House adjourns after Kevin McCarthy falls short in three rounds of voting for speaker – as it happened

The fabulist New York Republican representative-elect George Santos has yet to be sworn in. In the meantime, Brazilian prosecutors say they are reopening a criminal fraud case against him.

Santos, who faces federal and state investigations involving possible criminal activity related to his two congressional campaigns, is accused of using a stolen chequebook and fake name at a clothing shop outside Rio de Janeiro in 2008, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing court documents.

The case languished for more than a decade, however, as Brazilian authorities did not know where Santos was.

Santos reportedly told police in 2010 that he and his mother stole the chequebook from a man that she had once worked for, and then used it to make illicit purchases, per the Times.

He seemed to come clean about the purported fraud to the store’s proprietor the next year on a Brazilian social media website, allegedly writing: “I know I screwed up, but I want to pay.”

While a judge in Brazil greenlit a charge against Santos in 2011, he had already gone to the US. Because Brazilian authorities needed to officially notify him of the charges before the case could proceed, the case ground to a halt. Brazilian prosecutors will now file a petition in court asking that Santos respond to the charges, after which Brazil’s justice ministry will send it to the US justice department.

If convicted, the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment as well as a fine, the New York Times said.

“We’ll see what happens,” Donald Trump told NBC’s Garrett Haake after he was asked whether he’ll stick with his support for McCarthy.

Trump endorsed McCarthy for speaker and had tried to rally support for him before he lost three rounds of speaker votes today.

Here’s some context, again, on what today’s three, chaotic rounds of voting for House speaker mean, from Joan E Greve and Lauren Gambino in Washington:

McCarthy is the first nominee for speaker in 100 years to fail to win the first vote for the gavel. After the first three ballots, the House prepared for votes that could stretch into Tuesday evening.

McCarthy had acknowledged he was unlikely to win the speakership on the first ballot, setting the stage for a potentially lengthy delay before new members of the House could be sworn in. McCarthy suggested he was comfortable breaking the record for the longest speakership election in history, which stands at two months and 133 ballots.

“We may have a battle on the floor,” McCarthy told reporters. “But the battle is for the conference and the country, and that’s fine with me.”

The Republican opposition to McCarthy has been led by members of the House’s Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group that has pushed for changes to chamber rules. Scott Perry, the Freedom Caucus chair, reiterated his opposition on Tuesday and accused McCarthy of failing to work in good faith with his group.

“At nearly every turn, we’ve been sidelined or resisted by McCarthy and any perceived progress has often been vague or contained loopholes that further amplified concerns as to the sincerity of the promises being made,” Perry said. “Kevin McCarthy had an opportunity to be speaker of the House. He rejected it.”

“The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes,” said Bryon Donalds, who defected from McCarthy in the third round. “Our conference needs to recess and huddle and find someone or work out the next steps.”

Representative Byron Donalds, a Republican of Florida, has become the first McCarthy supporter to switch his vote from McCarthy to Jordan.

The vote got a few claps in the chamber.

Hi there, is Maanvi Singh, reporting from West Coast.

It seems Kevin McCarthy is on the verge of losing for the third time today, after five Republicans so far voted in support of Jim Jordan.

Democrats, meanwhile, have remained united in voting for Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Is Kevin McCarthy’s bid to be House speaker doomed? As we head for an excruciating third round of voting in the election for speaker, there is no sign of the California Republican, who has long aspired to step into the role, gaining a majority of the votes.

Some speculate that if this goes on, McCarthy could step aside and nominate prominent Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise to be speaker in his stead.

Any idea of Ohio rightwinger Jim Jordan leapfrogging into the seat and grasping the gavel seems far-fetched.

And…

It’s surreal.

Steve Scalise is also a stalwart of the right wing known for hanging around with white supremacists and Klan types.

Scalise was badly wounded in a mass shooting targeting members of Congress at a baseball practice in 2017.

The humiliations for Kevin McCarthy just keep coming. Right-winger Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is a McCarthy supporter but was nominated by anti-McCarthy rebel Matt Gaetz to disrupt everything, already has 19 votes in the election for House speaker.

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, is also ahead of McCarthy, with 196 votes compared with McCarthy’s 183. Jeffries won’t be able to get a majority, with Republicans controlling the House, but he is playing a big part in the epic embarrassment for McCarthy.

We’re up to the Ws already in the roll call vote, so McCarthy’s second go around of twisting on a skewer is about to wrap up.

McCarthy is doing his best to keep a fixed smile on his face in the chamber, but the giveaway is his left hand reflexively tapping his leg with nerves.

The last time the vote went to multiple ballots was in 1923, when a small bloc of Republicans refused to reelect Rep. Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) as speaker. (The rebels were part of the party’s progressive faction, in contrast to the conservatives threatening to block McCarthy’s rise today, but like their modern counterparts, they were pressing for changes to House rules), the Washington Post reports today.

The Washington Post continues:

“So powerful and determined was the grip of the insurgents that after the fourth ballot Nicholas Longworth, the Republican floor leader, moved an adjournment until tomorrow, when the struggle will be resumed,” the New York Times reported at the time.

Gillett did not prevail until the ninth ballot, two days after voting began. He was elected with 215 votes, the lowest total of any speaker since the House reached its modern size. (Others have come close, though: Pelosi prevailed with 216 votes in 2021, as did Boehner in 2015.)

Older fights over the speakership dragged on even longer, such as the 1855 deadlock that ended with the election of Representative Nathaniel Banks as speaker. It took 133 ballots. “This will not take that [long],” former House speaker Newt Gingrich told The Early last month.

Ohio right-winger Jim Jordan has just re-nominated Kevin McCarthy to become House Speaker.

Jordan said: “We need to rally around him.” He then quoted the Bible, calling on the caucus to “keep the faith” and unify around McCarthy.

It’s a crisis for the Republicans in the House, no doubt about it.

California Democrat Pete Aguilar is now once again nominating Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries as that party’s choice for speaker.

Freedom caucus and right-wing rebel Matt Gaetz of Florida has now risen. he’s nominating Jim Jordan to become speaker. We’re definitely in sitcom territory now, other than this is about one of the highest offices in the land and third in line to the presidency.

Wry smiling from McCarthy, who’s sitting feet from Gaetz. In the first round, Arizona congressman Paul Gosar nominated Andy Biggs. He’s not being nominated this time around. The reading clerk is now going to call the roll and voting will begin.

Astonishingly, because it is the first day of the new Congress, the floor of the House of Representatives is not just full of representatives, there is a smattering of children, babies, even, miniature adults in suits and a variety of family members.

They’re there to see their relatives sworn in for the 118th Congress. There are many freshman members who won their races in the midterm elections in November and are now waiting to take their seats.

On the first day of a new congress, new members bring family along. What these folk are now witnessing is an historic mess as Republican civil war in the House produces a scene of chaos.

No-one is being sworn in until the House has a Speaker, which it is currently missing, the Speaker’s seat sitting vividly unoccupied, the gavel silent.

Right-winger and conspiracy theory-fan Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is huddling with Kevin McCarthy right now, after he just lost the first round of voting to elect the House Speaker.

She voted for him, unlike other right-wing rebels such as Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Scott Perry.

Jim Jordan, who backs McCarthy, is trying to swing support behind McCarthy now, doing the rounds on the floor.

Much huddling and milling about on the floor of the House of Representatives before the chamber is expected to proceed to an historic second round of voting for the election of House speaker.

California Republican Kevin McCarthy just spectacularly failed to win a majority of House votes to become speaker in the first round. The House currently has no speaker. The chamber is not in recess, it’s still in session. It’s not entirely clear what will happen in the moments between now and the next round of voting.

McCarthy has been handed his pride on a plate by a knot of right-wing rebels in his own party who refused to vote for him, who he has failed to win over despite intense days and, indeed, weeks of negotiating.

Six lawmakers voted for representative Jim Jordan, even though he was nor formally on the ballot. Will Jordan try to get those people to switch to McCarthy? That still won’t give McCarthy the requisite 218-vote majority he needs.

McCarthy can be seen laughing loudly as he talks to allies on the floor. One wonders what he is feeling inside.

We’re coming up on the end of the alphabet and not only is Kevin McCarthy far short of winning a majority in the election for House Speaker, he’s behind Democratic minority leader HakeemJeffries in the voting.

This is a disaster for Republicans on their first day supposedly in control of the House of Representatives.

They can’t recess without the clerk of the House, Cheryl Johnson, agreeing to a vote, it seems, so the Democrats might just keep everyone on the floor and force the second round of voting to proceed with McCarthy having any chance to twist more arms on his side.

Nancy Pelosi just got a standing ovation as she voted for Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries to succeed her as Speaker.

Jeffries was nominated (more or less as a formality) by the Democrats, but has a negligible chance of taking that post. Signs are voting will continue until a Republican has a majority.

But it was a vivid moment as Pelosi, dressed in a dazzling pink pantsuit (much more dazzling that Hillary Clinton’s usuals), called out her vote for Jeffries and Democrats cheered and rose to applaud her.

Pelosi grinned broadly, blew a kiss and put a hand to her heart.

After Republicans scraped a victory for House control in the midterms, and also following the violent attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, by a right-wing member of the public last year, Pelosi announced she was stepping back from her leadership role. She will remain a congresswoman but she handed the baton of leadership to Jeffries.

A big roar has gone up in the house for Kevin McCarthy voting for himself just now.

But he must be squirming in his seat. He’s on track for an historic loss in the first round of voting for House Speaker, an epic embarrassment. We’re in uncharted congressional waters in modern times, here.

It’s worth noting that even in some bizarre humiliation Jeffries garners more votes than McCarthy, he won’t be elected speaker as he won’t have a majority of the House. We’ll grind on to a second round vote, most likely.

Paul Gosar, far-right representative from Arizona, just rose to nominate his state fellow Andy Biggs as Speaker of the House, throwing down the gauntlet to the Republicans.

The first round of voting is beginning, with the three names on offer, Kevin McCarthy, Biggs and Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.

It’s a roll-call vote, in alphabetical order. All representatives have their names called and then state aloud which name they support for Speaker. Or they may abstain by noting simply that they are present, without placing a vote, which will be very disruptive for McCarthy if that happens.

Kevin McCarthy has been frantically negotiating with his party’s right-wing House rebels in recent days and nights, seemingly without securing the votes needed to get him to the majority required to become House Speaker, at least not on the first round of voting, which is about to begin.

One of the main thing that the rebels are demanding is the reinstatement of a rule, scrapped by previous speaker and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, that just one member can call a vote to oust the speaker.

McCarthy apparently hasn’t gone below a threshold of five members needed to force such a vote. McCarthy is in a massive pickle here, that’s for sure. Nancy Pelosi can be seen posing for pix on the House floor right now, grinning broadly in a shocking-pink pantsuit.

She’s stepped back from her leadership position, post-midterms, but remains the representative for her San Francisco district.

Then there’s this from CNN:

McCarthy’s struggle within his own caucus is massively embarrassing for House Republicans, no matter what happens in the coming hours.

But McCarthy is not prepared to drop out.

It’s down to the wire for Republican Kevin McCarthy as the House prepares for the first round of voting for House Speaker.

Wow.

Hakeem Jeffries is set to be the Democratic House minority leader.

Meanwhile:

We have a live feed for you of House proceedings as the 118th Congress gets underway, with the first order of business being the contentious floor vote for House Speaker.

Kevin McCarthy is struggling and faces the humiliating prospect of failing to get through a first round vote, the first time this will have happened in the chamber for a century.

If he can’t rustle up a majority in the first vote, which will take around an hour as the House goes through roll call, there’s the prospect of a second round and maybe more.

There will be horse trading on the side, as well as the prospect of a stalking horse prowling up behind McCarthy.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene has broken from her far-right colleagues Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry, who are staunchly against McCarthy.

Over in the US Senate, the start of the 118th Congress is set to go smoothly even as chaos plays out at the other end of the building, in the House.

New York Democratic Senator and enduring majority leader Chuck Schumer will settle his glasses on the end of his nose and peer over them as he settles into the new session, in the knowledge that his party picked up an extra seat in the midterms, when John Fetterman flipped a seat in Pennsylvania, to consolidate their slim Senate majority. Although Arizona’s Kyrsten Synema switching to become an independent not long after doesn’t help, she’s signaled so far that she’ll vote with the Democrats.

But the warm spotlight as Congress opens today will be on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who passes the mark to be the longest-serving party leader in Senate history. He’ll make a short speech on the floor.

He’s also flagged that he’s backing McCarthy for the speakership over in the House.

As the right-wing Freedom Caucus of representatives in the House tries to drag McCarthy to the far right, McConnell is going to appear alongside Joe Biden in the Republican’s home state of Kentucky tomorrow, as they promote the bipartisan legislation that is pumping a mountain of money into infrastructure, including a crucial, crumbling road bridge where Kentucky meets Ohio.

The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, will be there, as will the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, alongside the Democratic US president and Republican Senator McConnell, in a bipartisan display that will only further show up the infighting among Republicans in the House.

A crescendo of bipartisan outrage will accompany the swearing in due today of George Santos, one of the Republican party’s most controversial new Congress members, who has admitted large parts of his biography are a fantasy.

The New York politician, caught in lies over his family background, education and work history, is facing calls to step down from several senior figures within his own party before he even sets foot on the floor of the chamber.

Kevin Brady of Texas, formerly the ranking member of the House ways and means committee, told Fox News Sunday that Santos “is certainly going to have to consider resigning”, while Asa Hutchinson, outgoing governor of Arkansas, said on ABC’s This Week that his “unacceptable” falsehoods must be subjected to an ethics committee inquiry.

Yet in a reflection of his importance to would-be speaker Kevin McCarthy’s personal ambitions, the current Republican leadership has remained all but silent on the Santos affair. McCarthy needs every vote he can get from the party’s precariously thin majority to win the gavel, and appears willing to embrace a self-confessed liar to get there.

“Any other job in the world, you’d get fired. Unfortunately, we don’t have that option in Congress,” the Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley told MSNBC, acknowledging there were no formal procedures to deal with the episode, and that it was “probably up to House leadership”.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic incoming House minority leader, said Santos was “unfit to serve”, and told reporters he appeared to be “a complete and utter fraud [whose] whole life story is made up”.

Read the rest of the report here.

Here’s Santos having a torrid time within moments of arriving in the Capitol this morning.

This is absolutely priceless.

Freshman members of Congress arriving on Capitol Hill today, after being elected in November’s midterms, include one very controversial new representative – Republican George Santos of New York.

The youthful Republican, who won a crucial seat spanning part of New York City and Long Island, in November, is on the rack for lying about numerous aspects of his track record and yet has rolled up in the capital to take his seat.

He is also the subject of investigations, including the news yesterday that Brazil intends to revive an old criminal fraud investigation into Santos.

The Democrat who lost his seat to Santos, Tom Suozzi, has written an op-ed in the New York Times today that has the stinging headline “A con man is succeeding me in Congress today.”

Santos reportedly turned up in the House this morning but turned tail when he saw the febrile ranks of the media waiting for him.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is in real trouble as he tries to gather the votes needed to become Speaker.

We are planning to have a live feed at the top of this blog when the first vote takes place on the House floor after the new Congress convenes at 12pm ET today, when the California Republican faces his make or break moment.

Here’s a new snippet:

Kevin McCarthy has apparently moved his clobber into the House speaker’s office being vacated by outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This despite the fact that he has not been elected to the post yet and appears to be draining support by the minute.

This is leading to some hilarity among politics-watchers in Washington, possibly some grudging admiration for the guts of it from his supporters in the party.

Will he have to reverse ferret and take his boxes of stuff back out (perhaps passing Steve Scalise in the corridor going in the opposite direction)?

Voices raised! There is actual shouting going on as Republicans gather in the House in a meeting where Kevin McCarthy is trying to wrangle the votes he needs to become speaker of the House.

McCarthy has been addressing his caucus and trying to persuade them, as he told a CNN microphone in the corridors in the bowels of the Capitol: “It’s not about personal grievances, it’s about the country.”

McCarthy reportedly raised his voice to declare “I’ve earned this job” inside the caucus meeting, with cries of “bullshit” coming back at him. Oh to be a fly on the wall. Luckily, such meetings are leaky and reporters are crawling around the corridors like flies anyway, picking up gossip from lawmakers on this dramatic day.

Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw just told CNN’s Manu Raju that right-wing rebels from the Freedom Caucus staunchly opposing McCarthy for the speakership were just “looking for notoriety.”

McCarthy is looking weaker by the minute as he tries to make his case after days and nights of negotiating with those opposing his run.

Right now, he doesn’t have the votes on paper to win a majority in the House and be elected speaker. First vote takes place on the floor asap after the 118th Congress gavels in at 12pm, as first order of business.

The noontime showdown in the House over the speakership could very well devolve into a prolonged floor fight, a spectacle that divides the Republican party, weakens its leadership and consumes the first days of the new Congress, the Associated Press reports.

This is a lot more important than about one person. It’s about whether Republicans will be able to govern,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican leadership senior aide.

A new generation of Trump-aligned Republicans are leading the opposition to McCarthy, inspired by the former president’s Make America Great Again slogan.

They don’t think McCarthy is conservative enough or tough enough to battle Democrats. It’s reminiscent of the last time Republicans took back the House majority, after the 2010 midterms, when the tea-party class ushered in a new era of hardball politics, eventually sending Speaker John Boehner to an early retirement.

Typically it takes a majority of the House’s 435 members, 218 votes, to become the speaker. With just a slim 222-seat majority, McCarthy can afford only a handful of detractors. A speaker can win with fewer than 218 votes, as Pelosi and Boehner did, if some lawmakers are absent or simply vote present.

But McCarthy has failed to win over a core — and potentially growing — group of right-flank Republicans led by the conservative Freedom Caucus, despite weeks of closed-door meetings and promised changes to the House rules. Nearly a dozen Republicans have publicly raised concerns about McCarthy.

Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the 218 votes to be speaker. Unless something dramatically changes, that’s where we’re going to be,” Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican representative and chairman of the Freedom Caucus – and a leader in Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election – said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The balance of power in Washington will shift when Republicans officially take control of the House on 3 January.

Yet House Republicans begin the 118th Congress in a precarious position: their grip on power is fragile and their conference fractured.

After a historically weak performance by the minority party in a midterm election, House Republicans have struggled to unite. Uncertainty hangs over the speakership election, as Kevin McCarthy attempts to quell a conservative revolt that could derail his long-held hopes of claiming the speaker’s gavel.

Democrats meanwhile will begin the next Congress with a fresh slate of leaders, after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and her deputies stepped aside to pave the way for a new generation. Now, in a historical first, the triumvirate of top House Democrats includes no white men.

Read more of the who’s who and what’s what in our handy explainer, here.

All the new members of Congress elected in the midterm elections in November will arrive on Capitol Hill today, many with family in tow, waiting to be sworn in to the brand new 118th Congress.

There will be exuberant scenes but the House speaker vote comes first, which is going to be quite the political soap opera, as we’ve outlined.

Kevin McCarthy is expected to huddle with fellow Republicans in the bowels of the House around 9.30am as he tries to wrangle sufficient support before facing the first vote, which will be the first order of business when the House gavels in at midday.

House speakers are normally elected on one vote, but there are signs that McCarthy does not have enough support to win a majority and will perhaps be shoved aside by another (though no obvious names right on his shoulder) or, more likely, grimly hang on through rounds and rounds of voting until he finally garners a majority of his fellow Republicans.

There are 222 Republicans in the newly-convening House. McCarthy probably needs 218 votes to become Speaker and at least five of his fellows are strongly in opposition, so he starkly does not have the votes at this time.