The House of Representatives has adjourned after failing to elect a new Speaker, leaving Kevin McCarthy’s political future hanging by a thread after Republican party infighting threatened to halt lawmaking in Washington.
On Tuesday, McCarthy became the first majority party leader in a century to falter in the first ballot, before he went on to lose two subsequent rounds of voting.
McCarthy secured 203 votes in the first round, 15 short of the 218 required to seize the Speaker’s gavel, after 19 Republicans voted against him. He did not improve his numbers in the second round, with his 19 opponents coming together to support Jim Jordan, the Republican congressman from Ohio who had formally nominated McCarthy for Speaker.