Speaker McCarthy Has Lost Control of His House

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this month, a group of hard-right Republicans hijacked the floor of the House of Representatives in protest against Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The mutiny, staged by nearly a dozen members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, raised questions about whether the speaker could continue to govern his slim and fractious majority. Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The Times, explains how and why this small group of members made the chamber ungovernable. Guest: Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is it, Aileen.
0:14.0	Today, ever since Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives
0:19.2	last year, there have been predictions that a small group of far-right members would
0:25.0	make the chamber ungovernable. Over the past few weeks, that prediction has proven
0:32.8	correct. My colleague, Annie Karney, explains.
0:45.1	It's Tuesday, June 27.
0:55.4	Annie, it is very nice to see you and welcome back.
0:58.6	Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
1:00.8	We wanted to talk to you because over the past couple of weeks, something started happening
1:05.8	in Congress that we wanted to better understand. Lawmakers from both parties, Democrats,
1:10.9	Republicans, had just passed this big last-minute deal to avoid a US financial default on its
1:17.0	debt, everybody breathed a sigh of relief, and then right after that, strange things
1:23.0	started to happen within the Republican-controlled House. Pick up the story there and tell
1:28.5	us about that.
1:29.9	What's been happening is that over the last few weeks, Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of
1:33.6	the House, has basically lost control of his chamber. After he cut the debt ceiling
1:39.4	deal with President Biden, he received a lot of blowback from far-right members of his
1:46.3	conference, the Freedom Caucus, who are livid that he didn't follow through on promise
1:52.7	as he made to them, specifically on spending cuts, and basically feel like they got rolled
1:58.5	at this whole process. They're aware that they have a ton of power in this dynamic of
2:03.9	the House, where there is a four-seat majority, and they think they have a power-sharing agreement
2:09.6	with Kevin McCarthy. After that debt deal, where they feel like they were sold out, they
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.