U.S House of Reps sacks Speaker McCarthy

United States House of Representatives, Tuesday afternoon, voted to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy from office amid a stalemate at the legislature over a looming shutdown of government following disagreement on budgetary allocations.

McCarthy, a majority Republican Party Representative from California, was ousted from office via a vote 216-210, with a handful of conservatives joining Democrats to remove him. Seven members were absent during the voting.

The removal of McCarthy is the first time in United States history that a speaker of the House will be voted out of office.

McCarthy, whose emergence as House Speaker was dogged by a stalemate among party members who had aligned to prevent him from taking the position after the Republican Party had claimed the majority seats at the House of Representatives during the mid-term elections.

McCarthy, however, narrowly scaled through after several rounds of voting among party members of the House.

Incidentally, the motion to commence a vote of no-confidence was moved by fellow Republican I the House, Rep. Matt Gaetz who forced a vote to try to oust McCarthy from the speakership position.

Eight Republicans joined with all Democrats in voting for a motion to vacate forcing McCarthy to relinquish his post, throwing the House into chaos.

Since there is no precedent for this it is not immediately clear what happens next in finding a new speaker for the House of Representatives.

However, it is believed the that the clerk of the House would announce that the chair of speaker is now vacant and the Speaker pro-tempore would immediately take the chair and preside over the House.

It would be recalled that far-right Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, last Monday moved to oust fellow Republican McCarthy as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, injecting an additional element of chaos into an already tumultuous Congress.

Gaetz, who has clashed with McCarthy for months, introduced a ‘motion to vacate’ that would force a vote to remove McCarthy as speaker.

Moments after his much-anticipated move on the House floor, Gaetz held an impromptu press conference in which he acknowledged that his effort might fail – at least on the first try.

“I think that’s the likely outcome,” Gaetz said. But in leaving open the prospect of repeated moves to get McCarthy fired, Gaetz predicted that support could grow and the initial vote on evicting McCarthy would be “the floor and not the ceiling.”

Asked who he would support as a replacement for McCarthy, Gaetz said: “I think very highly of Steve Scalise. I would vote for Steve Scalise” as well as many other Republicans.

Scalise currently serves as House Majority Leader, the No. 2 job in the chamber.

Republicans control the chamber by a narrow 221-212 majority, and it would take as few as five defections to threaten McCarthy’s hold on power, if all Democrats voted against him.

Gaetz and other far-right Republicans are angered that McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to pass a temporary funding extension on Saturday that headed off a partial government shutdown. A faction of about 20 Republicans, Gaetz included, had forced McCarthy’s hand by repeatedly blocking other legislation.

McCarthy has called Gaetz’s leadership challenge disruptive and has said he expects he will survive. “Bring it on,” he wrote on the X platform, formerly Twitter.

Gaetz was one of more than a dozen far-right Republicans who repeatedly voted against McCarthy’s bid for speaker in January. McCarthy ultimately secured the gavel after 15 rounds of voting.

As a condition of winning that January vote, McCarthy agreed to a rules change that allowed any one member to call for a vote to oust the speaker, setting the stage for Gaetz’s move.

No U.S. House speaker has been removed from the position that is second in line in succession for the presidency after the vice president.

Several House Democrats had late on Monday said they would await direction from party leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Democrats are also upset that the ousted speaker gave them little time to read the stopgap spending bill before Saturday’s vote, even though he needed their support.

They could demand that McCarthy honor his spending deal with Biden, drop the impeachment inquiry or hold votes on gun and immigration legislation.

Jeffries has not said so far if his caucus would join right-wing Republicans to help topple McCarthy or if Democrats might support him in exchange for political or legislative favors.

The White House has characterized Republicans as unreliable and extreme during the spending fight.

“What we’re seeing with House Republicans is pure chaos,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

The stopgap bill passed on Saturday did not include $6 billion in aid to Ukraine, which is backed by Democrats and many Senate Republicans but opposed by right-wing House Republicans like Gaetz.

It is unclear whether Congress will approve that money.

On the House floor, Gaetz earlier accused McCarthy of having a “secret side deal” with Democrats to approve Ukraine aid, even as McCarthy said there was no secret plan and the Biden administration needed to provide more detail on how that money would be spent.

“Our members have a lot of questions, especially on the accountability provisions of what we want to see with the money that gets sent,” he said.

The House and Senate have until November 17 to either pass spending legislation for the current fiscal year or pass another stopgap measure to avoid a shutdown.

An earlier vote was 218-208 against tabling the motion, with 11 Republicans allowing it to advance.

The House then opened an extraordinary floor debate, unseen in modern times, ahead of the next round of voting on what could be an motion to “vacate the chair,” something that has not happened in Congress in a century.

McCarthy, of California, insists he will not cut a deal with Democrats to remain in power, not that he could rely on their help even if he had asked.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a letter to colleagues that he wants to work with Republicans, but he was unwilling to provide the votes needed to save McCarthy.

“It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War,” Jeffries said, announcing the Democratic leadership would vote for the motion to oust the speaker.

As the House fell silent, Gaetz, a top ally of Donald Trump, rose to offer his motion. Gaetz is a leader of the hard-right Republicans who fought in January against McCarthy in his prolonged battle to gain the gavel.

“It’s a sad day,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said as debate got underway, urging his colleagues not to plunge the House Republican majority “into chaos.” But Gaetz shot back during the debate, “Chaos is Speaker McCarthy.”

McCarthy’s fate was deeply uncertain as the fiery debate unfolded, with much of the complaints against the speaker revolving around his truthfulness and his ability to keep the promises he has made since January to win the gavel.

But a long line of McCarthy supporters, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus, stood up for him: “I think he has kept his word.” And some did so passionately, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), waving his cell phone saying it was “disgusting” that hard-right colleagues were fundraising off the move in text messages seeking donations.

It would take the support of only a handful of Republicans from his slim majority to remove McCarthy as speaker if Democrats vote in favor alongside the conservative rebels.

At the Capitol, both Republicans and Democrats met privately ahead of what would be a historic afternoon vote.

Behind closed doors, McCarthy told fellow Republicans: Let’s get on with it.

“If I counted how many times someone wanted to knock me out, I would have been gone a long time ago,” McCarthy said at the Capitol after the morning meeting.

McCarthy insisted he had not reached across the aisle to the Democratic leader Jeffries for help with votes to stay in the job, nor had they demanded anything in return.