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Mr. Biggs, who also eventually softened his opposition to Mr. McCarthy’s speakership bid enough to vote “present,” was involved in a range of organizational efforts in 2020, including meetings aimed at attracting protesters to Washington on Jan. 6, according to the House Jan. 6 committee. WASHINGTON — They helped lead the efforts to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. They spread lies that helped ignite a mob of Trump supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Early leadership posts
McCarthy's departure had long been anticipated since his ouster, although his decision to leave before the end of the term will create fresh headaches for his party. Republicans have struggled to pass GOP appropriations bills this fall, and their slimmer majority next year could make it more difficult to pass GOP messaging bills or an impeachment resolution in a key election year. “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. Almost alone, Gaetz led his side of the floor debate, criticizing the debt deal McCarthy made with President Joe Biden and the vote to prevent a government shutdown, which conservatives opposed as they demanded steeper spending cuts. McCarthy told lawmakers in the evening he would not run again for speaker, putting the gavel up for grabs. Next steps are highly uncertain with no obvious successor to lead the House Republican majority.
Democrats and durability
The fact that Trump's endorsement of McCarthy — which he reiterated on Wednesday — did not shift significant support from those members suggested the former president's influence over them is waning. After McCarthy failed to secure the speakership in a 14th round of voting late Friday night, the House quashed a motion to adjourn until Monday and instead opted to continue voting in a 15th — and ultimately final — round of balloting. Jeffries now leads the minority party in the House, succeeding California's Nancy Pelosi, who served as speaker in the prior session of Congress when Democrats held the majority.
In the shadow of the attack on the U.S. Capitol
Garcia was officially sworn into office early Saturday morning alongside other House members. It is presently unclear when the ceremonial swearing in, at which Garcia will use the comic, will take place. "We actually interacted more this week than we have in the last four years. And if anything, that relationship-building is where it was at." Yet that style has appeared uniquely ill-suited to the challenge Mr. McCarthy faces of corralling a restive group of ideologically driven House Republicans that is obsessed with legislative details and skilled at procedural disruption. Not every Republican involved in blocking Mr. McCarthy’s ascension was among those who voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.
Speakers by time in office
Typically, top leaders would be next in line for the job, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise is battling cancer and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, like any potential candidate, may have trouble securing the vote. 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’s the end of the political line for McCarthy, who has said repeatedly that he never gives up, but found himself with almost no options remaining. Neither the right-flank Republicans who engineered his ouster nor the Democrats who piled on seem open to negotiating. All McCarthy managed to prove in his clumsy reach for power was a bottomless capacity to get pushed around and capitulate to extortion.
January 7, 2023 updates on Speaker Kevin McCarthy
And feelings of boredom, desperation and annoyance seemed increasingly evident on Thursday. In the 15th ballot which started in the waning minutes of January 6 and finished well after midnight, all of the remaining anti-McCarthy voters switched their choice to a “present” vote. He remains close to the many lawmakers he recruited and helped get in office and keeps in touch with a nationwide donor network built during years as one of the GOP’s top congressional strategists. "If this motion carries, the House will be paralyzed," McClintock said in remarks on the House floor. "We can expect week after week of fruitless ballots while no other business can be conducted."
Fresh headaches for the GOP
The rules of the 118th Congress state that "in the case of a vacancy in the office of speaker, the next member" named on a list submitted by McCarthy to the clerk of the House in January will become speaker pro tempore until a speaker is elected. A House reading clerk announced immediately after the vote that Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina was the first name on McCarthy's list and therefore was appointed speaker pro tempore. Washington — The House on Tuesday voted 216 to 210 to remove California Republican Kevin McCarthy from his position as House speaker, a historic move that comes days after he reached an 11th-hour deal to avert a government shutdown with the help of House Democrats. Members told reporters that they expect to hold a candidate forum next Tuesday ahead of votes on a speaker, possibly as early as Wednesday. Many of the House Republicans who spurred on gridlock of the speaker elections this week were supportive of Trump's effort to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"If you throw a speaker out that has 99 percent of their conference, that kept government open and paid the troops, I think we're in a really bad place," McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol Tuesday morning. Now that a House speaker has been selected following a days-long stalemate and members have finally been sworn in, the chamber can look toward picking back up business and organizing GOP-led committees. Other hard-right holdouts who for days have refused to vote for Mr. McCarthy were Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Harris of Maryland.
Not since the disputed election of 1923 has a candidate for House speaker faced the public scrutiny of convening a new session of Congress only to have it descend into chaos, with one vote after another until a new speaker is chosen. In his quest to be House speaker, Kevin McCarthy is charging straight into history — potentially becoming the first nominee in 100 years unable to win the job on a first-round floor vote. In California, Friday is the last day for candidates to file paperwork to enter the 2024 elections. If the vacancy occurs before the end of that period, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom would be required to call a special election to fill McCarthy’s seat. McCarthy emerged from the fight weakened, especially considering Republicans held only a fragile margin in the chamber after a predicted “red wave” failed to materialize in the 2022 elections.
McCarthy made a series of concessions to his critics in order to sufficiently mollify them and avoid a political deadlock. Gaetz, perhaps McCarthy’s most virulent critic in the House GOP, said in a floor speech earlier Friday that even if the California Republican won, his powers would be more similar to the speaker in the British House of Commons than the American House of Representatives. In other words, McCarthy would be more of a constitutional figurehead than a powerful party leader. Since Tuesday, the California Republican had faced an ongoing rebellion from hard-right members of his party who did not trust him to sufficiently adhere to conservative doctrine if given power.
At the Capitol, both Republicans and Democrats met privately ahead of the historic afternoon vote. The House then opened a floor debate unseen in modern times, and Republicans argued publicly among themselves for more than an hour. A new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, want to upend business as usual in Washington and are committed to stopping McCarthy’s rise without concessions to their priorities. Republican Party holdouts repeatedly put forward the name of Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, ensuring continuation of the stalemate that increasingly carried undercurrents of race and politics. The rebels also won concessions on limiting spending as well as a commitment by an outside super PAC affiliated with McCarthy, the Congressional Leadership Fund, not to spend in open Republican primaries in safe seats. Charlie Brown never kicked the football, Ralph Bellamy never got the girl, but early Saturday morning, Kevin McCarthy finally became speaker.
Republicans announced that they would wait until Monday to consider a package of rules for the chamber, which is expected to enshrine many of the compromises Mr. McCarthy made to win his post. Mr. Gaetz refused to budge, and Mr. McCarthy’s allies moved to adjourn the House until Monday, crestfallen after a defeat they had not anticipated. Republicans quickly switched their votes to oppose the adjournment and proceeded to a 15th speaker vote, which ended well after midnight.
McCarthy blames ouster on lawmaker who wanted to stop ethics complaint that he 'slept with a 17-year-old' - Fox News
McCarthy blames ouster on lawmaker who wanted to stop ethics complaint that he 'slept with a 17-year-old'.
Posted: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
About two-thirds of that money was for Ukraine, an issue Greene had called her "red line" for moving against the speaker. The opposition to McCarthy has prompted a counteroffensive from other House GOP groups, which are becoming more vocal in their support for him — and more concerned about the fallout if the new Congress opens with an internal party fight. Even if McCarthy gives in to the demands of his party’s right flank, it’s not clear whether the faction will drop its opposition to his leadership. Freedom Caucus members and others want assurances that they can help draft legislation and amend bills during floor debates. And they want enforcement of the rule that requires bills to be presented for review 72 hours before a vote.
With Republican lawmakers growing irritable after days of fruitless voting, a heated argument broke out between several of them. But Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, a McCarthy ally who is in line to become the next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, took it to another level when he stepped toward Mr. Gaetz and had to be restrained. Those compromises delivered a breakthrough for Mr. McCarthy, who in votes on Friday afternoon won support from a sizable chunk of the Republicans who had consistently refused to back him — though he remained short of the majority to win. Mr. McCarthy agreed to allow a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that he had previously refused to accept, regarding it as tantamount to signing the death warrant for his speakership in advance. With Mr. McCarthy elected, he immediately turned to swearing in the 434 members of the House to officially seat the 118th Congress.
Those changes would shrink the power of the speaker’s office and give rank-and-file lawmakers more influence in drafting legislation. Eight Republican lawmakers joined 208 Democrats in toppling the former Bakersfield congressman, the first time in history a House leader has been voted out. His victory followed days of negotiating with the far-right members of the House Republican conference, and in order to win their backing, McCarthy agreed to a number of their demands. Chief among them was lowering the threshold for the motion to vacate, which allowed a single member to call for a vote to remove the speaker. Ahead of the vote, there was speculation that Democrats might step in to save McCarthy's speakership by voting "present" rather than in favor of the motion to vacate. But McCarthy said he was not willing to offer any concessions to Democrats to help him stay in power.
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