It looks like Nancy Pelosi has been kicked to the curb after House Speaker pro-tempore Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) evicted her from her private Capitol office on Tuesday.
Politico was first to report that McHenry, an ally of the now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, gave the order to Pelosi to vacate her “Capitol hideaway office” by Wednesday. It was one of his first official acts as interim speaker. According to the report, only a select few members of the House get a hideaway office.
“Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed,” a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee wrote in an email to the former Democrat speaker. The room was being redesignated “for speaker office use,” the email said.
Staffers were seen packing up the office Tuesday evening.
As you can imagine, Pelosi was none too pleased about the humiliation.
“With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time.”
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Pelosi called the eviction “a sharp departure from tradition,” and added that “As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”
“Office space doesn’t matter to me, but it seems to be important to them,” she continued. “Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let’s hope they get to work on what’s truly important for the American people.”
Cry me a river, Nancy.
Rep. Matt Gaetz and seven other Republicans joined with House Democrats to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday. This marked the first time in history a speaker was ousted from the top House position. McCarthy refused to cut a deal with Democrats to save his job.
“Nobody knows what’s going happen next, including all the people that voted to vacate (they) have no earthly idea what, they have no plan,” Rep. Tom Cole, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said. “They have no alternative at this point. So it’s just simply a vote for chaos.”
McCarthy revealed on Tuesday after the vote that he will not seek the speakership again to let another candidate who can win in the first round of voting take over.
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