Alwaght- The US House of Representatives ousted on Tuesday Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after Kevin McCarthy led a successful, bipartisan effort to avoid a government shutdown over the weekend.
McCarthy was expelled from his role in a 216-210 vote on Tuesday evening, the first time in US history that the House has voted to remove its leader.
“Speaker McCarthy has failed to take a stand where it matters,” far-right Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who launched the effort to remove McCarthy, said in a social media post before the vote. “So if he won’t, I will.”
The unprecedented vote underscores growing turmoil in the Republican Party, also known as the GOP, with its hard-right faction sparring with McCarthy on several occasions since he first became the speaker in January. There is no clear choice within the party to replace him.
In the vote on Tuesday evening, eight Republicans broke with the speaker, sinking his chances of securing the majority needed to keep his job. Democrats, who have expressed frustration with McCarthy over what they see as his efforts to appeal to the Republican’s hard right, refused to vote in his favor.
