McCarthy Makes Last-Minute Concessions in Bid for Speaker’s Gavel

With the election for speaker of the House on Tuesday, Congressman Kevin McCarthy is making his last play to collect 218 votes even as some in his conference are making plans for a potential alternative — including making an outgoing Republican speaker.Sunday afternoon brought together the House Republican conference for a meeting to try to cut a deal to secure his election as speaker for the 118th Congress.Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports that Mr. McCarthy has given at least one major concession to the holdouts on the right flank of his party and agreed to restore the motion to vacate the chair.The restoration of this procedure will make it much easier for members of the House to remove Mr. McCarthy as speaker and will make the position far weaker during his tenure.The motion was last used in 2015 in an attempt to oust Speaker Boehner by a congressman at the time, Mark Meadows. At the time, however, the motion was referred to the Rules Committee instead of going to the floor.The motion did not result in the successful removal of Mr. Boehner officially, however, most believe that the motion contributed to his eventual resignation, later in 2015.Under the rules that some Republicans have been demanding, a motion to vacate the chair would be considered a privileged motion, meaning it would go to an immediate floor vote.The Wall Street Journal reports that Mr. McCarthy also has yielded to at least one other demand, agreeing to support the creation of a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”An incoming congresswoman, Anna Paulina Luna, also told Steve Bannon’s War Room over the weekend that other House members had called her, “threatening” her in an attempt to whip votes for Mr. McCarthy’s speakership.“I’m not going to be bullied, if you are going to negotiate in good faith, negotiate in good faith but don’t resort to threatening people,” Ms. Luna said.While reports swirl of concessions that Mr. McCarthy is making, it’s not yet clear that those opposed to his speakership — namely a few outspoken members of the Freedom Caucus — will vote for him on Tuesday.As of Sunday night, there were still five holdouts — just enough to prevent Mr. McCarthy from getting the gavel — in the House.Congressmen Andy Biggs, Bob Good, Matt Gaetz, Matt Rosendale, and Ralph Norman said that they would oppose Mr. McCarthy’s leadership under any circumstances. However, the restoration of the motion to vacate the chair was one of their chief demands.Last week, Mr. Biggs, Mr. McCarthy’s only official challenger as of now, predicted that the vote would go to multiple ballots and that other Republicans would withdraw their support for Mr. McCarthy after he failed to win in the first vote.Suspicions that some Republicans may try to cut a deal with Democrats should Mr. McCarthy lose may have been well founded, according to Roll Call.The Republican Main Street Caucus, the Republican Governance Group and the Problem Solvers Group have reportedly been discussing the possibility of working with Democrats to elect an outgoing representative, Fred Upton, as speaker.The deal would reportedly give Democrats some concessions on rules in return for the votes necessary to elect the outgoing Republican speaker, though the details of the discussion are not public.

McCarthy Makes Last-Minute Concessions in Bid for Speaker’s Gavel

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