Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the House Republican Leadership Battle.

With me to discuss the efforts by House Republicans to select a new speaker of the House,

and the consequences for U.S. foreign policy is Christopher Tuttle.

Chris is a senior fellow and director of the Renewing American initiative here at the

Council. Before his

current stint at CFR, Chris served as the policy director of the majority staff of the U.S.

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations under its chairman, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee.

Earlier in his career, Chris served as Chief of Staff

in Senior Policy Advisor to Representative Mark Green, a Republican member of the House from

Wisconsin. This episode is part of the Council on Foreign Relations, Diamondstein-Steen

Spielvogel Project on the future of democracy.

Chris, thank you for coming back on the president's inbox.

Absolutely, Jim.

Always good to be here.

Let me begin by acknowledging that the battle over who will be the next speaker of the

House is fluid.

As we are recording this episode, House Republicans are meeting to have a candidate

forum over who they will nominate to be Speaker, which is a constitutionally mandated

position that is number two in line to succeed the president. With that caveat out of the way,

I'd like to begin with how the House finds itself

...