House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Georgia's Marjorie Taylor He easily stopped Congressman Greene from removing him from office. .
The vote to cancel the activity was an overwhelming 359-43, with seven Democrats voting “present.”
Unlike the ouster that brought down Kevin McCarthy last fall, Democrats flocked to Johnson's rescue, with all but 39 voting Republican to thwart the effort to oust him. Thirty-two Democrats voted against blocking Greene's motion, in addition to the seven who voted “present” without registering a position.
Now Greene, who had supported Mr. McCarthy as speaker, found herself on a political island. Only 11 Republicans voted to move forward with a vote on Johnson's removal.
Greene's move comes as she and other Republicans, who staunchly opposed sending Johnson's long-stalled $95 billion national security spending plan to support Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies, The move came about three weeks after the move was pushed through over the objections of right-wing lawmakers. Additional aid to Kyiv.
But when Greene took to the House floor to introduce a resolution declaring the Speaker's position vacant, it appeared that she was making an almost symbolic move. Only two other Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, have publicly said they would support the motion, and Democratic leaders have warned that lawmakers would not be able to ban Mr. He said he would join efforts to stop the attempt.
“When faced with a choice between advancing Republican priorities and allying with Democrats to maintain personal power, Mr. Johnson always chooses to ally with Democrats,” Greene said. Told.
She concluded with a formal call for his removal: “Now, therefore, it is resolved that the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.”
Lawmakers widely booed Greene as she called for the resolution and jeered several times as she read it aloud. As Mr. Johnson read the bill aloud, Republican lawmakers lined up on the House floor to shake Mr. Johnson's hand and pat him on the back, amid a chorus of disgruntled voices that lasted more than 10 minutes.
This is the second time in less than a year that Republicans have called for the removal of their own speaker, and the first time in about seven months since Republican insurgents ousted Mr. McCarthy from the speaker's chair, the only person in history to do so.
And Greene has made it clear that even if efforts to oust Johnson fail, she still sees value in publicly undermining him.
“If he continues to be a voice with support from Democrats, he has completely compromised,” she recently wrote on social media.
His move comes after two days of talks with Johnson this week in which he sought to negotiate a series of demands in exchange for not voting to remove him. Among the demands: cutting off all future U.S. aid to Ukraine, cutting off funding to the Justice Department, and cutting off all future U.S. aid to Ukraine if lawmakers fail to negotiate a deal to fund the government in September. It included imposing a across-the-board 1% cut in spending bills.
“What I'm asking for is simple,” Greene said Tuesday on Steve Bannon's “War Room” podcast. “We need to act like Republicans. We need to demand control and stop government from being politicized.”
Mr Johnson told reporters he had not negotiated with Mr Green or Mr Massey. “Part of our job is to take suggestions and ideas from members, and that's what we do,” he said.
Greene first filed the motion against Johnson in March, when lawmakers were voting on the $1.2 trillion spending bill that Johnson passed in the House over the objections of the Republican majority. It was late in the year. She called the move a “betrayal” and said she wanted to send a “warning” to the speaker, leaving the threat in the air for weeks afterwards.
Mr. Johnson pressed on anyway and put together a package of aid for Ukraine. Mr Green had previously described the move as a red line calling for Mr Johnson to step down, but it did not mean Mr Johnson's threats would be carried out immediately.
“I'm going to send my colleagues home to hear from the voters,” Greene said after the vote, predicting that Republicans would join in the outcry from voters over Johnson's removal. Foreign aid bill. Instead, many of them heard the exact opposite and returned to Washington expressing skepticism about Johnson's removal.
Her actions Wednesday paved the way for the first House vote in more than 100 years on whether to expel the speaker. When Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz incited Mr. McCarthy's removal from office in October, such a scene had not been seen in the chamber since 1910.
This time, Mr. Green has found little support for removing Mr. Johnson. House Republicans, wary of relapsing into the kind of chaos that paralyzed the House for weeks after McCarthy's ouster, have been quietly bubbling over the public unrest that Greene's threat would cause. There is.
Even ultra-conservatives like Gaetz have expressed concern about removing another speaker, and the measure would hand control of the House to Democrats, as Republican control is rapidly narrowing. It suggests that there is a danger.
The minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, initially signaled that Democrats would bail out Johnson if he faced a revolt after he moved to send aid to Ukraine in February. However, last week, he officially announced this in a joint statement with Johnson. two other top leaders in the party's lower house; This would be a sharp contrast to October, when Democrats unanimously joined eight far-right Republicans in voting to expel Mr. McCarthy.
With support from Democrats, Greene is back to making threats.
“If Democrats want to elect him Speaker (and some Republicans want to support the Democratic Party's choice of Speaker), we will give them that chance,” Greene said on social media. “I am a strong believer in recorded voting because having Congress on the record allows all Americans to see the truth and brings transparency to voting.”
“Americans have a right to see the United Party in full force,” she said. “We're going to have a coming out party for them!”
Still, she hesitated this week, meeting with Mr. Johnson at length on Monday and again on Tuesday before making her decision.
Johnson criticized Greene's resolution as a “distraction” at a time when House Republicans have the smallest majority in U.S. history.
“This motion is wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the country,” he said last week.
guo keira and Karl Hulse Contributed to the report.