The United States lost the third most powerful figure in its political system, when the House of Representatives voted to kick out its leader, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
It is the first time it has ever happened in the history of the US. The House of Representatives - and its Republican Party majority - is in chaos.
Without a Speaker, the House cannot carry out its normal functions - including voting money for the government to spend.
On Saturday night, a government shutdown was averted for six weeks after Democrats sided with most Republicans to pass a six week temporary budget - one that excluded billions in aid to Ukraine.
That move bypassed a small faction on the right wing of the Republican party that was holding up a budget deal. Last night they exacted their revenge, by voting with opposition Democrats to take out their own leader.
The chamber was packed, and it was standing room only in the press gallery on the third floor by the time I got there. One could sense that something big, something unusual, was about to happen in this cockpit of American democracy.
But there was something else in the atmosphere, something familiar: a faint whiff of Brexit, that sickly scent of institutional decay, that brought back to the surface troubling memories of the parliamentary meltdown in Westminster in 2019.
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It's not that bad - yet - on Capitol Hill. But it's not good either.
Yesterday was the day the House of Representatives entered uncharted waters for this great democracy; the day a former president [Donald Trump] was rebuked by the judge in his fraud trial for posting social media threats about court officials in New York; the day the current President's son [Hunter Biden] was arraigned on firearms charges in Delaware; the day a Congressman from Texas [Henry Cuellar] became the 736th victim of carjacking in the District of Colombia so far this year.
After losing a bid to block the motion to get rid of him, McCarthy took a seat in the second row to the left of the presiding member, awaiting his fate as the House held a one hour debate on his speakership. He appeared relaxed, like a weight had been lifted from him, laughing and joking with other Republicans in his row just before the speeches began.
I had entered the Capitol via a passage from one of the office buildings the Representatives and their staff work in, the Cannon Building – named for former speaker Joe Cannon. He was the last speaker to face a "motion to vacate" the office- and that was way back in 1910. Of course he survived the vote - they wouldn't have named an office building after him otherwise.
But Kevin McCarthy was skating on much thinner ice than his predecessor Joe Cannon, who had been able to call his own motion to vacate to best his opponents.
Mr McCarthy’s chief opponent - Matt Gaetz of Florida - put down the motion on Monday, after four days of frenzied activity on Capitol Hill, that included a very close call to avert a government shutdown on Saturday night.
The vote - when it came - came slowly, the drawn out cruelty of a roll call vote, normally used by leaders to focus as much pressure as possible on individual members trying to stage a putsch. Unable to hide behind electronic voting, or even cutting quickly through the voting lobbies, each of the members was called by name and had to respond with a yea or nay. On the record. One by one.
It didn't save McCarthy. Matt Gaetz needed five Republican defectors, and the Democrats to vote solidly against McCarthy. He got eight from his own side, while the Democrats had decided earlier that morning that it was not the job of the opposition to save McCarthy's job.
In response to members who said sacking McCarthy would lead to Chaos, Mr Gaetz said Kevin McCarthy is chaos. But chaos there nevertheless is.
Outside, on the steps of Congress, in the middle of a roiling media scrum in the baking sun, Mr Gaetz said any disruption or even paralysis of the system caused by the vote was the fault of Kevin McCarthy, not him.
"What's paralyzed the House of Representatives has been the failure of speaker McCarthy. What paralyzed the House of Representatives was not taking up appropriations bills. We left for a six week vacation, while the appropriations process hung in the balance, and because I forced these people to take a few votes.
"You think I'm paralyzing the House of Representatives? I think the House of Representatives been paralyzed for the last several decades as we've refused to pass a budget as was governed by continuing resolution and omnibus bill. So I think that this represents the ripping off of the band aids and that's what we need to do to get back on track", he said.
He also issued a firm "no" to a reporter who asked him if he was running to be Governor of Florida at the next election.
Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who is the ranking member on the House oversight committee investigation into whether Joe Biden ought to be impeached, saw the hand of Donald Trump in McCarthy’s fate.
"Kevin McCarthy came up with the idea for an outside independent 9/11 style commission to investigate the events of January [2021]. Five Republicans and five Democrats, equal staffing, equal subpoena power. And even though we were in the majority, the Democrats agreed to it. Bennie Thompson delivered the Democrats and said we'll sign up for that. And then McCarthy pulled the plug on his own idea because Donald Trump said he wanted no investigation and then when Speaker Pelosi created the select committee on January the 6th, Kevin McCarthy oppose that and tried to sabotage it and tried to put a pro Trump insurrectionists on the committee".
Mr Raskin was a member of that committee, which produced the 6 January 2021 report for the House.
"When the committee subpoenaed Kevin McCarthy to come and testify, he blew off our subpoenas. He defied the committee, and then he has proceeded to orchestrate a completely counterfeit impeachment proceeding against Joe Biden based on no evidence at all," Mr Raskin said.
Mr Raskin said he expected the Democrats leader in the House, Hakim Jeffries, to stand again, and would vote for him, hoping to peel off some Republican defectors who want stable government. It's an unlikely arrangement, but it keeps the pot stirred.
The search for a new speaker is now under way, with Kevin McCarthy ruling himself out of contention.
Majority leader Steve Scalise is often mentioned as a successor, but is recovering from cancer treatment.
Jim Jordan is another name in the frame. A temporary acting speaker has been appointed, but there are no plans for the house to conduct any formal business this week. It's all behind closed doors for now.
Nine months into a job he had wanted all his political career, Kevin McCarthy entered the history books, but not in a way he would have wanted - as the first Speaker to be deposed by a vote of the House. Uncertainty follows, including uncertainty over the US budget and its funding allocation to Ukraine, which members voted to delete on Saturday.
The members of the House of Representatives now have six weeks before a government shutdown looms again, so have little time to find a new Speaker.
And Kevin McCarthy's offer to bring most of his caucus onboard with a Democrat motion for a 45 day funding bill if the bill dropped funding for Ukraine has triggered a foreign policy crisis for the White House and the State Department.
The appearance of the US Congress blocking aid to Ukraine hands a propaganda weapon to the Kremlin.
Even if most members want to see Ukraine funding restored, even if the White House and senators from both parties have ben reassuring their Ukrainian and EU counterparts that the US remains fully committed - appearances count. And the US appears to be hesitant about funding Ukraine.
A damaged Speaker, a damaged Republican Party, a damaged House of Representatives, a damaged Foreign Policy. It was quite a day in American politics.
