Chaos erupted in the U.S. House of Representatives this October, which culminated in the unprecedented ousting of the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. The unfolding of events showcases a significant amount of power currently held by the most far-right members of the House. The House of Representatives is the lowest chamber in Congress, and holds representatives from each state: 435 in total. The Speaker of the House is a crucial role in U.S. government; as the leader of the majority in the chamber, the Speaker controls the agenda, committee assignments, and is second-in-line for the presidency, after the Vice President. As a result of the 2022 midterm elections, the House changed from majority Democrat to majority Republican by a slim margin of 9 seats, so upon the new House convenening in January 2023, the first order of business was to elect a new Speaker.
When the vote for the Speaker began, the immediate front-runner was Representative Kevin McCarthy from California. However, his appointment was blocked by about 20 Republican hardliners from the far-right, including many from the ‘Freedom Caucus’ and its allies. Voting for the House Speaker doesn’t tend to take more than one vote, because whichever party has the majority tends to agree on the candidate. In fact, this was the first contested voting for the Speaker of the House since 1923. What followed was an unprecedented 15 rounds of voting, perpetually containing the same group of far-right Republicans withholding enough votes to allow a majority to emerge. They were demanding certain concessions from McCarthy, including preferential committee assignments, and, crucially, the ability for any of them to call a snap vote for his removal at any time. Representative McCarthy managed to dwindle the holdouts down to 7, and then 6, as the 12th and 13th rounds of voting failed again. It became clear that the remaining 6 (Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Matt Good, and Bob Rosendale) were not going to budge, forcing McCarthy to eventually agree to their terms, and was resultantly elected Speaker of the House in the 15th round of voting.
A couple months later, in May 2023, the House was required to pass a government spending bill to raise the U.S. debt ceiling in order to avoid a catastrophic default that would effectively shut down the government. Raising the debt ceiling is part of regular government practice, but this time, because the House is controlled by Republicans, the collective aimed for a bill that would roll back federal spending on government social programs. However, as President Biden vowed to veto this bill, Representative Kevin McCarthy was forced to collaborate with Democrats in the House. The resulting compromise bill toned down the spending cuts while raising the debt ceiling; and as all compromises go, neither side was especially happy with the results, but understood that the need to pass a spending bill before the default deadline was an imperative. In the end, the bill garnered more Democrat support than Republican, with 165 Democrat votes to 149 Republicans in favor. This fact drew considerable anger from the far-right coalition, including Representative Gaetz, who called on his allies to “reassert House conservatives as the appropriate coalition partner for our leadership, instead of them making common cause with Democrats.” How the debt bill was meant to succeed without bipartisan support, given the Democrat majorities in both the Senate and the White House, is uncertain. Broadly, how a two party government is meant to function without compromise is equally uncertain.
On September 29, 2023, another spending bill was passed following roughly the same pattern. There was a looming government shut down, and after weeks of refusing to compromise with Democrats, Representative McCarthy introduced another compromise spending plan. The most vocal grievance among the Democrats was that it did not include money for Ukraine. Nevertheless, under the threat of the political and economic disaster of a government shut down, the bill passed with even more Democrat support than last time, with 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting to pass the bill. Represenative McCarthy’s latest circumvention of the most far-right members in the House proved to be the last straw for Represenative Matt Gaetz and his allies, who began to call for McCarthy’s removal. Representative Gaetz was one of the last remaining holdouts during McCarthy’s appointment to Speaker votes, and was a champion of the proposed concessions that were eventually adopted. Gaetz would only need a simple majority to oust McCarthy as Speaker, which would require almost all of the Democrats, plus himself and his allies. Some back-and-forth ensued among the other members of the Republican bloc, many of whom saw this move as “counterproductive and self-destructive” (Representative Tom McClintock, R-Calif.), but these attempts to dissuade proved unsuccessful. The vote turned out to be 216 in favor (D-208, R-8) to 210 opposed (all R), and on October 3, 2023, Representative McCarthy became the first Speaker of the House to be removed in U.S. history.
The following days plunged the House into completely unchartered territory; an interim Speaker was appointed, North Carolina Republican Representative Patrick McHenry, and rounds of voting to appoint a new Speaker began immediately. After three weeks of voting and in-fighting among the Republicans, the House elected Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House on October 25, 2023. Representative Johnson is an evangelical Christian, which is central in his messaging against abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights. He is also a loyal ally of former president Donald Trump, and led efforts to deny and overturn the 2020 presidential election results. To be clear, the same ideologies could be attached to Representative McCarthy, and of many other House Republicans. While the Republican Party itself wavers between trying to move away from the former president’s influence and embracing Trumpism ever more fully, ‘loyalty’ to the former president and his ideology is a spectrum that most House Republicans adher to on to some degree. Representative Johnson was elected to the Speakership unanimously by House Republicans, and is perceived as sufficiently pro-Trump for the far-right group while still appeasing the more centrist Republican members.
The entire story of the historic proceedings in the House of Representatives this year warns of an increasingly powerful far-right minority in U.S. politics. This is by no means the first far-right coalition to exist in Congress, and Representative Johnson’s stances are not those of an outlier; McCarthy himself voted to overturn the 2020 election results. What is more concerning is the influence that this far-right group seems to possess over the GOP Representatives in the House, due in large part to their assertiveness and refusal to compromise. With the mechanisms in place that were exacted from Representative McCarthy, the far-right is empowered to stand their ground until the rest of the Republican party is forced to bend. It is possible that this cycle will repeat itself in the next few weeks, as Congress will be forced to pass future spending bills and other relevant legislation. As long as Democrat President Biden is in the White House, it will be nearly impossible for a spending bill to be passed without bipartisan support, a move which just cost Representative McCarthy his job as Speaker. The House rule that anyone is able to call a vote to remove the Speaker remains in tact, and the far-right Republicans have proven that they are not afraid to use it.
Furthermore, these events showcase how large former president Trump’s shadow continues to loom across the Republican party. Trump remains the front-runner in the Republican race for the 2024 presidential elections, despite several criminal charges and mounting legal pressure against him. Among the House Republicans, any perceived lack of loyalty to the former president and his ideology has consistently and successfully been weaponized by the far-right coalition to keep the more centrist Republicans in line. On the same day as the 2024 presidential election, every seat in the House of Representatives will also be up for reelection. The results of the last presidential election were widely and falsely denied by many of the same people who now hold critical political power in the House. Now is the time for the American electorate to think critically about the danger of a far-right minority who refuses to compromise and holds enough power that they forsake a necessity to.
Edited by Hanna Schmoelz
