The House of Representatives was in a state of paralysis on Wednesday, ground to a halt by the ouster of Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy and with no clear sense of who might succeed him — or when.
After a historic vote to remove Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday, lawmakers quickly departed Washington and scattered to their districts around the country, abandoning the Capitol as Republicans remained deeply divided over who could lead their fractious majority.
“What now?” one Republican muttered aloud on the House floor just after the vote on Tuesday afternoon, the first time the chamber had ever removed a speaker from his post involuntarily.
It underscored the chaos now gripping the chamber, which is effectively frozen, without the ability to conduct legislative business, until a successor to Mr. McCarthy is chosen. The California Republican said late Tuesday that he would not seek the post again after being deposed by a hard-right rebellion.
The vacancy promised to tee up another potentially messy speaker election at a time when Congress has just over 40 days to avert another potential government shutdown. But it was not yet clear who might run.
Discussions on the future of the conference were being led by Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina. Mr. McCarthy had named Mr. McHenry first on a list of potential interim speakers in the event of a calamity or vacancy, but he does not have power to run the chamber — only to preside over the election of a new speaker.
While no Republican has announced a bid for the post, some names reliably come up in conversations with G.O.P. lawmakers, including Mr. McHenry and Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican and Rules Committee chairman, as well as the No. 2 and No. 3 House Republicans, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Tom Emmer of Minnesota.
Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Emmer have held discussions about potential runs, according to people familiar with those private talks who described them on the condition of anonymity, and lawmakers were also exploring drafting Mr. McHenry.
“For a time such as this … Steve is the right man to lead our country,” Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, wrote on social media, with a picture of himself and Mr. Scalise.
Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma was also reaching out to colleagues, and some Republicans said they would like to see Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican and Judiciary Committee chairman, make a bid.
Other Republicans suggested looking further afield, given that a speaker of the House need not be a member of the body. Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the House.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also took to X to say that Mr. Trump was “the only candidate for Speaker I am currently supporting.”
Any candidate would have to win a majority of the House, a tall order given the rift among Republicans that made it so difficult for Mr. McCarthy to win the post and do the job for the nine months that he held it. Right-wing Republicans have made clear that they will not support a speaker without assurances that they will see their priorities, including enacting deep spending cuts and severe immigration restrictions, met.
That is nearly impossible to promise given that Democrats control the Senate and the White House. And the situation could be a recipe for further dysfunction on Capitol Hill, most immediately in negotiations on federal spending. The House and Senate must agree by mid-November on the 12 annual appropriations bills to fund the government in the fiscal year that began on Sunday, something that cannot be done without a speaker in place.
Should a new Republican speaker be chosen, the pressure would be immense for that person to push for spending levels far below what Mr. McCarthy had agreed to in a debt deal with President Biden in the spring. Changing the terms of that deal would prompt a clash with the Senate, which is adhering to the agreement.
Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
Carl Hulse is chief Washington correspondent and a veteran of more than three decades of reporting in the capital. More about Carl Hulse
Republicans lawmakers signaled they would need a week to regroup, planning to meet on Tuesday to discuss possible candidates to replace McCarthy - who said he would not run again - with votes on Oct. 11 at the earliest.
The leadership fight is eating into the time lawmakers have to avert a looming partial government shutdown, which would begin on Nov. 18 if Congress fails to pass legislation proving more funding.
"We're in uncharted waters," Republican Representative Byron Donalds told reporters after supporting McCarthy in a vote the speaker lost 216-210.
It was not clear who might seek to succeed McCarthy in a job that has proven challenging for Republicans in recent years. The last two Republican speakers, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, retired from Congress after clashes with their right wing.
McCarthy, who led a narrow 221-212 majority, made the job even more difficult for himself. During 15 grueling rounds of voting on his bid for the speakership in January, he agreed to changes to House rules that allowed any one member of Congress to call for the speaker's ouster, setting the stage for Representative Matt Gaetz to do just that.
"I don't envy anyone this job," Republican Representative Mike Garcia said. He described the rule change as "like handing 220 matches out to people in your party and dousing yourself in fuel and hoping none of them are crazy."
McCarthy said only that his advice to the next speaker was: "Change the rules."
Republican Representative Dusty Johnson, asked about the prospect of picking a new speaker, told reporters: “Frankly, one has to wonder whether or not the House is governable at all.”
'I'VE NEVER SEEN THIS'
Even though many lawmakers saw this day coming, given McCarthy's tenuous hold on the speakership, they nonetheless were stunned that Republicans actually dumped their own leader.
"I've been here for a while, and I've seen a lot, but I've never seen this," Democratic Representative Jim McGovern told Reuters.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged "traditional Republicans" in the House to "walk away from MAGA extremism and join us in partnership for the good of the country," a reference to former President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, is viewed by many in the party rank-and-file as a more rock-solid conservative than some House Republicans viewed McCarthy. Scalise recently was undergoing cancer treatment but has been working in the Capitol since then.
The entire House - Republicans and Democrats - vote for the chamber's speaker who normally holds the position for two years or until the end of the current Congress in early January 2025. Jeffries is expected to run against any Republican candidate nominated by the party conference, as he did in January.
The Republican Party chaos comes as Congress already was struggling over how to fund the government in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Just four days ago, lawmakers narrowly averted a partial government shutdown that would have stopped pay for more than 4 million federal workers and shuttered a wide range of federal programs.
McCarthy's move Saturday to join forces with opposition Democrats to enact a stopgap spending bill saved the country from a wrenching shutdown.
But it sparked the revolt led by Gaetz among hard-right Republicans who were angered by the failure to achieve deep spending cuts in that temporary measure.
The crisis also detracts from Republican hopes to fix the public's focus on an impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden and immigration troubles at the southwest U.S. border with Mexico.
McCarthy and his fellow Republicans had hoped to make those twin issues the centerpiece of the 2024 congressional and presidential campaigns along with inflation.
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