A grim-faced Kevin McCarthy clenched the armrest of his seat in the House chamber as he was ousted from the speakership on Tuesday, the knuckles of his right hand turning whiter with every vote that assured he would lose the gavel in a move without precedent in modern US history.
The person who had orchestrated his removal, the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, was seated about 20ft behind him, at times leaning forward in anticipation and apparent excitement.
When it was all over and the office of the House speaker was no longer his, McCarthy slumped back and laughed as several of his allies came up to shake his hand, reassuring him that he had done a good job and it wasn’t his fault, a person familiar with the matter said.
The first-ever removal of a speaker in congressional history was a tense political moment that occurred in the same way the speaker is elected – in an alphabetical roll-call vote conducted by the clerk with all the members in the chamber – with moments of high drama.
McCarthy’s ouster was the culmination of months of internal Republican party antagonism and an epic power struggle between McCarthy and a small group of hard-right members that had tormented him ever since they ultimately failed to stop his ascent to the speakership in January.
By 2pm in Washington, the upper galleries looking down onto the House chamber were packed. The press gallery, running the length of the chamber directly behind the dais, ran out of seats and a row of reporters stood against the back wall.
Down on the House floor, the anticipation among the members was focused on the upcoming vote series: the motion to table, the final chance to prevent the McCarthy removal vote from taking place, followed by the motion to vacate, the actual vote to strip McCarthy of his post.
The first vote ended up taking longer than expected. A huge number of Democrats swarmed the well of the House floor to vote by hand – holding red cards to indicate their no votes – in an effort to keep the vote open and buy time for their colleagues to get back to the Capitol.
But even with a handful of Democrats absent on Tuesday – Cori Bush, the former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mary Peltola, Emilia Sykes – the writing on the wall was quickly becoming clear for McCarthy after nine Republicans voted to proceed to the second, removal vote.
McCarthy had held out hope for some cross-party support and his aides, behind the scenes, frantically called a number of moderate Democrats to see whether they were willing to negotiate some deal in exchange for their support. There appeared to be no takers.
The atmosphere for the motion to vacate was nonetheless tense. After an hour of impassioned debate, where Gaetz was forced to speak from the Democratic side of the chamber because McCarthy allies blocked the lecterns on the Republican side, Gaetz moved seats from the front to the back.
McCarthy also changed seats and brought himself closer to the front, sitting in the aisle next to an aide. The chamber was silent – unusually quiet because the members normally chat with their seat neighbors – and most of the Republicans stood in the back, near their cloakroom.
As the clerk ticked through the roll call, there were murmurs, when the Republican Warren Davidson voted against removing McCarthy after earlier joining Democrats to proceed to the removal vote, and there were gasps, like when the Republican Nancy Mace, in a surprise move, voted to oust McCarthy.
(Standing on the east front steps of the Capitol afterwards, Mace explained that she had decided to remove McCarthy because he had not honored his agreement to her on women’s issues such as birth control access and rape kits.)
There were also moments of levity: when the far-right Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert was called upon, she answered “not for the moment” – drawing mockery from both sides of the aisle.
Once the number of Republicans against McCarthy climbed to seven, it was clear to McCarthy, Gaetz and everyone else, that his time was up. McCarthy put one hand over his other, palms facing upwards, and looked at the ornate stained-glass eagle on the ceiling of the chamber.
As the vote continued towards the inevitable, Gaetz looked relieved. He struck up conversations with his seat neighbors, and played with Boebert’s well-behaved baby boy who was cooing in her arms. A foot away stood the indicted Republican congressman George Santos, watching the pair interact.
By the end, when his ouster had been gavelled, a look of resignation was etched on McCarthy’s face. He sat in his seat for some time longer than others. Hours later, when he addressed the Republican conference, McCarthy told his members he would not seek another term as speaker.
