WASHINGTON — Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday threw their support behind Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan through three bills, but far-right members of his own party are growing frustrated with the Louisiana man’s bipartisan stance.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia who is leading the effort to remove Johnson as speaker, told reporters that Johnson is planning behind the scenes to possibly change the procedure that allows a member to call for a vote to remove the speaker. That is “unprecedented” and “completely wrong,” she said.
“If he wants to change the eviction petition, he must go before the Republican Conference that elected him and tell us his intentions,” Greene said.
“And I’ll tell you something, Kevin McCarthy, while staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, he never took such a step behind closed doors and colluded with Democrats to amend the eviction motion,” Greene said, referring to the former House speaker who was ousted by Republicans last year. “And we hear Mike Johnson is doing just that.”
The vacancy motion currently allows any member of the House of Representatives to request a vote to remove the Speaker from his leadership post.
Greene said Thursday morning that Johnson was considering amending the motion to repeal the mandate to make it more hard to implement, which could deny Greene and other far-right lawmakers the opportunity to oust him for promoting foreign aid that Democrats have long demanded and the U.S. Senate supports.
Johnson announced slow Thursday afternoon that he would not take that step at this time. However, this is unlikely to allay concerns among far-right members about his leadership style.
“Since the beginning of the 118th Congress, the House rule allowing a single member to vacate the House has damaged this office and our House majority,” Johnson wrote in a social media post.
“Recently, many members of Congress have encouraged me to support a new rule to raise that threshold. While I understand the importance of this idea, any rule change would require a majority of the entire House, which we do not have,” Johnson added. “We will continue to govern under the existing rules.”
Johnson said during a press conference on Wednesday evening that he would not allow speculation about a motion to vacate the seat to dictate his leadership of the House of Representatives.
“My philosophy is to do the right thing and let things happen as they happen,” Johnson said. “If I acted out of fear of being evicted, I could never do my job.”
Johnson said providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine was the right thing to do at this time in history and could assist deter Russia from attacking a NATO country that could lead to direct conflict between U.S. troops and that country.
“To be blunt, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson said. “My son is going to the Naval Academy in the fall. For me, this is live-fire training, as it is for so many American families. This is not a game. This is not a joke. We cannot make politics out of this.”
McCarthy removal
Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida used the eviction request last October to Remove McCarthy from the role after a vote in the House. This led to weeks of internal turmoil and public embarrassment for House Republicans as they struggled to agree on a candidate who could win the necessary support in the House.
Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Good, chairman of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said Thursday that lawmakers frustrated with Johnson should wait to debate leadership changes until after the November election.
“I think the speaker is guaranteeing himself that there will be a contest for speaker, hopefully in November,” Good said. “I think that’s the smart way to go when you’re sitting at a 216-213 majority. But of course I can’t predict what the other members will or won’t do.”
Johnson should have used “pressure points” such as the annual defense appropriations bill, annual government funding bills and Ukraine aid to force the Democratic-dominated Senate to address a stalled Republican border security bill in the House, he said.
Good also reiterated that he does not support the motion to revoke Greene’s mandate. submitted in March and Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie decided to support this week after calling on Johnson to resign.
The increasing attention to the eviction request comes as Johnson looks ahead to a vote on Saturday on 95 billion dollars in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan This would be approved in three separate bills.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on a separate bill that would ban the social media app TikTok (unless it is sold by Chinese owner ByteDance) and impose sanctions on Iran, Russia and China.
If all four bills pass the House, they will likely be combined into a package and sent to the Senate.
The House of Representatives could hold a separate vote on a border security measure that would reinstate Trump-era immigration policies, but the measure appeared to lack the votes needed to advance to the U.S. Senate.
Democrats are impressed by the Republican leadership
Numerous Democrats indicated in interviews Thursday that they were willing to assist House Republican leaders overcome the procedural hurdle of passing a rule to get to the final vote on emergency aid.
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, said it was “of the utmost importance” that Congress pass aid to Ukraine after months of inaction and “remove any dysfunction on the Republican side.”
“We want to get help to our allies as quickly as possible and we want to try to stabilize the very chaotic and dysfunctional political environment that has come upon us,” Raskin said.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said she had reached a point where she would agree to split aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan into three bills if that was necessary to get the bill through a divided Congress.
“We all have to have the courage to take risks, to use political capital and to ensure that we can save democracy and thousands of people from literally marching to their doom,” she said.
The US Senate approved a bill This included all aid in February on a 70-29 votebut that proposal has been stuck in the House ever since as Johnson sought a path forward that was acceptable to most of his conference.
Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland and former House Majority Leader, said he expects his party to support the rule and bills, which would ensure broad bipartisan support.
“We want this to pass,” Hoyer said. “We think it needs to pass, and it needs to pass now. And I think you’re going to see support for efforts to get that done.”
Democrats would also likely support an amendment to the one-man eviction motion because it has “a proven destabilizing effect on the House of Representatives,” Hoyer said.
Hoyer said such a change to House rules would need to be handled separately, but he also suggested that Democrats might not object to approval under a rule if House Republican leadership were to take that route.
“You know, one thing about democracy is that you elect a leader and that leader serves a term, in this case two years,” Hoyer said. “And to have to constantly question a leader every day … is bad for the House of Representatives, bad for the American people.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle said Johnson deserves credit for his comments during a press conference on Wednesday, saying he is doing what is best for himself and is not thinking about how it might affect his role as speaker.
“From 1945 until Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, the bipartisan consensus in United States foreign policy has been that we oppose Soviet and now Russian aggression, that we lead the transatlantic alliance, that we are NATO’s greatest supporters and NATO’s leaders,” Boyle said.
After Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Boyle said the former president “changed the base of the party almost overnight from that position to a much more isolationist position.”
