Friday will see a mid-morning teleconference with House Republicans as the drama over whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy will become speaker enters its fourth day.
McCarthy and other GOP leaders will participate in the conference call to go through the compromises the California Republican made with the 20 rebel legislators who have proposed a variety of candidates for the top House position, including former President Donald Trump.
McCarthy made a formal concession to the ‘Taliban 20’ late on Thursday, after the House adjourned for the day with McCarthy losing on the 11th vote.
According to Roll Call, it guaranteed floor votes on a balanced budget, term limits, and appropriations changes. It also reportedly reduced the number of members who could remove the speaker from the chamber from five to one.
A prior concessional also promised that a referendum on border law would take place.
McCarthy supporter and Pennsylvania Representative Brian Fitzpatrick referred to the written proposal as “phase one” of a two-part agreement.
He told Roll Call, “Tonight is phase one, and I anticipate the number [of holdouts] will be reduced, and we’re going to have different debates on other matters in the second.”
McCarthy had already consented to allow additional Freedom Caucus conservatives to participate on the committee that decides which measures go to the House floor.
The longest speakership race since 1895 ended with the House adjourning late on Thursday as voting continued for five rounds and McCarthy still fell short of a majority.
In contemporary US political history, no House Speaker vote has lasted this long, and it has given the new Republican majority in the chamber a difficult start.
The House of Representatives did not elect a leader until Nathaniel Prentice Banks, a previous House Speaker, after two months and 133 voting rounds in 1856.
McCarthy’s supporters failed to gain ground for the ailing GOP Leader in the eleventh round. Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of his rivals in the Republican Party, made the long-shot, primarily symbolic nomination of Donald Trump.
As anticipated, McCarthy’s name was once again put forth for nomination with Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Kevin, never Rep. Bob Good, a Republican, then took the stage to propose Kevin Hern, a McCarthy supporter who would now chair the Republican Study Committee.
McCarthy’s detractors have changed their approach after spending the most of Wednesday and Thursday supporting Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds for the gavel.
The coalition of 20 conservatives committed to McCarthy’s removal now looks divided about who they want to succeed him, indicating that House members may have a long night until a Speaker is selected by a majority vote.
Thursday’s session has been going on for more than six hours, and tempers are running hot.
Democrat Representative Steve Cohen’s claim that the former president “wanted to destroy our country” cut off Gaetz’s nomination of Trump.
By Wednesday night, there were fewer people in the room as worn-out members meandered about the House floor, but they still showed up when it was time to vote.
Hours were spent entering and exiting a Republican leadership office by McCarthy’s enemies and some of his friends as they feverishly tried to reach an agreement that would satisfy McCarthy’s critics on the far right.
When she first chose to bring Hern up for a vote, flamboyant Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert provided a shocking fourth nomination.
She said that behind closed doors, “threats were made” against members who refused to back McCarthy and declared that the speakership ambition of the leader “was not occurring.”
Boebert added, “We need to get to a point where we start analyzing what life looks like after Kevin McCarthy,” adding that she “liked” the heated discussion taking place in the Republican dressing room and around the US Capitol’s corridors.
She submitted the same candidacy in the tenth round, supported by firebrand Gaetz and newly elected Representative Josh Brecheen.
It follows McCarthy’s loss of the first three rounds on Thursday by margins comparable to those he experienced earlier in the week.
Gaetz, who like Hern is from Oklahoma, first supported Donald Trump in the first and second rounds of voting before switching to Hern in the third and fourth.
Boebert previously voted for Hern in the second round of the day and seventh overall without first nominating him.
When Hern was named as well, she first just emphasized her support for “Kevin,” twisting her dagger of criticism into the beleaguered GOP leader.
Because “we’re not going to get the votes” to support the black Florida Republican, Boebert told DailyMail.com that she had transferred her vote from Donalds to Hern.
According to Brecheen, who voted for Hern, “He is from Oklahoma, and he’s got a very solid track record on budgetary prudence.”
McCarthy’s total of “no” votes in the seventh round of voting earlier on Thursday soon surpassed the four-member barrier he can afford to lose, as the members of the same group of “Never Kevin” Republicans defeated his bid for the gavel.
The bulk of those dissidents supported Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds, as they did yesterday, while outspoken Congressman Matt Gaetz defied his group to support Donald Trump.
From a politician who had all but sworn off ever voting for McCarthy, it is solely symbolic action.
Gaetz dryly said, “Yes, that’s why I voted for him,” when asked by DailyMail.com whether he actually thought Trump was a suitable choice for the gavel.
That’s despite McCarthy reportedly agreeing to a number of concessions that would substantially increase the authority of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
Donalds wasn’t in the chamber when it was time to cast the first vote. Later, he came back to cast his own ballot.
Otherwise, the seventh round of voting proceeded essentially in the same manner as the others. Despite their verbal sparring over McCarthy in the days before the Speaker vote, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was seen sitting close to Gaetz.
Greene yet stuck with her decision to support the troubled House GOP Leader.
Hakeem Jeffries finally received support from all 212 Democrats in the first round of voting while McCarthy received 201 votes.
Donalds had the backing of 19 Republicans. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana repeated her Wednesday vote change from “McCarthy” to “present.”
Some legislators added humor to the usually dull proceedings.
Democratic Representative Jared Huffman continued a skit he started on Wednesday in which he voted for his party’s leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in imitation of the “Leeroy Jenkins” internet meme, which entails yelling the name loudly.
In voting for McCarthy, GOP Rep.-elect Mike Lawler proudly said that he was doing so from the area that is “home to Bill and Hillary Clinton.” The GOP leader laughed in response to the remark.
As the Republican struggle over who would head their slender majority overflows into a third day, House legislators groggily made their way back to the US Capitol.
McCarthy’s campaign for House Speaker was thwarted by conservative rebels known as the “Taliban 20,” according to one of his allies.
After a contentious vote on whether to call it a night, the House adjourned on Wednesday evening.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, the third-ranking member of the House Democrats, requested individual votes just before nine o’clock Friday night when the voice vote came up empty.
McCarthy would have likely lost extra rounds of voting if four Republicans had joined Democrats in seeking to prolong the session, but the move to adjourn was finally defeated 216 to 214.
McCarthy told reporters at the US Capitol the day before the vote: “I’m certain we will get a solution else we won’t be successful.”
Capitol Hill has been rendered immobile by the unprecedented impasse; without a Speaker, the 118th House of Representatives cannot be sworn in, and new legislation cannot be debated on the floor or passed via committees that do not yet have official chairmen.
And on Wednesday, a group of Republican former service members held a news conference to warn that the chaos was creating serious threats to national security. “Authoritarian regimes all over the globe are pointing to what’s going on in the House of Representatives and saying, “Look at the messiness of democracy, look at how it doesn’t work, it can’t operate,” Florida Representative Michael Waltz said from the stage.
A move to leave the chair, which would let one GOP member to call a vote for a new House Speaker, was reportedly one of the important new concessions that McCarthy reportedly made to his 20 critics.
In addition to the one-vote threshold for the move to leave the chair, McCarthy is said to have promised conservatives support on bills relating to border security and term limits.
Additionally, he allegedly consented to adding additional representatives from the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group, to the House Rules Committee. The influential group serves as a gatekeeper for any proposed legislation.
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