May 7, 2024, 7:51 p.m.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene threw a party to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, and only two other people showed up.
The Trump-aligned Georgia firebrand has held the threat of a vote to remove Johnson for weeks following his decision to hold a vote on a now-passed foreign-aid bill providing assistance to Ukraine. Two lawmakers, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona, publicly signed on to her motion to remove Johnson from the speakership.
Greene, Massie, and Gosar huddled with Johnson on Tuesday to go over a list of legislative demands Greene had presented to the Louisiana Republican earlier this week. But following the midday meeting, Greene’s rhetoric softened. Now, Greene says Johnson has time to consider and implement her demands.
“Right now the ball is in Mike Johnson’s court,” Greene told reporters after a vote series Tuesday. “He understands that he needs to be our Republican speaker of the House.”
Greene’s Tuesday comments aren’t quite a reversal, but—boxed in and running out of options—she appears to be stepping back from the brink for now. Instead of what was supposed to be an imminent move to advance her motion to oust Johnson, she is now putting forth an open-ended timeline for a series of demands that stand little chance of becoming reality.
Johnson did not even describe the talks with Greene as “negotiations” over demands, but as “a good discussion.”
“What I do every day, almost on an hourly basis, is I hear suggestions and ideas and thoughts from members,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday at the weekly GOP leadership press conference. “My door has been open from Day One. Everybody knows that.”
Greene left the talks with Johnson on Tuesday without a commitment that he would follow through on her demands, nor was there a public announcement of another meeting.
She will likely never oust Johnson. Three Republicans in a nearly evenly divided House would normally be enough to jettison the speaker—if every Democrat voted with the motion as they did last year for the ouster of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But Democratic leaders have said they would back a motion to table Greene’s resolution before it ever came to a vote, effectively killing any chance of removing Johnson.
“We have said her effort will not be successful,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar told reporters Tuesday. “We want to turn the page. We want to put this behind us, and we’ll see what happens in the future.”
An overwhelming majority within Greene’s own conference want to get past recent, tumultuous votes to fund the government and pass the $95 billion foreign-aid bill, and don’t see the utility in ousting a second speaker following the chaotic aftermath of McCarthy’s removal last October.
If Greene backs off from forcing a vote, Johnson not only avoids a threat to his job but also dodges the political baggage of relying on Democrats to save his speakership. Emerging from the ordeal without needing Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to bless a Democratic-led effort to save him would be a boon to his governing ability within the conference.
Greene, Gosar, and Massie’s demands—Massie insisted to reporters that they are “suggestions”—reflect much of what hard-line conservatives have criticized about Johnson’s six-month tenure as speaker even if most don’t back his removal.
The first suggestion is that Johnson must not put legislation to a vote that a majority of Republicans won’t support, a principle known as the Hastert Rule. More than half of House Republicans voted against the omnibus funding bills last month.
Additionally, Congress must not pass more funding for Ukraine, Greene said. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said the new aid should last through this year, meaning a new Congress would likely take up any additional Ukraine assistance.
Greene said Congress must also pass all 12 appropriations bills for fiscal 2025, and if not, then an automatic, 1 percent cut to all federal spending would kick in. Lawmakers needed four stopgap spending bills before Congress passed fiscal 2024 appropriations legislation, and another stopgap funding bill is expected to get the federal government past the Sept. 30 funding deadline and through the November elections.
And Greene also wants Johnson to go after Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting former President Trump for attempts to overturn the 2020 election and, separately, for mishandling classified documents. Greene is calling on the speaker to defund Smith’s office.
“I want it ended. I want the entire special counsel defunded, and I want it to end,” Greene said on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s podcast Tuesday. “And I think our Republican speaker can make that happen, and I think our Republican conference can make that happen.”
That demand might not get past opponents inside the conference, however.
“Getting involved in the justice system that way makes me nervous,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a centrist Republican from Nebraska. “I don’t think it’s a smart move.”
Bacon cautioned leadership against falling into the same trap as Johnson’s predecessor McCarthy, who cut deals with hard-liners at the beginning of this Congress to secure their votes for his speakership, only to see one of those concessions, the one-person threshold to force a vote to remove the speaker, turned against him.
“So we got into trouble in January 2023, right? And we gave away too much, and I think we’re paying for it right now,” Bacon said. “So I would be very careful in negotiating with her.”
Some hard-line Republicans who oppose removing Johnson have said they would consider calling on him to step down after the November elections or to decline running for the top House Republican spot in the next Congress. Johnson, though, has no plans to step aside, he told reporters Tuesday.
“I intend to lead this conference in the future, and the most important thing that we have to do right now is govern the country well, show the American people that we will, as we have been doing,” he said.
