On the fifteenth ballot, after a long series of humiliating flops and tense moments, including physical strain, 57-year-old Republican Kevin McCarthy, representing California, was elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. In the decisive round, after midnight in Washington, the GOP candidate collected 216 votes out of 428, with a quorum set at 215 preferences given that six Republican “dissidents”, although present, did not speak.
Democratic challenger Hakeem Jeffries won 212 votes and will be the Democrat Minority Leader in the House, the first time for an African-American representative. Jeffries, a 52-year-old criminal lawyer, is also the first Democratic House leader born after the end of World War II.
According to CNN, Donald Trump helped break the deadlock with a phone call to rebel MPs Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs to persuade them to give in and vote for McCarthy. After the two talks, Republicans reportedly withdrew the motion to adjourn the House until Monday and the longest vote for the president in 164 years at this party was closed in the fifteenth round, which saw U.S. lawmakers in the edge of a fight. At one point, Republican Mike Rogers, representing Alabama, approached the rebellious Gaetz menacingly and was held back by another congressman, while someone shouted “behave civilly.” ! »
However, the turning point came after McCarthy gave in to numerous demands from his opponents, including reinstating an old House rule that would allow any member to call a vote to oust the new speaker from office. McCarthy did so, but made his debut weakened, recovering from a grueling standoff that forced him to relinquish some prerogatives accrued over time by Speaker of the House. But some US media point out that, on the other hand, the new president can be seen as a tough survivor of a House leadership race that has no precedent in terms of length and complexity since the American Civil War era.
The showdown came against the backdrop of the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, as a crowd of Donald Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the president’s defeat. era in the 2020 election against Democrat Joe Biden. “America is a land of law, not chaos,” Biden said yesterday.
US President Joe Biden has congratulated Republican Kevin McCarthy, elected new Speaker of the US House of Representatives after a grueling standoff with a group of “dissidents” that caused chaos in the chamber and an unprecedented deadlock since the Civil War. In a statement released by the White House, the president stresses that he is “ready to work with Republicans and voters have made it clear that they expect Republicans to be ready to work with me”. “The American people want their needs first for their leaders and we need to do that now,” Biden said.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America (in English: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives) or Speaker of the House (Speaker of the House) is the person entrusted with the task of directing the work of the representatives of the House of Representatives, one of the two houses of Congress; he sits second in the presidential succession, behind the Vice President of the United States and ahead of the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.