Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest.

Boy, is today a barnburner: there is no more Speaker of the House, and the Capitol has devolved into a battleground of absolute chaos. Abby’s got the latest with a sweeping report documenting Hill society at large as it crumbles—her dispatches remind me of reportage around the Fall of Saigon, and I’m allowed to say that—and I’ve got a deep dive into the Kevin-hating anti-establishment trying to figure out, exactly, what kind of mess Matt Gaetz has gotten them into: this was not planned, and now all of their plans to take on the Swamp have been set on fire.

First, a congressional update from Abby Livingston…

• You’ve got to hide your love away…: If there is one maxim that has proven unshakably true on Capitol Hill over the last fifteen years, it’s that for every action there is an opposite and escalated reaction. And so it will be fascinating to see exactly what follows Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry’s brusque eviction of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer from their Capitol hideaways. Think things are petty now? Brace yourselves.

  Even Republicans felt like the decision was reactive and unnecessary—although one operative I spoke with said the Democrats should have lost the space at the outset of the new Congress. A non-D.C. Republican texted me: “Need video of people vacating their Capitol hideaways set to ‘Layla’…” referencing the Goodfellas bloodbath montage.

  Another timely movie reference came my way shortly after, when a non-D.C. Republican operative with close Hill ties wondered if Matt Gaetz truly thought he could take down McCarthy. This source compared him to Robert Redford at the end of The Candidate, when he asks, “What do we do now?”

• Campaign aftershocks: It hardly bears repeating, but Kevin McCarthy had many, many weaknesses as speaker. But he was also indisputably the most active political animal in this generation’s House G.O.P. conference. He was an active recruiter, strategist, mentor, and fundraiser, and nobody in the conference demonstrated his level of interest or work ethic when it came to electing House members. So what happens now that this force has been neutralized?

  I’m wary of drawing sweeping conclusions about how this present chaos will impact the House races next year. (Most analysts say the fight for the majority is a pure tossup, if not slightly leaning toward Democrats.) Of course, when John Boehner resigned in 2015, Republicans were concerned that his exit would destabilize the N.R.C.C. and the G.O.P.-aligned super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund. But then Paul Ryan ascended to the speakership, and raised even more money than Boehner. The problem for the House G.O.P. is that they’ve burned through all of their Paul Ryans.

  What I’m most immediately curious about is how the last stretch of House G.O.P. recruitment goes. This early October window is usually the last opportunity for candidates to declare their bids for competitive seats—and the recruits were watching Tuesday’s spectacle, just like the rest of us.

• The Speaker shortlist: Meanwhile, a herd of House Republicans trekked to a Texas Republican delegation meeting today to make their pitch for leadership roles, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, and Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, who are in the hunt for the speakership. There was also Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who’s after the majority leader slot that Scalise may vacate, and Guy Reschenthaler who’s looking at Emmer’s current role as majority whip.

  The Texas delegation has long been the power center of the House G.O.P. conference. The prioritization of the Texans reflects their stature as the largest Republican state delegation. It’s very much an open question if they will consolidate behind a single speaker candidate. And Scalise has two helpful guides in Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, a close ally, and Tony Gonzalez, who was one of the first members to back Scalise’s bid.

  But the Texans once wielded their power through cohesion—usually under the strategic guidance of long-gone Republicans like Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and Kay Bailey Hutchison (disclosure: I briefly worked for K.B.H. in 2006…). This next-gen Texas Republican delegation is far less unified compared to a decade ago, both as members and as a state party back home. Michael McCaul, the Foreign Affairs chairman, is one of the handful of Texans left from that era, and he urged his fellow Texans to unite.

  Also of note: Yes, Jim Jordan is running, setting up a fight between two very conservative Republicans. A lobbyist told me on Wednesday that “Jim Jordan is way scarier than Scalise to Main Street types.” Which, naturally, Jordan will probably take as a compliment.

  It’s also worth keeping an eye on McHenry, in a very general sense. For weeks ahead of McCarthy’s downfall, sources have frequently cited McHenry as a font of calm and stability within a conference that is on fire. Republicans reinforced confidence in his competence in the 24 hours since the McCarthy ouster.

And sure, he was a recognizable Washingtonian archetype—a career political climber who’d shimmied his way up the greasy pole by saying and doing whatever he needed on a day-to-day basis to get ahead. McCarthy was infamous, as speaker, for his lack of long term strategic thinking. But the hardline wing could at least count on him to be transactional—a quality that made him more receptive to MAGA pressure campaigns than his predecessors, who tried their best to ignore them.

McCarthy, in other words, was perhaps the best speaker that MAGA could get in the 118th Congress. Even when their priorities were sidelined, McCarthy’s mixture of ambition and insecurity made him a perfect whipping boy for their failures. Nevertheless, McCarthy’s exit was more or less preordained from the moment he gave Matt Gaetz the power to initiate a no-confidence vote—a nuclear weapon that Gaetz was always, inevitably going to use.

In the end, the votes to oust McCarthy came down to a vengeance caucus of eight members. Four had declared themselves Never Kevins in late 2022—Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Matt Rosendale, and Bob Good—and remained true to their word. Then there was Eli Crane, a recently-elected anti-establishment type who “never voted for the former Speaker back in January,” as his spokesperson proudly noted to me. And of course Ken Buck, who wasn’t part of the initial anti-Kevin crew, in 2022, but voted against him for speaker in January, and never forgave how McCarthy welshed on his promises to the 20 holdouts who held up the vote.

Finally, among the rebel crew was the relatively moderate Nancy Mace, who cited McCarthy’s inability to keep certain promises during his tenure, and his decision to avoid moving individual spending bills; and Tim Burchett, a frustrated budget hawk who was allegedly tipped over the edge by McCarthy saying something “condescending about my religious beliefs” while attempting to convince him to not to vote him out. “The last thing he said to me was ‘I really want to be Speaker,’” Burchett said in a video posted on X. “And folks, it really has to be more than that.”

I can’t help but think that this was all completely preventable. Back in January, during my reporting of the initial dealmaking that led to McCarthy’s speakership, Republican insiders told me that the one-vote “motion to vacate” rule was just a “shiny object” for the hardliners—just one of the many concessions they were looking for. Some of these sources suggested that McCarthy could have gotten away with his counter-offer of a five-vote rule. “If you can’t get five members of Congress to come together and say, Hey, this guy is not doing the job and we should get rid of him, then that’s on you,” a MAGA strategist told me at the time. Alas, in the heady final stages of the 15-rounds of votes that McCarthy pushed to become speaker, he handed the rebels a procedural weapon of mass destruction. Is it any surprise that they used it?

In fact, Jordan was the 20’s preferred alternative to McCarthy during the Speaker’s race in January, although he declined their entreaties at the time. Now, he’s starting to gain support from Republicans outside the anti-establishment MAGA caucus, who at this point might as well be considered moderates: Jim Banks and Darrell Issa, for example, have voiced their support. But as a conservative activist in communication with Jordan’s team told me, the would-be speaker has a few weak points he needs to confront in order to secure the votes of the rightward flank.

First, he has to address the fact that he initially supported McCarthy in the January race, voting for him during all fifteen rounds—a favor that McCarthy returned by naming him chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “I don’t think that’s a deal killer, but it’s something that is just there that he needs to be aware of,” the activist told me. Second, the more he tilts towards his roots as a Freedom Caucus populist, the more likely he is to alienate moderate members such as Don Bacon, or members from districts that had voted for Biden in 2020. “They don’t want to go home and say I voted for the guy who’s leading the impeachment on the president that my constituents voted for,” the activist added. “That might be tricky.”

To be clear, both men are pretty reliably conservative, as is the caucus, but the issue right now is this: Who can present themselves as the hardest ideological fighter, especially after McCarthy got booted for not fighting hard enough? One potential proposal coming out of Jordan’s camp is to promise that, as speaker, he would block voting on funding Ukraine from even making it onto the House floor. “Most Republicans are just like, hey, just put Ukraine up for an individual vote, and then if you don’t support it like Gaetz, then you just vote no,” the activist said. “But there’s clearly enough Democrats and Republicans together that it’ll get three hundred votes… For lack of a better term, the Freedom Caucus position is, not even a vote. Just block it all together. Don’t even bring it up.”

Of course, there is a high likelihood that Ukraine funding will still end up in the next continuing resolution regardless—Senate Republicans want it, and the White House will insist—but the next House Speaker may have their hands tied by Gaetz. And whoever wants the job, thankless as it is, will need to at least nod at mounting conservative concerns about aiding Ukraine. “It’s just like, whose fingerprints are on what?” the activist said. “The outcome is still going to be money for Ukraine. But it’s just a matter of, are you seen as being part of that? Or are you seen as somebody who at least tried to fight it?”

“It’s the little things,” he added.