Nothing Is Working for Kevin McCarthy

Published

2 years ago

January 14, 2023

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At this point in the unending search for a House speaker, Donald Trumps candidacy is making as much progress as Kevin McCarthys.

The former president (and half-hearted 2024 White House applicant) today secured his first vote as the House slogged through its seventh fruitless attempt to elect a leader. The semi-serious effort to elevate Trump, put forward by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, came at the expense of McCarthy, the Trump-endorsed Republican leader whose bid hasnt improved in the past six ballots. McCarthy twice more lost 21 Republicans and fell well short of the 218 votes he needs for a majority.

Todays votes were notable because they were the first since McCarthy reportedly made an offer to his GOP opponents that seemingly encompassed all of their public demands. The two sides have engaged in intense negotiations over the past day, keeping McCarthys candidacy alive and offering perhaps a slim hope that he can win over enough of the holdouts to become speaker. But none of that progress was evident in the tallies this afternoon.

McCarthys concessions represented the equivalent of giving away the remaining trinkets in an already ransacked store. He had previously agreed to significantly lower the threshold of members needed to force a vote to remove him as speaker, known as a motion to vacate. After setting the minimum at five members, McCarthy gave in to the renegades demand that a single member could trigger that voterestoring the standard conservatives had used in 2015 to push Speaker John Boehner out of office. His allies could argue that with so much opposition to McCarthy already, there was little difference between a threshold of five and one.

David Frum: No tears for Kevin McCarthy

But according to reports, McCarthy went even further. He agreed to give the House Freedom Caucus designated seats on the powerful Rules Committee, a panel traditionally controlled by the speaker that decides whether and under what parameters legislation can come to a vote on the floor. He also reportedly promised to allow members to demand virtually unlimited amendment votes on spending bills; that change could open up a process that in recent years has been centralized by the leadership, but it could also lead to free-for-alls that drag out debates on bills for days or weeks.

The concessions are sure to frustrate McCarthy supporters who believe the wannabe-speaker had already surrendered too much to his opponents. Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri told me that the threshold for the motion to vacate should be a majority of the Republican conference. Lowering it to five, she said, was akin to the speaker having a knife over your head every day. Earlier this week, I asked Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a McCarthy supporter who has spoken of partnering with Democrats on a consensus pick for speaker, whether he might desert McCarthy if the GOP leader kept empowering his far-right critics. It depends on what it is, Bacon told me. But I think we went too far as it was already.

McCarthy was betting that Republicans closest to the political center would stick with him if it meant finally ending a leadership crisis now on its third day. And yet, even this most generous offer to his foes was not enough, and none of the 21 holdouts crossed over to McCarthys corner.

McCarthy downplayed todays first vote before it even began, telling reporters, Nothing is going to change. For McCarthy, maintaining the status quo might count as progress. His lingering fear is likely that the bottom will fall out among supporters who are growing tired of the stalemate and are looking to alternatives. Representative Ken Buck of Colorado told CNN that Republicans could nominate McCarthys lieutenant, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, by the end of the day if a deal wasnt struck.

McCarthys allies had hoped for another delay to buy time for negotiations, perhaps even through the weekend, but Republicans evidently determined they could not muster the voters to adjourn for a third time in 24 hours. The desire for delay revealed a tactical reversal by McCarthy born out of desperation. At the outset of the voting on Tuesday, his stated goal had been to keep lawmakers on the House floor, casting ballot after ballot until either his far-right opponents or possibly the Democrats got tired enough to let him win. But six consecutive defeats, during which McCarthy lost rather than gained support, disabused him of that idea. Beginning yesterday afternoon, McCarthy tried to adjourn the House to give him more time for backroom negotiations, having apparently realized that his repeated public floggings were doing him no good.

David A. Graham: Kevin McCarthys predicament is a warning

Democrats reluctantly agreed to adjourn after the sixth vote yesterday afternoon, but when McCarthy allies sought to close down the House again in the evening, the Democrats fought back. The vote to adjourn became something of a circus. McCarthys critics on the right splintered, with four of them voting alongside Democrats to keep the House in session and one arch-conservative, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, switching his vote at the last minute. With the outcome in doubt, both parties began shoving late-arriving memberssome still wearing their winter coatsto the front of the chamber to cast their votes before the House clerk, Cheryl Johnson, gaveled the motion closed. When Johnson shouted the final tally over the din of the Housethe motion to adjourn passed, 216214McCarthy and his allies cheered. McCarthy had won his first vote in his bid for speaker, one that staved off his next public abasement for at least another day.

Earlier yesterday, the House took three more failed speaker votes that were nearly identical to the three failed votes it took on Tuesday. The lone differences were that the anti-McCarthy GOP faction nominated a new candidate, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, and McCarthy lost 21 Republican votes instead of the 20 defections he had suffered previously. Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana switched her vote from McCarthy to present, telling reporters after that the party needed to have more conversations about the way forward. What were doing on the floor is wasting everyones time, she said.

Spartzs protest made little difference. The House met again for more time-wasting this afternoon, and the best that McCarthy could accomplish was not losing any more votes. His candidacy survived a seventh losing ballot, and the House moved quickly on to an eighth and then a ninth (during which Gaetz abandoned his support for Trump and voted for Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma instead).

Those votes proceeded no better and no worse for McCarthy, who now seems to be one or two more defections away from a final defeat. He is hanging on for now, but the deadline for him to strike a deal or exit the race is fast approaching.

World

I felt I had to go back to help Gaza’s hospitals, says British plastic surgeon

Published

3 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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I felt I had to go back to help Gaza's hospitals, says British plastic surgeon

Dr Victoria Rose is a consultant plastic surgeon who worked in Gaza hospitals for two separate periods last year. This is her first-hand story of the war in Gaza.

The word “dire” does not adequately describe the situation in Gaza’s hospitals.

On a daily basis when I was working there, I had a list of at least 10 patients, and 60% of them were under the age of 15.

These were tiny children with life-threatening burns and limbs blown off, often losing significant family members in the attacks and left to cope with their life-changing injuries alone.

I first joined the charity IDEALS, which helps medical professionals during crises, in Gaza in 2019. I returned last year, working with orthopaedic surgeons.

I felt compelled to go back after becoming aware that a plastic surgeon from Gaza who trained with me in London had been inundated with complex trauma cases since the war broke out in October 2023.

Our aim was to deliver essential surgical equipment and assist our colleagues with the increasing trauma workload they faced. But as the war progressed, it became apparent that we had a third objective: to bear witness.

I worked at the European Gaza Hospital in March 2024 and then returned in August of that year for a month, working at Nasser Hospital.

The transformation of the landscape during these two visits was staggering. The streets were unrecognisable, just pile after pile of dust and rubble. Such a scale of destruction could only be justified if every single building in Gaza was part of Hamas’s infrastructure.

In February 2024, we were denied entry by COGAT – part of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) controlling activities in the occupied territories – which, regrettably, has become a standard outcome for 50% of foreign doctors attempting to gain access. However, we managed to regain access in May.

This mission was intended to last four weeks at the European Gaza Hospital. However, due to its bombing on the day we arrived and its subsequent decommissioning by the IDF, we were redirected to Nasser for three and a half weeks.

The population had now been relentlessly displaced, bombed in their tents, deprived of water and sanitation, and ultimately starved. I remember thinking it couldn’t get any worse – and then they cut the internet.

We ploughed on without essential equipment such as painkillers and antibiotics, patching the patients up, knowing that they were likely to be bombed again.

When we left the hospital we went into the red zone – an area of active fighting that needed to be evacuated.

This meant that nothing could enter without the journey being “deconflicted” by the IDF. Minimal journeys have thus far been deconflicted. Patients struggle to gain entry, and staff cannot leave, as equipment continues to be depleted.

Nasser is the only hospital in the south equipped with a CT scanner, a blood bank, ICU capabilities and an oxygen generator.

I work with two orthopaedic surgeons who run the IDEALS charity. They have been travelling to Gaza since 2009.

IDEALS started the lower limb reconstruction programme in 2013, visiting Gaza every other month and bringing four orthopaedic surgeons back to the UK for short periods of training.

In 2021, I arranged for a plastic surgeon from Gaza to come to London to train with me. He was an incredible trainee and returned to Gaza in February 2023 to take up the post of chief of plastic surgery at Shifa Hospital.

Shortly after the war broke out, I felt compelled to help him.

All eyes are now on Israel’s next move.

Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June

World

Israel’s block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand

Published

3 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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Israel's block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand

On Sky News this week we’re showing a film about Israel’s war in Gaza which has now been going on for more than 620 days.

It is a chastening watch.

Swathes of Gaza’s medical infrastructure have been razed, many of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, maimed and left hungry and malnourished in a war fought mainly from the air with heavy ordinance dropped on crowded civilian areas.

These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are not brought to our screens by experienced international war correspondents – they are barred from entering Gaza – but by two British medics whose mission was to save lives not to report on the horrors of war.

That visiting surgeons Victoria Rose and Tom Potokar felt compelled to do just that, speaks not only to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, but to the swingeing restrictions imposed on reporting what is happening there.

In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.

And Israel stands accused of egregious crimes in Gaza.

Since it launched its war there in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th 2023, in which around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were murdered and a further 250 taken hostage, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gazan health authorities. Many of the dead have been women and children.

Earlier this month, former US State Department official Matt Miller told the Sky News Trump100 podcast that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. Ex-UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths went further, telling Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim that Israel is responsible for genocide there.

It’s an accusation supported by Ireland, Spain, and South Africa which is pursuing Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice – the UN’s highest court.

Israel rejects the case against it, claiming that many of the dead are Hamas fighters who have been hiding in tunnels under the hospitals that it has the right to attack in self-defence.

Israeli officials and diplomats deny that its military targets women and children and react with outrage to the suggestion that it is responsible for ethnic cleansing or genocide – accusations of crimes against humanity that are taken as particularly loaded given the dark resonance they have for the Jewish people.

But Israel’s confidence in the integrity of its wartime conduct is not matched by a willingness to allow international journalists into Gaza to witness what is going on there for themselves.

Military-organised ’embeds’ fall well short of independent journalism

For the course of its longest war, no reporters have been permitted entry to Gaza other than on organised and controlled ’embeds’ of a few hours alongside Israeli soldiers.

These managed opportunities fall well short of independent journalism, for which Sky News and other global news organisations must rely on trusted and heroic local reporting teams who lack the support and infrastructure to provide a complete picture of what is going on.

And these Palestinian journalists have paid a heavy price for their work; according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 185 of them have been killed during the war and 86 imprisoned.

The Foreign Press Association, which represents the interests of international journalists operating in Israel, has been petitioning its High Court of Justice to lift the ban on reporting independently from Gaza.

So far, that legal action has been unsuccessful and last month the court again postponed a hearing in the case without reason or setting a new date.

Israeli officials push back on the need and suitability of allowing journalists to operate independently in Gaza. They say that their military’s priority is the rescue of the remaining hostages and the fight against Hamas and that the safety of reporters could not be ensured.

But journalists from Sky News and fellow news organisations have operated in Gaza in previous conflicts, providing details of their location and movements to the Israel Defence Forces.

‘We accept the risks’

Moreover, we have decades of experience of covering conflict zones and our reporters are highly trained at doing so. The risks are real, for sure. But they’re risks that we accept. It’s what we do.

The ongoing denial of access to Gaza feels much less about the safety of journalists and more about preventing proper scrutiny and accountability of the desperate situation there.

The barring of international journalists is accompanied by the active delegitimisation of what reporting on the war has been possible which is often shamefully labelled as anti-Semitic and compared to the darkest periods in Jewish history.

All together this constitutes a war on truth that is at odds with Israel’s proud and oft-repeated claim to be the Middle East’s only democracy and it should not be allowed to stand.

Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June

World

US President Donald Trump says he ‘may or may not’ strike Iran as Israel’s air war continues

Published

3 hours ago

June 19, 2025

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US President Donald Trump says he 'may or may not' strike Iran as Israel's air war continues

US President Donald Trump says he has yet to decide whether the US will join Israel militarily in its campaign against Iran.

Asked whether the US was getting closer to striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Mr Trump said: “I may do it. I may not do it.”

Speaking outside the White House on Wednesday, he added: “Nobody knows what I’m going to do…Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate.

“And I said, ‘why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?'”

Mr Trump said Iran had reached out to W ashington, a claim Tehran denied, with Iran’s mission to the UN responding: “No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would not surrender and warned “any US military intervention will undoubtedly cause irreparable damage” to US-Iranian relations.