McCarthy announces he will leave Congress at the end of the year
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, who made history as the first speaker to be ousted from office, announced Wednesday that he would leave the House at the end of the year, but said that he planned to remain engaged in Republican politics.Mr. McCarthy's resignation, which he announced in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, will end a 16-year term in Congress during which he rose from being a member of the self-styled "Young Guns” – Republicans on their way to building their party’s majority in the House – into second place after the presidency.It caps his spectacular fall after just under nine months as president, when the right-wing forces that he and other establishment Republicans exploited to fuel their political victories finally rose up and ousted him.“I will c...