Right-wing Republican Matt Gaetz from Florida and his allies have ousted their party colleague Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives. This is the first time in the nearly 250-year history of the United States that the chairman of the House of Representatives has been voted out of office by his own party.
This was preceded by a bitter debate between supporters and opponents in the Republican camp. The “motion to vacate” was submitted out of anger over the compromise with the Democrats in the US budget dispute.
The Democrats had decided against rushing to help McCarthy with their votes. Only six dissidents from the Republican camp were needed to unseat McCarthy; In the end there were eight.
A motion to remove the chairman is extremely unusual in the US House of Representatives. Such proposals have only been put forward three times in the history of the Congressional Chamber. And only once – in 1910 – has there been a vote on it in the chamber’s plenary session. No chairman had ever lost his office in this way.