The House of Representatives has concluded a tumultuous year, to say the least. An ousting, expulsion, and internal strife plagued the walls of the chamber for the latter half of 2023.
Conflict began in late September when a group of about a dozen hard-lined Republican congressmen, spearheaded by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, began a motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy from his position as Speaker of the House. Gaetz cited McCarthy’s decision to back a stop-gap bipartisan resolution that required negotiation with Democrats to avert a government shutdown as his justification for ousting him from Speaker.
“Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz stated in an interview with CBS just days before the vote to oust succeeded, “This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we set up is a last straw.”
Rules regarding the rare and obscure “motion to vacate” have constantly changed over the past few years, but ultimately have stayed consistent since McCarthy’s own decision in early 2023. This rule change allowed only one lawmaker to initiate the motion – as opposed to the previous rule that required the support of the majority of one party. The ruling largely came from pressure by hard-line Republican conservatives, in many ways the same ones that would remove him from his speakership in October.
Following a motion to vacate, a vote must be forced to the House floor within two days, and only a simple majority is needed to oust the Speaker from their position.
History was made on October 3rd, 2023, when McCarthy was ousted from the speakership on a vote of 216-210, making him the first Speaker of the House to ever be removed from the position in U.S. history. With no clear successor, a lengthy process then began to elect a new one.
A three week long undertaking involved the voting of many potential speakers, including Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and even a single vote cast for former President Donald Trump by Matt Gaetz himself.
AP U.S. Government teacher Thomas Kuhn described the process of how the Republican party selects a new speaker through caucuses, which are private meetings with all Republicans of the House.
Kuhn said, “What the Republicans do is they go into caucus, and they say, ‘we’ve got to unite behind one candidate, because you need 218 votes to win. So rather than throwing three names out and looking like idiots, let’s unite behind one, but let’s do it behind closed doors.’ So in those closed domains, they couldn’t unite behind one candidate.”
In late October, Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson, a relatively new congressman, became Speaker of the House with 220 votes cast for him. Johnson remains the current Speaker today.
This was not the end of troubles for the House of Representatives, though. Former Representative George Santos of New York found himself on the chopping block just two months after McCarthy on December 1st, as he was voted to be expelled from Congress by a two-thirds majority.
Santos became the sixth member of Congress to ever be expelled from the House, accused of misusing campaign donations for his own personal use, among other convictions of fraud.
Expulsions are very rare in the House, as it requires a bipartisan vote of two-thirds majority to succeed. This means that a large part of Santos’ own party were willing to give up a Republican seat in order to kick him out.
“The Chair announces to the House,” Speaker Mike Johnson announced after the votes had been tallied, “that in light of the expulsion of the gentlemen from New York, Mr. Santos, the whole number of the House is now 434.”.
According to the Department of Justice, Santos pleaded not guilty to over 23 felony charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft, and credit card fraud. His trial date is set for September of this year.
