Congressman Matt Gaetz faces protesters at town hall events in Santa Rosa County, Florida: Glynn Wilson

Staff Report –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The MAGA Dixie Caucus, a.k.a., the “Freedom Caucus,” led by Matt Gaetz of the Redneck Riviera in the Panhandle of Florida, got their way on Tuesday as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed in a vote of 216 to 210.

In live coverage, the New York Times called it “a move without precedent in modern history that left the chamber without a leader and plunged it into chaos.”

Democrats joined with a small group of hard-liners in McCarthy’s own party to strip the California Republican of the speakership, “the culmination of a bitter power struggle between Mr. McCarthy and members of a far-right faction who tried to block his ascent to the speakership in January and have tormented him ever since, trying to stymie his efforts to keep the government funded and the nation from defaulting on its debt.”

Before the vote, a surreal Republican-against-Republican debate played out on the House floor as members of the hard-right clutch of rebels railed against their own speaker and verbally sparred with McCarthy’s defenders. Democrats sat silently.

A tense scene played out on the floor as lawmakers voted to oust the speaker the same way they vote to elect one: by sitting on the House floor and rising one by one in an alphabetical roll-call by conducted by the clerk.

“A vacancy in the speaker’s chair essentially paralyzes the House until a successor is chosen,” according to multiple procedural experts. “That promises to tee up another potentially messy speaker election at a time when Congress has just over 40 days to avert another potential government shutdown.”

In the hours before the vote, McCarthy, an inveterate optimist who prides himself on never giving up, was characteristically sanguine, saying he was confident about his ability to survive and defending his decision to work with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, which precipitated the bid to remove him.

“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 on Tuesday morning. In a closed-door meeting underneath the Capitol, he told Republicans he had no regrets about his speakership, and was interrupted several times by raucous standing ovations.

McCarthy’s critics took to the floor to savage him for what they characterized as a failure to wring steeper spending cuts out of the Biden administration and a lack of leadership.

“Chaos is Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz declared. “Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word.”

In the days leading up to the vote, Democrats had wrestled with whether to help McCarthy survive, or at least to stay out of the effort to oust him. But in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday morning, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, instructed fellow Democrats not to do so, citing Republicans’ “unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism.”

Democrats were not participating in the floor debate over whether to oust the speaker.

There is no clear replacement for McCarthy.

“I think there’s plenty of people who can step up and do the job,” said Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the rebels who voted to push McCarthy out, adding that he did not know who he had in mind for the job instead.

The proceedings that played out on Tuesday have taken place only once before in the House of Representatives, in 1910. Back then, progressive Republicans tried to remove then-Speaker Joseph Cannon, a conservative known as “Uncle Joe,” for refusing to bring their priorities to the floor for a vote. He survived that vote, but was weakened as a result.

The interim speaker, Patrick McHenry, recessed the House so both parties can find a path forward.

“The House floor will be paralyzed until a new speaker is elected,” the Times reported.

While it appears the Dixie Caucus got its way, the move makes a government shutdown more likely next month when the Continuing Resolution passed last week expires.

Related: Congress Narrowly Averts a Government Shutdown as House Democrats Help Pass Stopgap Funding Bill, Approved by the Senate

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