At a virtual town hall, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke about the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the Speaker role, which every Democratic lawmaker in the House voted for.
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00:00 which was the removal of the Speaker of the House. Now, I want to be very clear that this removal
00:07 was not particularly because Democrats worked with Republicans. This was, I think, a long time
00:16 coming because of a series of agreements that the former Speaker had essentially agreed to.
00:24 In January of this year, the Speaker of the House and the Republican Majority Party
00:29 agreed to change the underlying rules of the House of Representatives. And there's always been
00:35 something known as a motion to vacate. And this has almost been like an emergency, smash the glass
00:42 in case something happens, and something, an extreme emergency around the Speaker of the House
00:50 occurs and the Speaker must be removed. This is typically a very high threshold. In order to
00:59 implement a motion to vacate historically, you must essentially have huge, huge droves
01:06 of members of the House of Representatives to remove the Speaker. And this is precisely because
01:15 this is such a serious measure that removal is not something that should be politicized
01:20 or weaponized. However, in January, that was our take. And in January of this year, however,
01:29 the Republican Party disagreed and they changed the underlying House rules to allow just one member
01:37 to file a motion to vacate. And if just one member initiates a motion to vacate,
01:44 then within 48 hours, the House of Representatives must cast a vote. And
01:50 if that vote yields yes on the motion to vacate, then the Speaker is consequently removed.
01:58 Now in January, every single Democrat voted against changing that rule. We said,
02:06 this is not only a large break from precedent, but it's probably not good for you all to set
02:15 this precedent for yourselves. And every single Democrat voted against this rule change. However,
02:22 every single Republican voted for it. And when Republicans have the House majority,
02:30 and when they have control of the House, when every single Republican votes for something,
02:35 it will happen. That is the nature of a majority. And so the Speaker of the House and the Republican
02:40 Party insisted on a one-person motion to vacate while they were in the majority. And that is what
02:48 was implemented. And almost this entire year, the Speaker of the House has been quite beholden to
02:54 this extremist wing of the party, because this motion to vacate that he adopted and approved
03:00 had been kind of looming over his head. Now, on top of that, we've also seen a series of
03:08 destabilizing moves within the institution of the Speaker of the House. The current Speaker,
03:16 or the former Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, he voted to overturn the results of the US presidential
03:23 election. Additionally, he held the entire US economy hostage earlier this year, and he, by
03:32 refusing to raise the US debt limit to pay for spending that he himself had already approved of,
03:40 and also that the House had already voted on. In fact, having a debt limit separate from our
03:47 budgets is a very strange and bizarre, archaic mechanism that does not exist in most countries.
03:54 And so Kevin McCarthy, by holding the entire US economy hostage in March, struck a deal with
04:02 President Biden. And that's in that deal, that's one of the reasons why we have student loan
04:08 repayments that are restarting, and in addition to cuts to certain critical services. And regardless
04:16 of whether we agree with that or not, I'm vehemently against, I was vehemently against it,
04:21 and voted against it. But whether we agree with that or not, at the end of the day,
04:27 that is the deal that was struck to keep the US government open. Now, President Biden has upheld
04:34 his end of the deal. He has exacted and executed those concessions that were issued unfairly,
04:44 but that were issued in order to keep the government open. And one of the problems is
04:49 that Kevin McCarthy has not. And so Biden gave his end of the deal. And in this most recent CR,
04:56 Kevin McCarthy said, never mind. And this has created a situation that has largely become
05:04 untenable. And so on Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday, one of the members of the Republican caucus
05:14 filed a motion to vacate. Now, I want to be very clear that pretty much never in the history of
05:22 the institution has one political party voted for the other party's speaker. Democrats do not
05:30 elect Republican speakers and Republicans have never elected Democratic speakers. This is almost
05:35 a foundational part of the institution. And in fact, it's part of having a party majority.
05:43 It is if the if Republicans are elected in the majority, it is up to Republicans to elect a
05:48 Republican speaker. And when Democrats are in the majority, it is up to Democrats to elect a
05:52 Democratic speaker. And what happened this week was that Republicans cast this vote. Kevin McCarthy
06:01 exhibited extraordinary confidence that he would win this vote. He told everyone to bring it on.
06:10 He said that he did not need to negotiate with Democrats. He did not ask Democrats for votes.
06:19 He did not indicate in any single way, shape or form that he would need Democratic votes.
06:25 And so the vote happened. And the votes that Kevin McCarthy had publicly suggested that he had
06:35 did not follow through within his Republican caucus. And when that happens, that means he
06:42 lost the motion to vacate and he was removed as Speaker of the House. This is the first time that
06:47 this has ever happened in U.S. history. The last time a motion to vacate even occurred was over
06:54 100 years ago. And that motion, I believe, failed. And so this is the first time in U.S. history that
07:01 a Speaker of the House has been removed and vacated. This also means that the line of
07:06 succession to the presidency has a hole in it. Usually the line of succession is the president.
07:14 If the president cannot serve his duties, it's the vice president. And after the vice president,
07:19 it's the Speaker of the House. Currently, there is no elected Speaker of the House. There is
07:25 kind of a placeholder known as a Speaker pro tempore. But a Speaker pro tempore does not
07:34 qualify to be able to serve in the line of succession. And so right now we have the
07:42 president, the vice president, the gap, and then in what goes after that gap is the current head
07:50 of the Senate, the eldest serving member of the Senate in the majority, which is Senator
07:57 Patty Murray. And so that is the current situation that we are in. The House Republican caucus is in
08:05 a bit of chaos right now. They have the responsibility of nominating their party
08:11 Speaker. Democrats, we will be, I will be going back to Washington on Tuesday, and Democrats
08:18 will nominate their nominee for Speaker, which in our case is fellow New Yorker,
08:24 Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn. And on Tuesday, at least it's currently scheduled,
08:33 that on Tuesday, there are going to be the nominating conference meetings. So Republicans
08:38 will put forward and select their conference nominee, the name that they're going to submit
08:44 to the House floor, and then Democrats are going to select their name that they're going to submit
08:49 to the House floor. We know who that Democrat is going to be. We do not yet know who that
08:54 Republican is going to be. Until then, there is an interim Speaker. That interim Speaker
09:03 really cannot, let's see, the interim Speaker can only really do kind of clerical duties. They
09:12 cannot bring any legislation to the floor. We cannot vote on any bills. We cannot do anything
09:19 until we select a new Speaker. And currently, the one individual that by far has the most votes
09:29 on the floor is Democrat Hakeem Jeffries. And now he has about 212 Democratic votes.
09:37 However, you have to get 218 or so in order to clinch the Speakership. And so we don't know who
09:48 the Republican nominee is. One viable option is that if somewhere between six or seven, six to
09:56 eight, you know, more moderate district Republicans, I won't say moderate Republicans,
10:03 but moderate districts, Republicans join the Democratic caucus. That is one way we can
10:12 end through this. There could be a coalition candidate. But we are in a standstill. And
10:21 the clock is ticking during this standstill, because we have that 45 day government funding
10:29 extension. And so the government has only been is was only authorized to be funded for 45 days
10:36 starting last Saturday. We've lost a week on this, we will likely lose another week next week,
10:44 because Republicans have not determined who their leadership is going to be. And so the clock is
10:50 slowly ticking on that. We have about mid November, I believe November 15, or so is when this clock
10:57 runs out. I do not anticipate that given all of this chaos over there that Republicans will be
11:07 able to pass those 12 departmental bills that I discussed earlier. But one option that is on the
11:13 table is a second continuing resolution, just like the one that we just passed, that gave us a 45
11:19 day extension. Continuing resolutions can last as long as in, you know, almost as long as we want
11:27 them to within a congressional term. But that is our current dilemma. And that's currently where
11:36 we are at in terms of the speakership.