Republicans were warned by their leadership about plunging the party "into chaos" but Gaetz, who has repeatedly complained about McCarthy failing to honor agreements made with conservatives, retorted: "Chaos is Speaker McCarthy."

"The reason Kevin McCarthy went down today is because nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy," he added after the vote. "Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost."

Democrats, too, had no love for McCarthy, pointing to his decision to renege on a deal with Biden on spending limits agreed earlier this year in high-stakes talks over the federal budget.

The New Democrat Coalition, a bloc of pro-business Democratic lawmakers, described McCarthy as "simply not trustworthy." And Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, a leading leftist, vowed to let Republicans "wallow in their pigsty of incompetence" rather than rescue McCarthy.

Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) ordered Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to vacate her Capitol hideaway office so he could take it over, just hours after becoming acting Speaker, Pelosi’s office said Tuesday.

McHenry became acting Speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from the role Tuesday, the first time a Speaker has been voted out of the job.

McHenry’s office requested that Pelosi vacate her Capitol hideaway office by Wednesday because it was being re-allocated “for speaker office use,” the message, first reported by Politico, reads. A small number of senior Representatives have “hideaway offices” inside the Capitol Building.

Pelosi denounced the demand in a statement late Tuesday.

“With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol,” she said.

“This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition,” she continued. “As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”