Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is about to lose a fifth vote for House speaker

WASHINGTON — In the fifth vote in two days, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., again failed to secure enough support to win the U.S. House speakership, setting the chamber up for a sixth round of votes and plunging the party into further chaos.

The previous vote saw a core group of 20 GOP holdouts nominate and vote for Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a sophomore Republican lawmaker who on Tuesday had publicly shifted his support away from McCarthy. While the vote is still ongoing, McCarthy has already lost about a dozen Republicans.

With 222 Republicans in the House, McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of them and still win the 218 votes necessary to take the gavel.

All 212 Democrats voted for that party’s incoming Minority Leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., re-nominated Donalds in the fifth round of voting, which is currently underway, before asking McCarthy to withdraw his nomination.

“You’ve been having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off,” Boebert said on the House floor, referring to former President Donald Trump. “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, ‘sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.'”

Together, Donalds and Jeffries marked the first time that two Black Americans have ever been nominated for House Speaker.

Democrats could help McCarthy by withholding their votes, which would reduce the number of votes he needed to win House Speaker, according to the Intercept. But former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and others have reportedly dismissed that out of hand.

Pelosi told reporters outside the House floor earlier Wednesday that the Republican chaos revealed “a lack of respect for this institution.”

“There’s a lack of respect for the sworn duty we all have to defend the Constitution and get the job done for the American people,” she told reporters in the Capitol Wednesday.

Little appeared to have changed, publicly or privately, between Tuesday and Wednesday. Both McCarthy’s allies and his opponents delivered effectively the same message in interviews Wednesday that they have been for weeks: We’re not going to budge.

One exception to the stalemate was a fresh endorsement for McCarthy from Trump, who on Tuesday afternoon had initially sounded an uncertain note about the political future of one of his most loyal allies in Congress.

“REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website Wednesday morning. “IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE, YOU DESERVE IT. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB – JUST WATCH!”

Despite Trump’s broad support among conservative Republican voters, it was not clear his new endorsement would move the needle for any of the holdouts in Congress. While the group of 20 far-right Republicans are all close Trump allies, the former president’s name and his “America First” message have been notably absent from the intraparty GOP debate raging behind closed doors.

McCarthy himself was tight lipped Tuesday and into Wednesday, and he declined to give interviews or take his message to the airwaves or social media.

When asked Wednesday morning what his plan would be, NBC News reported that McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol, “Same game plan as yesterday.”

When a journalist asked how he would get more votes, McCarthy replied: “We’re sitting, we’re talking … I think we can get to an agreement.”

Instead, he authorized a handful of allies to negotiate with the holdouts, many of whom identify with the Freedom Caucus, a loosely organized 40+ member caucus led by Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who is among the most outspoken opponents of McCarthy’s speaker bid.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.