Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) returns to Washington this week celebrating several recent policy victories but also facing a renewed threat to his gavel from a small but unpredictable group of conservative rebels infuriated by his leadership style.
Johnson received widespread praise from leaders in both parties this month after muscling two high-profile proposals through the House: an increase in aid for Ukraine and an extension of Washington’s warrantless spying powers. But his decision to champion those controversial policies — and to forge deals with President Biden and the Democrats to get them done — has sparked a new backlash from a handful of hard-liners vowing to topple him from power.
Leading the charge is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who introduced a motion-to-vacate resolution last month, after Johnson endorsed legislation to fund the government, and is now escalating her threat to force it to the floor. Two other conservatives, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), have endorsed her effort.
With no pressing must-pass legislation on the immediate schedule, that internal battle is set to take center stage on Capitol Hill — a bitter Republican-on-Republican fight coming at an inopportune time for GOP leaders, who are looking to unite the party ahead of the November elections.
Greene has not said when — or even if — she intends to compel the House to act on her vacate motion. But she’s made clear her frustrations with Johnson’s policy decisions, particularly his support for Ukraine aid that he’d opposed before taking over the Speakership last October. And in recent public appearances, she’s all but promised a vote on her resolution is imminent.
“Mike Johnson’s Speakership is over,” Greene told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” earlier this month. “He needs to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process.”
Such a vote would set the stage for an extraordinary internal clash, because most other House conservatives — even those who share Greene’s distaste for Johnson — are emerging from the woodwork to say that now is not the time to boot the Speaker from power.
Not only has the Republicans’ small majority become even slimmer in the months since the historic vote to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), but the calendar has crept closer to November’s elections, when the House is up for grabs, and even many hard-liners are eager to avoid a bitter civil war heading into the polls.
“The overwhelming sentiment among even conservatives angry at him is that we need to focus on beating Democrats in the fall and not have that kind of a debate right now heading into election season,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Fox News’s Guy Benson last week.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), head of the far-right Freedom Caucus and a supporter of McCarthy’s removal, is delivering a similar warning. Good said Johnson “has failed us” as McCarthy’s replacement, but he argued the current political environment makes it a bad time for another rancorous Speaker fight, especially with no obvious successor to Johnson in sight.
“My judgment, estimation is this is not the time to do that because of the much more narrow margin, the much greater degree of certainty, the fact that I wouldn’t want to select someone now that would be — in my view — probably less desirable, not the best option perhaps, that would be an incumbent going into November,” he said.
The resistance from even staunch Johnson critics has complicated Greene’s promise to remove the Speaker from office. Yet while conservative opposition to Greene’s motion to vacate is racking up, some hard-liners are leaving the possibility of supporting the effort on the table.
“I’m open to it,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who voted to oust McCarthy, told reporters earlier this month when asked whether he would vote to remove Johnson should a vote come to the floor.
“We’ll see if that materializes; we’ll see if the trigger’s pulled on this,” he added. “That won’t be up to me, but I’m definitely frustrated like a lot of the conference and like a lot of the American people.”
But even if Greene’s army grows, it is unlikely to swell to a size that would overtake the chorus of Democrats who have said they are willing to protect Johnson from a conservative coup after he successfully ushered Ukraine aid through the House.
“I give him credit for doing this,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday.
“I would actually vote to table any motion to vacate him.”
Hovering in the background of the debate over Johnson’s fate has been former President Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Trump, who had cozied up to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his White House tenure, has been cold to the idea of providing Ukraine with more help in its fight against Moscow — a dynamic that’s energized Greene’s vow to remove the Speaker from power.
Yet Trump also has taken steps to prevent another chaotic Speaker fight, which could damage the GOP brand just six months from the elections. Perhaps with that in mind, Trump hosted Johnson this month at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he gave the Speaker a glowing review “under very tough circumstances.”
“I stand with the Speaker,” Trump said, effectively giving Johnson cover to unveil his plans for Ukraine aid three days later.
And he re-upped his support after Johnson pushed through assistance for Kyiv over the sharp opposition of hard-liners — including many of the former president’s closest allies, namely Greene — crediting the Speaker for embracing his Ukraine aid loan strategy and remarking on his handling of the GOP’s slim majority, before pivoting to November’s elections.
“It’s a tough situation when you have one,” Trump told conservative radio host Chris Stigall, remarking on the House GOP’s slim majority. “I think he’s a very good man. I think he’s trying very hard.”
“Again, we’ve got to have a big election,” he continued. “We’ve got to elect some people in Congress, much more than we have right now.”
Johnson, meanwhile, is blocking out the motion-to-vacate noise, criticizing the hard-liners for pushing an unrealistic all-or-nothing strategy and vowing to plow ahead with legislative business in the lead-up to November’s elections — which will determine whether Republicans keep hold of the gavel next year.
“I don’t think about her at all,” Johnson told Fox News’s Jesse Watters last week when asked if he has nightmares about Greene. “Some of my colleagues want us to throw a Hail Mary pass on every play. It’s not a game-winning strategy.”
“Right now, when you have this margin, it is 3 yards and a cloud of dust. Right?” he continued. “We get the next first down, we put points on the board, and we get to November and we take back and grow the majority in the House.”