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On Wednesday, Republicans nominated Rep. Steve Scalise to be the next House Speaker after the historic ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the position.

In a narrow margin, House Republicans pushed aside Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the firebrand Judiciary Committee chairman, after private balloting at the Capitol. Instead, they voted in favor of Scalise, the current majority leader. The Louisiana congressman is currently battling blood cancer; and is seen as a hero after surviving a shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. Scalise said: “We have a lot of work to do … We need to make sure we’re sending a message to people all throughout the world, that the House is open to doing the people’s business.”

Republicans will now attempt to quickly unite their deeply divided majority and elect the conservative in a public floor vote. A floor vote of the whole House was expected, but with tension still running high among Republicans after McCarthy’s stunning removal last week, the House broke indefinitely, with next steps uncertain. It is also uncertain whether lawmakers who supported Jordan, the hard-liner backed by Donald Trump, will throw their support behind Scalise. Democrats are set to oppose the Republican nominee, and plan to nominate their leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Jordan said little after the vote, only that the GOP majority “is divided,” but gave Scalise a nominating speech on the floor in a show of support Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a centrist leader, said, “We do need to get a speaker in place so we can govern. What we should have heard today after the vote count was, ‘I will heartily support Steve. Let’s get behind him.’ We did not hear that.”

In a floor vote, Scalise would need to amass votes from almost all Republicans to overcome opposition from the Democrats. The majority needed would be 218 votes, but there are currently two vacant seats, dropping the threshold to 217.

Currently, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was named as the speaker pro-tempore, is effectively in charge. However, he has shown little interest in extending his role as interim leader.

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Authorities announced Wednesday that former NFL player Sergio Brown was arrested in San Diego and faces first-degree murder charges in connection with the September death of his mother. According to a news release from the police department, San Diego Police Department and other local and federal agencies took Brown into custody Tuesday when he was entering the United States from Mexico. Brown, 35, was booked at about 4 p.m. local time Tuesday and is being held without bail. He is awaiting extradition to Illinois to face first-degree murder charges.

The news comes three-and-a-half weeks after family members reported Brown and his mother Myrtle Brown missing on Sept. 16. They were unable to locate Brown and a had a warrant issued for his arrest. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said that Myrtle’s death is being investigated as a homicide, and that she died as a result of “multiple injuries due to assault.”

Disturbing social media videos from Brown began to surface days after his mother’s death. A video appearing to be Brown was posted on an Instagram account, and while Brown didn’t refer to his mother’s death directly in the video, he claimed that the FBI paid him an “unwarranted” visit on “Bob Marley’s death day.” He also claimed the Maywood Police Department “kidnapped” him on two occasions. In the since-deleted video, he also said he thought Myrtle was “on vacation,” and that “it had to be the FBI or Maywood PD,” without explicitly stating what “it” referred to. Two days later, he appeared in another video on the same Instagram account, singing a Drake song and making references to dying.

Brown played in the NFL for six seasons, signing with the New England Patriots in 2010 and retiring following the 2016 season, during which he played for the Bills.

Editorial credit: Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock.com