The House has voted to adjourn until noon on Friday – without a clear decision on a speaker. The House cannot continue any business or swear in new members without filling the speaker role. Lawmakers voted ELEVEN times so far, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy was unable to secure the votes to win the speakership. The current bid for House leadership is now the longest speaker contest in 164 years. A group of hardline Republicans have so far derailed McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker — even after McCarthy reportedly proposed major concessions late Wednesday. No member of Congress can be sworn in until a House Speaker is elected. EARLIER STORY BELOW: For a third day, divided Republicans left the speaker’s chair of the U.S. House sitting empty Thursday, as party leader Kevin McCarthy failed and failed again in an excruciating string of ballots to win enough GOP votes to seize the chamber’s gavel. Pressure was building as McCarthy lost the seventh and eighth rounds of voting, and launched on a historic ninth ballot, tying the number it took the last time this happened, 100 years ago, in a fight to choose a speaker in a disputed election. But with his supporters and foes seemingly stalemated, feelings of both boredom and desperation seemed increasingly evident with no end in sight. One McCarthy critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, even cast his votes for Donald Trump, a symbolic but pointed sign of the broader divisions over the Republican Party’s future. It’s not happening,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado who nominated a new alternative, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, and urged colleagues to consider a future without McCarthy: “We need a leader who is not of the broken system.” McCarthy could be seen talking, one on one, in whispered conversations in the House chamber, and met privately earlier with colleagues determined to persuade Republican holdouts to end the paralyzing debate that has blighted his new GOP majority. “We’re having good discussions and I think everyone wants to find a solution,” McCarthy told reporters shortly before the House gaveled in its third session. Despite endless talks, signs of concessions and a public spectacle unlike any other in recent political memory, the path ahead remained highly uncertain. What started as a political novelty, the first time since 1923 a nominee had not won the gavel on the first vote, has devolved into a bitter Republican Party feud and deepening potential crisis. Democrat Hakeem Jeffries of New York was re-nominated by Democrats. He has won the most votes on every ballot but also remained short of a majority. Republican Party holdouts repeatedly put forward the name of Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, assuring the stalemate that increasingly carried undercurrents of race and politics would continue. Donalds, who is Black, is seen as an emerging party leader and GOP counterpoint to the Democratic leader, Jeffries, who is the first Black leader of a major political party in the U.S. Congress and on track himself to become speaker some day. Another Black Republican, newly elected John James, nominated McCarthy on the seventh ballot. Republican Brian Mast of Florida, a veteran, appeared to wipe away a tear as he nominated McCarthy on the eighth, and insisted the California Republican was not like past GOP speakers who are derided by […]

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