Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday ahead of a planned vote to oust him — and following reports that he is considering kicking GOP rebels off of their committees.
Johnson (R-La.) has brushed off the looming threat to remove him as Republican leader, and revealed to donors during a Sunday retreat at the Four Seasons in Washington that he supported disciplining members who kamikaze their own party’s procedural votes
On Saturday, former President Donald Trump hosted Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago estate for the Republican National Committee’s annual spring fundraiser, at which Trump “emphasized the need for party unity, collaboration, and expanding the GOP’s House Majority,” according to a campaign readout.
A Capitol Hill source told The Post that the speaker’s Sunday remarks on Republican conference rules were a “hypothetical” that Johnson is entertaining for the next Congress.
Punchbowl News first reported Johnson’s comments.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is talking about kicking Republican members off of committees if we vote against his rules/bills,” Greene (R-Ga.) posted Monday morning on X.
“This comes after he’s serving Chuck Schumer and Biden’s every single wish and passing major bills with Democrats and not the majority of Republicans!” she railed. “It’s not us who is out of line, it’s our Republican elected Speaker!!”
Johnson’s office confirmed to The Post that he will sit down with Greene for a private meeting Monday afternoon.
“By the way, being kicked off committees is nothing new for me,” boasted the far-right Georgia congresswoman, who lost those positions under House Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in 2021.
“Badge of honor. Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Greene scoffed. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
Another Hill source suggested the motion to vacate Johnson could become privileged as soon as Monday evening, when the House returns for its first votes of the week. That means the ouster of Johnson must be considered within two legislative days.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced last week that Democrats will vote to table the motion when or if it comes up for a vote.
In a Sunday interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Jeffries (D-NY) said he had not spoken with Johnson about the decision beforehand but affirmed that his caucus “will not allow the extremists to throw the Congress and the country into chaos.”
But 208 Democrats did exactly that on Oct. 3, when they joined a gang of eight Republicans led by far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and voted to remove then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“Even though we’re in the minority, we effectively have been governing as if we were in the majority because we continue to provide a majority of the votes necessary to get things done,” Jeffries added. “Those are just the facts.”
Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) pointed to the remark as proof that Johnson had truly become a “Uniparty Speaker.”
“Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries gloats that Democrats control the House of Representatives under Mike Johnson, yet some of my Republican colleagues want to continue business as usual for the rest of the year,” Massie said Monday morning on X.
Both announced their intention to privilege the motion to vacate, which was filed in March, citing Johnson’s “three betrayals” of the Republican conference on votes that raised government spending, authorized warrantless surveillance of US citizens’ communications with foreign nationals and sent $95 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Each faced an uphill battle to come to the floor as part of a rule, which is typically the avenue for bills to receive votes by the governing majority but has been rarely used in the 118th Congress.
“What we need is a new Speaker willing to use our majority to wield the power of the purse for the benefit of America,” Massie, who serves on the influential House Rules Committee, added in another X post.
“In just a few months, this Speaker has worked to give the Executive more authority and more money than even Pelosi granted,” he said. “Vacate this #uniparty Speaker.”
Massie defended McCarthy against his critics before the motion to vacate last year and has since frequently praised the ex-GOP House leader for being a superior fundraiser and negotiator on behalf of the Republican conference.
Both Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who also signed onto the motion to vacate Johnson, also opposed McCarthy’s ouster.
A top aide to one of the eight GOP lawmakers who voted McCarthy out told Politico that there is little interest in dragging the Republican conference down into another speakership fight with fewer than six months to go before House elections.
Trump, 77, tried to stay above the fray during the speakership controversies, but has issued several pleas for Republican unity.
“I think he’s doing a very good job,” he said of Johnson last month before the foreign aid bill passed the House.
“He’s doing about as good as you’re going to do. And I’m sure that Marjorie understands that, and she’s a very good friend of mine, and I know she has a lot of respect for the speaker.”
