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House Republicans flailed through a second day of multiple balloting on January 4, unable to elect their leader Kevin McCarthy as House speaker or come up with a new strategy to end the political chaos that has tarnished the start of their new majority. For a fourth, fifth and sixth time, Republicans tried to vote McCarthy into the top job as the House plunged deeper into disarray. But the votes were producing almost the same outcome, 20 conservative holdouts still refusing to support him, and leaving him far short of the 218 typically needed to win the gavel. In...

Vice President Kamala Harris needed to get to the U.S. Senate to break a tie. But first she had to avoid causing a traffic jam. One more senator had to vote before Harris could end the impasse, and he was in Georgetown, on the opposite side of Washington. If Harris left in her motorcade, street closures would likely cut off his route to Capitol Hill. So she waited. “I was on the phone with the senator’s staff telling them, you have to tell me when he’s in the car and when he’s crossed the threshold through downtown,” Kristine Lucius,...

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy failed in two rounds of voting to become House speaker on January 3, a historic defeat with no clear way out as House Republicans dug in for a long, messy start for the new Congress. Needing 218 votes in the full House, McCarthy got just 203 in both rounds — less even than Democrat Hakeem Jeffries in the GOP-controlled chamber. McCarthy had pledged a “battle on the floor” for as long as it took to overcome right-flank fellow Republicans who were refusing to give him their votes. But it was not at all clear how...