Gaetz tries to push out McCarthy after deal averts shutdown
Follow the latest updates as spending bill is signed by Joe Biden, temporarily preventing shutdown
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Your support makes all the difference.Matt Gaetz will offer a motion to vacate the chair in an attempt to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the far-right Florida Republican told CNN on Sunday morning.
This comes after MAGA Republicans were outraged by Mr McCarthy striking a deal with Democrats on Saturday to avert a government shutdown.
“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to rip off the band-aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” Mr Gaetz told CNN.
Meanwhile, House Republicans seem eager to exact revenge against Mr Gaetz.
News outlets reported on Sunday that Republicans in the lower chamber are looking towards the conclusion of a House Ethics Committee probe into the Republican congressman from Florida in the hopes that the probe’s findings could warrant (or excuse) his expulsion from the chamber.
Donald Trump called for Rep Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) to be put in jail for pulling a fire alarm in the US Capitol complex on Saturday.
The former president bizarrely claimed that Mr Bowman’s behaviour was worse than that of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Gaetz could be expelled from House over ethics case amid face-off with McCarthy
Gaetz seeks to oust Speaker McCarthy after shutdown deal with Dems
AOC says she’d consider backing Gaetz push to oust McCarthy as House speaker’s future in question
Ukraine aid left out of US government funding package, raising questions about future support
AOC declares victory: ‘People will get paychecks and MTG threw a tantrum on the way out. Win-win'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared victory on Saturday, writing: “Here’s what went down: we just won a clean 45 day gov extension, stripped GOP’s earlier 30% cuts to Social Security admin etc, staved off last minute anti-immigrant hijinks, and averted shutdown (for now). People will get paychecks and MTG threw a tantrum on the way out. Win-win”
Ukraine aid left out of US government funding package, raising questions about future support
Congressional supporters of Ukraine say they won’t give up after a bill to keep the federal government open excluded Joe Biden’s request to provide more security assistance to the war-torn nation.
Still, many lawmakers acknowledge that winning approval for Ukraine assistance in Congress is growing more difficult as the war between Russia and Ukraine grinds on. Republican resistance to the aid has been gaining momentum in the halls of Congress.
Voting in the House this past week pointed to the potential trouble ahead. Nearly half of House Republicans voted to strip $300m from a defence spending bill to train Ukrainian soldiers and purchase weapons. The money later was approved separately, but opponents of Ukraine support celebrated their growing numbers.
Then on Saturday, House speaker Kevin McCarthy omitted additional Ukraine aid from a measure to keep the government running until 17 November. In doing so, he closed the door on a Senate package that would have funnelled $6bn to Ukraine, roughly a third of what has been requested by the White House.
Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the stopgap measure, with members of both parties abandoning the increased aid for Ukraine in favour of avoiding a costly government shutdown.
Read more below
Ukraine aid left out of US government funding package that averted shutdown
Congressional supporters of Ukraine say they won’t give up
‘I’m pleased Kevin McCarthy finally backed down'
Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, offered a simple commentary as he left the floor following the House vote: “We won.”
“I’m pleased Kevin McCarthy finally backed down and put a bill on the floor that would win overwhelming Democratic support,” added Brendan Boyle, another Democrat, from Pennsylvania.
‘If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it'
Matt Gaetz, the leader of the far-right GOP contingent opposed to Mr McCarthy’s efforts to keep the government open with short-term measures, spoke to reporters on the steps of the Capitol just before the vote was to take place. He and other conservatives such as Tim Burchett, also present, seemed to acknowledge that GOP leadership would have the votes to pass it and remained pessimistic about the future of Mr McCarthy’s speakership.
When asked by The Independent if there was any path forward to working with the speaker going forward, Mr Gaetz demurred from the overt threats to unseat Mr McCarthy, but left the possibility wide open.
“I’ve said that whether or not Kevin McCarthy faces a motion to vacate is entirely within his control, because all he had to do was comply with the agreement that he made with us in January,” Mr Gaetz responded. He then issued a warning: “Putting this bill on the floor and passing it with Democrats would be such an obvious blatant and clear violation of that. We would have to deal with it.”
Mr McCarthy later responded in his own comment to reporters outside the chamber.
“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” he said. “There has to be an adult in the room.”
Republicans now have 45 days to pass longer-term budget measures
Republicans now have 45 days to pass longer-term budget measures to operate the government for the 2024 year. Those budgets have already hit their own set of roadblocks in the House, and are destined to run up against a Democratic-controlled Senate and White House that will likely demand changes.
All in all, the chamber could very well face another shutdown deadline this year unless Congress, specifically House Republicans, are able to pass legislation that can actually win support from the rest of the legislative branch.
Democrat Jamaal Bowman accused of pulling fire alarm to delay House vote
A New York congressman is under fire after CCTV footage appeared to show him activating a House office building’s internal alarm system in an effort to delay voting on a spending bill on Saturday.
The congressman, Representative Jamaal Bowman, is in his second term representing the Empire State’s 14th district, which includes northern Bronx, southern Westchester County, and Yonkers.
Alarm triggered as Democrats sought delay on House vote
After an emergency alarm was set off in the Cannon House Office Building, where Mr Bowman’s office sits on the building’s third floor, reports emerged that a man matching Mr Bowman’s description had been seen pulling the alarm near a second-floor exit.
The alarm was triggered as Democrats on the House floor were seeking to slow down consideration of a spending bill which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had called up for debate less than an hour earlier.
Democrats had expressed concerns that the bill, which extends government funding for 45 days, might contain objectionable provisions and had demanded more time to review it before voting.
VIDEO: House votes to fund government for further 45 days
Government shutdown narrowly averted as Senate backs McCarthy deal with Democrats
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve a stopgap bill to fund government operations for the next 45 days with three and a half hours to go until a midnight deadline at the end of fiscal year, ending a days-long standoff which had threatened to paralyse federal agencies and leave millions of workers without paychecks.
The upper chamber approved the measure, known as a continuing resolution, by a vote of 88 senators In favour and just nine against at 9.04 pm, only hours after the House of Representatives approved an identical bill put forth by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Speaking on the Senate floor just before senators began voting, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the compromise bill would “keep the government open” and represented “good news for the country”.
“Bipartisanship, which has been the trademark of the Senate, has prevailed, and the American people can breathe a sigh of relief,” he said. “The bipartisanship here in the Senate set the tone for today’s result, and I hope it sets the tone for the future”.
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