The president of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, was dismissed yesterday in a decision unprecedented in the history of the country and as a consequence of the initiative of a legislator from the hard wing of the Republican Party.
For the first time in more than two centuries of United States history, the lower house resolved to “leave the office of president vacant” with 216 votes in favor and 210 against, according to the AFP and Sputnik news agencies.
Thus, the ground was clear for an unprecedented race to succeed McCarthy a year before the next elections.
The motion to debate McCarthy’s impeachment was presented yesterday to the lower house by Republican Matt Gaetz.
The initiative was part of the tension within the Republican Party between the hardline wing that responds to former President Donald Trump, to which Gaetz belongs, and traditional conservatives.
The motion, which required the support of a simple majority of the lower house to be approved, was to be debated within the next two legislative days, although in principle it emerged that some mechanism would be sought to delay it.
However, with 218 votes in favor and 208 against, the full chamber ruled this afternoon in favor of debating and voting on the motion.
Both for the motion to be debated and for McCarthy to be later removed, the votes of more than 200 Democrats were joined by those of just over a dozen Republicans, who have a simple majority of the chamber’s seats.
Gaetz is a leading figure among the small group of far-right Republican lawmakers who last week brought the government to the brink of a shutdown with their refusal to pass a new budget without deep spending cuts.
That bloc also opposes sending additional aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, arguing that the money would be better spent in the United States in the fight against illegal immigration. Hardliners wield a de facto veto over the passage of legislation in the House, given the Republicans’ narrow victory in last November’s midterm elections.
After the House on Saturday approved a last-minute measure to extend the budget, at current levels and without new aid to Ukraine, Gaetz warned that he would move to remove McCarthy.
Source: Ambito
