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In the wake of the House of Representatives passing a Continuing Resolution maintaining current funding levels a group of Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have filed a motion to vacate against Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). This is a motion that, if passed, would remove McCarthy as Chair of the House of Representatives after only nine months on the job. The reporting I'm seeing on Twitter says Democrats are united in supporting the motion, which means only three Republicans would need to join Gaetz for the motion to pass. I believe this would also be the first time in US history the House will have removed a Speaker with a motion to vacate.
What happens after that is anyone's guess. In a literal sense we move back to where we were this January and do another election for Speaker. Presumably Democrats are going to nominate and vote for Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as they did then. It's not clear who on the Republican side would be a replacement for McCarthy. He still enjoys the support of a strong majority of Republicans, but the Republican majority is so small he needs basically everyone. His getting elected Speaker again would almost certainly need someone who voted to vacate to vote for him to Speaker. I'm skeptical there are promises McCarthy could make to the Republicans voting to oust him that could convince them to support him again. On the other hand I'm not aware of any consensus about who Republicans could be convinced to support except McCarthy. By far the funniest outcome, I think, would be the Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy abstaining in the Speaker vote, letting the Democrats elect Jeffries Speaker.
Vote on the motion is supposed to be held this morning though the House is currently debating other bills. You can watch the House Session on C-SPAN. Will update this post as the news develops.
ETA:
By a vote of 216-210-0 Kevin McCarthy becomes the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives removed by a motion to vacate.
Vote breakdown by party (based on the vote on the motion to table, C-SPAN roll call doesn't break down by party):
As expected McCarthy retains the support of the vast majority of his own Conference. I think the rule is the House can't do business without a Speaker so I imagine we go directly into elections for Speaker of the House now. Given the multiple days it took to elect McCarthy before I am not confident about any particular path forward from here.
ETA2:
Am hearing online that the Speaker pro tempore (selected by McCarthy when he became Speaker) may be able to function as Speaker indefinitely. They may not have to have an election for Speaker on any particular time table.
I can only see two plausible outcomes:
The Freedom Caucus have zero leverage here. The speaker needs to be acceptable to the median Representative, who (a) is a RINO and (b) will lose their seat if they become associated with the unpopular parts of the Freedom Caucus agenda.
I think there's a possibility for another 'oops Trump' where the left goes along with beclowining the Republicans by giving legitimacy to a Gaetz that he then uses down the line.
The D's support recalling McCarthy presumably because it seems like an easy win to make the Republicans look bad, cause self-inflicted chaos and ultimately not end up any worse. But the side cost is legitimizing a Gaetz win.
Gaetz doesn't have leverage now in getting a new speaker elected. But he did just successfully flex power. If the Dem's don't think Gaetz in the future is a problem, whatver, but by joining him in a recall vote, he makes himself more legitimate in future congresses with different make-up.
Gaetz as a power player? I think we both know the odds of that.
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Well, the bigger a future GOP majority, the less power Gaetz has. And even as the GOP slowly moves to the right in congress, there are still going to be many longstanding incumbents there years from now, many of whom will hate him for this play.
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This depends on the goal. Not to engage in too much typical minding of Freedom Caucus members, but if they think anything like me and their constituents are anything like me, my express goal is to humiliate McCarthy and make it difficult for the federal government to start doing anything that it isn't currently doing. There are many goals I have that would be more proactive, but if I can't have those, I could at least cause a lot of trouble. If you're someone that wants "extreme" positions like cutting the federal budget by 1%, the most you might be able to do is make it incredibly tedious and inconvenient for your enemies, who certainly include the RINO caucus.
Yeah, if Gaetz’s goal is to cause chaos and shut the government down- or if he’s the fall guy for chip Roy shutting the government down- it makes a lot of sense for him to do what he’s doing.
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There’s also the possibility that the republicans throw out a moderate but not RINO Republican and get the remaining blue doggers on board. Not likely, I know.
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I have sometimes wondered if this would function the other way. There are, like, 10 House Republicans who were elected in 2022 in districts Biden won in 2020. I wonder if there's some angle where a few of them could be convinced to vote Jeffries for Speaker. It would only take four!
In a sane world, voting for Jeffries for speaker would get them kicked out of the Republican Conference and lose them their committee assignments, so it would only make sense if they were planning to defect to the Dems (which might be a good idea if the DNCC can credibly promise that they won't face a serious primary challenge from the left). But I suppose the House Republican Conference have already demonstrated that they are living in Clown World.
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