US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership position in a historic vote on Tuesday, October 3 after a revolt by far right members of the Republican party for collaborating with Democrats to pass funding to avert a government shutdown.
In the Tuesday vote,- 216-210, eight Republicans joined all the Democrats to vote to remove McCarthy. It’s the first time a House speaker has been removed in a no-confidence vote.
“The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” said Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, who was presiding over the chamber.
Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a top ally of McCarthy’s and a member of the Financial Services Committee, was then appointed speaker pro tempore. 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.
McCarthy can be renominated and reelected as speaker, but that path seems unlikely unless he makes concessions to the hardline Republicans or forges a coalition with Democrats.
“The reason Kevin McCarthy went down today is because nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told reporters after the vote.
“Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes of people who maybe don’t even ideologically agree with me on everything.”
“This represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid and that’s what we need to do to get back on track,” the Florida Republican added.
Along with Gaetz, seven Republican members voted to oust McCarthy: 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 and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
A day earlier, Gaetz accused McCarthy of making a “secret side deal” with President Biden on Ukraine aid to get a short-term funding bill passed hours before the government was set to shutdown. The California Republican denied having made any deal in exchange for voted from the Democrats.
The speaker of the House is not only the leader of the chamber but also second in line for the presidency. Removinga sitting speaker by vote in the middle of a congressional term is unprecedented in American history.
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