The House of Representatives will vote on whether to retain California Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker as early as 1pm ET on Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
Mr McCarthy reportedly announced the schedule of the no-confidence vote during a meeting of the House GOP conference this morning, not 24 hours after Florida Representative Matt Gaetz formally called for the motion to declare the office of Speaker of the House to be vacant.
The rapid action on whether to oust him as the leader of the House — a position that is second in the presidential line of succession — comes just hours after his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, suggested that he and his leadership team would not “whip” Democrats to vote for or against retaining Mr McCarthy.
The New York Democrat told MSNBC on Tuesday that he had not made any decisions on how to handle the upcoming no-confidence vote, but said he and the rest of the Democratic caucus plan to discuss the matter when they meet this morning.
“I care about what members of the caucus have to say. This is a vote of conscience in many ways and I am interested in hearing what every single member of the House Democratic family has to say on this issue and then we’ll come to a collective decision at the end,” he said.
Mr McCarthy spoke to reporters after the GOP conference meeting, telling them that he is “confident” because of who he is.
“I don’t give up. There are obstacles in my life. I have fallen many times. There was time I was going to speaker and I couldn’t. But now I am speaker. I’m the 55th speaker of the House ... each and every time, if it is an obstacle, I have viewed it as a challenge. We will solve the challenge,” he said.
He added that his decision to allow the House to pass a stopgap bill to keep funding the government with Democratic support — something Mr Gaetz said violated the Speaker’s prior commitments to the GOP conference — had been the right move.
“At the end of the day, keeping the government open and paying our troops was the right decision. I stand by that decision — if I have to lose my job over it, so be it,” he said. “I will fight for the American public and I will continue to fight”.
He also said that Mr Gaetz’s reasons for calling the no-confidence vote appeared “very personal” and accused the Floridian of not “looking out for the country or the institution” of the House.
Because as many as five or more Republican members have previously declared that they will not support keeping Mr McCarthy in his post, the Californian would need support from at least a small number of Democrats to defeat the no-confidence motion.
One progressive member of the Democratic Caucus, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told CNN over the weekend that she would “absolutely” in favour of a motion to remove Mr McCarthy.
On Monday, Ms Ocasio-Cortez reiterated her position. The third-term New Yorker, a member of the so-called “Squad” of young, high-profile progressives, told The Independent she was not worried that voting in favour of the motion would be enabling Mr Gaetz.
“I think our priorities are Democratic priorities and we just assess the conditions of the moment,” she said. “It’s really not about any one individual it’s about the decision we make as a team to really do as much as we can to deliver for people.”
