Members of the pro-Trump US House Freedom Caucus are withdrawing their support for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s nomination and have begun drafting their list of demands, jeopardizing the California Republican’s path to securing 218 votes, if the party eventually wins Parliament.  by a slim majority.   

  McCarthy and his team are confident he will eventually get the votes to be speaker.  But conservative hardliners have been emboldened by the possibility of a narrow House GOP majority and are threatening not to back it — which could jeopardize his bid or force him to make deals to water down the speech, which has been resisting for a long time.   

  Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told reporters that “no one right now has 218” votes for speaker, which is the magic number McCarthy would need to secure the speaker’s gavel on the House floor in January, and said that he wants McCarthy to list in more detail his plans for a wide range of investigations into the Biden administration.  And Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona complained that McCarthy appeared to be backtracking on whether he would be willing to open impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden or members of his cabinet.   

  “I’ve heard from many of my constituents who question the wisdom of moving forward with this leadership,” Biggs said, adding that there needs to be an “honest discussion” about who they elect to the top job.   

  Group members are also pushing to make it easier for lawmakers to request votes to remove a sitting speaker.  This is something McCarthy is adamantly opposed to and was practiced by former Speaker John Boehner before he eventually resigned.   

  Rep. Lauren Bobert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make it a hard line.   

  The Freedom Caucus, a group that includes dozens of hard-line members, met in Washington, D.C., this week for new member orientation, where they began strategizing about the speaker’s race.  With a slimmer-than-expected majority, they see an opportunity and plan to use their leverage to gain more power in a GOP-led House.   

  But the group’s push to extract concessions from McCarthy has exacerbated tensions within the party.  Said one senior GOP lawmaker: “They’re a bunch of selfish, prima dona a**holes who want attention for themselves.  They trade efficiency for the warm embrace of their social media followers.”   

  McCarthy, who has been working the phones to lock in support from across Congress and received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement on Monday, remains the frontrunner for the job and has not emerged as a serious challenger.  And two would-be challengers, Reps. Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, have lined up behind his bid to speak.   

  McCarthy also has time to win over critics.  The internal GOP leadership election, where he needs only a simple majority to win his party’s nomination for president, is next week, but the vote where McCarthy needs a majority of the entire House isn’t until January.   

  His ability to muster 218 votes for speaker will ultimately depend on two things: the size of his majority and whether he is willing to make deals with the conservatives he diligently courted after being denied the speakership in 2015. So far, however, McCarthy He has made no promises or given in to their requests, with sources saying he was just in listening mode with possible caveats.   

  CNN has yet to predict which party will control the House of Representatives, although as of Friday morning, CNN has projected Republicans with 211 seats to Democrats’ 198.   

  Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina said McCarthy personally called and asked for his support for speaker, but Norman was non-committal.  He told McCarthy there is a group of them he wants to meet in person, which he said McCarthy was amenable to.   

  Norman said the group hopes to formalize a longer list of all the rule changes they are seeking.  They are also pushing to delay next week’s internal leadership election, although there is no indication that McCarthy intends to do so.   

  “I’m not endorsing anybody until I know what the plan is,” Norman said.   

  When asked if McCarthy should get credit for providing the majority, Norman replied: “The taxpayers who voted for the delegates deserve the credit.”   

  Rep. Bob Good, a member of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters that McCarthy “did nothing to earn my vote” as speaker.   

  The Virginia Republican also predicted that “there will be a challenge for (McCarthy) as the speaker nominee,” a possibility that CNN initially reported was being considered by the group.   

  Such a challenge would be more of a candidate protest than a serious one.  The group simply wants to show McCarthy during next week’s internal GOP leadership election that it doesn’t have the votes for the speaker, in hopes of forcing him to the negotiating table.   

  But there is at least one member who has said there is nothing McCarthy can do to win his vote.  Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said on his podcast that not only was McCarthy not his first choice to lead, he wasn’t “even in my top 100.”   

  “With a slim majority, we shouldn’t start Group C,” Gaetz said.  “We need to get our star players to shine more so we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.”