NOT SO EMPTY THREAT — Congress is coming back next week from a two week recess with a new headache: Speaker Mike Johnson could lose his job. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership just before Congress left town, the first step in ousting the Speaker of the House. While stripping Johnson of the gavel seems an unlikely scenario, it’s not an empty threat. The same device was used in October to dump Johnson’s predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. How did the House get here? It’s a bit of a complicated story, stretching back to the start of the current legislative session — when it took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to get elected. At the time, McCarthy struck a deal with hardline Republicans that allowed a single member to file a motion that would propose a vote to knock off a sitting Speaker. And while McCarthy is now gone in part thanks to that very deal, Johnson is stuck with that same problem — a single aggrieved member can propose a vote to oust him. When Johnson became speaker in October, he inherited the volatile combination of a razor-thin majority and a large right flank eager for spending changes — just before the annual spending bills needed to be passed. When Johnson finally passed the final 2024 spending bills about two weeks ago, resistance from his fellow Republicans was so widespread that he needed Democratic votes to get it done. Now, with Congress back in town, he’s dealing with some of the blowback — namely the prospect of Greene moving forward on her threat. At the moment, few Republicans have the appetite for another speaker fight. No one else is publicly backing her effort yet, though Greene claims there are members who are silently frustrated with Johnson who are on board with her. The eight who voted to oust McCarthy aren’t among them — they appear to have no appetite for another embarrassing spectacle of a speakerless House, the last one of which lasted three weeks. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the lead architect behind McCarthy’s fall, said before the recent congressional recess that Johnson’s job was safe for fear a Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries would get elected as his replacement. “You can only vacate the speaker if you know that the party leadership won’t change hands,” Gaetz said the day before Greene filed her motion. “I knew that with certainty last time. I don’t know with certainty this time.” Of course, it wouldn’t take many defections to oust Johnson if Greene moves forward. Johnson’s GOP majority is so thin due to recent departures from the House that if she was joined by just a handful of her colleagues he’d lose his speakership — assuming, of course, that Democrats don’t throw him a lifeline. It’s not lost on Greene’s colleagues that she was singing a different tune last year. A McCarthy ally, the Georgia congresswoman opposed other hardliners and defended the former speaker when his job was dangling by a thread. Back during the October speakership fight, she urged her fellow Republicans to “stop the absurd drama” and “stop fighting each other,” in a thread of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I don’t agree that a motion to vacate will effectively create the changes needed to solve the intentional systemic failure that create the annual never ending CR’s and Christmas omnibus mega spending packages,” Greene posted the day before McCarthy was vacated. “A [motion to vacate] of our Speaker gives the upper hand to the Democrats.” “Republicans need to get off the power trips,” she added. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at mmccarthy@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Reporter_Mia.
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