It took fifteen rounds of voting for the US House of Representatives to elect Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy as its leader in January. It was the longest vote for Speaker of the House since the US Civil War and it was fraught with political divisions. Nine months later, McCarthy’s tenuous leadership came crashing down this week, as he became the first Speaker of the House to be voted out. The move was led by members of his own party. So how did things get to this point, and what does it mean for American politics?

In this episode: 

• Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi), MSNBC Chief Correspondent and host of “Velshi”

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Sonia Bhagat, Ashish Malhotra, Chloe K. Li and our host Malika Bilal. Sarí el-Khalili and Amy Walters fact-checked this episode.

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.

Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.

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