House adjourns for 2nd day without a speaker after Kevin McCarthy fails to win enough Republican support
Yet McCarthy wasn't giving up, even after the fourth, fifth and sixth ballots produced no better outcome and he was left trying to call off a night-time session. Even that was controversial, as the House voted 216-214 - amid shouting and crowding -to adjourn for the night.
Seeing no quick way out of the political standoff, Republicans voted abruptly late in the day to adjourn for a few hours as they desperately searched for an endgame to the chaos of their own making. They were due back in the evening, but McCarthy wanted to take a break until Thursday. “Well, it's Groundhog Day,” said Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., in nominating McCarthy on the sixth ballot.
The House gaveled in at noon, but no other work could be done - swearing in new members, forming committees, tackling legislation, investigating the Biden administration - until the speaker was elected. It was the first time in 100 years that a nominee for House speaker could not take the gavel on the first vote, but McCarthy appeared undeterred. Instead, he vowed to fight to the finish.
Tensions flared among the new House majority as their campaign promises stalled out. Not since 1923 has a speaker's election gone to multiple ballots, and the longest and most grueling fight for the gavel started in late 1855 and dragged out for two months, with 133 ballots, during debates over slavery in the run-up to the Civil War.
As the spectacle of voting dragged on, McCarthy's backers implored the holdouts to fall in line for the California Republican.
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