Nearly a dozen members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus revolted against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday, tanking a procedural vote that had been expected to pass easily with Republican support.
In a vote of 206 to 220, the rebellious Republicans joined Democrats in preventing debate on a pair of GOP bills that would ramp up gas stove protections.
The publicly humiliating blow for McCarthy and House Republican leadership follows intraparty discord around the debt ceiling deal brokered by the speaker and President Biden.
“There’s a lot of discussions that’s going on among the group that’s very healthy, and I look forward to getting back together later,” said House Republican Whip Tom Emmer, putting a positive spin on the fallout.
Republicans scrambled and began meeting on the House floor after the rare failure of a so-called rule vote to allow debate on the gas stove bills.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., could be seen in intense conservations with several Republicans who voted no on the floor.
Republican claims he was threatened over debt limit vote
South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters the members’ rejection of the rule was “about a lot of things,” including frustration about the debt ceiling deal and an apparent slow-walking of Rep. Andrew Clyde’s bill regarding pistol stabilizing braces.
“It is about moving the bill — the brace rule — holding that and not putting that on the floor,” he said. “That’s part of it.”
Last week, Clyde said on provocateur Steve Bannon’s controversial podcast that House leadership threatened to block his bill on pistol braces if he voted against the debt ceiling legislation. Clyde is the sponsor of a bill on pistol braces.
“I was told by leadership that if I didn’t vote for the rule [for the debt ceiling debate], that it would be very difficult to bring my bill to the floor,” Clyde said.
Leaving the House chamber Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer told reporters: “We have a small but very willful group of people who unfortunately have much more influence than they ought to.”
What does this mean for McCarthy?
House Freedom Caucus members have been vocal in their disappointment with McCarthy over the recent debt ceiling legislation, claiming the speaker didn’t do enough to force significant spending cuts.
But it was unclear whether members would move on a motion to vacate, a rule McCarthy agreed to in January when he was fighting to become speaker that would enable any one House member to offer a resolution to remove the speaker.
On Monday night, Norman said it’s not “the right time” to have a conversation about ousting McCarthy — still, he was quick to add there’s palpable frustration among his caucus.
“We think he gave the farm away,” he told NPR of the debt deal, adding McCarthy has other avenues to “show his conservatism” going forward.
“Fighting another day means you look at appropriations, look at reallocations on the military budget, look at the farm bill,” he said. “There are other things that he can do that hopefully will get this country back on financial footing.”
This story originally appeared on NPR
