that he’s going to “fight like hell” in December to ensure Congress doesn’t further obstruct the grant overhaul.
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resistant to the White House approach to grants. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will “continue to oppose” the Trump administration plans “because I think they politicize the grants process, and I don’t want that to occur.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Appropriations, said she too would “welcome the fight.”
The Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) intended to ensure that a ban on intoxicating hemp products kicks in come November, after Senate leaders at the White House’s urging included language in the funding bill to delay it.
The Senate bill includes language Democrats sought to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol don’t get any new funding under the patch. Republicans enacted $70 billion for those agencies along party lines earlier this year.
That prohibition could be contentious in the House.
Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said in an interview that the provision “could be a dealbreaker” and that he’s “not a fan” of the Senate version. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said Tuesday that he would say he’s undecided if GOP leadership whipped his vote on the Senate stopgap.
“I do not like the Senate language,” Van Drew said, noting the grant approval provision. “It’s one I would want to know what the president thinks.”
The White House issued a statement of administration policy in support of the Senate’s funding bill. No such memo was issued for the House bill, which did not include the funding increases and authorizations the White House requested.
“Every Member of Congress should support passage of this [continuing resolution] to keep the Government open as discussions on full year appropriations continue,” it reads.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, praised the Senate measure for including the grant and immigration enforcement language.
“This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution, but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills,” she said in a statement.
Mia McCarthy and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.
The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.
The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.
Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.
The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.
Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.
During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.
“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.
Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”
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