Washington: Hardline Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried and failed in a brazen push to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, but the resounding rejection by Republicans and Democrats tired of the turmoil does not guarantee an end to the GOP chaos.
One of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress, Greene stood on the House floor late Wednesday and read a long list of “transgressions” she said Johnson had committed as speaker, from his passage of a $95 billion national security package with aid for Ukraine to his reliance on Democrats’ wield power.
Colleagues booed in protest. But Greene soldiered on, criticizing Johnson’s leadership as “pathetic, weak and unacceptable.”
After Greene triggered the vote on her motion to vacate the Republican speaker from his office, Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise quickly countered by calling first for a vote to table it.
An overwhelming majority, 359-43, kept Johnson in his job, for now.
“As I’ve said from the beginning, and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job,” Johnson said afterward. “And I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”
It’s the second time in a matter of months that Republicans have worked to oust their own speaker, an unheard of level of party upheaval with a move rarely seen in U.S. history.
While the outcome temporarily calms the latest source of House disruption, the vote tally shows the strengths but also the stark limits of Johnson’s hold on the gavel, and the risks ahead for any Republican trying to lead the GOP.
