Rep. Matt Gaetz is threatening to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. It won't be easy

WASHINGTON (AP) — “How would you be different as speaker, compared to Mr. Boehner?” a reporter asked then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in September 2015 as the California Republican pursued, and eventually gave up, his first attempt at the speakership.McCarthy laughed while standing next to outgoing Speaker John Boehner — who had just stepped down after facing a threat of removal — and joked that he was from a different generation and wouldn’t be as tan.Eight years later, McCarthy is finding that there are fewer differences between them as he faces a conservative revolt against his speakership.”If somebody wants to remove (me) because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy told reporters Saturday.And his critics, namely Rep. Matt Gaetz, plan to do just that. On Sunday, the far-right Republican from Florida threatened to use a procedural tool — called a motion to vacate — to try and strip McCarthy of his office as soon as this week after he relied on Democrats to provide the necessary votes to fund the government.”I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid,” Gaetz said on CNN. “I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.”Here’s what you need to know about how the House can remove a speaker:The rules of the House allow for any single lawmaker — Democrat or Republican — to make a “motion to vacate the chair,” essentially an attempt to oust the speaker from that leadership post through a privileged resolution.It’s a rare and strong procedural tool that has only been used twice in the past century. But in recent years, conservatives have wielded the motion as a weapon against their leaders.In January, McCarthy, hoping to appease some on the hard right as he fought to gain their vote for speaker, agreed to give as few as five Republican members the ability to initiate a vote to remove him. But when that wasn’t good enough for his critics, he agreed to reduce that threshold to one — the system that historically has been the norm.Proponents of allowing a single lawmaker to file the motion said it promotes accountability, noting its long history in the House. The last use of the motion was in 2015, when then-Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a Republican who later became Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, introduced a resolution to declare the speaker’s office vacant. Two months later, Boehner said he would be stepping down.No speaker has ever been removed from office through a motion to vacate.At any point in time, a member of the House can introduce a privileged resolution — a designation that gives it priority over other measures — to declare the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives vacant.Once the motion is introduced, the lawmaker can walk onto the House floor and request a vote. Such a request would force House leaders to schedule a vote on the resolution within two legislative days.But there are procedural motions that members of either party could introduce to slow down or stop the process altogether. If those tactics were to fail, and the resolution came to the floor for a vote, it would take a simple majority of the House — 218 votes, when no seats are vacant — to remove the speaker.While it has never been successful, a motion to vacate has been used as a political threat against several speakers throughout history, dating back to Republican Speaker Joseph Cannon — who first invoked the resolution against himself in 1910. The effort failed as his fellow Republicans voted overwhelmingly to keep him as their leader. But by calling the bluff of his detractors, Cannon was able to put them on the record and end the threats against him.