Update, May 8, 2024, at 4:53 p.m.: Shortly after this article was published, Greene brought to the floor her resolution to oust Johnson from the speakership. The attempt failed when the House voted 359–43 to table the resolution.
This was supposed to be the week in which Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had pledged to hold a snap vote on Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership, the culmination of a threat months in the making. She wouldn’t have succeeded in ousting him, after Democrats had announced they’d provide the votes to save Johnson. But, at least in her head, she would have made some sort of point.
But Greene and her army of two other people have backed off for now, having secured a few hours of chit-chat time with Johnson as an acceptable alternative to a botched execution. Following her second meeting with Johnson in as many days on Tuesday, Greene told reporters that “the ball is in Mike Johnson’s court” to act on her several “suggestions” she proposed to him. She offered no timeline on when she expected a response.
“That’s up to Mike Johnson, and it can’t drag out,” she said. “These are things that need to be done.”
These meetings were called at Greene’s request, and if Johnson is feeling any distress, he’s not displaying it publicly. He called their conversations “productive,” downplaying them as run-of-the-mill talks he’d have with members at any time. “I heard Marjorie and Thomas [Massie]’s ideas, just like I have every day for the last six months heard others.” To the extent he was firm with them, though, he said this: “It’s not a negotiation.”
Indeed, the only one really dragging things out is Greene, not Johnson.
After Johnson passed a government-funding bill disliked by Greene (and plenty of other conservatives, albeit those with more limited delusions of grandeur) in March, she warned him that his speakership was on the line. This was effectively a warning to not put Ukraine funding up for a vote next. Johnson did it anyway.
But the cavalry never arrived for Greene when Congress returned from recess last week. While plenty of conservatives were irate at Johnson for passing bipartisan bills on government funding, surveillance, and Ukraine, their prevailing impulse—with most meaningful legislative work done for the year—was just to get through November and hash out their leadership drama afterward. The party’s presidential nominee, meanwhile, had no appetite for another House Republican meltdown to embarrass the party while his name is on the ballot. Greene misunderstood both how exhausted her fellow Republicans were with these shenanigans, and how quickly “governing” season had pivoted to campaign season following the Ukraine vote. The previous 18 months were for beating up on one another. The next six months are for beating up on leftist extravagances.
Since Greene announced that she would force the vote on Johnson’s speakership this week, she has spent most of her time looking for a way to back out, and to stay in Trump’s good graces, while saving face. And so she brought to her meeting with Johnson a quartet of demands for the speaker: no more money for Ukraine; defunding special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump; only putting bills up for a vote if they have support of a majority of the majority (the unfortunately named “Hastert rule”); and a promise to enact “a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut as part of stopgap funding legislation if the 12 annual appropriations bills aren’t enacted by the Sept. 30 deadline .”
To just get through 2024, Johnson could agree to the Ukraine and “Hastert rule” provisions without any real consequences. Ukraine assistance is done for the year, and there aren’t significant, must-pass bills with limited Republican support on the horizon. The other two provisions—on “defunding” Jack Smith and enacting a blanket spending cut—have zero Democratic support and, if insisted upon at the next government funding deadline, could cause government shutdowns, for which Republicans would be blamed, a month before the election.
That said, rather than giving an inch, there’s good reason for Johnson to just stand firm here and dare Greene to do something about it. Even if he were able to give her some things here, some things there, giving her anything would reinforce an awful, recurring trend of the 118th Congress that needs to end: that any couple of members can blackmail the speaker into sending the party down a new, risky, and ultimately self-defeating strategic course. And there’s no better time for Johnson to end it than during this brief window when Democrats are willing to bail him out.
The only question for Greene now is how she chooses to claim victory in defeat. She could take some words that Johnson says in a press conference and insist that those words were a hard-fought concession. She could turn her attention to an entirely new matter and wait for people to forget how she caved. She could still force the vote on Johnson’s speakership, lose, fall out of favor with Trump for a few months, and then work her way back up. Or she could just say, “The numbers weren’t there; we’ll get him in the next Congress,” get made fun of for a few days, and move on with her life.
Mike Johnson, meanwhile, need only roll his eyes.
