Republics Divided on Speaker of the House

   After the recent election of the U.S. House Representatives in November 2022, they now have to decide on a new Speaker of the House. The candidates which were nominated for the position were Republican Kevin McCarthy, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, and Republican Byron Donalds. 

   After 15 failed votes and many adjournments, Kevin McCarthy finally won the title for Speaker of the House and had a rocky first day trying to undo the first half of Joe Biden’s presidency, funding the IRS, pledging to tackle immigration, and promising to stop “woke” education in schools. The only reason the voting went on as long as it did was the Republican Party in the House was split, having 20 members not voting for McCarthy and instead for Byron Donalds. This wouldn’t have mattered however, the difference between the number of Democrats and Republicans in the House is only nine members leading the Democrat representative to have the majority of the votes. 

   The House then agreed to adjourn and proceeded to have 14 more votes, with McCarthy still losing each one, failing to flip the votes of the Republicans voting for Donalds. This indecisiveness changed after McCarthy made a plan with the Republican voters, who were originally voting for Donalds, that they could give more power to the far right and promised to deal with the debt ceiling and appropriation bills in a certain way. McCarthy also agreed to change the House rules to give him an easy no-confidence vote in his leadership and he agreed to committee assignments including placing Republicans on the Freedom Caucus. 

   The Speaker of the House has the power to choose and elect 9 out of 13 members of the Committee of Rules which is a committee under the House of Representatives that is responsible for the Rules under each bill that will be presented to the House of Representatives. In his deal with the Republicans that were voting for Donalds speculation surrounds him having privately promised a position on the counsel for them. The whole process has been exhausting not only for the House members but for the nation watching, now that McCarthey is elected all of the Representatives can be sworn in and start working on official government duties.