Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is facing renewed motion to vacate threats a day after he introduced a plan to pass foreign aid.<\/p>\n
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., threatened to force a vote to oust the speaker during remarks in House Republicans\u2019 closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday morning, if the speaker did not willingly step aside first. He\u2019s the second conservative to do so after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a motion to vacate against Johnson last month.<\/p>\n
\u2018I asked him to resign\u2026he said he would not,\u2019 Massie told reporters after the meeting. \u2018And I said, well, you\u2019re the one who\u2019s going to put us into this because the motion is going to get called, OK? The motion will get called.\u2019<\/p>\n
Massie took it a step further and said Johnson would lose more GOP support than the eight House Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last year.<\/p>\n
Asked about the chaos wrought in October during the race to replace McCarthy, Massie said, \u2018We ended up with some guy nobody in America ever heard of.\u2019<\/p>\n
A defiant Johnson said at his weekly press conference afterward, \u2018I am not resigning.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It is, in my view an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion. We\u2019re simply here trying to do our job. It is not helpful,\u2019 Johnson said. \u2018It is not helping the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people.\u2019<\/p>\n
Massie is among the conservatives pushing back against Johnson\u2019s plan for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, which was announced Monday night and is already facing pushback from members on the right over its lack of border security provisions. He predicted that the proposal would not even pass its initial procedural hurdle on the House floor, a chamber-wide rule vote.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m the canary in the coal mine. This rule\u2019s dead on arrival,\u2019 Massie said.<\/p>\n
A GOP lawmaker who was present at the meeting said Massie told Johnson that he should \u2018just get all this legislation out of the way and then announce he\u2019s not going to stay speaker.\u2019<\/p>\n
Asked if Massie was serious about trying to oust Johnson, the GOP lawmaker said, \u2018I\u2019ve never found him as someone who is not serious.\u2019<\/p>\n
A second GOP lawmaker said Johnson responded to Massie with some form of \u2018Bring it on\u2019 challenge \u2013 and noted that McCarthy made similar comments when presented with a leadership fight.<\/p>\n
\u2018My experience has been so far, don\u2019t do that,\u2019 the second GOP lawmaker said.<\/p>\n
While no House Republicans leaving the Tuesday morning meeting said they would back Massie\u2019s effort, they were divided on whether his accusations had any merit.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think if the speaker ignores the obvious desire of the conference to include border control [in the foreign aid plan], and I think a lot of people who want part of this to be paid for, I think he ignores that at his own risk,\u2019 House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Rep. Anthony D\u2019Esposito, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital of Massie\u2019s threat, \u2018I think it\u2019s ridiculous. Speaker Johnson is doing the best job that he can with a divided conference. I think it\u2019s about time we come together.\u2019<\/p>\n
Massie said he would sign onto Greene\u2019s existing resolution to vacate Johnson. But unless they file it as a privileged motion, as was the case with McCarthy, there is nothing compelling House Republican leadership to hold a vote.<\/p>\n\n
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is facing renewed motion to vacate threats a day after he introduced a plan to pass foreign aid. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., threatened to force a vote to oust the speaker during remarks in House Republicans\u2019 closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday morning, if the speaker did not willingly step aside first. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}