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Kevin McCarthy Announces Resignation from Congress

Eight Republicans voted with House Democrats in October to remove the California Republican from his leadership post…reports Asian Lite News

Former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will be resigning from Congress by the end of this year and will not run for re-election next year, leaving a legacy of a historic Capitol Hill career after 15 rounds of voting to become Speaker in January and getting ousted 10 months later by a conservative rebellion. His resignation will reduce the Republican majority in the House by three.

“I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways. I know my work is only getting started,” McCarthy said in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

While politicians are clueless about McCarthy’s future steps, he has promised to stay invested in Republican politics. The California Republican declined to make another bid for the gavel after being removed as Speaker in October, media reports said.

“I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office. The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders,” McCarthy said.

Eight Republicans voted with House Democrats in October to remove the California Republican from his leadership post.

Notwithstanding his unceremonious ouster from speakership led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz, McCarthy, in a video after his announcement, said he is “proud of what we have accomplished”, touting the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement he struck with President Joe Biden to avert a catastrophic default and his efforts to avoid a government shutdown. Both of those deals played a role in his eventual removal from the speakership by a conservative rebellion.

“Simply put, we did the right thing,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy’s departure reduces further the razor-thin GOP majority in the House. After his resignation, Republicans will control the lower chamber by just a three-seat margin, further complicating House Speaker Mike Johnson’s bid to pass conservative legislation. Also, try to force an impeachment vote on Biden on the Hunter Biden (son) issues while most politicians will fall through as there is no evidence to link Biden with his son’s business dealings.

Though there is no love lost between the Democrats and Republican former Speaker McCarthy, they will certainly lose a moderator across the aisle.

After McCarthy’s departure from Congress, California Gov. Gavin Newsom must declare a special election to fill the vacancy within 14 days, according to California law. After that declaration, the special election must be held within 126 to 140 days. McCarthy’s seat is considered a safe Republican district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

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US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Removed From Office

US House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (Photo:Instagram)

McCarthy, who became Speaker in January after a gruelling 15 rounds of voting in the chamber, said that the hardliners who ousted him “are not conservatives”….reports Asian Lite News

Republican Kevin McCarthy, who has been ousted as the Speaker of the US House of Representatives in a right-wing revolt for the first time ever in the country’s history, has said that he will not run for the post again.

“I will not run for speaker again. I’ll have the (Republican) conference pick somebody else,” Xinhua news agency quoted McCarthy as saying to reporters after a closed-door meeting with party lawmakers late Tuesday night.

“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governing over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating. Our government is designed to find compromise,” he said, adding: “You know it was personal… It had nothing to do with spending.”

McCarthy, who became Speaker in January after a gruelling 15 rounds of voting in the chamber, further said that the hardliners who ousted him “are not conservatives”.

Amid party infighting, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a motion to oust McCarthy in an unprecedented move, days after he relied on Democratic votes to pass a “clean” stopgap funding bill to avert a federal government shutdown.

The 216-210 vote came nearly nine months after McCarthy won the position in a dramatic 15-round floor fight, marking the first time in US history that a House speaker has been ousted from office in a no-confidence vote in the middle of a term.

“The office of Speaker of the House is hereby declared vacant,” declared Arkansas Republican Steve Womack with a bang of his gavel, to audible gasps.

Eight Republicans joined Democrats in voting to remove McCarthy from the speakership, less than a day after hardline Republican Representative Matt Gaetz announced a resolution to oust him through a process known as “a motion to vacate”.

Gaetz and other hardline Republicans had warned for weeks they would move to oust McCarthy from his position as leader of the chamber if he relied on Democrats to pass funding legislation.

The Florida Republican accused the Speaker of making a secret deal with the White House to continue funding for Ukraine, amid negotiations to avert a partial government shutdown at the weekend.

McCarthy has denied the allegation.

Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, said in a statement on Tuesday that under the Republican majority, the House “has been restructured to empower right-wing extremists, kowtow to their harsh demands and impose a rigid partisan ideology”,

“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,” said Jeffries, referring the “Make America Great Again” slogan popularised by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.

In a last-minute effort to avert a government shutdown, McCarthy released a stopgap funding bill on September 30, which will keep federal agencies funded at current levels until mid-November, and included $16 billion of funding for disaster relief.

The bill dropped steep spending cuts and border security provisions sought by conservative Republicans, and did not include additional aid for Ukraine sought by Democrats.

The bill was passed by the Senate and House on September 30, and was signed by President Joe Biden later that night, just a few minutes before federal government funding for this fiscal year was set to expire.

McCarthy’s proposal came as a surprise, as he had been trying to advance a funding bill with steep spending cuts and border security provisions in attempts to garner support from Republican conservatives.

His decision to put forward the “clean” stopgap funding bill was welcomed by Democrats and the White House, but had upset some Republicans, especially party hardliners in the House.

When asked on September 30 what if conservative Republican critics tried to remove him from the speakership over the funding bill, McCarthy told reporters that “If someone wants to remove (me) because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try”.

North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry, who supported McCarthy, is now the Speaker pro tempore, or interim Speaker, the BBC reported.

After the vote on Tuesday night, he gavelled the House into recess for a week.

It is unclear if he will have the full powers of the office, or merely administrative powers and the ability to supervise a new election.

The rules do not state how long a person could fill in as an interim Speaker, though a vote on a new Speaker is planned for October 11.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that President Joe Biden is hoping the House will quickly elect a new Speaker, noting that the “challenges facing our nation will not wait”.

The last two Republican Speakers — Paul Ryan and John Boehner — left Congress after repeated tangles with their more conservative colleagues.

The so-called motion to vacate had only previously been used twice in the past century to remove a Speaker — in 2015 and 2010 — though never successfully until Tuesday.

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McCarthy vows to survive ouster threat

It was not clear how much support McCarthy would have in such a vote, or whether any Democrats would back him…reports Asian Lite News

Top US House Republican Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday he expected to survive a threat to his speakership after a hard-line critic within his party called for his ouster following the passage of a stopgap government funding bill that drew more support from Democrats than Republicans.

Hard-line Republican Representative Matt Gaetz told multiple US media outlets he would file a “motion to vacate,” a call for a vote to remove McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives, which his party controls by a narrow 221-212 margin.

“I’ll survive,” McCarthy said on CBS. “This is personal with Gaetz.”

Former President Donald Trump, who had encouraged Republicans in Congress to work for a government shutdown unless their budget demands were met, on Sunday said. “Republicans got very little” out of the temporary government-funding deal reached this weekend and that they needed to “get tougher.”

Asked at a campaign stop in Ottumwa, Iowa, whether he would support a move by Gaetz to strip McCarthy of his speakership, Trump said, “I don’t know anything about those efforts but I like both of them very much.” Trump added that McCarthy has said some “very great things about me.”

Gaetz is one of a group of about two dozen hard-liners who forced McCarthy to endure a withering 15 rounds of voting in January before he was elected speaker, during which they squeezed out concessions, including a rule change to allow any one House member to call for a vote to oust the speaker.

It was not clear how much support McCarthy would have in such a vote, or whether any Democrats would back him. McCarthy angered Democrats last month by launching an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfD8PN18Jso

“If at this time next week Kevin McCarthy is still speaker of the House, it will be because Democrats bailed him out,” Gaetz said in an interview on ABC. “I am relentless and I will continue to pursue this objective.”

McCarthy stunned Washington on Saturday when he backed a bill to fund the government through Nov. 17, averting a partial shutdown but not imposing any of the spending cuts or changes to border security that his hard-line colleagues had called for.

The bill, which was approved by the Senate on a broad bipartisan basis and signed into law by Biden, is meant to give lawmakers more time to agree on a deal to fund the government through Sept. 30, 2024.

An ouster of the speaker would complicate that process.

“It is destructive to the country to put forth this motion to vacate,” Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican, said on ABC. “By putting this motion to vacate on the floor, you know what Matt Gaetz is going to do? He is going to delay the ability to complete that work over the next 45 days.”

Gaetz had been threatening to move against McCarthy for weeks.

Republican Representative Byron Donalds, a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus who had been nominated to challenge McCarthy for speaker in January, declined to say how he would vote.

“I don’t know right now,” Donalds said in an interview on Fox. “I gotta really think about that because there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

McCarthy decided to bring a vote on a measure that could win Democratic support, knowing full well that it could jeopardize his job. One of his advisers told Reuters the speaker believed some hard-liners would try to oust him under any circumstances.

“Go ahead and try,” McCarthy said in comments directed at his opponents on Saturday. “You know what? If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”

The bipartisan measure succeeded a day after Republican Representative Andy Biggs, a leading hard-liner, and 20 others blocked a Republican stopgap bill that contained sharp spending cuts and immigration and border restrictions, all of which hard-liners favor.

The bill’s failure ended Republican hopes of moving a conservative measure and opened the door to the bipartisan measure that was backed by 209 House Democrats and 126 Republicans. Ninety Republicans opposed the stopgap.

Hard-liners complained that the measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, left in place policies favored by Democrats, including Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It was not clear what action Democrats might take if a Republican moved to vacate the chair and the House voted on the measure.

Some Democrats have suggested they could support McCarthy if an ouster attempt occurred at a turbulent time. Others have suggested they could back a moderate Republican willing to share the gavel with them and allow power sharing within House committees. Others have shown no interest in helping any speaker candidate aside from House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

US Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive Democrat, said her party was unlikely to help McCarthy keep his job without receiving concessions from Republicans.

“I don’t think we give up votes for free,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s State of the Union.

Asked if she would vote on a measure to oust McCarthy, Ocasio-Cortez said: “Would I cast that vote? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak Speaker. He clearly has lost control of his caucus.”

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Impeachment Inquiry Against Biden Dubbed “Weakest Ever” by Experts

Two impeachment experts told TIME that there is less evidence implicating Biden of wrongdoing than in any of those previous inquiries…reports T N Ashok

The Republicans-led Congress’ move to impeach incumbent US President Joe Biden when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ordered without a majority vote, directing three of the committees led by the GOP to inquire into business dealings Biden’s son had overseas is “disturbing and the weakest ever”.

TIME quoted impeachment experts saying the launch of an impeachment inquiry against the President has happened only a handful of times and there is less evidence implication of Biden of wrongdoing than in any of these previous inquiries that yielded no concrete results or evidence.

Speaker McCarthy took the rare step on Tuesday of launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden and his son Hunter over the latter’s foreign business dealings by passing the usual measure of taking a vote, as he was under pressure from his GOP colleagues, and his action was mainly to placate the Republicans to prevent a possible showdown between the Democrats and Republicans leading to a government shutdown by month-end that he wanted to avoid, media reports circulating in the US said.

The House has voted to impeach just three Presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But even the launch of an impeachment inquiry against a President has only happened a handful of times. Two impeachment experts told TIME that there is less evidence implicating Biden of wrongdoing than in any of those previous inquiries.

“This is very disturbing for people who study past impeachments, because impeachment is really a very extreme measure,” says constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on the history of impeachment, who co-authored an updated edition of Charles Black’s classic legal text, Impeachment: A Handbook, in 2018. 

“I honestly don’t know that there is any evidence tying the President to corrupt activities when he was Vice-President or now.”

TIME also quoted Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and author of the book “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump”, as saying that McCarthy’s decision did not appear to be based on the evidence House Republicans have gathered thus far.

“Biden’s Republican pursuers have got exactly zero, zip, bupkis, on any matter that might be impeachable,” says Bowman.

The US Constitution empowers Congress to impeach and remove from office a President, Vice-President, or Federal Civil Officer for committing “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. However, an inquiry is not a legal requirement for impeaching a President, and the rules around what constitutes one are poorly defined.

Setting apart the five previous Presidents, who faced impeachment proceedings ought to have been impeached and convicted, there was at least some evidence indicating that they committed misconduct.

When impeachment was imminent for President Richard Nixon, he resigned before the House could formally impeach him. It was preceded by a special prosecutor investigation examining his ties to the Watergate burglary, as well as a Senate Special Committee inquiry into the break-in that went beyond a year. Reporting by journalists suggesting that responsibility for the incident and attempts to cover it up stretched into the administration also led to the impeachment move.

Two decades later, a month before the House launched an impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton, independent counsel Ken Starr released a report outlining 11 possible grounds for impeachment, including lying under oath and obstructing justice. 

“In every single case, there was very significant evidence of presidential wrongdoing before the formal inquiry was begun,” Bowman said adding, “The House, and House leadership, took the responsibility of formally opening such an inquiry extremely seriously. Nancy Pelosi, in the first impeachment, resisted calls for impeachment of Trump for two years.”

McCarthy’s inquiry, Bowman suggests, lacks that discipline. 

“What they’re doing here is absolutely shocking,” says Bowman, who added that House Republicans “have no interest at all in preserving the basic integrity of the process, or indeed their own power as legislators in legitimate opposition and tension with the executive branch”.

House Republicans have spent all year investigating Hunter Biden in hopes of proving that Joe Biden profited off his son’s business dealings, particularly while Joe Biden was Vice-President. There has been no conclusive evidence indicating Joe Biden did anything wrong. 

The impeachment move refers to two cases : 1) That Joe Biden as Vice-President in 2017 was aware of Hunter Biden’s involvement with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and allegedly received bribery payments to promote the company in the US while sitting on their board. 2) Another charge against Hunter is that he illegally procured a gun while under the influence of cocaine — US laws prohibit an individual from possessing a gun while under the influence of drugs. Republicans charged, Department of Justice quashed the case. 

McCarthy had earlier indicated that the full House would hold a vote to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden. But such a vote would require the support of nearly every Republican in the narrowly-divided chamber. McCarthy went ahead launching the inquiry without a vote as 20 House Republicans expressed resistance to voting as full House vote could open them up to political liability.

The Speaker’s decision to open the inquiry without a vote has precedent; Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the second impeachment against former President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol without an inquiry at all while the first impeachement was voted for. 

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Trump vs. DeSantis puts McCarthy in a bind

US House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (Photo:Instagram)

Even as McCarthy’s supporters have endorsed Trump, many Republican members are keeping away, report by T.N. Ashok

The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy is under tremendous pressure between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the two will spar off in Iowa setting the temperature high within the party before the primaries kickoff.

McCarthy is unrelenting and a truce could be short lived as the Speaker’s allies understand why he is not offering an formal endorsement toTrump, media reports said.

The pressure on McCarthy to choose sides will only keep growing throughout the summer as the former President locks down support across the House Republicans, says Politico, a leading media outlet.

By delaying a decision, media reports have claimed that McCarthy is only risking Trump’s ire by not officially endorsing his third White House bid.

But political observers say the Speaker is fulfilling a vital mission, that is of sparing the House Republicans over a ‘civil war’ in 2024 as Trump and DeSantis up the ante with harsh words against each other.

Even as McCarthy’s supporters have endorsed Trump, many Republican members are keeping away.

Political observers say that this camp of ‘stay away from Trump’ fear embracing him could spell their electoral doom next fall — as well as allies of the former President’s rivals, from DeSantis to Doug Burgum.

Even as McCarthy risks alienating Trump by staying on the sidelines, the California Republican is shielding his members who are right now very vulnerable.

“The pressure on the speaker to choose sides will only grow throughout the summer, though, as Trump locks down support across the House Republican and questions intensify about why McCarthy isn’t fully embracing the man who helped deliver him the speakership,” the Politico said in an analysis of trends.

Probably McCarthy will choose sides at the near end of the primary, Republican Dan Meuser said, suggesting the Speaker is subtly clearing a path for his members to rally behind the former president by the end of the primary.

“Hey, you’re with DeSantis right now. That’s OK. We get that. You’re with Mike Pence, Tim Scott. But in the end, we’ve got to come together with who’s going to be our winning candidate,” Meuser was quoted as saying by media reports.

Several Republican lawmakers feel a McCarthy endorsement so early before the primaries kickin could result in a potential disunity and infighting across different factions within the party. 

McCarthy will find it difficult in the coming months to thread the needle. The speaker, it might be recalled, backtracked last week after questioning whether Trump was the strongest candidate for the party to run in 2024. 

For the Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, things are quite different.

McConnell and Trump have a history of serious differences and he was never expected to back the latter and he’s been more focused on winning back the Senate.

McConnell has taken painful paths to yank himself off Trump, though that distance from the former president is too cold for comfort and untenable.

On the contrary, McCarthy’s relationship with Trump has often affected his standing with his more conservative members.

Politico claimed that McConnell is facing a much more favorable electoral 2024 map than McCarthy, who’s in a tossup battle to hold onto the House.

McCarthy has a razor edge majority of five members, margin in the house quite tenuous for the party.

More than a dozen Republican-held battleground seats are in the deep blue, high-turnout states of New York and California.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua/IANS)

If one looks at the Joe Biden friendly turf nationwide, only 18 House Republicans sitting in that green have made an endorsement in the 2024 primary.

New York Republican George Santos backed Trump in May, on the eve of his being indicted on a string of federal charges considered a death knell for his re-election.

Conservatives among the party feel that McCarthy and his leadership team are highly focused on their conference’s work before next November, against their fate with voters.

It’s not just McCarthy staying out of the primary. His two deputies, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, have also not endorsed Trump.

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Kevin McCarthy wins House Speakership in 15th attempt

The development came after a dramatic pressure campaign played out live on the House floor as Republican rebel Matt Gaetz was urged to vote for Mr McCarthy, reports Asian Lite News

The US House of Representatives elected Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy as Speaker on Saturday after a historic and embarrassing deadlock that kept the lower chamber from being fully functional days after the new Congress convened earlier this week.

McCarthy from California who has been the House Republican leader since 2019, will finally take the gavel after 15 rounds of voting since the 118th Congress convened on Tuesday, despite his party holding a majority in the chamber, reports the BBC.

The development came after a dramatic pressure campaign played out live on the House floor as Republican rebel Matt Gaetz was urged to vote for Mr McCarthy.

The Florida Congressman was among six holdouts who relented late on Friday.

This was the longest longest Speaker contest in 164 years.

Not since 1860 in the build-up to the American Civil War, when the US’ union was fraying over the issue of slavery, has the lower chamber of Congress voted so many times to pick a Speaker.

Back then it took 44 rounds of ballots.

Meanwhile, Democrat Representative Hakeem Jeffries has made history by becoming the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress.

The Speaker of the House is the second in line to the presidency, after Vice President Kamala Harris.

They set the agenda in the House, and no legislative business can be conducted there without them.

Speaking after his confirmation, McCarthy wrote on Twitter: “I hope one thing is clear after this week: I will never give up. And I will never give up for you, the American people.”

After the 13th ballot was adjourned,the Republican had insisted to reporters that he would “have the votes” to take the speakership on the next round, the BBC reported.

Friday was the first day that McCarthy’s vote count actually surpassed that of Jeffries.

In November 8, 2022 midterm elections, Republicans won the House by a weaker-than-expected margin of 222 to 212.

Democrats retained control of the Senate.

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