WASHINGTON >> Refusing to give up, Rep. Jim Jordan told GOP colleagues Thursday he was still running for the House gavel — leaving Republicans few viable options after his hardline backers resisted a plan to expand the temporary speaker’s powers to re-open the House.

The combative Jordan delivered the message at a fiery closed-door meeting at the Capitol as the Republican majority considered an extraordinary plan to give the interim speaker pro tempore more powers for the next several months to bring the House back into session and conduct crucial business, according to Republicans familiar with the private meeting who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.

But neither seemed immediately workable. GOP moderates who have twice rejected Jordan are unwilling to support him now, especially after some report harassing pressures and even death threats from his supporters. At the same time, Jordan’s hard-right allies are refusing to allow a temporary speaker to gain more power.

The stalemate risks keeping the House shut down for the foreseeable future after the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker,

“I’m still running for speaker and I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race,” said Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman and founder of the hardline House Freedom Caucus.

Thursday’s meeting grew heated at times with Republican factions blaming one another for sending their majority into chaos, lawmakers said.

When Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a chief architect of the ouster of the speaker two weeks ago, rose to speak, McCarthy told him it was not his turn.

With Jordan refusing to concede and his detractors rejecting installing McHenry as a temporary speaker, there are few options left to put the House back to normal.

The House convened briefly Thursday, but no action was taken, the schedule ahead uncertain.

There is a realization that the House could remain endlessly stuck, out of service and without a leader for the foreseeable future as the Republican majority spirals deeper into dysfunction.

Elevating McHenry to an expanded speaker’s role would not be as politically simple as it might seem. The hard-right Republican lawmakers including some who ousted McCarthy, don’t like the idea.

While Democrats have suggested the arrangement, Republicans are loathe to partner with the Democrats in a bipartisan way. And it’s highly unlikely Republicans could agree give Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry more powers on their own, even though they have majority control of the House.

“It’s a bad precedent and I don’t support it,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., the Freedom Caucus chairman.