It feels a bit like déjà vu on Capitol Hill. Just 6 months after Speaker Mike Johnson was elected House Speaker by his peers, he is facing a motion to vacate — just like his predecessor.
Late last month as Congress was heading out for a two week recess, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she was filing a motion to vacate. Without it being privileged, there was no time constraints on when the House would need to deal with the matter.
Just after she filed the motion, she told Spectrum News that she felt Johnson had “broken our conference rules.”
"I want our conference to have the time that we all need to choose a speaker that can lead the House of Representatives and do the work of the majority and not hand over control to Democrats," Greene said, saying she didn’t want to interrupt “important” work being done by her colleagues in committee, and that she would give the conference time to find a successor for Johnson.
"There's important investigations going on, and I want not want to be disrespectful to my colleagues, and I don't want to interrupt or stop any of those investigations or important committee work that needs to happen for the American people," she said. "That's what was done in the last speaker's race and it really threw the house into chaos. I don't want to see the House thrown into chaos. I want to give our conference deliberate time that we need to choose a Speaker of the House that knows how to walk in the room and negotiate and doesn't get rolled and do the bidding of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer."
Following Greene’s motion to vacate, some Democrats had come out saying they would support a motion to table Greene’s effort to oust Johnson if he would put a foreign aid package on the floor.
“It's not a question of saving Mike Johnson," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. told Politico at the time. "I'll make a common cause and an alliance with anybody in Congress who will try to save the Ukrainian people at this point.”
At the time, Greene suggested that Democrats vowing to help Johnson in exchange for bringing foreign aid to the House floor would be pilloried by their constituents: “I really wonder how that will work out for them when they're campaigning for their reelection, that they voted to support a Christian conservative, pro-life Republican speaker. That'd be interesting to see how that works out. I'd be willing to argue that they won't want to support him.”
But after returning from that two week recess, Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., told Spectrum News Tuesday he believes a group of Democrats could support that motion to table.
“I think we have to see how this all plays out,” said Bera. “I think a lot of us know that Speaker Johnson's taking some risk, allowing us to do a relatively normal appropriations process, keeping the government open. I’m on the intelligence committee, so we will see how the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) reauthorization comes up – but again, I know he has taken some risk with FISA reauthorization.”
“If he gives us a security supplemental that looks like the Senate bill, then I think you might see a lot of folks vote to protect him.”
Other Democrats, such as Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., didn’t mince words about their feelings towards Johnson.
“I personally, in no scenario would ever vote to keep Mike Johnson as speaker. I think he's a terrible one of the worst, most conservative speakers that we've had in the modern era,” Garcia said. “All he does is listen to whatever Donald Trump wants, and I think that’s bad for the country.”
Matt Green, a professor at Catholic University of America who studies Congressional leadership, says he doubts the Republican conference is willing to deliver Johnson to the same fate as McCarthy.
“The Republican conference was in basically three weeks of deadlock and unable to choose a successor. Iit was a period that was frustrating for members, it was embarrassing to the party, and I don't think that Republicans want to go through that again. There is no clear successor, there's no one who can command the unified support of the Republican Party as Speaker besides Mike Johnson,” explained Green.
When McCarthy was ousted in October 2023, eight Republicans voted with every Democrat to vacate the chair. But Green says that the tides have perhaps changed enough that the Democratic caucus could give Johnson some cover that they didn’t afford McCarthy and table Greene’s motion.
“Democrats and some Republicans to not trust [McCarthy]. It's not clear that Speaker Johnson has lost the trust of that many members of either party, not to the same extent that McCarthy has and In fact, Democrats have in some ways benefited from the tactical decisions of Speaker Mike Johnson, in particular, his decision to bring major bills to the floor under suspension, which requires a two thirds vote, and they've passed with Democratic votes,” said Green. “Democrats would not vote for these measures if they weren't getting something from them. So I think that those two things alone, give Speaker Johnson a little bit more safety around or a little bit more wiggle room, and a little less to worry about with Democrats.”
“We're now in an election year,” added Green. “Democrats have things they really want to get past like aid to Ukraine. If there's no Speaker of the House, that doesn't get done. So they have another incentive to maintain the status quo, even if it means a Republican is the Speaker.”
When asked about conversations within the Democratic caucus pertaining to members willingness to save Johnson in return for putting Ukraine aid on the floor, Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., would not say outright Democrats would bring the votes, but hinted that may be the case.
“We need to deliver aid as quickly and as timely as we can. The Senate bill — a bipartisan bill 70 senators signed on to — is the quickest and fastest way to do that," Aguilar said. "That’s the bill we need to put on the floor, that’s the bill we need to pass and send directly to the President.”
“The Speaker needs to put that bill on the floor,” added Aguilar. “You’ve heard me say, and you’ve heard Leader [Hakeem] Jeffries say — and he pointed out it was an observation not a declaration — that we feel if the Speaker does the right thing, that he is in a good position.”
But just because Democrats may vote to save him in the short term, Johnson is still facing an incredibly difficult road ahead.
“Every vote gained on the Democratic side is a threat vote gained within the Republican conference,” cautioned Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. “This is true with budgets, this is true with foreign aid. This is true with even keeping his job with the potential to table the motion to vacate. And so he's walking an incredibly fine line where every decision that he reaches across the aisle, makes him more vulnerable, or at least upsets more members of the Republican Conference of who he was elected to represent as their speaker.”
Some Republicans, such as Rep. John Duarte, R-Calif., say it’s time to move on from the motion to vacate.
“We don't have time for this. We're happy with our speaker, we're in a very slim majority. He's done the best job anyone can do with the facts as they are,” said Duarte. “We need to keep moving forward. And if we want more control over the budget, if we want to be happy with the appropriations process, we need to get more Republicans elected.”
Johnson said Wednesday that he plans to meet privately with Greene, calling her “a friend.” Greene told reporters that the two had exchanged some brief text messages but hadn’t spoken in person since her filing of the motion to vacate in March.