Unprecedented chaos reigned in the US Congress after the sudden resignation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives

After leading a successful bipartisan effort to avoid a federal government shutdown over the weekend, Kevin McCarthy was abruptly removed as speaker of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, ousted by far-right members of his own Republican Party less than a year after being elected to the post.

As The Guardian notes, McCarthy’s overthrow marked the first time in US history that the Speaker of the House of Representatives was removed from office, marking an inglorious end to the California Republican’s short and fraught tenure in office. It comes as Americans’ approval ratings for Congress and the federal government remain near historic lows, with most saying they have little or no confidence in the future of the US political system.

The infighting between Republicans effectively stalls all business in the House until the House, which has only a narrow Republican majority, elects a new speaker. McCarthy said Tuesday night that he will not run again for speaker, clearing the way for a new Republican speaker if party members can reach consensus.

Republicans plan to vote on a new speaker next Wednesday after a closed session on October 10 to discuss various candidates, Reuters reports.

The vote to remove McCarthy followed a motion to vacate Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz’s seat. After McCarthy’s Republican allies failed to block the bill’s progress, the final vote took place Tuesday afternoon. Amid gasps from members of the tense chamber, eight far-right Republicans joined 208 Democrats in supporting McCarthy’s removal, while 210 Republicans tried unsuccessfully to keep the speaker in place. McCarthy needed a simple majority of voting members to retain his gavel, but he failed to clear that threshold.

“The resolution has passed,” Congressman Steve Womack, the Arkansas Republican who chaired the session, announced after the vote. “The office of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.”

McCarthy sat stoically with his hands folded in his lap, but when the voting ended, he threw his head back and chuckled at his own plight as some of the committee members came to shake his hand.

Following this announcement, McCarthy appointed Congressman Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina, to serve as acting Speaker until a new House leader is elected. Taking the gavel, McHenry quickly called a break.

“It is the Chairman’s view that before proceeding with the election of Speaker, it would be prudent to first adjourn for the relevant caucuses and conferences to meet and discuss further action,” McHenry said. House Republicans met Tuesday night to regroup and finalize plans.

Some Republican leaders condemned McCarthy’s ouster, with former vice president and current presidential candidate Mike Pence suggesting it would undermine the Republican Party in the eyes of voters. “Chaos has never been America’s strong suit, and it has never been a friend to America’s struggling families,” Pence said at the Georgetown event.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dubbed Gaetz “anti-Republican” and called him “actively destructive of the conservative movement,” calling on Republicans to vote Gaetz out of the House Republican Conference.

Several Republican members of Congress told CNN they expected to discuss whether Gaetz should be expelled from the Republican Conference as punishment for his behavior, although they did not say whether they would personally support the measure.

The eight Republicans who joined Democrats to vote for McCarthy’s resignation offered a variety of reasons. South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mays said McCarthy had “failed to keep his word on how the House would operate” and argued that the chaos in Congress would be worse with McCarthy in charge than without him. “We need to start over,” she said.

Tennessee’s Tim Burchett told CNN that McCarthy “said something that I think disparages me and my belief system” in the phone call. He said he was willing to support several “honorable men” to replace McCarthy, adding: “At any rate, they never openly mocked me.”

Speaking to reporters Tuesday night to confirm he would not run again for speaker, McCarthy said, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I leave the post of Speaker with a sense of pride and accomplishment. And yes, optimism,” McCarthy said, citing a Teddy Roosevelt quote about a man who “fails but is very brave.”

“I made history, didn’t I?” – he said.

McCarthy fired the eight Republicans who voted against him, saying, “This country is too big for the little ideas of these eight,” and calling them “individuals” who “didn’t strive to be productive.” He noted that he helped many Republicans who voted against him get elected in the first place, joking to a CNN reporter, “I should have picked someone else.”

McCarthy told reporters that Matt Gaetz was motivated by a “personal” vendetta against him stemming from a congressional ethics investigation into him, including allegations of sexual harassment, illegal drug use and misuse of campaign funds. He said the Florida congressman was not a true conservative and that his goal was to attract attention and campaign donations. “We’ve been getting fundraising emails from him while he’s been doing it,” McCarthy said.

But the former speaker placed much of the blame for the intra-Republican infighting on the opposing party, saying: “I think the Democrats made a political decision today.”

McCarthy decided not to run again for speaker after he was ousted because he “wasn’t going to negotiate with Democrats to become speaker,” Republican congressman Kevin Hurn told Reuters.

President Joe Biden called on the House to move quickly to elect a speaker, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement: “The urgent challenges facing our nation will not wait.”

McCarthy’s ouster capped a tumultuous nine months in the House of Representatives, marked by clashes between the speaker and his party’s far-right flank. Despite his repeated attempts to appease them, his willingness to work with Democrats to prevent economic chaos sealed his fate. With their razor-thin majority in the House, Republicans now face the unenviable task of electing a leader who can win near-unanimous support in a deeply divided conference.

Matt Gaetz sought McCarthy’s removal after the speaker worked with House Democrats to pass a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, to extend government funding through Nov. 17. Gaetz also accused McCarthy of making a “secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine, which has become a source of right-wing outrage. McCarthy denied the existence of any secret deal.

The U.S. House and Senate passed the stopgap bill with overwhelming bipartisan majorities, averting a shutdown that could have left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay for an extended period.

Some Republican House members condemned Gaetz ahead of the vote to remove McCarthy, calling him an “agent of chaos” and a “fool or a liar” in an interview with CNN and expressing fears that the maneuver could cost Republicans their majority in the House.

Tuesday’s vote marked the first impeachment of a House speaker in more than 100 years and the first successful such vote in American history. Other recent House speakers, including former Republican leader John Boehner, have previously been threatened with motions to vacate but have never faced a full-scale effort to remove them.

The referendum illustrated McCarthy’s tenuous grip on the gavel, as it took him 15 rounds of voting to win the House speakership in January.

McCarthy never won the support of many Republicans to his right. Additionally, many of his fellow Republicans felt that McCarthy had not secured their side enough concessions in the deal that prevented a shutdown.

“The Speaker competed for 15 votes in January to become Speaker, but was only willing to fight for one failed [продолжающуюся резолюцию]before surrendering to Democrats on Saturday,” Bob Good, a Republican congressman from Virginia, said in a speech Tuesday. “We need a Speaker who will fight for something, anything, other than just staying or becoming Speaker.”

Before McCarthy learned his fate on Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries made it clear that his caucus would not help McCarthy keep his job. In the end, every House Democrat present voted to remove McCarthy.

With the removal of the Speaker, all business in the House of Representatives will be suspended until a new leader is elected.

Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state representative and chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CNN that under McCarthy and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, “there was constant chaos, not to mention division, polarization, racism. We don’t get any pleasure out of it.”