House adjourns as speakership evades McCarthy even after sixth vote

Republicans push back deadline of electing new speaker to noon on Thursday, after six failed votes in two days

The House remained paralyzed on Wednesday, after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy failed for the sixth time to capture the speaker's gavel as his critics stood firm in their opposition to his candidacy. After the House adjourned for a few hours, McCarthy and his allies went into negotiations with the Republican holdouts without a clear path forward to end the standoff, then pushed back a seventh vote on the House leadership until Thursday.

The House held a total of three inconclusive votes in the speakership election on Wednesday, mirroring the three votes held a day earlier. Across all six ballots, no speaker candidate successfully captured the 218 votes expected to be needed for a victory. The stalemate marked the first time in a century that a House speaker was not chosen in the initial vote. After the sixth vote on Wednesday evening, the House moved to adjourn until at least 8pm ET, giving Republicans more time to reach a solution, then pushed back the deadline again, voting to adjourn until noon the following day.