Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed, again, and again to secure election as Speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday as 20 members, including 18 election deniers, refused to support his candidacy. McCarthy also ran for Speaker in 2015 and his failure to secure victory after the first ballot is the first such failure in a century.

The “unsteadiness … circular firing squad [and] dysfunction” (as Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) described it to Politico) of the House Republican caucus augurs ill for stable governance.

House Republicans have vowed to attack the consideration of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing in the new Congress and whatever may happen at the federal level, state GOP officials are forging ahead. Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball threatened to divest state funds from 11 major financial firms including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock if they did sufficiently invest in fossil fuel companies. (Speaker election: Washington Post $; Future chaos: Washington Post $, Politico, E&E News, New York Times $; Election deniers: Washington Post $; ESG attacks: Inside Climate News; Kentucky: Reuters, Politico Pro $, The Hill)