In a historic vote Tuesday night, 55th Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, was removed from his leadership position in a vote of no-confidence. This is the first time in U.S. history that this happened, and the last time someone even tried to the fire house-speaker was over 100 years ago.
The whole ordeal was initiated by a far-right-flank (the most conservative members of the majority, the Republicans) revolt over McCarthy’s dependence on the Democrats to agree on funding that would avoid a government shutdown.
The day prior, the speaker crossed a line he really didn’t want to cross by going around his right-flank to the minority party (the democrats) to get the votes he needed to keep the government from shutting down. He tried to play both sides by giving the democrats a 71-page bill that outlined the deal and then immediately calling for a vote on that document – attempting to get away with a more favorable deal by not giving them proper time to look over it.
However, as per the rules, when a party leader wants to speak, they are allowed to speak for however long they desire. So, the democratic leader stepped up to the podium and spoke for 52 minutes – giving his party time to look through the bill. With this time, they caught McCarthy’s sneak attack which would allow for congressional pay raises. That piece was taken out and the bill was finally put to a vote, where it passed.
“The speaker of the house just enraged the one group he’s been trying to play nice with [the far-right republicans] all year and now they’re going to come for him,” says Rep. Jeff Jackson of North Carolina.
At this point, McCarthy has enraged both democrats and republicans and has few allies on his side. Rep. Jackson comments, the right-flank was “beyond furious… Whatever comes after fury, that’s what they were.”
Right after the bill passed, one of the leaders of the right-flank, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, marched right up to a microphone and asked to speak to the chamber. This was the moment where most of the representatives expected Gaetz to call for the speaker’s removal.
But the congressman who was presiding over the chamber, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina – who is an ally of the speaker – brought his gavel down and said, ‘We’re adjourned.’ – buying the speaker time where he could turn to the democrats for help or try to make amends with his right flank.
Some members of the minority were expecting him to reach out and say “Hey, let’s make a deal,” but instead, he went on TV and said, “Here is an offer for the minority party: Nothing.” So, the minority party heard that and basically said, “Ok, best of luck.”
A day later, Rep. Gaetz finally did call for a removal vote which ended with 216 voting to remove and 210 voting to keep the house-speaker. Every single democrat voted for McCarthy’s removal and every single republican, except for eight who joined the democrats, voted against the removal.
Those eight were Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana, and of course, Gaetz.
Rep. Jeff Jackson recalls the events after the removal, saying, “Then a congressmen walked up to the podium and told us he was now the acting speaker, which was a surprise to us… So, this person stood up and basically said we would be in recess until further notice and then he brought down the gavel as hard as he possibly could. He just smashed the heck out of it because he’s good friends with the former speaker and he was really upset.”
He continued, “nobody cheered, and nobody booed. We all just sat there in silence for a moment. This has never happened before, ever.”
Rep. McHenry was the congressman appointed speaker pro tempore which he will remain as until a new speaker of the house can be voted on. McHenry was chosen from a list submitted by McCarthy to the clerk of the house in January which is a formality rule of the 118th congress “in the case of a vacancy in the office of speaker, the next member” named from the list will take over.
Many believe that the former Speaker had it coming, with republican Rep. Gaetz of Florida saying that he has “made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes…this represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid and that’s what we need to do to get back on track.”
