After failing six times to drum up enough votes for the speakership, McCarthy reportedly drew up a deal for his hardline conservative colleagues on Wednesday evening, agreeing to a number of demands that would give rank-and-file members, namely his critics, more power.

Among the most important requests, is a rule change to the motion to “vacate the chair,” a procedural attempt to oust the speaker. Currently, the rule requires either a party leader or a majority vote by one party to force such a vote. The last time the vote of confidence was held was in 1910.

While McCarthy has proposed dropping the threshold to five members of the majority party, his defectors have criticized him for not going far enough, writing in a Sunday letter that, “we have from the beginning made clear that we will not accept following Nancy Pelosi’s example by insulating leadership in this way.”

Instead, Republicans who are blocking McCarthy’s bid for the gavel are demanding that the threshold be lowered even further to just a single member, which would give any random House Republican veto power.

Although the motion to vacate has rarely been invoked, politicians on both sides of the aisle have long feared changing the rule because it would essentially hand over more power to a speaker’s critics.

In 2015, when Paul Ryan wanted to make it harder to force such a vote, his spokesperson explained that, “No matter who is speaker, they cannot be successful with this weapon pointed at them all the time.”

Each time there is opposition in a majority party, members could threaten their speaker. And given the events that have unfolded on the House floor this week, it’s likely members of the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) may wield the motion to vacate as a weapon against McCarthy, forcing him to surrender to their demands or risk the gavel.

Susanne Schwarz, a political science professor at Swarthmore College, told Newsweek that because McCarthy would have to anticipate a snap vote being used as a political tool, the motion would incentivize him to be more cautious about his legislative ambition. In turn, that would restrict his agenda-setting power and slow congressional proceedings.

“Legislative proposals could be killed by simply initiating a snap vote against the speaker every time members disagree with his agenda,” Schwarz said.

She said the legislative process would also become more vulnerable to outside interests. In the past, lobbyists had to rally coalitions of lawmakers to influence legislative proposals, but the change demanded by HFC members would make it so that those groups only need a single legislator “who is willing to hold the whole chamber hostage on their behalf.”

Even though it’s unlikely McCarthy would be ousted, lowering the threshold would highlight the divisiveness of the party he’s trying to lead and weaken the office he’s gunning for.

While some House Republicans have pushed to weaken the motion, others have been outspoken against doing so. On Thursday, Carol Miller of West Virginia told CNN she “didn’t like” McCarthy’s new proposal, while David Joyce of Ohio called it a “stupid idea” last month.

Joyce said in an interview with ABC News that constituents could just “vote us out” if they didn’t like how lawmakers were acting, and that members of Congress should “certainly…give the speaker the opportunity” before voting them out after two years.

In an effort to secure enough votes on Thursday, McCarthy has reportedly also offered the HFC two of the four seats requested on the House Rules Committee’s 13-member panel and hold votes on controversial bills related to term limits and border security.

The House is set to reconvene and vote again on a speaker at noon ET on Thursday.