For the first time in United States history the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy was removed from office. This is extremely historic because no speaker has ever been voted to be ousted by the Chamber. The House voted 216-210 to eliminate McCarthy from his position. McCarthy brought up many conflicts around a possible government shutdown, ultimately leading to his termination from the House. The newly vacant speaker seat has created a lot of conflict and chaos in the House.
When McCarthy was elected for this position as speaker in January of 2023, he agreed as one of the terms that a single person could make a motion to remove him. Previously, half of the Republican party in the House was needed to call a vote and get rid of the speaker. This is not a normal act in the House of Representatives, however, McCarthy did not have a lot of support in the first place. He beat the Democratic candidates just by a hair, which is the reason he did not have a lot of people rooting for him. McCarthy agreed that if he failed to do his job well, all it took was one person to follow through with the removal process.
One of the reasons that started the removal process was McCarthy’s efforts to prevent shutting down the government. Republican lawmakers were concerned about his interactions with Democrats to keep the government open. Specifically, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz started the plan to get McCarthy out of office. This began when McCarthy started working on a funding bill that would help avoid a government shutdown. Even though McCarthy sided with Democrats on this issue, 208 of the votes were a part of the Democratic party, while only 8 were Republican. As said by Gaetz in an interview, “It is for the benefit of this country that we have a better speaker of the house… Kevin McCarthy couldn’t keep his word.” Since the seat of the speaker remains vacant, the House will have to work on finding a new one.
The position of a speaker is crucial for the House to run effectively, and even at all. Since it is a constitutional position, nothing gets done when there is no speaker. If one is not elected, the House of Representatives’ work will be put at a halt. The House will now have to go through the process of choosing a new speaker. For now, Representative Patrick McHenry will step into the speaker position until the House can start electing a new official. It is unknown how long McHenry will remain in this position, but just until a new speaker is chosen in the place of McCarthy.
