After a month of attacks on the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, orchestrated by hard-liners of his own Republican party, and following the Speaker's attempts at appeasement by launching an impeachment probe into President Joe Biden, the Speakership of the House is now vacant as McCarthy was voted out earlier on Tuesday.

This is a historic move. The United States House of Representatives has never ousted its Speaker. The position is now vacant with no clear path forward.

The vote was called for through a motion filed on Monday by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, a member of a radical Republican bloc in the lower house of Congress, which obliged the Speaker to call for a "no-confidence" vote in which he would be ousted should a simple majority vote against him.

The result was 216 votes in favor of ousting the Speaker, and 210 against, with the 8 Republican hard-liners joining the House Democrats in the vote.

Of the 435 members of the House, the Republican party holds a very slim majority of 222 to the Democrats' 213, this allowed the fringe Republican bloc to put far-right conditions on Kevin McCarthy following the 2022 midterm elections in a deal to re-elect him as Speaker. According to Matt Gaetz, these conditions have not been met, and the impeachment probe into President Biden was "insufficient" to make amends.

The now-former Speaker alleges that Gaetz moved against him as a result of McCarthy not stomping an ethics investigation into the Florida Representative, allegations that Gaetz later denied on Fox News.

“That's totally false … I’m the most investigated man in the entire United States Congress'' said Gaetz, claiming he'd been cleared by multiple law enforcement agencies, and insisting that his no-confidence motion came as a result of McCarthy's performance as Speaker.

“The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant” declared Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas, the first person in the House's 234 years to say this.

McCarthy announced in a press conference after the vote that he will not run for Speaker of the House again. No Republicans have yet announced their interest in taking over the role.

Following the 2022 midterms, 15 rounds of voting were required for McCarthy, a well-known and relatively uncontested Republican, to be re-elected as Speaker with a simple majority, making the path forward difficult for Republicans, and allowing the Democratic Party to have a chance of claiming the Speakership through House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who took to the press calling on the Republicans to "end the chaos".

For the time being, the House of Representatives will be led by the Speaker Pro Tempore, Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, whose authority will be limited to recognizing nominations for the role of Speaker.