John Boehner announces resignation as Speaker
Speaker John Boehner has announced that he will step down from his position.
Boehner, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, announced his resignation on Friday morning.
The Speaker has been under pressure from an increasingly divided US Government, and has struggled to appease fractious and conservative Republican members.
Boehner became Speaker in 2011.
The 65-year-old had been challenged trying to find a solution to keep the Government open for the remainder of 2015.
Conservatives had piled on pressure, saying they would not vote for a bill to not defund Planned Parenthood.
Some had spoken of removing Boehner as Speaker.
Boehne, after Obama signed an executive order against anti-LGBT workplace discrimination, announced that he planned to file a lawsuit against the President for ‘abusing his authority’ by passing executive orders and circumventing Congress.
Despite the action, Obama dismissed the lawsuit as a “stunt”, and has since announced yet another executive order, banning transphobic workplace discrimination.
