House conservatives are furious with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for supporting another large round of Ukraine assistance.
Despite complaining, making threats, and publicly protesting, none of the critics are willing to use the one tool that gives them leverage in the fight: a motion to vacate. Without it, they have no viable way to stop Johnson.
Conservatives rushed around Capitol Hill on Thursday to express their outrage over Johnson’s leadership style in general and his handling of the Ukraine debate in particular—a fury fueled by news reports suggesting Johnson was ready to weaken a rule empowering a single lawmaker to force a vote of no confidence against the Speaker.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—a frequent critic of the Speaker who has already introduced a motion to vacate against him—went as far as to bring her resolution onto the House floor during Thursday’s sole vote.
However, despite the dramatic actions, the day ended much as it began: with Johnson moving forward on a package of foreign aid bills expected to pass through the lower chamber with overwhelming Democratic support in a series of votes on Saturday.
The day’s developments are the latest indication of the ongoing challenge facing Johnson as he tries to steer contentious legislation through a divided House in the face of persistent opposition from a lively right flank that has lost faith in his willingness to fight for conservative policy priorities.
Time and again, Johnson has chosen to make deals with President Biden in order to enact significant bills, infuriating conservatives who have urged him to use the GOP’s House majority to achieve greater Republican victories.
These dynamics were at the forefront in recent debates over federal spending and government surveillance—two issues on which Johnson joined forces with Democrats to ensure the bills became law. They are shaping the debate again this week as he takes the step to advance another massive round of foreign aid, including over $60 billion in new Ukraine funding, over the vocal objections of his most animated hard-line critics.
These critics are not taking defeat quietly.
Nearly a dozen members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus surrounded Johnson in the back of the House chamber after Thursday’s sole vote, pressuring him to resist any alteration to the motion to vacate—the mechanism used to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in October.
The full-court press turned out to be a success: Johnson announced Thursday afternoon that he would not raise the threshold to trigger a vote on ousting the Speaker, taking the side of the conservative troublemakers over moderate lawmakers seeking to avoid chaos in the chamber.
“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,” Johnson wrote on the social platform X. “We will continue to govern under the existing rules.”
But just thinking about the change got the Speaker in more trouble with conservatives, and now more of them seem willing to remove Johnson than before.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) warned that she would support his removal if he went ahead and changed the threshold. And Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — who previously said he was against a motion to vacate, because it might lead to a Democratic Speaker — spoke out against Johnson’s recent legislative moves and suggested he would do the same.
“I think a motion to vacate is something that could put the conference in peril, and Ms. Boebert and I were working to avoid that,” Gaetz said. “Our goal is to avoid a motion to vacate. But we are not going to surrender that accountability tool, particularly in a time when we are seeing America’s interests subjugated to foreign interests abroad.”
Even Greene — who marched Thursday from the chamber to the Capitol steps, her motion to vacate in hand, to denounce Johnson to reporters — has so far declined to force a vote on her resolution.
Greene has criticized Johnson for sealing spending deals with Biden, for opposing a new warrant requirement surrounding the government’s surveillance powers, and for championing the $60 billion in new Ukraine aid, without ensuring it will be accompanied by tougher security measures at the U.S.-Mexico border — an early demand of the Speaker that he abandoned this week in announcing his four-vote strategy for securing foreign aid.
“Republican voters want actions. They want to be protected from the destructive Democrat agenda,” Greene told reporters Thursday. “And Republican leaders aren’t doing it.”
Yet even the possibility of Johnson changing the motion to vacate threshold did not compel Greene to commit to forcing a vote on her ouster resolution. Asked about her reluctance to pull the trigger, Greene suggested she was waiting for more of her GOP colleagues to endorse her measure.
“I’m not acting out of emotions, or rash feelings, or anger. I’m doing this the right way,” she said. “And I’m allowing my conference to see exactly what I saw months ago.”
The conservative outcry, followed by inaction on ousting Johnson, has gotten under the skin of the Speaker’s allies, some of whom are challenging hard-line critics to “put up or shut up,” in the words of Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.).
“We got to call their bluff,” Van Orden said Thursday afternoon by phone. “And if they are not bluffing, and they want to vacate the Speakership, the American people are gonna see that these folks are not here to govern.
“They’re not serious legislators. They’re here showboating,” he added. “We don’t have room for that.”
