U.S. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz filed a resolution late Monday to oust Republican Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, setting up a likely showdown vote in the House in the days ahead.
Gaetz, a far-right Republican from Florida, has for months threatened to use a procedural tool — called a motion to vacate — to try to strip McCarthy of his office. Those threats escalated over the weekend after McCarthy relied on Democrats to provide the necessary votes to fund the government.
In an earlier speech on the House floor, Gaetz demanded McCarthy disclose the details of a supposed deal the Speaker made with the White House to bring forward legislation to help fund the war in Ukraine during funding negotiations.
“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for and it’s not the Republican Conference,” Gaetz said in his speech, hours before he filed the resolution.
Brushing off the threat, McCarthy told reporters earlier at the Capitol, “I’m focused on doing the work that has to be done.” He said there was “no side deal” on Ukraine, noting he has not spoken to U.S. President Joe Biden.
A motion to vacate is a rare and strong procedural tool that has only been used twice in the past century, both times against Republican Speakers. But in recent years, conservatives have wielded the motion as a weapon against their leaders.
In January, McCarthy, hoping to appease some on the hard right like Gaetz as he fought to gain their vote for Speaker, agreed to give as few as five Republican members the ability to initiate a vote to remove him.
But when that wasn’t good enough for his critics, he agreed to reduce that threshold to one — the system that historically has been the norm.
That decision has set McCarthy up for the ultimate test of his leadership as he will now have to rely on Democrats to on Democrats to not support Gaetz’s effort to force his removal.
It is not clear whether Gaetz will succeed. Republicans control the chamber by a narrow 221-212 majority, and it would take as few as five defections to threaten McCarthy’s hold on power, if all Democrats vote against him.