CNN –
After suffering another stinging defeat on Wednesday, in which he lost a sixth round of voting for House speaker, Kevin McCarthy proposed more key concessions in his push for 218 votes, including agreeing to propose a rule change that only would allow a member to request a vote to remove a sitting speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The major concession comes as McCarthy is struggling to find a way forward with the House adjourning until 12 pm ET on Thursday.
The Republican majority in the House has been caught in a contentious stalemate amid opposition to McCarthy from a group of conservatives. The fight, which began on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House Republican majority into chaos and undermined the party’s agenda.
The House will remain suspended until this standoff is resolved. The situation has become dire for McCarthy’s political future, as Republican allies begin to fear that the House GOP leader may not be able to pull off his bid as speaker if the fight drags on much longer.
It’s not at all clear whether McCarthy and his allies will be able to block the votes, and the longer the fight drags on, the more dangerous his presidential bid has become. But on Wednesday there were signs that negotiations were moving forward.
McCarthy’s latest concession would be a significant victory for hard-liners, after the California Republican had already proposed a five-member threshold, below current conference rules that require half the GOP to ask this vote But many more moderate members had been worried about giving in to the far right on this matter, as it could weaken the voice and cause chaos in the ranks.
In two other concessions, the sources said, he has also agreed to allow more members of the Freedom Caucus to sit on the powerful House Rules Committee, which dictates how and if bills reach the session, and to vote on a handful of bills that are priorities for holdouts, including proposed term limits on members and a border security plan.
Nothing is final, however, as negotiations continue. And Republican sources say that even if McCarthy’s offer were accepted, he still wouldn’t get the 218 votes he needs to be president. While these concessions could attract new support, other opponents have raised different concerns that have not yet been fully resolved.
After a series of failed speaker votes earlier in the day, the House adjourned for several hours as Republicans continued talks.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, one of the conservatives who voted against McCarthy’s bid for president, told GOP leaders he believes he can get 10 abstentions if these ongoing negotiations go ahead, according to GOP sources familiar with internal discussions, and that there are additional detractors who may be willing to vote “present.”
Sources said Wednesday’s talks between McCarthy’s allies and resisters were the most productive and serious yet. And in a sign of progress, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC agreed not to play in open GOP primaries in safe seats, one of the big demands that conservatives had been making but that McCarthy had so far resisted.
“We’ve had more discussions in the last two days as a body sitting there than we have in four years,” Roy said as he left the Capitol Wednesday night.
Still, even if those negotiations are successful and 10 lawmakers move into McCarthy’s column, which is far from certain, that won’t put McCarthy at 218 votes to win the speakership, so he would still have more work to do.
House Majority Leader Tom Emmer said Wednesday evening that negotiations over the next speaker have been “very, very constructive.”
“There were a lot of members who were involved in this and now there are some people sitting down and talking about this discussion to see where they want to go with this next,” the Minnesota Republican said.
House Republicans hold 222 seats in the new Congress, so for McCarthy to reach 218, he can only afford to lose four Republican votes. His obstacle is that he faces a small but determined contingent of hardliners who have so far been successful in denying him the votes to secure the hammer.
The group has used the leverage it has in the Republican majority as a razor to extract concessions. McCarthy has already given in to a number of his demands, including making it increasingly easy to oust the sitting speaker, but so far his efforts have not been enough.
The House met on Wednesday to continue voting after three rounds of voting on Tuesday. McCarthy has fallen short each time, falling short of the majority threshold needed to secure the speakership.
As the voting dragged on Tuesday, the situation appeared to turn even more dire for McCarthy, as the vote count in opposition to his bid for speaker increased.
The tally for the first ballot on the speaker ballot was 203 for McCarthy, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates. The count for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for Republican representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. In the third round of voting, there were 202 votes for McCarthy and 20 for Jordan, with Rep. Byron Donalds joining the 19 Republican lawmakers who had voted against McCarthy in the first two rounds.
It was the first time an election for speaker went to multiple ballots since 1923.
“My vote yesterday was basically to break a deadlock, because we were deadlocked and we weren’t going anywhere,” Donalds, a Florida Republican, said on “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday. “Right now, (McCarthy) has no path to get there. If that comes up again, yes, I can be there, that’s fine, but what’s needed now is for Republicans to come together and find a way choose a speaker”.
In the fourth round of voting, 20 Republicans voted together for Donalds as the group switched their collective support from Jordan to Donalds. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted in favor, lowering McCarthy’s threshold to 217.
Spartz told CNN he did so because he wanted to allow more negotiations within the conference to address the concerns of the 20 members.
The final tally on the fifth ballot was again 201 votes for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds and one absentee.
The final tally on the sixth ballot was the same: 201 for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds, and one present vote.
Trump is closely watching how the dynamic unfolds on Capitol Hill, and his public support has been a key focus of McCarthy’s efforts.
Two GOP sources familiar with the matter said McCarthy’s allies were panicking Tuesday after the former president gave a tepid response to NBC News when asked about his support for McCarthy. The former president also declined to issue a statement Monday reiterating his support for McCarthy despite behind-the-scenes efforts by several McCarthy allies to get Trump to do so, two sources said.
Then a close McCarthy ally began working behind the scenes to do cleanup work and began pushing for Trump to make a statement clarifying his support. McCarthy and Trump connected by phone, where McCarthy said Trump expressed that he was still committed to supporting him. Trump gave a strong endorsement to Truth Social on Wednesday morning, imploring Republicans not to “TURN A HUGE TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT, EMBARRASSING DEFEAT” and urging them to vote for McCarthy.
While Trump’s statement might not move the needle among McCarthy’s fiercest enemies, one of the sources said McCarthy’s world was worried about looking “weak” and like he was bleeding support, so they considered that it was important to reverse the narrative.
Gaetz, one of the House Republicans who opposed McCarthy’s bid to be speaker, dismissed Trump’s latest effort to help the California Republican as “sad.”
“This does not change my view of McCarthy or Trump or my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.
Long a staunch Trump ally, Gaetz’s refusal to give in to Trump’s desire for a McCarthy president raises new questions about the former president’s waning influence over Republicans amid his third term presidential campaign.
“If Matt Gaetz is ignoring you, that’s not a good sign,” said one Trump ally who is involved in his 2024 campaign.
Trump has been making calls on McCarthy’s behalf over the past 24 hours to try to break the conservative deadlock against him, this person said, but his efforts so far have been unsuccessful.
A lawmaker who spoke with Trump on Tuesday afternoon suggested the former president should come forward as a speaker, according to a person briefed on the call. Trump pushed back and continued to press that person to support McCarthy, saying he would be a strong supporter of “America First.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional updates.