House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is set to face his own ouster after expediting bipartisan spending legislation through the lower chamber on Friday, just hours before a scheduled government shutdown.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to vacate against the speaker on Friday, accusing the speaker of failing to do more to secure America’s border and for working with Democrats on a bipartisan spending deal.
“We need a Speaker of the House who will fight to secure America’s border at all cost! Not one that passes a trillion dollar Democrat wish list that continues the border invasion, funds the weaponized government, and breaks our own conference rules,” Greene wrote in a post on X earlier Friday.
“I’m done with this one,” she added.
The threat comes after weeks of frustration from hard-line Republicans toward Johnson, which came to a boiling point this week after the speaker finalized a spending agreement for the remaining six appropriations bills in a series of closed-door negotiations without lawmaker input.
While several Republicans have decried the spending legislation and voted against it on the floor on Friday, few have publicly said whether they would retaliate against Johnson or threaten his leadership position. But that changed on Friday morning when Greene told Steve Bannon on his War Room show that a possible motion to vacate would be made in a “minute by minute” decision — later filing such a motion just hours later.
Greene has repeatedly criticized Johnson’s leadership after the last few months, arguing the speaker has violated the same Republican rules that were used to oust his predecessor just five months earlier.
“Our Republican majority started out with all these rules and sweeping changes: single appropriation bills, 72 hours to read bills, open rules, open amendments,” Greene told the Washington Examiner on Thursday, “and this breaks every single one of those rules under the new ‘conservative speaker.’”
The motion comes after the House passed its final appropriations package on Friday, sending the legislation to the Senate to avert a government shutdown scheduled for midnight. Congress is then scheduled to adjourn for a two-week recess, meaning any effort to remove Johnson would have to wait until mid-April.
Johnson, for his part, has repeatedly brushed off any threats to oust him from the speakership, noting he would not make decisions based on whether he’ll be punished by his fellow Republicans.
“I don’t operate in fear, no,” Johnson told Punchbowl on Thursday. “We have to do the job, we have to govern and that’s what we’re doing day by day.”
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The threat comes less than six months after the House voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), marking the first time lawmakers have removed the chamber’s top leader. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) started that motion to vacate against McCarthy and was one of eight Republicans and all Democrats who voted to remove him from office.
It’s not yet clear how much support there would be for a speaker’s removal this time around. The first effort left the House leaderless for three months and unable to advance any legislation.