Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy lost a historic tenth round of voting in his bid to become Speaker of the House on Thursday, after his efforts to offer fresh concessions to members of his own party fell on deaf ears and the impasse in Washington rolled on for a third day.
Despite last-ditch attempts by McCarthy to quell opposition and secure the votes he needs to be elected Speaker of the House, 20 Republicans repeatedly voted against him on Thursday, depriving him of the simple majority needed to clinch the Speaker’s gavel.
The enduring gridlock exposed long-simmering tensions in the Republican party and prompted questions about how lawmakers might be able to chart a path forward. McCarthy has so far resisted calls for him to step aside in favour of another Republican, and Democrats have demurred at suggestions that they might back McCarthy or work with Republicans to select a different Speaker.
The lower chamber of Congress is constitutionally required to select a Speaker and cannot move on to legislating until someone is handed the gavel.
McCarthy has made history with the relentless succession of votes, becoming the first candidate for Speaker to require 10 such rounds in nearly 200 years. The last time at least 10 ballots were needed was 1859.
Some of the rebels have personal grievances with McCarthy while others have demanded rule changes that would make it easier to oust the Speaker.
After months of negotiations, it appeared on Thursday as though McCarthy had capitulated to those demands, agreeing to change the rules so that just one member of the House could call a vote of no confidence. But the changes did little to move the dial and get him any closer to securing the 218 votes required to win a simple majority in the chamber.
Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. But McCarthy finds himself in such a tough position because the “red wave” he predicted did not materialise and Republicans control the chamber by a razor-thin margin, leaving him beholden to a small number of rebels.
Late on Wednesday, the Club for Growth, the ultra-low-tax group, and the Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned fundraising vehicle, said they had struck a deal whereby the latter would not spend money in open Republican primaries in safe seats. The agreement was seen as a win for rightwing Republicans who have taken issue with McCarthy’s efforts to support more centrist candidates in the past.
McCarthy had received an apparent boost earlier on Wednesday when Donald Trump, the former US president, issued a full-throated endorsement of his candidacy, saying: “It’s now time for all our GREAT Republican House members to VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY.”
But Trump’s push did little to sway the dissenters, in the latest signal that his influence over the party is waning. Lauren Boebert, one of the Republican rebels, called Trump her “favourite president” but said he should be urging McCarthy to withdraw.
Some of McCarthy’s allies have also quietly called for the California congressman to step aside in favour of a consensus candidate who could unite the party’s warring factions. Many members have publicly and privately suggested Steve Scalise, a congressman from Louisiana and McCarthy’s deputy, as an alternative.
At the same time, Democratic leaders have shown little willingness to help end the stalemate, despite suggestions that Democrats could band together with a group of Republicans to back an alternative Speaker candidate. Instead, Democrats have been united in voting in favour of Hakeem Jeffries, who took over as the party’s leader in the House after Nancy Pelosi said she would step down from leadership.
Ukraine has started the new year with a major attack that killed many Russian soldiers in their barracks, and with a defensive victory – its air force said it managed to shoot down all the Iranian drones Russia launched against Ukrainian infrastructure since the beginning of the year.
Ukraine launched six artillery rockets at a barracks in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, using its US-supplied HIMARS system a couple of minutes into New Year’s Day.
Four of the rockets got through air defences, the Russian defence ministry admitted, striking their target.
Russia acknowledged 63 deaths two days after the strike, later raising that number to 89.
But video of the wreckage showed that the temporary barracks, a former vocational school, had been almost completely flattened, suggesting that casualties may be much higher and it may take time to extract bodies.
Ukraine said the soldiers were being housed alongside a major ammunition dump, which detonated, and claimed an estimated 400 Russian soldiers killed and 300 wounded.
The strike caused a furore among Russian military reporters and lawmakers, who called for the resignation of Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, though he is not technically part of the Russian military hierarchy.
Donetsk law enforcement tried to deflect blame by suggesting that the soldiers themselves were to blame for using their mobile phones, enabling Ukrainian electronic surveillance to track them.
“Preliminarily, the reason for the HIMARS hit was the active use of mobile phones by the [newly] arrived military personnel. The enemy, using the ECHELON reconnaissance complex, revealed the activity of cellular communications and the location of subscribers,” a source told Russia’s Tass news agency.
Russia’s defence ministry adopted that explanation.
Ukraine said it had scored some success on the ground as well.
Brigadier-General Oleksiy Gromov said Ukrainian ground forces had advanced 2.5km (1.5 miles) towards the occupied town of Kreminna in Luhansk region over the last week of 2022, and were continuing to make progress.
Military analysts have opined that if Ukraine were to recapture Kreminna and Svatove, both just a few kilometres from the line of contact in Luhansk, they could roll over a 40km (25 miles) section of territory before reaching the next natural Russian defensive position in a counteroffensive similar to that which retook much of Kharkiv region last September.
“In the event of a breakthrough … of the defensive lines of the Russian occupying forces on the Svatove-Kreminna line and, accordingly, the transfer of hostilities closer to the city of Luhansk, a significant part of the servicemen of the units of the 2nd Army Corps, especially among those mobilised for temporary occupied territories, plans to surrender,” Gromov said.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said Ukraine could capture Kreminna as early as the beginning of 2023.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told the BBC that the two sides were in an effective stalemate for now, and that hardware would make the difference.
“The situation is just stuck,” Budanov said. “We can’t defeat them in all directions comprehensively. Neither can they … We’re very much looking forward to new weapons supplies, and to the arrival of more advanced weapons.”
Russia continues air campaign
Russia was not idle on the last day of 2022, pounding Ukraine with drone and missile fire, albeit at a slightly reduced intensity.
Ukraine said it shot down all 13 drones launched by Russia, and 12 out of 20 cruise missiles. Eight people were injured when one of the missiles hit a residential building. More drones were to follow overnight, and Ukraine declared on January 1 that it had shot down all 45 Shahed-136 drones Russia had sent on New Year’s Eve.
Ukraine reported it shot down a further 39 drones launched on New Year’s Day.
By January 2, Ukraine said it maintained a 100 percent kill rate against enemy drones, a rate “never achieved before” according to air force spokesman Yuri Ignat.
“Only two days have passed since the beginning of the year and the number of Iranian drones shot down over Ukraine is already more than 80,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on January 2.
“We have information that Russia is planning a lasting attack by the Shahed drones, he said. “Her bet might be on exhaustion. On the exhaustion of our people, our air defence, our energy. But we must and will make sure that this terrorist goal fails like all the others.”
Ukraine’s air defences have been strengthened in recent weeks by at least two NASAMS and one IRIS-T air defence systems. But even without those, Ukraine’s air force had begun to develop ground-breaking countermeasures that were effective against drones and cruise missiles, the latter being notoriously difficult to stop.
On December 29, for example, Ukrainian officials reported that their forces shot down 54 out of 69 cruise missiles Russian forces launched, and 11 out of 23 drones.
Ukraine has also made it a priority to remind Russia that it is not itself immune to long-range air raids.
On December 29, Ukraine attacked Engels airbase in Russian territory with a drone, three days after causing three deaths there with a similar attack. Engels houses some of Russia’s long-range strategic bomber fleet. Ukraine had killed another three servicemen at Engels and Dyagilevo bases on December 5.
The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Moscow “is struggling to counter air threats deep inside Russia”, with air defence systems such as the Pantsir needed to protect forward field headquarters in or near Ukraine.
Who has the greater staying power in weapons and troops?
There has been an ongoing discussion among military observers about Russia’s ability to generate firepower and manpower. Ukraine has devastated both with precision strikes, like that on Makiivka, since July thanks to deliveries of HIMARS rocket systems.
Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said Russian forces were conserving artillery rounds, firing 19,000-20,000 a day, a decreased rate compared with their previous track record.
The UK MoD agreed that “shortage of munitions likely remains the key limiting factor” on Russia, which was “unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large scale offensive operations”, given that “even just sustaining defensive operations along its lengthy front line requires a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets”.
Russia has been buying artillery rounds from Belarus and North Korea to supplement large losses of ammunition dumps near the front.
But one Ukrainian official warned against complacency.
“One should not underestimate the resource of the Russian Federation as a state in general. Perhaps they are not capable of conducting hostilities with the same intensity as before, but, unfortunately, they still have enough reserves, and in no way can they relax,” said Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar in a telethon.
Maintaining manpower has been a challenge for both sides. Ukraine has mandated conscription since the early days of the war, but Russia delayed mobilisation, an unpopular measure, until September and October, when it enlisted 300,000 men for the war.
Russia’s defence ministry said its regular autumn conscription had enlisted 120,000 men in November. The announcement emphasised that the conscripts were not destined for Ukraine, and would receive five months’ training on “modern weapons and military equipment”.
“Citizens called up for military service are not involved in the special military operation in Ukraine, and conscripted servicemen who have served the established terms of military service are dismissed in a timely manner and sent to their places of residence,” the ministry said.
The delay in mobilising troops and the assurances that regular cycle conscripts would not be sent to Ukraine could be signs of growing unease with the war in Russia.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov cast doubt on Russia’s reassurances, saying that Russia was in such need of manpower, it was about to declare martial law, close its borders to men of military service age and conduct a new mobilisation a week or so into the new year.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview that Moscow will not accept a peace plan Zelenskyy proposed in early November, in the first official Russian rebuttal of its specific terms.
The Kremlin rejects conditions that Russian troops withdraw to 1991 boundaries, that Russia pay Ukraine reparations, and that it participate in an international criminal tribunal at the Hague.
Kevin McCarthy’s dreams of becoming Speaker of the House were fading fast on Wednesday, as the California congressman lost a historic sixth ballot amid sustained opposition from an intransigent group of Republican party rebels.
Despite an eleventh-hour intervention from former president Donald Trump encouraging Republicans to rally around McCarthy, 20 Republicans voted against him in a sixth ballot, depriving him once again of the simple majority required to take hold of the Speaker’s gavel.
The two-day gridlock raised fresh questions about whether McCarthy has a viable path to seize the Speaker’s position, and unleashed chaos on the House floor, as Republicans sought to hash out a way forward. The House voted to adjourn after the sixth vote on Wednesday afternoon in an effort to give lawmakers a chance to come up with a plan to break the impasse. The chamber was expected to reconvene at 8PM local time.
McCarthy made history on Tuesday when he became the first majority party leader in a century to lose on the first ballot. In 1923, it took nine rounds of voting before a Speaker was elected.
McCarthy’s multiple defeats came even after Trump sought to rally support, posting on his Truth Social platform: “It’s now time for all our GREAT Republican House members to VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY.”
Lauren Boebert, one of the Republican rebels and a Trump loyalist, was defiant on Wednesday, saying her “favourite president” had called to tell them to “knock this off”.
“The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw,” Boebert said in a speech on the House floor. Boebert and the other rebels have thrown their weight behind Byron Donalds of Florida.
McCarthy has so far resisted calls for him to step aside, and it remains unclear whether any Republican would be able to successfully unite the party’s warring factions and secure the simple majority of votes require to become Speaker. But many in Washington have speculated that McCarthy’s deputy, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, would be the natural alternative.
Joe Biden, the Democratic US president, on Wednesday morning called the House proceedings “a little embarrassing”, adding: “How do you think this looks to the rest of the world?”
“This is not a good look, this is not a good thing,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “This is the United States of America, and I hope they get their act together.”
Democrats, who lost their House majority in last November’s midterm elections, have so far voted against McCarthy and instead backed their nominee for Speaker, Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Democratic leaders have publicly demurred at suggestions that they might form a coalition with McCarthy or other more centrist Republicans to break the stalemate.
McCarthy’s opponents have come from various factions of the Republican party, and include Trump loyalists such as Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Boebert, as well as ultraconservatives such as Chip Roy of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who are pushing for rule changes that would make it easier to call a vote of no confidence in a future Speaker.
The failed votes have ushered in a historic moment of gridlock in Washington, as the House is constitutionally required to elect a Speaker and cannot start governing until one is selected.
The stalemate has also underscored long-simmering tensions in the Republican party, which remains fractured after a disappointing performance in the midterm elections. Despite expectations of a “red wave”, Republicans eked out a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, and failed to take back control of the Senate, the upper chamber.
Many Republicans in Washington have blamed those failures on Trump, who played a key role in the primary process by pushing his preferred candidates — many of whom later failed at the ballot box. The former president nevertheless has sought to reassert himself as kingmaker in the party, especially with an eye towards the 2024 presidential contest. Trump launched his third presidential bid just days after the midterms, and no other candidate has entered the ring to challenge him.
Trump’s support for McCarthy marks the latest chapter in a rollercoaster relationship between the two men. For years, Trump frequently referred to the congressman as “my Kevin”. But McCarthy reportedly said “I’ve had it with this guy” after the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, before smiling in photos with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort just weeks later.
A little-known patriotic group that supports the widows of Russian soldiers has called on President Vladimir Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine.
A Russian missile attack destroyed an ice arena in Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine’s ice hockey federation said, following earlier reports of a missile hitting the town and injuring two people.
Diplomacy
Protesters in Germany have called on Berlin to reconsider its support for Ukraine, reflecting the legacy of Soviet ties to Communist East Germany and decades of German dependency on Russian gas.
French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed that Ukraine “needs our support more than ever”. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also said Ukraine can count on long-term support. Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.
Ukraine and the European Union will hold a summit in Kyiv on February 3 to discuss financial and military support, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said in a statement.
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By Kayla Epstein
BBC News
On a day of high political drama, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly failed in his bid to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
The House adjourned without a speaker on Tuesday night - the first time since 1923 they had failed to choose a leader after a first round vote.
The start of a new Congress was supposed to be a victory lap for the Republican Party as it took control of the lower chamber following November's elections. Instead, Mr McCarthy faced a rebellion from within his own ranks and made history for all the wrong reasons.
The California congressman has lost three consecutive votes for Speaker so far, and it's unclear what his path to victory could be when the House returns on Wednesday to try all over again. They will keep voting until someone wins a majority.
And even if Mr McCarthy finds a way, analysts warn, the turmoil on the floor of the House foreshadows a tumultuous two years of moderate and right-wing Republicans at war with each other.
A Republican party unable to effectively run the lower chamber of Congress could hamper its ability to carry out some of its core functions like passing spending bills or raising the debt ceiling.
'Negotiations made him look weak'
Republicans narrowly won control of the House in November, so Mr McCarthy only had a few votes to spare in his bid to become Speaker. That allowed a group of hardline conservatives to band together to oppose his nomination.
The rift was a long time coming, according to Republican observers.
"Kevin McCarthy has not made friends with certain segments of the caucus for a while, he's made a lot of enemies," said one Republican lobbyist, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about Tuesday's vote. "There's people who don't like him for political reasons, for personal reasons."
Mr McCarthy entered into negotiations with his detractors - who see him as too mainstream and power hungry - offering concessions to try to win their vote. At one point, he reportedly agreed to change the House rules to make it easier to oust a sitting Speaker, handing his opponents an enormous check on his power.
"The fact he was negotiating with the Republicans at all made him look very, very weak to the point of being desperate," the Republican lobbyist said.
His opponents feel emboldened
The futility of that approach became clear on Tuesday.
In three consecutive votes, Mr McCarthy failed to reach the required 218 vote threshold. Though Republicans hold 222 seats, a bloc of 19 hard-right Republicans had solidified in opposition to him. They oppose Mr McCarthy on ideological and personal grounds, but also see an opportunity to exploit Republicans' narrow majority to force further concessions from him.
They would "never back down" Representative Bob Good, a Virginia Republican, told reporters on Tuesday.
Getty Images
In one of the day's most dramatic moments, they even nominated Representative Jim Jordan to challenge him, just moments after Mr Jordan himself nominated Mr McCarthy for Speaker.
Even after Mr Jordan - who is a leading figure in the hard-right Freedom Caucus - urged Republicans to "rally around" Mr McCarthy in the third round of voting, 20 Republicans voted for Mr Jordan, again denying victory to Mr McCarthy.
Meanwhile, Democrats remained unified behind their party's new leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
A few could not help publicly teasing their Republican counterparts about their party's difficult afternoon. One congressman, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, tweeted that Democrats were "breaking the popcorn out," and as evidence included a photo of the snack.
What are McCarthy's options now?
Political observers in Washington have begun spinning out various theories about how this all could end. Their predictions to the BBC ranged from the feasible (Mr McCarthy holds out and wins, but walks away seriously weakened) to the entirely possible (he bows out and backs his second in command, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana). One suggestion verged on fantasy (five Republicans decide to vote for Mr Jeffries, a Democrat, and deliver him control of the House).
As it stands, Mr McCarthy is "essentially hostage to one side of his party," said Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies partisanship.
Mr McCarthy has pledged not to make any more concessions, but may not have a choice. He could try to win over obstinate lawmakers with plum committee assignments or new leadership roles.
"He's got to give the people who are against him something to hang their hat on," said Aaron Cutler, a lobbyist who once worked for former congressman Eric Cantor, another politician who was ousted by conservative opposition. The other Republican lobbyist, however, believed there was "no path to victory, at all, period."
Members will reconvene for a fourth time on Wednesday, though it's unclear if the stalemate will break.
"We haven't heard anything new from McCarthy," one of the conservative holdouts, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, told reporters. "So I guess we'll just keep doing this."
Russia has said a new year missile attack that killed at least 89 Russian soldiers happened because troops were using their mobile phones.
Ukraine hit a college for conscripts in Makiivka, in the occupied Donetsk area, shortly after midnight on 1 January.
Soldiers' use of banned phones allowed the enemy to locate its target, the Russian military has now said.
While the number of people killed is unverified, it is the largest death toll acknowledged by Russia in the war.
Ukraine claims the figure is far higher, saying 400 soldiers were killed in the attack and a further 300 wounded.
Russia said that at 00:01 local time on New Year's Day, six rockets were fired from a US-made Himars rocket system at a vocational college, two of which were shot down.
The deputy commander of the regiment, Lt Col Bachurin, was among those killed, the military of defence said in a statement on Telegram in the early hours of Wednesday.
A commission is investigating the circumstances of the incident, the statement said.
But it is "already obvious" that the main cause of the attack was the presence and "mass use" of mobile phones by troops in range of Ukrainian weapons, despite this being banned, he added.
"This factor allowed the enemy to locate and determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel for a missile strike."
Officials found guilty in the investigation will be brought to justice, the statement added, and steps are being taken to prevent similar events in future.
Russia also raised the number of Russian soldiers killed in the attack to 89 - up from 63 - although there is no way of verifying how many soldiers were killed. It is extremely rare for Moscow to confirm any battlefield casualties.
The vocational college was packed with conscripts at the time - men who were among the 300,000 called up in President Vladimir Putin's partial mobilisation in September. Ammunition was also being stored close to the site, which was reduced to rubble.
Reuters
Some Russian commentators and politicians have accused the military of incompetence, saying the troops should never have been given such vulnerable accommodation.
Pavel Gubarev, a former leading official in Russia's proxy authority in Donetsk, said the decision to house a large number of soldiers in one building was "criminal negligence".
"If no-one is punished for this, then it will only get worse," he warned.
The deputy speaker of Moscow's local parliament, Andrei Medvedev, said it was predictable that the soldiers would be blamed rather than the commander who made the original decision to put so many of them in one place.
President Putin signed a decree on Tuesday for families of National Guard soldiers killed in service to be paid 5m roubles (£57,000; $69,000).
The House of Representatives has adjourned after failing to elect a new Speaker, leaving Kevin McCarthy’s political future hanging by a thread after Republican party infighting threatened to halt lawmaking in Washington.
On Tuesday, McCarthy became the first majority party leader in a century to falter in the first ballot, before he went on to lose two subsequent rounds of voting.
McCarthy secured 203 votes in the first round, 15 short of the 218 required to seize the Speaker’s gavel, after 19 Republicans voted against him. He did not improve his numbers in the second round, with his 19 opponents coming together to support Jim Jordan, the Republican congressman from Ohio who had formally nominated McCarthy for Speaker.
McCarthy lost a third round of voting after Byron Donalds, a congressman from Florida, switched allegiance to Jordan, bringing the votes against McCarthy to 20.
Voting was expected to resume on Wednesday afternoon. It remained unclear whether McCarthy would be able to build support and achieve the simple majority required to become Speaker. The House is constitutionally required to elect a Speaker and cannot start governing until one is selected.
The once-in-a-century gridlock underscored the unprecedented levels of dysfunction in Washington, especially among Republicans. The party is grappling with how to move forward after a disappointing performance in last year’s midterm elections, and whether it should back Donald Trump as its presidential nominee in 2024.
McCarthy, a 57-year-old congressman from California, is the House’s top-ranking Republican, and had long been touted as the most likely successor to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House who is ceding the gavel after her party lost its majority in the midterms.
But while the GOP won enough seats to take back control of the lower chamber of Congress, the “red wave” McCarthy predicted did not materialise. At the same time, Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate, the upper chamber of Congress, after flipping a seat in Pennsylvania.
All 435 members of the House of Representatives participate in the vote for Speaker, the first order of business for a new Congress. A Speaker needs a simple majority, or at least 218 votes if the entire House is in attendance, to be elected.
Given the razor-thin size of Republicans’ new majority in the House and the outsized influence of a handful of vocal critics, McCarthy has for months struggled to shore up support amid opposition from various factions within the Republican caucus, including ultraconservatives and lawmakers such as Florida’s Matt Gaetz, who are unflinchingly loyal to Trump.
McCarthy’s relationship with Trump has over the years oscillated between unabashed public displays of loyalty — Trump has frequently referred to the congressman as “my Kevin” — and acrimony. McCarthy reportedly said “I’ve had it with this guy” after the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, before smiling in photos with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort just weeks later. Trump last year endorsed McCarthy’s bid for Speaker.
In recent weeks, McCarthy has sought to bolster his standing within the party by brokering deals intended to satisfy the demands of various dissenters.
At the weekend, he rolled out a package of proposed rules to change House procedure. But several Republicans have said the changes do not go far enough. They want further concessions that would make it easier to call a no-confidence vote in any future Speaker.
Many on Capitol Hill are braced for the possibility that the process could drag on for days, until McCarthy is able to build enough support or ultimately step aside in favour of another candidate. While his deputy, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, has supported his boss’s bid, he is seen as the most likely alternative to secure 218 votes if McCarthy fails.
Democratic House leaders have rejected any suggestion that they would move to help McCarthy, or throw their support behind an alternative Republican candidate. Many Democratic lawmakers appeared to revel in their party’s relative unity on Tuesday, with some openly mocking the Republicans’ discord. Ted Lieu, the congressman from California, posted an image on Twitter in which he was holding a bag of popcorn.
