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 ...
