House Speaker Mike Johnson‘s (R-LA) decision not to back a change to the threshold for bringing a motion to vacate the speakership has angered some House Republicans as the speaker faces the threat of ouster.
Reports swirled on Thursday that Johnson was considering changing the requirement for a member of the GOP conference to bring a motion to vacate, but he later denied he would seek a rule change in a post on X.
“Since the beginning of the 118th Congress, the House rule allowing a Motion to Vacate from a single member has harmed this office and our House majority,” he wrote. “Recently, many members have encouraged me to endorse a new rule to raise this threshold.”
“While I understand the importance of that idea, any rule change requires a majority of the full House, which we do not have. We will continue to govern under the existing rules,” Johnson added.
The decision has made several senior Republicans upset, according to Punchbowl News, with one senior House GOP aide saying a rule change “would have brought real stability to the House.”
“The [motion to vacate] rule change would have completely shifted the power dynamics within the GOP conference in the way that the vast majority of members have been begging for,” the aide said. “It would have immediately disarmed the bad actors so that they could no longer hold the conference hostage week in and week out.”
The rule allowing one member of the House Republican Conference to bring a motion to vacate the speaker was one of several concessions former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made in January 2023 to secure the speakership after a lengthy speaker election.
The motion to vacate rule was triggered against him by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in October, and seven other Republicans joined Democrats in removing him.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to vacate against Johnson last month but did not do so as a privileged resolution, meaning it does not require immediate action. Only one other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), has publicly supported Greene’s motion to vacate Johnson.
Greene has not said what her redline would be to trigger the motion to vacate, but with the threat of the resolution dangling over Johnson, there is concern the House could again be without a speaker in the near future.
