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WASHINGTON — Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., lost an eighth vote for speaker of the House on Thursday, even after making several concessions to win over far-right opponents who have so far barred him from the election hammer blocked.

Earlier in the day, McCarthy had sounded an upbeat note over talks between his top lieutenants and a block of GOP holdouts.

“I think everyone in the conversation wants to find a solution,” McCarthy said as he made his way into the House of Representatives chamber for the day’s first vote.

But less than two hours after voting began, an influential McCarthy holdout, Rep. Scott Perry, of Pennsylvania, released an angry tweet accusing McCarthy of revealing details of internal negotiations.

Though voting is still ongoing, McCarthy has already lost more than 10 votes, making it impossible for him to reach the 218 needed to win the speakership.

It was unclear what would happen after the eighth vote, whether Republicans would attempt to adjourn the chamber or be forced to hold a ninth vote, although there were no apparent signs that anyone in the GOP faction changed their minds had.

The continued absence of a Speaker has thrown the House into disarray, largely due to the fact that ordinary members cannot be sworn into office until a Speaker is elected and cannot set up their local or Washington offices. This means that all 434 members of the House still technically remain elected members, not official proxies.

Ahead of Thursday’s votes, Democratic Party leaders berated Republicans for the party’s dysfunction and stressed the damage days without a House Speaker would do to the legislature and the nation.

“We cannot organize our district offices, get our new members to do the political work of our constituent services, and minister to the people who sent us here on their behalf,” said new Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass. , reporters at the Capitol Thursday morning. “Kevin McCarthy’s ego in his quest for speaking at any cost drowns out the voices and needs of the American people.”

Democrats also stressed that the lack of a speaker threatens U.S. national security by preventing members of Congress from accessing classified information that is only available to lawmakers after taking the oath of office, which none of them have can do without a speaker.

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“Ultimately, all we’re asking is Republicans to find a way for themselves to organize so Congress can get together and do business with the American people,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y. , said at a press conference with Clark.

She accused McCarthy of being “held hostage to his own ambitions”.

“This is about your responsibility to organize the government. It’s fundamental to us as members of Congress,” Clark said.

McCarthy, meanwhile, negotiated late on Wednesday with both allies and his opponents to try and reach an agreement that would land him the hammer after six failed votes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Republican leader of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reacts on the floor of the House chamber with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as Democrats force the House of Representatives to vote on whether to hold a late night session to continue against McCarthy’s wishes The contest for Speaker of the House continues on the second day of the 118th Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, United States, on January 4, 2023

Jonathan Ernest | Reuters

The first major concession McCarthy agreed to Wednesday was a rule change that would allow any member of the party to vote at any time on whether to replace the Speaker of the House, a far lower threshold than the current bar, according to NBC News .

“Anyone, anywhere, anytime,” Gaetz, one of McCarthy’s staunchest opponents, described the new rule to NBC late Wednesday night.

Gaetz also said McCarthy has agreed to appoint members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus to positions on key committees, including the powerful House Rules Committee, which controls which bills get the floor for voting and which bills languish in committees indefinitely.

This change satisfied another demand from the extreme right that its constituent bloc be given more power to get their favorite bills on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) passionately addresses fellow conservative Republican House members at the center of the House Chamber after a fourth round of voting still failed, US House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), to be elected the new Speaker of the House on the second day of the 118th Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, United States, January 4, 2023.

Evelyn Hockstein Reuters

McCarthy’s allies didn’t deny he had agreed to new concessions, NBC reported, but they declined to confirm details.

“The question is movement and positive movement,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, told NBC News and other reporters camped outside the meeting rooms late Wednesday night. “We had an afternoon of very positive discussions and there seems to be goodwill among Republicans and McCarthy that’s developing in a very nice way.”

The limited progress came after McCarthy failed to meet the minimum required to become speaker, in this case 218 votes if all 434 incoming members of the House of Representatives were to cast ballots, in seven votes in two days.

Not only had McCarthy failed to reach 218, but over the course of 48 hours, McCarthy’s support had actually shrunk from 203 to 201 after two members of his faction, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz , had ceased their support.

Democrats stayed in step throughout all of the voting, casting all 212 of their ballots unanimously for Jeffries each time.

New Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), new Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) and new Democratic Faction Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) hold a press conference on Capitol Hill on December 13, 2022 in Washington, USA, from.

Elisabeth Franz | Reuters

This is an evolving story and will be updated throughout the day.

Former President Donald Trump did what he always does in tough times and attacked a person of color with three nonsensical smears about Ruby Freeman Monday night.

Apparently, attacking this black woman again brought no relief from his dangerously injured ego, so he lashed out and reloaded Wednesday morning with two new attacks on this woman who had done nothing wrong except count votes Trump didn’t gave what he wanted.

Here is one of Trump’s wounded animal lawsuits, offered with the proviso that he does these rants because he knows they will be shared and thus his lies will be amplified and seep into the national consciousness. Trump lost Georgia fairly and honestly. The 2020 election was the safest election in US history. Trump’s own attorney general and officials in 50 states found no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump has never presented any evidence of his fraud allegations, and his campaign lost its challenges over allegations of voter fraud.

But Trump isn’t ready even now to accept that truth, so he hits like he always has. Therewith:

The Ruby Freeman tapes I uploaded to Truth Social are AMAZING. Now they can be heard and seen across America, along with the actual act of “filling the ballot box” with far more votes than it would take for me and Senator Perdue to win GEORGIA. At first she thought they got caught, got VERY nervous and wanted to “spill the beans”. Then SOS, GBI, FBI calmed her down, helped her clean up her social media, took her away (for two months!). THEN CHANGE YOUR STORY!

None of that happened. In fact, Trump lost the 2020 election by millions of votes.

Despite this, Ruby Freeman was forced to shut down her own small business and flee her home to live in an undisclosed location on the advice of the FBI over Trump’s allegations against her after he lost the 2020 election.

You see, Ruby, a grandmother, volunteered for the work that citizens across America used to do to give back to their communities: She volunteered to do the tedious work of counting votes.

And those votes didn’t add up to a victory for Trump, so he went after Ruby and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, attacking them with lies and accusing them, without evidence, of “bagging” the November 2020 election for Joe Biden “having tampered with” the ballot.

It got worse. Reuters reported:

Freeman made a series of 911 calls in the days after she was publicly identified by the president’s camp in early December. In a call on December 4, she told dispatchers she had received a barrage of “threats and phone calls and racial slurs,” adding, “It’s scary because they say things like, ‘We’re coming to get you. We’re coming for you.’”

Two days later, a panicked Freeman called 911 again after hearing a loud banging on her door just before 10 p.m. Strangers had also come the night before. She asked the dispatcher for help. “Lord Jesus, where are the police?” she asked, according to the recording obtained by Reuters in a record request. “I don’t know who keeps coming to my door.”

Freeman and Moss worked on the Fulton County election. Fulton County is predominantly black or African American, like many of the other areas Trump has targeted with unproven and false allegations of fraud, like Detroit.

There is an undeniable racist component to Trump’s cheating allegations, which focus on cities with mostly black voters. The problem is that this is not widely discussed and accepted.

Judge Jill Karofsky of the Wisconsin Supreme Court pointed out that the “[t]two counties. . . are attacked because of their different populations. Because they are urban. I suppose because they vote democratically.” Addressing Trump’s attorney, Jim Troupis, Judge Karofsky said, “This lawsuit, Mr. Troupis, smacks of racism.”

Of course, the man who was a known racist also used racism to whistle the dog whistle at his followers, who were primed to believe racist lies about people in mostly black cities. Basically, these attacks, based on nothing but lies, are an attempt to disenfranchise people of color, and the continued attacks on Ruby Freeman serve as a warning to other black women not to participate in the voting process, lest they also be based accused of nothing and are expelled from their homes and businesses.

In June 2022, we learned how Ruby Freeman felt after these attacks. “You know how it feels when the President of the United States takes aim at you?” asked Ruby Freeman.

Trump’s attacks on Freeman were part of a widespread Trump campaign to pressure and intimidate election officials.

This is Trump’s way of dealing with ego wounds. He thrashes and tries to draw blood. Other people’s pain and fear is the only ointment he has when he’s hurt. And now he’s injured. Most recently, he went so far as to blame Republicans for the medium-term losses in how they handled Roe’s ouster, to suggest he wasn’t the cause.

That was the rare occasion when the former president was right. But he’s wrong that he’s not part of the Republican Party’s branding problem.

Trump is a lost cause when it comes to seeking integrity and decency. But where are Republicans willing to stand up for Ruby Freeman? There should be at least a few in the Republican leadership who might wish to offer even a measure of decency to publicly protest this ongoing assault on a private individual in his 1960s.

It’s likely Freeman will consider litigation, which Maddow Blog says would be easier now that Trump is no longer acting president.

The deep lack of decency in Trump’s ongoing attacks on Ruby Freeman should not be dismissed as more of the same. They are dangerous, how dangerous these election lies are, we all learned on January 6th and again with the attack on Paul Pelosi.

Someone in the Republican leadership should be willing to stand up for a campaign worker who has been forced to flee her own home following violent threats from her party leader. Everyone? Everyone?

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily’s newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been accredited to report on President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and to exclusively interview spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively on her first appearance at home following the then-Vice President’s first impeachment to report to President Donald Trump.

Sarah is a two-time Telly Award-winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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WASHINGTON — Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., failed to secure enough support to be elected speaker of the U.S. House in three straight votes Tuesday, throwing the Republican party into chaos and the House of Representatives forever yet left without a speaker to swear in members of the 118th Congress.

On each of the three ballots, every Democrat on the floor unanimously rallied around new Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y. But a sect of conservative Republicans split from their party to support other candidates, including longtime McCarthy ally Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

In an unexpected twist, McCarthy actually lost support as voting resumed when in the third round Florida Republican Byron Daniels announced his support for Jordan after voting for McCarthy twice.

As a result of Daniels’ defection, McCarthy won 202 of the 218 votes needed to secure the post in the third round, down one vote from the first two ballots.

Jordan, who nominated and voted for McCarthy, won 20 votes in the third round. Jeffries, the new leader of the Democratic minority, won 212 votes on each of the three ballots.

U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reacts as lawmakers address the first day of the 118th Congress in the U.S. Capitol Building’s Chamber of Representatives March 3.

Win Mcnamee | News from Getty Images | Getty Images

McCarthy’s failure to garner public support from his entire faction has already cast a shadow over the new Republican majority and exposed decades of divisions within the party. The differences were deepened by former President Donald Trump emboldening a small group of ultraconservatives.

Trump eventually backed McCarthy’s bid for speaker, as did other influential Conservatives like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. But the ex-president’s influence within the GOP faction did not prevent McCarthy’s initial defeat on Tuesday.

Conservative Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who received 10 votes in the first round, tweeted that the record shows Republicans “made it clear that our party deserves a new leader.”

“McCarthy should resign and allow us to choose someone else on the next vote,” he wrote.

The mood in the house on Tuesday started out cheerful and energetic, due in part to the presence of members’ children and family members, many of whom came to witness what they were swearing in ceremonies. But as the day went on it got more and more exciting.

Until a Speaker is elected, the remaining elected members of the Chamber cannot be sworn in, as their oath of office is taken by the Speaker.

House Republicans began Tuesday morning with a caucus meeting seen as a final opportunity for McCarthy to deliver his pitch in front of members who may be on the fence.

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After the meeting but before the vote, McCarthy told reporters that “we might have a fight on the ground, but the fight is for the conference and the country, and I’m fine with that.”

“Look, I have the record for longest speech ever on the floor, I have no problem getting a record for most votes for the speaker as well,” he added.

Judging by early statements from key Republican holdouts, conservatives had a long list of demands that they felt McCarthy failed to meet.

House Democrats, meanwhile, openly savored the internal chaos that was throwing the opposing party into turmoil.

“We’re certainly seeing chaos in Congress today, and this is an extension of the extremism we’ve seen from the GOP,” new House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

She accused McCarthy of “thrown away his moral compass”.

This is an evolving story, please keep checking back for updates.