California Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Oct. 3, less than nine months after he was sworn into the position, making it the first time in House history that a speaker has successfully been removed from the position.

McCarthy represents California’s 20th Congressional District, spanning from Kern County to Fresno. His district also covers Fresno State’s campus.

Salena Cedillo, a junior Film and Media major, voiced her thoughts about McCarthy being removed from the speakership.

“Although it doesn’t directly affect me personally, it’s surprising to hear. To my knowledge, McCarthy is the first person to actually be ousted from his role as speaker of the House,” Cedillo said. “I know that there was a motion to oust someone else in the past, but that didn’t go through. It’s surprising that he caused this much commotion with his action when he was only in this role for less than a year.”

The speaker of the House is always a party member who holds the majority seats, which is currently the Republican party. This means that members of McCarthy’s party voted to remove him from his speaker position.

The motion to expel him as speaker came from his party also.

The House voted 216-210 to remove McCarthy as speaker. All 208 House Democrats voted to remove him, with eight coming from House Republicans led by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz has been an outspoken critic of McCarthy as the House speaker.

Gaetz and the seven other Republicans who call themselves “The Freedom Caucus” were upset with McCarthy for working with moderate Republicans and Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to keep the government open and avoid a shutdown, which prompted Gaetz to put the motion to expel McCarthy on the house floor on Oct. 2.

“Kevin McCarthy is a feature of the swamp; he has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the fever now, and we should elect a speaker who is better,” Gaetz told CNN reporters.

McCarthy believes that the motion to expel him as speaker was a personal attack by Gaetz.

“I think Matt [Gaetz] has planned this all along, it didn’t matter what we transpired, he would have done it if we were in shutdown or not,” McCarthy said during a press conference.

In January 2023, The Freedom Caucus blocked McCarthy from becoming speaker, forcing the House to vote on confirming McCarthy as speaker 15 times over five days. This is something that rarely happens when electing the next speaker. For example, in 2021, it took just one vote to confirm Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.

Lisa Bryant, chair of the Political Science Department at Fresno State, explained how the Freedom Caucus holding up McCarthy in January and being removed as speaker are directly related.

“That [the January 15 vote incident] was really critical because it set the stage that McCarthy was vulnerable. He didn’t have a really secure base, and he didn’t have the numbers within the Republican Party to make sure that he was solid in his position,” Bryant said. “He knew that he was sort of walking on glass the whole time because this faction, the Freedom Caucus, could really cause division within the Republican Party. And just the fact that it took him 15 votes to get confirmed. They were showing that they can play their hand in Congress any time.”