WASHINGTON — The most expensive House primary in history. A stunning coup to unseat a sitting speaker. The frenzied battle to succeed him. A public campaign by congressional Democrats to force their own incumbent president off the ballot.

Lawmakers have grown tired of the word “unprecedented,” but the 118th Congress was unlike anything Washington has ever seen.

The last two years were a story about the struggle for power. Between the old and the new guard, the Washington establishment and disruptive insurgents, and the two sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. At the center of that struggle were six lawmakers who, in big and small ways, made an impact that will reverberate into the next Congress that begins in January and will certify the election win of President-elect Donald Trump.

Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In the first days of the 118th Congress, amid a grueling 15 rounds of voting — the longest speaker floor fight since before the Civil War — Kevin McCarthy began privately expressing doubts to his staff that he would be successful.

That’s when he got a call from his longtime friend, the legendary sportscaster Jim Gray. “You do Al Davis: ‘You just win, baby,’” Gray told him.

McCarthy said the pep talk re-energized him, and in the early morning of Jan. 7, 2023, the California Republican finally prevailed.

Being counted out, then defying his critics has been a constant theme throughout McCarthy’s life. As a young man in Bakersfield, he was rejected from a summer internship in his local congressman’s office. He would later get a job in that office and then win the seat himself in 2007. Eight years later, he abruptly quit a speaker’s race amid a different rebellion on the right, and pundits declared his political career dead. It would take him another eight years to secure one of the top prizes in American politics.

“Go 15 rounds? I’ll go 15 rounds. … Perseverance matters,” McCarthy said in an interview.

By May, McCarthy had struck a massive deal with President Joe Biden to extend the debt ceiling for two years and modestly cap spending.

His speakership would be short-lived. McCarthy became the first speaker ever to be removed in the middle of his term through a motion to vacate, forced out by his archenemy, then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. His 269-day speakership was the third-shortest in history.

His running feud with Gaetz has been one of the nastiest on Capitol Hill in recent memory. “He’s a real sociopath,” said McCarthy.

And McCarthy pushed back on 269 days, saying he served in nearly every major leadership position — chief deputy whip, majority whip, majority leader, minority leader and speaker — over 14 years.

“I look at being leader that entire time,” he said.

Once floated as a potential White House chief of staff or Cabinet member in Trump’s second term, McCarthy said he told the president-elect early on, “I don’t want anything.”

He’s now giving speeches in places like Tokyo and Abu Dhabi and advising wealthy business leaders. But as he peered at the Capitol in the distance, McCarthy said he still gets “goosebumps” whenever he sets foot in the building.

“Regrets? No. … Your stumbles, the good and the bad, make you who you are, and those are the things I learned from,” he said. “I enjoyed every minute of it, every challenge.”

“I’d do it all again tomorrow.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Rep. Mike Johnson began the 118th Congress as the No. 7 Republican in House leadership. Nearly 300 days later, the relatively unknown conservative Louisianan leapfrogged over more powerful leaders to become speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency.

It was a stunning, meteoric rise for the former constitutional attorney and state lawmaker, who was first elected to Congress just seven years earlier. For Johnson, it paid off being in the right place at the right time — and not having any political enemies.

Despite his reputation as a pro-Trump conservative warrior, the speaker spent his first year cutting several deals with a Democratic president — on averting government shutdowns; military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan; and the renewal of a key surveillance program known as FISA Section 702. He also survived a GOP-led coup, similar to the one that took out McCarthy, thanks to help from Democrats who opted against more chaos.

“I try to have camaraderie with everybody in politics, even if they’re in the opposing party, and even if we don’t agree on anything.”

“President Biden and I agree on almost nothing with regard to public policy, but I respect the office and I always keep that in mind,” Johnson said in an interview with NBC News in the speaker’s office earlier this year.

“These are dangerous times. They’re very difficult times. They’re fateful times for the country,” Johnson continued. “I think whoever serves as president and speaker of the House, by necessity they have to have some sort of open relationships so that they can address the major problems that we’re facing as a nation.”

Johnson defended his approach weeks before the election, telling NBC News: “Everyone else can evaluate my performance, but what we’ve tried to do is maintain steady hands at the wheel, not derail the train, which — there were many opportunities to do that over the last 11 months.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Depending on one’s politics, Gaetz could be seen as a conservative crusader or a far-right villain. Either way, he had a lasting impact on the 118th Congress.

On day one, Gaetz led a small band of GOP rebels in blocking McCarthy from winning the speaker’s gavel, a standoff not seen in a century. Gaetz only relented in the 15th round of voting, after Trump began making calls and a fed-up Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., lunged at Gaetz on the floor.

Nine months later, Gaetz — citing McCarthy’s failure to substantially cut federal spending —  forced a historic vote to oust the speaker.

“It shows that every once in a while in this town, the little guy can win. And I hope that gives generations of members of Congress beyond my time here the gumption to rage against the machine a little bit,” Gaetz said in an interview in September.

“We need change agents here. We don't need more people here that just want to follow the leader. This place needs disruption.”

Democrats could have stepped in and saved McCarthy’s speakership, but they chose not to. “I knew how to play the hand I was dealt,” Gaetz said. “If Kevin McCarthy knew that, he’d probably still be speaker.”

But spending was not cut dramatically this Congress and the government has continued to operate under the same kinds of short-term funding bills he ousted McCarthy over. Gaetz did raise his national profile, earning himself a nod from Trump to be the next attorney general, but he withdrew over opposition from GOP senators and scrutiny of a House Ethics Committee probe concerning allegations of drug abuse and sexual misconduct.

The committee released its 42-page report right before Christmas, finding “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, noting that a Justice Department investigation into him ended without charges. And he has suggested that his foes and allies in the Republican Party may not have seen the last of him yet, hinting at a potential bid for Senate or governor in 2026.

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn.

After Biden’s “awful, terrible” debate performance against Trump, Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., said she “couldn’t sleep.”

“I went home that weekend and … very quickly came to the conclusion that Joe Biden could not campaign and win,” Craig said in an interview before the election.

“I needed to tell my constituents,” she said. “I needed to tell the country that we were sleepwalking into a situation where Donald Trump was about to be president again.”

Nine days after the debate, Craig became the first Democrat up for re-election in a “battleground” seat to call on Biden to drop out — a dramatic development that led to a wave of others following suit.

She faced immediate backlash.

“I felt a responsibility … to tell people, even in my own party, what they didn’t want to hear,” Craig said.

Biden eventually quit the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee in search of a running mate. Once again, Craig injected herself into the debate, aggressively pitching her home-state governor, Tim Walz, for the job in conversations with colleagues and reporters.

There was one problem. “I walked onto the House floor … and thought, ‘Oh, s---, I actually haven’t talked to Tim Walz about whether he wants to be VP or not.’ And actually ran into the cloakroom, called Tim,” she said.

To Craig, Walz was the only potential VP pick who could appeal to rural America and the various factions of the Democratic Party. He was open to it.

Walz and Harris lost decisively to Trump in the Electoral College, but only narrowly lost the popular vote. That helped House Democrats stave off a big GOP wave. Trump “would have taken, I believe, if Biden had stayed on the top of the ticket, 30 to 40 House seats with him,” Craig said, including her own.

After the election, Craig, who is 52 and was first elected in 2018, took on the old guard again, launching an insurgent challenge against two much more senior, septuagenarian lawmakers to be the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. She won easily.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., toiled behind the scenes in Congress for two decades, rising to chair the Financial Services Committee, where he could influence fiscal policy while avoiding the spotlight.

But he may best be remembered for a spontaneous act of frustration on Oct. 3, 2023: slamming down the gavel in the House after he had been named the temporary successor to McCarthy, his close ally and friend.

“There was no forethought to that,” McHenry recalled. “I’m like a backstage guy.”

“I’m the guy that talks to you before you go out and when you come back, right? … That’s what I like doing — not this. Not this.”

Moments before, McHenry was told he’d have a protective detail shadowing his every move. From the dais, he peered out onto the House floor and spotted McCarthy now seated among the rank and file. “Looking at McCarthy and realizing he had busted his ass for 20 years to be speaker — this is unjust. This is just not right. And the spark of that just made it emotional,” McHenry said.

It quickly settled in that he would have to shepherd House Republicans through this mess and find a new speaker. It would take them 23 days.

It wasn’t the first time that McHenry had gotten the call from the bullpen. In 2017, McHenry had to fill in as the GOP vote counter after Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was nearly killed by a gunman at a Republican congressional baseball practice. And in 2023, McCarthy had tapped McHenry and another top lieutenant, Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., to negotiate a deal with the White House to avoid a catastrophic debt default.

A few months after McCarthy was ousted, McHenry announced this was his last term. While he held the speaker’s gavel for a few weeks, it’s that bipartisan debt ceiling deal, a policy issue with real “stakes” — that he’s most proud of.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.

The Israel-Hamas war bitterly divided Democrats this Congress. And nowhere was that clearer than in the most expensive House primary in U.S. history: a Democrat-on-Democrat war in New York.

In the end, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, the brash and burly pro-Palestinian progressive, couldn’t overcome a deluge of outside spending by pro-Israel groups to unseat him. He lost to Westchester County Executive George Latimer and became the first member of the left-wing “Squad” to lose re-election. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., another fierce Israel critic and fellow Black member of the Squad, lost her re-election as well, twin defeats this summer, spurred by record outside spending, that sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party, infuriating progressives and delighting Israel’s allies.

Not one to mince words, Bowman, who has denounced Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” and voted against military aid for Israel, is unapologetic about how he handled the issue in a district with a large concentration of Jewish voters.

“I’m a badass motherf-----. For someone to have to spend $25 million to beat me — that must mean I’m a bad motherf-----. … I must be doing the right thing, fighting for the right things, and they are desperate and scared,” Bowman said in an interview in his office.

Sporting a Public Enemy T-shirt, Bowman said he is not ruling out running for political office in the future: “U.S. Senate, yes, governor, yes, mayor, yes.”

“This is not just about me. It’s about the kind of politics that I think needs to be more represented here in Congress, which is a politics that unapologetically stands up for working-class people, Black and brown people, and Palestinians.” he said.

He has only one regret during his four years in Washington. “Wish I hadn’t pulled the fire alarm. That’s it.”