House Speaker Vote: McCarthy Wins Speakership on 15th Vote The New York Times

Table Of Content

• City of Los Angeles
• Mike Johnson is now House speaker. Here’s the latest.
• Kevin McCarthy gives cheeky answer for his newest government gig
• ‘Shameful’ effort to oust Speaker Johnson would ‘weaken’ the party, says GOP Rep. Bacon
• Homeless encampments are on the ballot in Arizona. Could California, other states follow?
• House to send articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the Senate

The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the suit, but not before Mr. Johnson persuaded more than 60 percent of House Republicans to sign onto the effort. He did so by telling them that the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was “anxiously awaiting” to see who in Congress would defend him. Mr. Johnson immediately faces a host of challenges that dogged his predecessor, Mr. McCarthy. He is confronting a mid-November deadline to pass a measure to fund the government to avert a shutdown. And he will need to lead a conference deeply divided over foreign policy as Congress considers the Biden administration’s $105 billion funding request for Israel, Ukraine and the southern border.

City of Los Angeles

Once he had Boehner's job, however, he experienced much the same internal strife. Ryan also had a strained relationship with then-President Donald Trump, with whom he had a falling out during the fall 2016 campaign. In April 2018, Ryan said he would not serve another term and left as the party was losing its majority that fall. While Republicans are celebrating finally electing a speaker, across the Capitol, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, chimes in with a reminder of the impending mid-November government shutdown looming unless Congress can pass legislation to keep it funded.

Mike Johnson is now House speaker. Here’s the latest.

Typically, each party votes for one nominee, and the party with the most seats gets to choose the speaker. In a foretelling of things to come, 25 Republicans voted for someone other than Boehner earlier this year. Nearly all the Democrats voted for Nancy Pelosi of California, who was speaker before Boehner. Some on the right opposed to Mr. Emmer cited his vote in favor of codifying federal protections for same-sex couples. Others railed against Mr. Emmer’s vote in favor of a stopgap spending bill put forward by Mr. McCarthy, the speaker at the time, to avert a government shutdown. Still others said he was insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump, because he voted to certify the results of the 2020 election won by President Biden.

Kevin McCarthy gives cheeky answer for his newest government gig

The Republicans retained their majorities in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections. In this week’s leadership vote, McCarthy received 188 votes from 219 returning Republican representatives, newly-elected members and candidates in uncalled races, overcoming a symbolic challenge from Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. The deciding vote in January is typically a party-line vote, so no Democrats are expected to back McCarthy.

Mr. Johnson has opposed continued funding for the war in Ukraine, which has emerged as a bitter fault line in the G.O.P. and in the spending battles that he will have to navigate in the coming days. Ballotpedia features 487,024 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. But the speech infuriated Mr. Trump, and Mr. McCarthy quickly worked to get back in the former president’s good graces, traveling to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks later to meet with him. They also were unhappy that he had suggested in an interview on Fox News that the House committee investigating the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, had the political aim of damaging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Representative Chip Roy of Texas started out as an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election but gradually grew alarmed about the push to invalidate the results and ultimately opposed Mr. Trump’s bid to get Congress to overturn them on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some of the Republicans who supported 2020 election lies have led the charge against Kevin McCarthy.

What's next now that Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a motion to vacate from Marjorie Taylor Greene - The Associated Press

What's next now that Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a motion to vacate from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Posted: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

A historic drama is playing out in the US House of Representatives after Republican congressman Matt Gaetz's successful attempt to dethrone his party's House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Emmer had attempted to mollify Mr. Trump by calling him over the weekend and praising him, according to the former president. By Tuesday evening, five more Republicans, none with a national profile, were vying for the nomination. Mr. Johnson won after multiple rounds of ballots, beating out Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a member of the Freedom Caucus. A majority of those opposed to Mr. Emmer were members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and loyal to Mr. Trump.

Homeless encampments are on the ballot in Arizona. Could California, other states follow?

Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the Democratic conference chairman, said that the speaker fight had devolved into a contest over “who can appease Donald Trump.” At that line, a handful of hard-right Republicans stood and applauded. The elevation of Mr. Johnson, 51, an architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election and a religious conservative opposed to abortion rights, homosexuality and gay marriage, further cemented the Republican Party’s lurch to the right. It came after a historic fight that began when the hard right ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3, and raged on as the divided House G.O.P. nominated and then quickly discarded three other candidates to succeed him. The far-right GOP Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas announced this week that he would nominate Trump to be speaker.

House to send articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the Senate

After Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who ending up holding the deciding vote, said “present,” most seated at the bar fell quiet. A bartender switched the channel from basketball to C-SPAN about 10 minutes before the vote was set to start, but it was only when the session was called to order that the rowdy crowd turned its attention fully to the screens, hooting and clapping. Mr. Trump’s call may have played a role in Mr. Gaetz opting to continue with another round of balloting, along with a small group of other members who had been opposing McCarthy’s candidacy. The dramatic moment was captured on C-SPAN’s video cameras, which, lacking the typical restraints placed upon them in a House with a speaker, were free to show whatever moments from the floor its operators deemed newsworthy. So much of what House Republicans want to do legislatively will go nowhere in the Democratic Senate, but the Republican majority will be able to conduct the investigations it has promised and McCarthy is emphasizing that point.

Meetings, Agendas, & Votes

But any luster left after 2006 was lost when he went to prison for bank fraud charges stemming from hush money payments he had made to a former student he admitted to having sexually abused decades earlier. In 1994, two years into the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, Gingrich organized a campaign around a 10-item agenda called the "Contract with America." It provided a unified message for the party's nominees, who flipped more than 50 seats and stormed into the majority. Even a glance at the history of Republican speakers since World War II would tell him that. Greene had vowed to press her challenge after Johnson announced a strategy to pass $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan earlier this month. About two-thirds of that money was for Ukraine, an issue Greene had called her "red line" for moving against the speaker. A shrewd and effective Speaker will be able to marshal their members behind their party's agenda, and control rebellious lawmakers by doling out incentives or punishments.

The most recent Democrat, however, is Nancy Pelosi, still a House member and the House speaker emerita. She comes in at fifth on the longevity roster, having served one day shy of eight years from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. Prior to that, the last Republican speaker had been Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, who died in 1931. Technically, he died as speaker, but his party lost its majority before the next Congress convened and elected a Democrat to the job. The next two Republican speakers would be John Boehner, elevated to the job by the GOP recapture of the House in the "Tea Party" election of 2010.

For instance, Nathaniel Macon served as speaker during both the 8th and 9th Congresses, but the eight-month gap between the two Congresses is not included in his service duration. The exact dates of service for each individual speaker is shown in the Term of service column of the above table. In a secret-ballot vote on Tuesday night, Mr. Johnson got 128 votes, with 44 Republicans voting for nominees not on the ballot, including 43 for Mr. McCarthy, whom many view as unfairly ousted. Still, in a separate vote afterward, only a few Republicans indicated they would not back Mr. Johnson on the floor, while about 20 Republicans were absent. A social conservative, Mr. Johnson is a lawyer and the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

The speaker is responsible for maintaining decorum in the House and may order the Sergeant-at-Arms to enforce House rules. Historically, there have been several controversial elections to the speakership, such as the contest of 1839. In that case, even though the 26th United States Congress convened on December 2, the House could not begin the speakership election until December 14 because of an election dispute in New Jersey known as the "Broad Seal War".

The chamber cannot organize until it has a speaker since that person effectively serves as the House's presiding officer and the institution's administrative head. The House can elect a new speaker at any time if the person occupying that role dies, resigns or is removed from office. To win the gavel, a candidate needs support from a majority of the House members present, meaning the eventual speaker will need 217 votes if every one of the current members votes and does so for a candidate by name.

In 1997, several Republican congressional leaders tried to force Speaker Newt Gingrich to resign. However, Gingrich refused since that would have required a new election for speaker, which could have led to Democrats along with dissenting Republicans voting for Democrat Dick Gephardt (then minority leader) as speaker. After the 1998 midterm elections where the Republicans lost seats, Gingrich did not stand for re-election. The next two figures in the House Republican leadership hierarchy, Majority Leader Richard Armey and Majority Whip Tom DeLay chose not to run for the office.

Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who had voted “present” in previous ballots, also voted for Mr. McCarthy in the 12th vote. Evidence cited in the committee’s report was made public over the weekend, but Republicans are seeking to hold back hundreds of thousands of pages of underlying evidence that was scheduled to go into storage for up to 50 years. If the current Speaker stays in office until a new Speaker is elected, then the new Speaker (not currently a Representative) can be elected and enter the Hall. Of course, Gen. Powell is no longer Secretary of State, so this no longer applies. Instead, as a private person, the question is, "Does the Speaker need to be an elected member in his own right?" Traditionally, of course, it would be unprecedented.