Less than six months after Republicans forced Kevin McCarthy out as Speaker of The House and elected Mike Johnson as the new Speaker, the Republican party may be about to do the same to Speaker Johnson. Earlier today, frustrated with Johnson’s decision to move forward with a vote on Minibus spending bill, Marjorie Taylor Greene moved forward with a threat to file a motion to again vacate the speakership.
It was not immediately clear how the House would act on her motion, which requires just a majority vote to remove the speaker. Greene, R-Ga., did not file the motion as privileged — which would force a vote within two legislative days — but instead as a regular motion, which could be referred to a committee, where it would likely languish.
Greene told reporters that the motion to vacate was “more of a warning than a pink slip,” saying she does not want to “throw the House into chaos,” like the three and a half weeks that the chamber was without a speaker when McCarthy was ousted.
“I’m not saying that it won’t happen in two weeks or it won’t happen in a month or who knows when. But I am saying the clock has started. It’s time for our conference to choose a new speaker,” she said.
source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-files-motion-oust-mike-johnson-house-speake-rcna134385
As coverage notes, MTG’s decision to file this as a regular motion just as the House leaves for recess makes the situation a little less urgent for Speaker Johnson. However, as John Bresnahan from Punchbowl news notes, the Speaker is not at all out of the woods:
Speaker Johnson faces a different set of circumstances than John Boehner did in the fall of 2015. As such, it’s unlikely that Johnson would resign. As a reminder, in 2015 it required multiple members to advance a motion to vacate. That changed in 2024 when McCarthy agreed to update the rules so that a single member could make a motion to vacate in return for getting the Speakership. It was that rules change that ultimately undid McCarthy.
So are we about to see a repeat of last fall? Probably not. CBS’s Scott MacFarlane is reporting that whereas McCarthy had alienated Democrats to the degree that they wouldn’t save him from his own caucus, the members of the opposition party are open to keeping Johnson as Speaker:
This puts Speaker Johnson in a challenging position. If he advances any Ukraine or Border package from the Senate, he will definitely face more motions to vacate from the right wing of his party (not to mention from his party’s Presidential candidate). However, if he loses the support of the Democrats, he will lose the Speakership, and we are back to the three weeks of disarray (if not longer) from last fall as the Presidential Election looms large. That inaction could also lead to a government shutdown.
What happens next? Who knows. There’s a lot of time between now and Tuesday, April 9th when the House returns from Easter break.
