Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is moving to cool House tensions as a band of hard-line Republicans weigh whether to set in motion an attempt at his ouster.
Conservatives are livid with Johnson over a series of bills he put on the floor, most recently foreign aid for Ukraine that a majority of Republicans opposed. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to remove him as speaker in March, but she has so far held off on forcing a vote.
Johnson could bring stability to what has been a chaotic Congress if the House raised the threshold on that motion, which a single member can bring forward today. Senior Republicans have urged him to pursue these and other changes to neutralize the threat posed by his right flank.
But Johnson has shied away from any steps that would be perceived as retribution, fearing the domino effect it might cause in a chamber he controls by two Republican votes.
The most recent flare-up came Tuesday when he convinced the House sergeant-at-arms not to fine Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for posting a recording of Ukrainian flags being waved on the House floor.
Massie, one of three Republicans to co-sponsor Greene’s motion, had been fuming at Johnson for attempting to “memory hole” the display, which came as the foreign aid passed the House.
Johnson was easily able to head off the apparent misunderstanding. He responded to Massie within two hours of his public venting. But his attempts to lower the House temperature are aimed at more than placating the loudest voices in his conference.
He wants to avoid a public spectacle that could cost the Republicans their House majority in November, or sooner. A wave of senior Republicans have retired from Congress in the middle of their term, citing exhaustion at the turmoil.
“When you have such a slim margin, you know, there are actions, and then there are reactions and reverberations from the actions. It’s a very delicate balance,” Johnson told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday.
The speaker was responding to calls to boot hard-liners from the House Rules Committee, which counts Massie and two other Republican critics as members. Spots on the panel, which the speaker uses to keep control of the floor, are normally awarded to allies. But Kevin McCarthy, Johnson’s predecessor, gave them seats last year to win the gavel.
The decision, along with other concessions McCarthy made, have fueled more than a year of House infighting. In a rare move, Johnson was forced to rely on Democratic votes in the committee to overcome their opposition to Ukraine aid last week.
But Johnson argues that any attempt to instill order through punishment will backfire. Hard-liners have already mobilized against such a possibility and warned that such moves could trigger the ouster attempt.
“If I start kicking people off committees right now, it’s likely that I cause more problems than I solve,” said Johnson. “What I’m trying to do every day is manage this team.”
Johnson would likely survive an attempt to remove him as speaker. The hard Right is generally reluctant to follow Greene, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has signaled many more Democrats would be there to quash the revolt.
McCarthy received no such assurances before he was deposed in October. In fact, all Democrats joined with eight House Republicans to oust him.
But Johnson built a well of goodwill with the Ukraine vote, a priority of President Joe Biden that he went forward with despite the personal risk to his job.
His decision reflected a newfound confidence that he could safely ignore the threats of hard-liners. It took three weeks and four candidates for Republicans to replace McCarthy, while the consensus candidate who emerged, Johnson, was likely as conservative a pick as they were going to get.
Johnson has taken steps to accommodate those voices. On Ukraine, he gave the aid a standalone vote to avoid the perception that funding for Israel and Taiwan, also included in the package, were added to give members political cover.
And he rejected a push from centrist Republicans to raise the motion to vacate threshold following a heated confrontation by hard-line members on the House floor last week.
But Johnson has largely plowed ahead with legislative compromises, in particular on 2024 spending, while arguing Democratic control of the White House and Senate, plus the disunity among House Republicans, have limited his leverage.
Those arguments are not enough to win over Republicans who consider the deals he cut a capitulation to Democrats. But he has worked to limit the dissent by leaning on Donald Trump, who has repeatedly voiced support for his speakership.
Greene, a close ally of the former president, has ignored those entreaties. As recently as Sunday, she called on Johnson to step down.
“He needs to do the right thing, to resign, and allow us to move forward in a controlled process,” she said on Fox News. “If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”
But she has also left herself space to pull back, noting that Johnson is at this point a “lame duck” speaker and that she had been “responsible” with the motion to vacate push.
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She did not force a vote on the motion before House lawmakers left for a one-week recess last week.
“I didn’t come here to Congress to actually hurt our institution and hurt our majority,” she told reporters on Saturday. “I’m handling this the right way, and so, I’m allowing the process to happen.”
