A monitor in Statuary Hall displays House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as he sits in the chamber at the start of a tenth ballot to elect a speaker of the House, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Capitol Hill faced another day of votes for the next House speaker as Kevin McCarthy failed to gain support in the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh rounds of voting.
Each of the Republican leader's attempts to win the speakership failed with 20 Republicans refusing to back him and another voting Present, even after the he made several concessions Wednesday evening.
McCarthy agreed to a rules change that would allow just one member to call for a vote to oust the speaker, a major concession that many defectors had asked for and initially something McCarthy had strongly opposed. He also agreed to allow more members of the Freedom Caucus to serve on the powerful House Rules committee.
The seventh and eight votes showed the reluctance of some defectors to ever support McCarthy as speaker.
“You never have to ask me again if I’m a no on Kevin McCarthy, I will never vote for Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Bob Good, a consistent voter against McCarthy, told reporters Thursday morning. McCarthy can only afford to lose the support of four Republicans, given the slim majority they have.
But even after eight defeats, McCarthy has shown no signs of giving up the bid, in part not wanting to set a precedent that such a small faction of the party can have so much control.
The California Republican told reporters Thursday he was “confident” they would get to a solution and that lawmakers were having “good discussions,” but would not predict when he would have the votes by.
Lawmakers probing the cause of last month’s deadly Maui wildfire did not get many answers during Thursday's congressional hearing on the role the electrical grid played in the disaster.
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that federal disaster assistance is available for Louisiana, which is working to slow a mass inflow of salt water creeping up the Mississippi River and threatening drinking water supplies in the southern part of the state.
A new law in California will raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour next year, an acknowledgment from the state's Democratic leaders that most of the often overlooked workforce are the primary earners for their low-income households.
From Sunday, workers at the main United States base in Antarctica will no longer be able to walk into a bar and order a beer, after the U.S. federal agency that oversees the research program decided to stop serving alcohol.
House Republicans launched a formal impeachment hearing Thursday against President Joe Biden, promising to “provide accountability” as they probe the family finances and business dealings of his son Hunter and make their case to the public, colleagues and a skeptical Senate.
The FBI and other government agencies should be required to get court approval before reviewing the communications of U.S. citizens collected through a secretive foreign surveillance program, a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended on Thursday.
The federal government is just days away from a shutdown that will disrupt many services, squeeze workers and roil politics as Republicans in the House, fueled by hard-right demands, force a confrontation over federal spending.
The Biden administration is finalizing a new rule that would cut federal funding for colleges that leave graduates with low pay and high debt after graduating.
The Biden administration is finalizing a new rule that would cut federal funding for colleges that leave graduates with low pay and high debt after graduating.
