Thursday is Day 3 of the standoff between McCarthy and 20 colleagues withholding the support he needs for the job.
Calls continue for Congressman-elect George Santos to resign - but before he can even be sworn in, we need a speaker of the House. Chantee Lans reports.House Republicans are at a crossroads as leader Kevin McCarthy has failed over and over again to become House speaker, but he remains determined to persuade enough right-flank holdouts to vote for him and end a stalemate with no end in sight.
The House, which is one-half of Congress, is essentially at a standstill as McCarthy has failed, one vote after another, to win the speaker's gavel in a grueling spectacle for all the world to see. The ballots have produced almost the same outcome, 20 conservative holdouts still refusing to support him and leaving him far short of the 218 typically needed to win the gavel.
"All who serve in the House share a responsibility to bring dignity to this body," California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, said in a tweet. The California Republican, however, vowed to fight to the finish for the speaker's job in a battle that had thrown the new majority into tumult for the first days of the new Congress.
A new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump's Make America Great Again agenda, want to upend business as usual in Washington, and were committed to stopping McCarthy's rise without concessions to their priorities. And a McCarthy-aligned campaign group, the Conservative Leadership Fund, offered another concession, saying it would no longer spend money on elections "in any open-seat primaries in safe Republican districts." The far-right lawmakers have complained that their preferred candidates for the House were being treated unfairly as the campaign fund put its resources elsewhere.
"I'm ready to vote all night, all week, all month and never for that person," said Florida Republican Matt Gaetz.
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