House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is offering a concession on his bid to become House speaker by agreeing to reduce the threshold now required to force a floor vote to oust the sitting speaker, sources familiar with internal discussions said.
Current rules require a majority of the incoming House GOP majority to call for a motion to vacate the speaker's chair, now held by Nancy Pelosi, but some conservatives are calling for a single member to be able to call for the vote, CNN reported.
Two of the GOP sources told CNN that a five-person threshold has come up in talks between McCarthy, R-Calif., and GOP lawmakers. Party moderates, though, might consider the five-person threshold too low and are privately suggesting they would be willing to agree on a 50-person limit.
Some of McCarthy's critics, including Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told CNN they still see the five-person threshold as too high.
"He's gotta get down to 1," Gaetz said in a text to CNN, while Norman responded "no, less than 5!! 2 or less (my opinion)."
McCarthy has scheduled a conference call for Friday afternoon with various House GOP caucuses. The speaker's vote will be held Tuesday.
McCarthy said before that he wouldn't budge on compromising on the motion to vacate the seat, but that could be the key to his getting the votes he will need to win the speaker's election. Still, there are other challenges as McCarthy faces at least five holdouts against his election.
McCarthy has said he wants a commitment from the holdouts that they will vote for him if he agrees on the motion to vacate, but critics like Norman said they want a firm commitment from him.
"The devil is in the details as far as threshold and other rule concessions," Norman said. "Until the details are spelled out, in writing and sealed with social media posts, people will not move on votes."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.