NO SPEAKER: AN HISTORIC DAY IN WORDS AND PICTURES
At the US House of Representatives, 118th Congress convenes in chaos
The nation went to bed Tuesday night — and woke up Wednesday morning — without a speaker of the House.
That literally hadn't happened in the last century, since the last protracted battle for the speakership, in 1923.
For most, it's perhaps a bit of archana, or something most Americans probably didn't register.
Yet it's significant. The speaker of the US House of Representatives is second in line to the presidency, just after the vice president herself.
And how we as a nation got here was nothing short of breathtaking chaos playing out in real time Tuesday on the House floor.
The Republican speaker-designate, Kevin McCarthy, failed to clinch the vote not once, not twice, but a truly humiliating three times before the House adjourned in exhaustion.
We were treated to such surreal imagery Tuesday, during McCarthy's thus-far fruitless “battle on the floor” as this:
Bitter political opponents like progressive Democratic Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York sharing what appeared to be a light moment with her far-right counterpart, Rep Paul Gosar of Arizona.
What made this tableau so jaw-dropping is that only a little more than a year ago, Gosar was stripped of his committee assignments because his staff created — and distributed — graphic and disturbing online content depicting the murder of Ocasio-Cortez.
File it under the header, “The enemy of my enemy…”
But nothing captured both Tuesday's failure and disarray like these screenshots of the speaker.gov website, rendering in stark relief that one of our country's most powerful and important constitutional offices began the day fully staffed and functional…
… but ended the day empty, barren and the future of which completely uncertain…
Please consider supporting our work …
Also, please subscribe…