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The House of Representatives has adopted new rules that make it more difficult to trigger a vote to expel a speaker.
House lawmakers voted 215-209 along party lines to set the house rules for the 119th Congress.
Among them was a measure to raise the threshold for calling a “motion to vacate the chair,” which triggers a House-wide vote to remove the sitting speaker.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., agreed to lower the threshold to just one person to win over the opposition and take the speaker’s gavel in January 2023 at the start of the 118th Congress.
But now the 119th Congress raises that number from one to nine, and further modifies the rule to specify that nine members of the majority party in office must be the ones to ask for the vote.
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Speaker Mike Johnson led the House to make it harder to oust him from the top job. (Getty)
It sparked fury among Democrats, who accused Republicans of eroding the importance of the minority party.
“His proposed changes, for the first time in American history, would shield the president from accountability before the entire chamber by making it so that only Republicans can move to oust the speaker,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. . top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.
“This makes it clear that they have no intention of working together to find common ground. Instead of electing a speaker of the House, they’ve decided to elect a president of the Republican Conference — a hostage of its most extreme members.”
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Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was ousted after agreeing to lower the threshold for a motion to vacate the chair. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
McCarthy was notably impeached by eight House Republicans and all House Democrats after former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, called for a motion to vacate the chair in October 2023.
The one-vote threshold hung over Johnson like the sword of Damocles for more than a year after he won the speaker’s gavel later that month.
The change is the product of negotiations between the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and the more pragmatic Republican Main Street Caucus.
Other changes in the new House Republican rules package include replacing some gender-neutral family language such as “son” and “father” with more gendered language such as son, daughter, mother and father .
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz led the impeachment of McCarthy (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
It also limits the Capacity of the president of the Chamber bypass traditional house processes to rush a bill to the House through a mechanism known as “suspension of rules.”
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Johnson’s use of the stopgap measure to pass critical Democratic-backed legislation angered GOP supporters at the House GOP Conference.
Under the new package, Johnson will only be able to bring a House bill up for a suspended vote on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
