Kevin McCarthy Becomes First Speaker Removed by US House Vote

Updated 1:48 October 3, 2023 at  PM PT

The House has voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, marking the first time in history that a speaker has been removed this way.

Congress has now entered uncharted territory. The vote has triggered a process where the Clerk of the House will refer to a list of people who can act as speaker pro tempore in the absence of speaker. That list is kept secret and will only be made public in the event that the speakership is vacant.

The House will then be forced to hold votes on a new speaker, though that could take time. Members will likely need to meet to discuss the path ahead. They are already preparing for a fraught process.

It took 15 rounds to elect McCarthy speaker in January, in part because there was no consensus alternative.

There is no clear alternative who could win the votes necessary to fill the job.

Republicans split into factions

McCarthy was defiant but resigned to the vote following a lengthy meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday morning.

“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.

By Tuesday afternoon, House members were testing that possibility as they prepared for an unprecedented vote on his leadership.

Democrats and Republicans huddled in corners and gathered in groups on the House floor ahead of the vote furiously trying to calculate whether or not McCarthy would survive the challenge. It would take a majority of the members present and voting to remove McCarthy, leaving both parties tabulating exactly how many members are present.

Counting members turned into an intense project as a group of McCarthy’s critics sat in the back corner of the House floor with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the member who set the revolt in motion. Across the room, McCarthy’s allies huddled with the speaker’s floor staff looking at notes and their phones.

McCarthy admitted that he may not have enough Republican votes to remain speaker, but he says he isn’t willing to offer any concessions to Democrats to help him say in power.

Democrats refuse to save McCarthy

That defiant tone helped unify Democrats against him, opting instead to let Republicans sort out their differences on their own.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said it is up to Republicans to “break with extremists.”

“We are ready, willing and able to work together with our Republican colleagues but it is on them to join us to move the Congress and the country forward,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol.

Jeffries also informed members that he and other party leaders will vote to remove McCarthy if and when a vote came to the House floor.

His comments followed a lengthy “open mic” meeting of House Democrats in the basement of the Capitol complex Tuesday. One by one lawmakers got up and had one minute to advise on what they thought the caucus should do and one by one Democrats railed on Speaker McCarthy’s record and his unwillingness to reach across the aisle.

“I think Kevin McCarthy is among the most unprincipled, untrustworthy people I ever have encountered in the entirety of my life, and I think he does damage to this institution and our democracy,” Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat, told reporters.

She pointed out that McCarthy did a television interview on Tuesday saying he didn’t need any help from Democrats so she didn’t see any reason to help him survive.

Multiple Democrats told NPR neither the speaker, nor his allies, have approached Democratic leaders with any proposal to support him.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said McCarthy’s decision to change the rules on who can propose a resolution to remove the speaker, allowing just one member to do it, “essentially puts the fringe in charge of the House of Representatives in terms of rulemaking.” Neal said he had a “Machiavellian position” about that decision in January: “Once you seal the deal, you have to take the consequences.”

This story will be updated.

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