House

Greene drama builds for embattled Johnson

by Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell - 04/09/24 5:00 AM ET

Drama is building in the House as lawmakers return to work on Tuesday waiting to see if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will follow through on her threat to force a vote to unseat Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Greene unveiled a motion to vacate, the same procedural tool used in October to end former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) reign, just before the House went on a two-week recess.

It’s unclear whether Greene, who has a flair for political theater, is ready to force a vote or wants to use the threat for leverage. She’s likely under pressure herself from some lawmakers to not force a vote given the chaos it would cause in the House months before an election.

Johnson and Greene exchanged text messages over the two-week recess, and the pair was supposed to speak Friday, but that plan fell through, according to a source familiar.

The new Speaker is under pressure from members of his own conference and GOP senators to move another round of Ukraine aid through his rebellious conference.

He’s made clear that his first priority will be to consider more military assistance to Kyiv’s beleaguered forces, along with new funding for Israel, Taiwan and efforts to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But the Ukraine portion of that package risks a direct confrontation with Greene, who has all but dared the Speaker to put such a measure on the floor, warning it would lead to his ouster.

It all sets up a crucial work period for the embattled Johnson, who has only been the Speaker for nearly six months. How he manages the debate could determine not only Ukraine’s fate, but his own.

“This is not an easy job right now,” Johnson acknowledged in an interview with Fox News during the recess.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) addresses reporters outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 22, 2024 after filing a motion to vacate for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

The Ukraine debate has exposed the deep fissures in the GOP conference, where veteran institutionalists supportive of muscular foreign interventions — especially in the face of Russian aggression — are squaring off against a newer strain of conservatism, championed by former President Trump, that wants to avoid overseas conflicts and focus Washington’s resources more squarely on domestic problems.

The debate has also heightened the tensions between Johnson — a Trump devotee who has deviated from the former president by supporting more Ukraine aid — and Greene, a staunch isolationist who argues that helping Kyiv’s defenses will only prolong the war at the expense of countless lives and the prospect of a negotiated peace.

In offering her motion-to-vacate resolution just before the recess — a move that came amid widespread fury within the GOP conference over Johnson’s support for a government funding deal with President Biden — Greene chose not to force an immediate vote on it. But she made clear that the motion is a warning to the Speaker not to defy the demands of his right flank going forward, and strongly suggested she would pull the trigger on Johnson’s removal if he moves ahead with more help for Kyiv’s forces.

“Funding Ukraine is probably one of the most egregious things that he can do,” Greene told CNN in an interview last week.

Still, Johnson appears poised to charge into the debate regardless of the tough political environment, telling Fox that the House would move on long-stalled foreign aid — which includes dollars for Ukraine — “right after” the two-week Easter recess.

“There’s a lot of things that we should do that make more sense, and that I think we will have consensus around,” he told Fox.

But as the Speaker inches towards movement on the politically prickly topic, his game plan remains unknown.

Johnson has rejected a bipartisan foreign-aid package passed by the Senate in February, vowing to offer a more conservative House version. But he has not laid out the specifics of his plan, leaving lawmakers in the Capitol, officials at the White House and leaders around the globe wondering — and waiting — as they sound the alarm about Kyiv’s waning resources in its battle against Russia.

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But he has floated some details — which he called “important innovations” on the Senate design — offering hints at how he plans to address the issue that has bedeviled him throughout his time in the top job.

During the Fox interview, Johnson mentioned sending assistance to Ukraine as a loan, an idea touted by Trump; he brought up the REPO Act, which would allow the U.S. to use seized frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine; and he mentioned a provision that would block the Biden administration’s freeze on new permits for liquified natural gas exports.

Democrats in the House and Senate have suggested they would get behind the loan structure for Ukraine aid, and nearly 30 House Democrats have signed on to the REPO Act as co-sponsors. But the energy provision is sparking opposition among liberals; should that be included in the final product, garnering approval for the aid may become a heavier lift for Johnson.

“It’s unconscionable that Republicans are playing politics with the lives of the Ukrainian people in their fight for survival against Russia and the lives of communities forced to live with the shameful legacy of toxic pollution by the fossil fuel industry,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told The Hill in a statement last week.

The clashing interests and early reservations are already suggesting a long-drawn fight before any Ukraine bill arrives on Biden’s desk. And Johnson’s ambitious timeline could be scuttled this week as Washington barrels into another explosive debate: extending the U.S.’s warrantless surveillance powers.

Congress is staring down an April 19 deadline to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — which allows the government to spy on noncitizens located outside the U.S. — a target date that is expected to overtake Ukraine aid as priority No. 1 during the House’s first week back in Washington.

“I believe that Speaker Johnson will bring up support for the supplemental appropriations for Ukraine, for Taiwan, for Israel immediately after completing the work on FISA and FISA’s extension. That deadline of April 19 makes it a priority for the first few days that we’re back,” Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

But that sequence of events could put Johnson on thinner ice with his right flank.

The Speaker rolled out a compromise FISA reform bill Friday and said he plans to bring it to the floor this week, but privacy hawks — including hard-line conservatives, like Greene — are sounding the alarm about the absence of a warrant requirement in the legislation, a dynamic that could nudge the Georgia Republican closer to her motion-to-vacate gambit.

“Warrantless spying is wrong,” Greene wrote on the social platform X. “I’ll go ahead and give you my vote, it’s a NO to FISA reauthorization without warrants.”

Tags Kevin McCarthy Marjorie Taylor Greene Mike Johnson