The US House of Rep. (Congress) has made a historic vote to remove their speaker, Kevin McCarthy nine months after he secured the position.
No speaker has ever before been removed by the House.
They appointed North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry as the speaker till the elections for the next.
Republican Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Gaetz, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana voted to remove McCarthy.
All House Democrats present voted to declare the office of the speaker vacant.
Before the vote, McCarthy said:
“At the end of the day, if you throw a speaker out that has 99% of their conference, that kept the government open and paid the troops — I think we’re in a really bad place for how we’re going to run Congress,” he said.
“I stand by that decision and at the end of the day, if I have to lose my job over it, so be it, I’ll continue to fight.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries released a “Dear Colleague” letter just before the vote announcing House Democrats would vote to vacate the chair.
“Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” Jeffries wrote.
A small group of Republicans defended McCarthy’s call concerning the government funding bill.
“He’s being punished because he did the right thing on Saturday and made sure that the government didn’t shut down, and we bought more time to continue the appropriations process,” GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma told reporters.
Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma told reporters she was suspicious of the reasons some have stated for removing McCarthy as speaker.
“This isn’t about the appropriations process, and don’t be fooled. (Gaetz) wants to talk about the fact that we should have been doing our (appropriations) work in August. Look, it didn’t happen. So now is the time, and instead of focusing on that for the next 43 days, we’re going to be focusing on this,” Bice said.
