Marjorie Taylor Greene Stalls Plan To Oust Speaker but Issues New Threats: ‘The Ball Is in Mike Johnson’s Court’

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is once again stalling her motion to oust Speaker Johnson after Congress’s top Republican refused to give in to Ms. Greene’s demands on Tuesday. A number of decisions made by the speaker in recent months have put him on the rocks with his old conservative friends, but support from Democrats will likely keep the gavel in Mr. Johnson’s hands. On Tuesday, Ms. Greene and Congressman Thomas Massie — two of the three signatories of the current motion to vacate the chair — met with Mr. Johnson in his office suite at the Capitol building. After emerging from the meeting to cast a number of votes, Ms. Greene told reporters that Mr. Johnson is considering some of her “suggestions,” but he failed to immediately agree. “The ball is in Mike Johnson’s court,” she told reporters, flanked by Mr. Massie. “He understands that if he’s going to be our Republican speaker of the House, the things that we’ve discussed about that got leaked out to the press are very simple and they serve the American people. They serve the people that gave us the majority and we’re interested to see his action, not just words.”Earlier in the day, Ms. Greene appeared on a show hosted by a former top Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, to lay out her four demands for the speaker to avoid the motion to vacate vote: enforce the “Hastert Rule” that states a majority of Republicans must support a bill before it is brought to the floor; stop all funding for Ukraine in their war effort; defund Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of President Trump; and enact a 1 percent cut of all federal spending through an extension of the current budget. “The American people have been patient,” Ms. Greene said on Mr. Bannon’s show. “They voted and gave Republicans the majority in 2022 for a reason — because they are fed up with the destructive Democrat agenda.”“Republican voters are ready to vote for Trump,” she said. “They’re coming out, and they’re coming out big, but they’re going to skip over those RINO names under the House of Representatives on their ballot because they’re fed up with them. What I’m demanding is simple: We need to act like Republicans.”The three pieces of legislation that Ms. Greene says led to her push for a motion to vacate, and seek to depose Mr. Johnson, were the speaker’s March government funding agreement with Senator Schumer, his reauthorization of warrantless surveillance powers, and his support for a foreign aid bill that included money for Ukraine, Israel, and Free China. Before his Tuesday meeting with the two conservative lawmakers, Mr. Johnson said he would not capitulate to a small minority of the conference, but he was willing to work through their concerns in order to provide better outcomes in the future. “It’s not a negotiation,” the speaker said at a press conference. “This is how I’ve operated as speaker — I committed to do it before I became speaker — and we’ve been doing this for the last six months.”“It takes a lot of time. It’s why I don’t get enough sleep these days,” Mr. Johnson said of managing the Republican conference. “What is required when you have the smallest majority in history, you quite literally get everyone to work together. When you can only lose one vote on a party-line preference or priority, it takes a lot of time to build consensus.”As all of this has unfolded in recent weeks, President Trump has declined to weigh in forcefully in favor of the speaker, whom he affectionately called “MAGA Mike” after his election. Speaking to reporters at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Johnson, the former president said: “I stand with the speaker,” but he did not explicitly address the motion to vacate question and whether Ms. Greene should drop it. Ten days later, he said the math of the slim House Republican majority made it impossible to do a better job than Mr. Johnson is doing. “Well, look, we have a majority of one, okay? It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he’s a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me,” the former president said, according to Politico. One person who is unambiguous in his support for Mr. Johnson is the minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. On April 30, he announced along with House Democratic leadership that they would support a motion to “table” — or kill — Ms. Greene’s move to oust the speaker if it was brought to the floor. Mr. Jeffries said in his 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.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Stalls Plan To Oust Speaker but Issues New Threats: ‘The Ball Is in Mike Johnson’s Court’

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