Democrats Maneuver Themselves Into Congressional Driver’s Seat by Promising To Protect Speaker Johnson From GOP’s Right Flank

Speaker Johnson will likely keep his job after Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene forces a vote on her motion to vacate the chair, thanks to the Democratic House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who has proven himself to be one of the most influential minority leaders in congressional history.Ms. Greene’s decision to bring the motion to remove the speaker up for a vote came just minutes after Democratic leadership said in a joint statement that they would vote to kill it. Mr. Johnson has faced the threat of being ousted from his job for months, ever since passing government spending bills negotiated behind closed doors with Senator Schumer and his appropriators. The “last straw,” as Congressman Thomas Massie put it to the Sun, was the speaker putting a warrantless surveillance reauthorization bill on the floor and passing a foreign aid package with overwhelmingly Democratic support. Ms. Greene on Tuesday announced on X that she was likely to bring her motion to vacate the chair up for a vote in the coming days in response to Mr. Jeffries announcing he would have the back of the deeply conservative speaker. “Mike Johnson is officially the Democrat Speaker of the House. What slimy backroom deal did Johnson make for the Democrats’ support?” she wrote. “He should resign, switch parties, and continue voting for Biden’s open border invasion of America, endless wars, full term abortion on demand, trans agenda on children, warrantless spying on the American people, weaponizing government against President Trump and his supporters, and every other Democrat wishlist item he’s handed over.”As she walked off the House floor on Tuesday, Ms. Greene refused to answer questions from reporters. Ms. Greene said the “endorsement” from Mr. Jeffries and his team was the breaking point. Shortly before she posted that message, Mr. Jeffries and other House Democratic leaders said in a statement: “From the very beginning of this Congress, House Democrats have put people over politics and found bipartisan common ground with traditional Republicans.”“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction. We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair,” the leadership wrote. She first introduced the motion to vacate in March after the speaker completed the yearly government funding process thanks mostly to Democratic support. She failed to make the motion “privileged” — meaning forced to the floor — at the time, saying she wanted to give her colleagues time to consider their options. Congressman Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate Speaker McCarthy was introduced on a Monday night in October as a privileged motion. In a sign of confidence, Mr. McCarthy brought it up for a vote the following day. Unlike in Mr. McCarthy’s case, though, Mr. Johnson’s Democratic support will prove vital to keeping the speakership. One Democrat, Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, tells the Sun that Democrats simply want the speaker to run the House in a fair, bipartisan manner that allows for substantive legislation with broad support to come to the floor. He says Mr. Jeffries understands utilizing his leverage better than most. “This is politics. We don’t want him to do anything except bring significant legislation that we all agree on to the floor,” the Missouri lawmaker says. Mr. Jeffries “has demonstrated that he’s willing to get something done,” he says. Mr. Jeffries and the Democrats will likely benefit from the fact that Mr. Johnson does not, in reality, have a functioning majority in the House anymore. At no point since his election as speaker has he been able to get a conservative funding bill across the line, and he ultimately had to rely on Mr. Jeffries to deliver Democratic support on the floor in order to pass the measures. On warrantless surveillance and the foreign aid bills, too, Mr. Jeffries was the one who delivered the overwhelming majority of votes to get the packages across the finish line. When the government funding battle begins anew this summer, the minority leader will have greater sway over the appropriations process with his promise to deliver Democratic support. The conservative flank of the House GOP has killed House rules — which allow for debate to begin — in the past as an act of protest, but it was Democrats on the Rules Committee who unanimously voted for the foreign aid package that allowed for debate to begin on the floor. Congressman Tom Suozzi, who won a special election in a swing district by promising to work with Republican members, tells the Sun that he and his fellow Democrats want to prove that Ms. Greene is powerless in the House and that Congress functions better as a bipartisan institution rather than a body that caves to the “far right.”“The bottom line is that we want to show that … the empress has no clothes. You cannot conduct the United States government on these very, very important affairs and have a group of people with no sense of responsibility to the nation,” he says. A swing district Republican who was enraged by the ouster of Mr. McCarthy, Congressman Mike Lawler, tells the Sun that the conference is “focused on the issues that matter,” rather than Ms. Greene’s antics. “To continually seek to fight among ourselves is really not accomplishing anything. We’re six months from an election and it’s time to focus our efforts on, you know, having a strong Republican House majority,” he says.

Democrats Maneuver Themselves Into Congressional Driver’s Seat by Promising To Protect Speaker Johnson From GOP’s Right Flank

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