Republicans return to D.C. amid dwindling majority, suspense over House speaker post
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome, Georgia speaks to reporters outside of the U.S. Capitol Building after a vote on a funding bill that would avert a government shutdown on March 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. Greene spoke to reporters about introducing a motion to vacate U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson of Louisiana over the bill’s passage. Alex Wong/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans are returning from a two-week recess Tuesday with an even slimmer majority and the potential looming chaos of a second speaker fight in less than a year.
Hours before recess began on March 22, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome, Georgia filed a motion to vacate the U.S. House speaker’s office, threatening to boot Mike Johnson of Louisiana from the role he’s held for just over five months.
The potential leadership crisis looms over a serious to-do list that includes renewing the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and pressure to finally approve a long-stalled foreign aid request for conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.
Adding to the risk of chaos for the GOP: Two House Republicans abruptly announced resignations days before lawmakers headed home for the Easter holiday break, narrowing the House GOP’s majority to 217-213 once both are finished and prior to a series of special elections later this spring.
Colorado’s Ken Buck resigned on March 22, quickly followed by the abrupt resignation of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, whose last day is slated for April 19.
And as the 2024 election cycle accelerates, political observers will be watching for whether House GOP lawmakers will balance day-to-day business while appeasing the political base for presumed Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump.
House Republicans have struggled to unify during the 118th Congress, which started with the party slogging through more than a dozen ballots to seat Kevin McCarthy at the helm, said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.
McCarthy, of California, was ousted in the fall, and the former leader left Congress in December, chipping away at the majority’s margin.
“This is a continuation of the tumult that really began when the Republicans took power,” Dallek said.
Ukraine aid
With a two-week work period ahead, House GOP lawmakers face another chance to prove whether they can coalesce around billions in aid to U.S. allies. House Republicans also face big questions about federal funds to help rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and the renewal of a surveillance law that expires April 19, a self-imposed deadline after lawmakers extended it in December.
Johnson has vowed to prioritize Ukraine aid when House lawmakers return Tuesday, despite the prospect of continued opposition from the party’s far-right faction.
The U.S. Senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package in February that would cover assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but the House has yet to advance it.
The standalone foreign aid package received support after Senate Republicans, heeding to Trump’s opposition, blocked a deal to alter U.S. immigration laws in exchange for Ukraine aid after months of bipartisan negotiations.
Johnson has said the House will be considering Ukraine aid again. “We’ve been talking to all the members especially now over the district work period. When we return after this period, we’ll be moving a product but it’s going to, I think, have some important innovations,” the Louisiana Republican said March 31 on Fox News’ “Sunday Night in America,” hosted by former GOP South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy.
Johnson said he wants to see the REPO Act as part of the deal. The legislation, introduced last year, would build a fund for Ukraine using the profits from the sale of seized Russian assets, which Johnson said would be “pure poetry.”
Johnson also said he expects conference members to rally in support if the bill restructured Ukraine aid in the form of loans and if it included a measure that would “unleash” American natural gas exports as a way to “help unfund Vladimir Putin’s war effort.”
The speaker faces an uphill battle in unifying House Republicans on the issue.
Georgia’s Rep. Andrew Clyde of Athens, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X April 3 that “(b)orrowing billions of dollars to protect Ukraine’s borders while OUR southern border is being invaded is a slap in the face to the American people.”
Some of Johnson’s conservative colleagues think amending the foreign aid bill could be a winning strategy.
Rep. French Hill of Arkansas said adding the REPO Act “would go a long way to filling the Ukrainian budget gap and be a good down payment for reconstruction, to make Putin pay the ultimate cost of his illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
“It would be, in my judgment, a way to get more support for the total package for Ukraine, seizing these Russian assets,” Hill told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday.
When Brennan pressed him on the skepticism from his colleagues on the far right, including Greene, Hill responded: “I think overwhelmingly Americans and Republican primary voters believe that Putin should be defeated in Ukraine. As I’ve said before, we should draw the line on authoritarian dictators, particularly permanent members of the (United Nations) Security Council invading neighboring countries.”
Working with the Democrats?
If Johnson can’t unify the House GOP conference, votes from across the aisle may be the only path to passing an aid package, particularly if Johnson bypasses the House Committee on Rules. That fast-track to the floor requires a two-thirds majority for passage, which will inevitably mean Democrats’ support will matter.
However, striking a government funding deal with President Joe Biden last year was a flash point that led to the far-right House Republicans’ ouster of McCarthy.
Business in the lower chamber ground to a halt for weeks in October after seven House Republicans joined Florida’s Matt Gaetz in taking the gavel from McCarthy. All Democrats joined in voting for his removal.
Greene’s motion in late March to sack Johnson followed a fast-tracked bipartisan House vote that resulted in the passage of the last round of overdue spending bills.
Greene did not force a vote on removing Johnson, but rather said it was a “warning” to him that the conference would begin looking for a new speaker who “will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with Democrats,” she told reporters after filing the motion.
Dallek said that Johnson putting a Ukraine deal on the floor “may be the final straw for the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world, and they might move to get rid of him.”
“There’s talk that Democrats would save (Johnson) in agreement for putting Ukraine funding on the floor. You know, retaining your speakership because you’re saved by the opposition party is not exactly a great place to be, right?” Dallek said.
Johnson said he believes his Republican colleagues view Greene’s effort as “a distraction from our mission.”
“Again, the mission is to save the republic,” he told Fox News’s Gowdy on Easter. “And the only way we can do that is if we grow the House majority, win the Senate and win the White House.
“So we don’t need any dissension right now. Look, Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the motion, it’s not a privileged motion so it doesn’t move automatically. It’s just hanging there. And she’s frustrated. She and I exchanged text messages. Even today. We’re going to talk early next week,” Johnson said.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said he’s “optimistic” the House can pass the Ukraine aid bill during this work period.
“But it is very likely that after this Ukraine bill, we may have a standoff with the speaker. I hope the speaker prevails. He’s doing the right thing. It’s in our national security interest that Ukraine remain independent,” Bacon told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 31.
On Monday, Greene wrote on X that she remains opposed to Johnson bypassing the Rules Committee and calling a floor vote.
“Our Republican Speaker of the House is upsetting many of our members by relying on Democrats to pass major bills and working with Dems by giving them everything they want,” Greene wrote.
“That makes him the Democrat Speaker of the House not our Republican Speaker of the House.”
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