Kevin McCarthy faces election for House speaker unsure if he has votes needed – live

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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.

Richard Luscombe

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.

Throwback: Nancy Pelosi of California takes the gavel from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, after being elected House Speaker at the Capitol in Washington. For the record, McCarthy has never been Speaker and hopes to remedy that this week. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

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.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy faces historic struggle to clinch speakership

All signs point to a battle royale on the House side of Capitol Hill today – and perhaps beyond – as California Republican Kevin McCarthy battles to secure enough votes to be named House Speaker, while facing fierce opposition from the right-wing of his caucus.

He has long aspired to become Speaker of the House, failing in an attempt in 2015 and now hoping he will succeed and take the gavel from his fellow Californian from the other side of the aisle – outgoing Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi is continuing as a representative in the House, of her San Francisco district, but is stepping back from her leadership role. The Republicans won control of the House by a narrow margin at the midterm elections in November.

Look for Pelosi’s Democratic leadership successor Hakeem Jeffries, as House minority leader, to help make things difficult for McCarthy today, rallying all his members to the chamber to vote against McCarthy becoming Speaker and making it harder for the Republican to scrape a majority.

McCarthy needs 218 votes to win the speakership (barring any absences that could lower that threshold) and there is stubborn opposition to his victory from far-right Republican representatives such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz.

The right-wing House freedom caucus chair’s Scott Perry tweeted this an hour ago:

New Congress convenes with Republican battle for speakership first order of business

Good morning, US politics blog readers and welcome to our first blog of 2023, kicking off here as the 118th US Congress gets going.

It’s a vertical take-off for drama in Washington DC today with all eyes on the House of Representatives. Here’s what’s in store:

• Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy hopes to be voted in as House speaker today, succeeding Democrat Nancy Pelosi as the GOP takes control of the lower chamber of Congress after the party’s notable win amid a below-par mid-term election performance in November.

• Trouble ahead, though. McCarthy arrives on Capitol Hill today with all signs pointing to his not having the votes he needs in the bag to be named speaker – at least on the first round of voting – setting up the biggest battle for the gavel in 100 years.

• The House will commence business at 12pm today and the very first order of business, before new members are sworn in, even, is to elect the speaker of the House. McCarthy plans to huddle in the bowels of the Capitol this morning, hoping to negotiate enough support to win a majority on the first round of voting – but it’s not looking good. We have the prospect of multiple rounds of voting, stay tuned to see what happens.

• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will hold the first media briefing of the year, with that gathering in the West Wing scheduled for 2.30pm (though we know from experience that that timing can slip … and slip …

• The US Senate also convenes today and it’s all calm in the upper chamber, as the Democrats retained control in the midterm elections and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell resumes his role as minority leader with a celebration as he becomes the longest-serving political party leader in senate history.

• Joe Biden has no public events today but the US president is traveling to Kentucky tomorrow to celebrate new infrastructure spending – with McConnell in tow as a display of bipartisanship.