The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.
Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnson’s removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.
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As she called for Johnson’s removal, Greene accused the speaker of abandoning his Republican principles in favor of Democratic priorities, such as Ukraine funding.
“Mike Johnson is giving [Democrats] everything they want,” Greene said Wednesday. “I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate.”
But Greene’s proposal is widely expected to fail, as House Democratic leaders indicated last week that they would vote to table, or kill, the motion to vacate the chair. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the three leaders cited the passage of the foreign aid package, which included nearly $61bn in funding for Ukraine, to justify their stance.
“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the leaders said. “We will vote to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”
Among House Republicans, Greene’s campaign has attracted little interest, as only two of her colleagues – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – have expressed their support of the motion.
Although the effort will almost certainly fail, Greene can still force a vote on her motion to vacate. Current House rules stipulate that a single member of the chamber may “offer a privileged resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant”. Greene introduced such a resolution in March, but she stopped short of calling for a vote on the matter.
Greene plans to move forward with requesting a vote on the motion, which will force the House to take up the matter within two legislative days.
Before voting on removing the speaker, one of Johnson’s allies is expected to introduce a motion to table the proposal. When then speaker Kevin McCarthy was facing the threat of removal in October, his allies tried the same tactic, but the motion to table failed in a vote of 208 to 218.
This time around, the House will almost certainly be able to pass a motion to table Greene’s resolution. With House Democratic leadership signaling that they will support the motion to table and only two Republican colleagues joining Greene’s cause, she remains hundreds of votes short of the majority that she will need to remove the speaker. (However, Democrats are not expected to unanimously back the motion to table, as some have signaled they will oppose it or vote “present”.)
Johnson himself has appeared largely unbothered by Greene’s threats, criticizing her motion as “wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country”. At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson insisted that he remained laser-focused on advancing House Republicans’ legislative priorities.
“I have to do my job. We have to do what we believe to be the right thing,” Johnson said. “We need people who are serious about the job here to continue to do that job and get it done.”
If Johnson were ousted, he would become only the second House speaker in US history to be formally removed from the position – and yet he would also be the second speaker removed in less than a year. In October, a small group of Republicans joined Democrats in ousting McCarthy, making him the first House speaker to ever endure that humiliation.
McCarthy’s departure set off weeks of chaos in the House, as Republicans repeatedly failed in their efforts to choose a new speaker. The House remained at a complete standstill for three weeks, unable to conduct any official business, until Johnson (the conference’s fourth speaker nominee) won election.
Johnson has often referenced that embarrassing episode in recent weeks, as he has attempted to dissuade Republicans from joining Greene’s campaign.
“We saw what happened with the motion to vacate the last time,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress was closed for three weeks. No one can afford for that to happen.”
