What is a motion to vacate? The process Matt Gaetz triggered to oust Kevin McCarthy

House speaker challenged to no-confidence vote by the rebel congressman representing hard-right fringe of Republican party

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is set to face a referendum on his leadership of the lower chamber of Congress in the coming days, after fellow Republican Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion calling for a snap vote on his future.

Mr Gaetz, a Florida populist from the hard-right fringe of the GOP, was angered by Mr McCarthy’s decision to reach a deal with Democrats over the weekend to avert a government shutdown.

On Monday, Mr Gaetz finally made good on a threat he has dangled over the speaker’s head for months by filing a motion to vacate in the House.

However, the MAGA Republican admitted that he might not have the support he needs to force his enemy’s ousting.

Speaking to reporters outside of the US Capitol, Mr Gaetz said: “I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen: Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats.”

Mr McCarthy was bullish in response, telling the congressman on social media: “Bring it on.”

The outcome of the vote is uncertain but promises to bring chaos in its wake whatever happens, particularly when the feelings of Democrats are taken into account.

“Do we side with a sociopath or an incompetent?” asked Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan, neatly framing the question for his fellow members of the opposition.

Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar may well be tempted to pick the former to embarrass Mr McCarthy but might live to regret it if a more extreme candidate should rise up to replace him.

Here The Independent outlines what exactly a motion to vacate is and what happens next.

What is a motion to vacate?

A motion to vacate is the House of Representatives’s formal procedure to instigate the removal of its speaker.

The chamber’s current rules allow any one member, be they Democrat or Republican, to introduce the motion, a concession agreed by Mr McCarthy in January to end the 15-vote marathon that finally brought him to the speaker’s chair.

Previously, under his Democratic predecessor Nancy Pelosi, a majority from either party was required to bring about such a referendum.

Matt Gaetz outside the US Capitol after filing motion to vacate (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

If the motion is introduced as a “privileged” resolution, as is the case in this instance, the House must consider it as a priority.

If the motion to vacate comes to the House floor for a vote, it would only require a simple majority to pass.

Republicans currently control the House with 221 seats to 212 occupied by Democrats, meaning that if Mr McCarthy wants to hang onto his gavel, he cannot afford to lose more than four votes.

What happens next?

Now that the motion has been filed, the next step is for House leaders to schedule a vote on the resolution within two legislative days.

However, either party could yet introduce any number of votes on procedural points that could slow down or halt the process altogether.

Should the vote go ahead, Mr Gaetz stands to secure Mr McCarthy’s removal if members vote at all similarly to the manner in which they did on Saturday to stop the shutdown – when a majority of Republicans voted against the measure while Democrats supported it.

The speaker could prevent that scenario by cutting another deal with Democrats to save himself, although any such arrangement would probably see him forced to make weighty concessions to the minority party.

Has this ever been done before?

The motion to vacate was first used back in 1910 when the Republican Speaker Joseph Cannon put forward the motion himself in order to force detractors from within his own party to commit to either supporting him or breaking with him definitively.

It was a bold strategy from Mr Cannon that ultimately paid off when the motion duly failed.

Kevin McCarthy’s future hangs in the balance (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

In 1997, another Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, was also threatened with a motion to vacate. Although he managed to cool the resistance and avoid an actual resolution being filed, he resigned of his own accord just a year later in response to disappointing midterm election results.

Most recently, in 2015, Republican congressman Mark Meadows, the future White House chief of staff to Donald Trump, filed a motion to vacate against the Republican Speaker John Boehner.

It did not come to a vote but Mr Boehner resigned a few months later anyway, citing the difficulty of managing a burgeoning hardline conservative faction within his party – a division that has only widened in the intervening years and that has ultimately led to Mr Gaetz’s rebellion this week.

Additional reporting by agencies.