If someone asserted even six months ago that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene would win over Bill Maher’s audience or that her appearance on “The View” would receive a warm reception from the daytime show’s studio audience, others likely would laugh. Yet, that is what is happening as the hardline conservative from Georgia goes to war against the Republican majority in Congress. 

Welcome to Washington, where Congress is about to reach a milestone: overseeing the longest closure of the American government in history. If no deal is reached by Wednesday to get Senate Democrats to drop their blockade of the clean funding measure passed by Speaker Mike Johnson then this shutdown will officially be the longest. 

More notable, however, is that the House has been kept out of session for the last six weeks. Mr. Johnson has canceled all upcoming votes for this week, too, so the House is expected to be out of town for seven consecutive weeks since mid-September. 

According to one analysis by the political blog Wake Up To Politics, the House is already on its longest recess ever in the context of a government shutdown. The only other times the House has been out for longer periods were during the annual summer recess — which usually lasts between six and eight weeks — or a recess in the weeks leading up to an election. 

Ms. Greene says that Mr. Johnson’s plan to keep her and her House colleagues from doing their work is unacceptable. She is especially upset — as she has expressed on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast — that the cost of living is far higher today than it was even just last year. 

“Here is why I’m angry: the Democrats passed Obamacare, but yet Republicans have never done anything to correct the problems that exist with it, and I blame my own party. That’s absolutely wrong,” Ms. Greene said on Mr. Maher’s show on Friday night. She blamed Mr. Johnson for the lack of action. 

“Mike Johnson, for a month now, cannot give me a single policy idea, and I’m angry about that,” she added. 

At the heart of Democrats’ shutdown demands is their insistence that Biden-era expanded health insurance subsidies be extended beyond their scheduled expiration date at the end of this year. Ms. Greene, stunningly, came out to say she agreed with her Democratic counterparts. 

This week, she made clear in a post online that she lays blame with Mr. Johnson for keeping lawmakers away from the Capitol, where some kind of deal could potentially be worked out or a policy program could be advanced. 

“I demanded to know from Speaker Johnson what the Republican plan for healthcare is to build the off-ramp off Obamacare and the ACA tax credits to make health insurance affordable for Americans,” she wrote on X in response to a journalist who reported she pressed the speaker on a phone call about the House being out of session. 

Mr. Johnson “said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call,” she added. 

Mr. Johnson, meanwhile, seems fed up with her criticism. He said during an interview with Fox News on Sunday that it was “absurd” for Ms. Greene to demand he explain to her everything about possible health care solutions. 

“Obviously, we’re not going to be on a conference call explaining all of our plans and strategies for health care reform, because they’re leaked in real time,” Mr. Johnson said. “She knows she can come into my office any day, at any hour, and I will lay out everything for her.”

In just four years, Ms. Greene has gone from pariah among colleagues who stripped her of her committee seats for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories to chief fundraiser among GOP lawmakers to party loyalist under President Trump to leadership antagonist once again. 

No matter how she got to this point, Ms. Greene has a point in criticizing her colleagues. Beyond the cryptocurrency legislation passed by Congress over the summer and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by the president in July, the Article I branch has done little of note. 

Keeping lawmakers away from the Capitol as Democrats block the funding bill in the Senate only lends credence to Ms. Greene’s argument that Congress is doing far less than it could.