1st Vote in 118th Congress

The first roll-call vote of the 118th Congress is now complete. As expected, the vote for Speaker of the House ended with Rep McCarthy (R,CA) did not reach the 218 votes (203 with 19 Republicans votes for someone else) needed to become the Speaker {in fact he ended up behind Rep Jefferies (D,NY) in the vote (212), but Jefferies did not reach the 218 total either}. A second vote is expected to begin shortly.

The House Rules Committee site has a copy of the current (as of January 1^st) proposed House Rules for the 118^th Congress. I would expect that further changes could be made to that text to get additional votes for McCarthy. Or, if the final vote goes to someone else, a completely different set of Rules could be considered.

One interesting provision of the draft rules is to add ‘Cybersecurity’ to the legislative jurisdiction of the House Homeland Security Committee under Rule X, clause (1)(j)(3) under the House Rules. This addition would only specifically apply to “Functions of the Department of Homeland Security”. The word ‘cybersecurity’ does not appear any where else in the House Rules.