DETROIT – A history-making meltdown in Congress, and today, there is no true United States speaker of the House.
Republican Kevin McCarthy is out after he narrowly avoided a government shutdown. With him gone, what happens when the next deadline hits?
There was no Flashpoint last weekend due to the Ryder Cup. Had we been with you last Sunday morning, we would have been talking about the razor thin avoidance of a government shutdown when to most observers it seemed a certainty. But an unusual alliance of Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Democrats kept the government up and running.
That alliance would not last. All of the Democrats voted to remove him as speaker last week, but despite even McCarthy trying to lay the blame for his departure on the Democrats, the minority doesn’t really have the power to change House leadership. It was a small band of renegade Republicans that doomed him. And just like that, history was made and a speaker was removed from that position for the first time ever.
But, now what? Does this mean that come November 17, we’re watching a shutdown come to fruition? Congressman John James and Congresswoman Haley Stevens will talk about their votes and the decisions yet to come on Flashpoint.
You can watch the Oct. 8, 2023, episode of Flashpoint in the video player above.