Corrected 12:23 p.m. | House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday did not commit to helping Speaker Kevin McCarthy keep his gavel as his Democratic colleagues described Republicans as engaged in a “civil war” they must end.
The New York Democrat spoke to reporters following a lengthy House Democratic conference meeting in which, members said, there was near-unanimity on not providing the votes to help McCarthy defeat a motion to vacate the speakership that is expected to come to a floor vote around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. Democrats emerged from their huddle to say McCarthy, as Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota put it, “made a deal with the devil” by empowering his right flank — which now wants to oust him.
“Democrats are going to continue to put people over politics and to fight to make life better for everyday Americans. From the very beginning, that has been our objective. And it will continue to be our sole focus, delivering for the American people,” Jeffries said before appearing to float an olive branch to rank-and-file GOP members — though a vague one.
“We encourage our Republican colleagues who claim to be more traditional to break from the extremists, end the chaos, end the dysfunction, end the extremism,” he said. “We are ready, willing and able to work together with our Republican colleagues. But it is on them to join us to move the Congress and the country forward.”
House Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes, D-Conn., told reporters McCarthy should not count on any Democratic support to retain his gavel. “This [was] probably true before the caucus meeting but after the caucus meeting,” he said, “I will tell you I will be shocked if there is not total, total unanimity that someone other than Kevin should be speaker.”
And Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calf., told reporters “we will need a new speaker,” adding: “Kevin McCarthy has shown he can’t govern. We need a functioning [House] that can govern.”
A defiant McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol around midday: “I’m confident I’ll hold on.”
McCarthy told House Republicans earlier that the chamber would vote Tuesday on a motion to vacate the speakership, vowing he would not cut deals with Democratic members to help him retain the gavel.
Fellow California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa told reporters that McCarthy made the announcement about the historic vote during a morning conference meeting, a little over 12 hours after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., informed the House Monday night he intended to force a vote to vacate the speakership.
“He’s going to stand on his record,” Issa said about McCarthy, adding that it is “understood by over 95 percent of the members” within the GOP conference that “there’s only one person prepared to lead our party.”
At least one conservative member who said he was undecided Monday night, North Carolina’s Dan Bishop, announced around 90 minutes before the expected vote that he would vote to keep McCarthy in the speaker’s suite.
[What to watch in Gaetz vs. McCarthy speaker fight]
But a House rule change that McCarthy agreed to in January to secure the speakership allowed one member to bring up a motion to oust a speaker. Gaetz has been bubbling with frustration over government spending and McCarthy’s penchant to call a legislative audible, as he did Saturday when he put a mostly “clean” stopgap funding measure on the floor. That bill sailed through with bipartisan support and averted a government shutdown.
After his floor move, Gaetz repeated his criticisms that McCarthy is not trusted, has gone back on agreements with Republicans and Democrats, and cut a “secret side deal” on Ukraine funding with President Joe Biden.
“Everyone was clapping in support of the man that’s led our party for five years successfully,” Issa told reporters about the scene inside the GOP conference in the Capitol basement.
If an expected motion to set aside, or table, Gaetz’s vacate motion were to be defeated and McCarthy be booted in a subsequent vote, Issa said McCarthy would be nominated anew in the speaker’s race that would follow.
“Then we put him back up for speaker and we continue to vote until we have our speaker back,” Issa said.
While it is unclear if McCarthy could again reach the necessary threshold to win a speaker’s race, the more immediate question is whether Democrats would maneuver on the floor to keep the speaker they know.
House Democrats were set to meet on Tuesday morning to reach a “collective decision” on a floor strategy, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told MSNBC. He also called for unspecified “institutional changes” to prevent a few “extreme” members from shutting down the chamber and threatening a speaker.
McCarthy said on CNBC Tuesday morning that he would respect any decision Jeffries makes.
“They haven’t asked for anything, I’m not going to provide anything,” McCarthy said of Democrats. He defended offering a stopgap spending bill Saturday that passed largely because of Democratic votes, noting that a more conservative measure had previously been defeated by a breakaway GOP bloc.
“What’s really difficult here is, how do you run a conference when we try to pass the most conservative bill that secures the border and 21 vote ‘no,’ they don’t allow you to move forward? I move forward and make sure the government stays open, and they get upset about that,” McCarthy said.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, said Tuesday morning that there is an effort to negotiate with Democrats to help McCarthy defeat Gaetz’s attempted ouster.
“I hope there’s 218 people that are [willing to] reward bipartisanship,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that McCarthy is not a part of those cross-aisle talks.
“He doesn’t know about it,” he said of the speaker. “Our group deals with ourselves.”
There are 32 Democratic members officially in the Problem Solvers Caucus.
Several House Democrats left their party’s caucus meeting saying there was no appetite to save McCarthy.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, called McCarthy “the worst speaker I’ve ever seen,” adding: “He has brought chaos to the House.”
“Now he’s coming to the Democrats and saying, ‘You have to save me in order to protect the institution’? No member of Congress that I can think of has done more to damage the institution than Kevin McCarthy,” Smith said. “And being who he is, he isn’t even talking to us.”
Rather than continue to fight for his gavel, “he should step aside” because “he does not have the support of this Congress,” Smith said.
As the path toward beating back the challenge looked bleak for McCarthy, he sounded reflective.
“If you throw a speaker out that has 99 percent of their conference, that kept 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. “”There are obstacles in my life. I have fallen many times.”
This report was corrected to reflect Rep. Jim Himes’ position as ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.
Caitlin Reilly, Mary Ellen McIntire, Laura Weiss, David Lerman, and Niels Lesniewski contributed to this report.
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