McCarthy fails 11 votes for speaker

Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy failed to become House Speaker on his 11th try Thursday evening. Most Republican holdouts have chosen to throw their support behind Congressman Byron Donalds, and have consistently prevented McCarthy from obtaining the 218 votes he needs. One McCarthy critic twice symbolically nominated former President Donald Trump to be Speaker. Trump has told Republicans to unite behind McCarthy.

Has this process ever taken this many votes before? Not in recent memory. On Tuesday, McCarthy became the first party leader in the House in 100 years who didn’t secure the gavel in the first vote. On the ninth vote Thursday afternoon, he tied the number of votes it took to finally elect a speaker 100 years ago. The record number of votes required to elect a speaker of the house is 133. The 34th Congress set that record in the late 1850s, according to the Office of the Historian of the House.

Dig deeper: Read Leo Briceno’s in-depth report in The Stew about Republicans’ battle over who should be Speaker.