It seems like only yesterday that Republican president in exile Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were pledging fealty to one another in a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Actually, it was five days ago and it appears their political union was as short-lived as the marriage of the Golden Bachelor. While Johnson faces the most difficult week of his short career as speaker, when asked if he supported Johnson's plan to finally pass the long-stalled foreign appropriations bill, Trump blandly replied, "We'll see what happens with that." So much for their beautiful friendship.
Trump has his own problems right now, of course. He's in the midst of his first criminal trial in New York where he's alternately nodding off and being admonished by the judge for intimidating the jurors. So I suppose it's too much to ask that he be concerned with something as trivial as national security. It's just too bad that his inexplicable admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his desire to thwart any deal at the border to boost his own electoral chances has led the House MAGA caucus to refuse to allow the Senate-passed bipartisan appropriations agreement to come to a vote. All Trump has to do is say the word and it's almost certain they could get it to the president's desk by the end of the week.
The state of play changes from minute to minute so there's every chance that this will be outdated by the time you read it. But as it stands on Wednesday morning, Johnson is preparing to present four separate bills, one for Ukraine, one for Israel, one for Taiwan and one with a hodgepodge of policies including the banning of TikTok. If he manages to get them to the floor for a vote (not a given since MAGA Republicans are routinely voting against procedural rules which means Democrats may have to do it), he could conceivably gather together enough votes to pass Ukraine aid with a majority of Democrats and separately pass Israel aid with a majority of Republicans. The Taiwan bill shouldn't have any trouble but who knows what's going on with that fourth vote?
No doubt Johnson thought he had Trump's backing for this plan when he left Mar-a-Lago on Friday but it's likely that Trump was only half listening. If he did agree he certainly didn't communicate that to MAGA ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who said this week that she plans to pull the trigger on her motion to vacate the chair if Johnson makes any move to help Ukraine. (She was calling the Ukrainians Nazis over the weekend.) On Tuesday she was joined in her crusade by Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who stood up in a GOP meeting and demanded that Johnson resign. He later went before the cameras and declared that he is now a co-sponsor of Greene's motion to vacate.
Rep. Massie on Speaker Johnson: “Yeah I asked him to resign … He said he would not. And then I said, ‘Well, you're the one who's going to put us into this,’ because the motion is going to get called up.” pic.twitter.com/HrfOg2hZCm
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 16, 2024
Greene demanded that Johnson resign as well:
Marjorie Taylor Greene calls on Mike Johnson to resign for funding the police and supporting our ally:
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) April 16, 2024
“Mike Johnson...fully funded the DOJ...Fully funded the FBI...Now he's pushing for billions of dollars to go to Ukraine...Speaker Johnson needs to resign.” pic.twitter.com/6sVtl0h8WO
Johnson was not amused. After the meeting, he told the press that he was not resigning and that it was "an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs." He has a point but that ship sailed when his predecessor Kevin McCarthy sold his spine to the far right by agreeing that any right-wing kook could call for the speaker's ouster.
With only a two-vote margin, Johnson would not survive a vote without Democrats jumping to his defense. As of Friday, when Congressman Mike Gallagher, R-Wi., departs after having resigned in disgust of what has become of the legislative body, that two-vote margin shrinks to one. However, it remains to be seen if Greene is serious about calling for this vote against Johnson or just wants to hold it over his head while garnering attention from the media. She spoke with Breitbart on Tuesday evening and said, "Yes I am prepared to do it. But the process of how I am doing it and going about it is I am being respectful of my conference and a Republican majority and I’m also being respectful of my colleagues. I didn’t like how it was done when they threw out Kevin McCarthy. It was done by force and no one had a say."
Despite her constant refrain that she has many (so far silent) supporters for this move, there is little evidence that's true. Greene added this hedge, "the reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker." In other words, she's probably bluffing.
The big question now is how the House Democrats and the Senate will deal with all this. There are two Democratic congressmen, Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, who have said they'd vote to keep Johnson if it comes to that. It's hard to say whether they'd actually do that if it came down to it. More immediately urgent is how the Democrats might handle the rule vote. (Johnson could agree to a suspension of the rules and bring it to the floor but he refuses.) The question is what the Democrats would want in return for helping him out and if they'd be satisfied just to get this appropriations bill over and done with. That is unclear but we should know in the next couple of days when we see how and if they can get these bills to the floor.
There is a possibility that it could run into some difficulty in the Senate, however. Yet another surreal moment occurred on Tuesday when the House formally delivered the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
I just delivered my Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas to the United States Senate.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) April 16, 2024
Mayorkas is derelict of his duty and must be removed from office.
Chuck Schumer: HOLD THE TRIAL! pic.twitter.com/pjTAmlJrQa
Greene's demand to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refers to the fact that Democrats may not bring up the impeachment for trial at all, which has a number of GOP Senators up in arms and could gum up the works on these bills Johnson is attempting to put together. If he would just put the bill the Senate already passed on the floor, that would be the end of it. But separating it into four different bills will require the Senate to vote again and there's a chance that they might be able to muster a filibuster if they decide to use the impeachment farce as an excuse to blow up the Ukraine funding. Thirty Republican senators voted against the original bill and so far there does not seem to be a border component in any of the new bills (Trump's doing, I'd guess) which was one of the incentives for the others to vote yes.
This is, in short, a huge mess and it will be a miracle if they get anything passed. Between Trump's self-serving meddling and Marjorie Taylor Greene's showboating, not to mention the general lunacy of the MAGA caucus in both chambers of Congress, the lunatics are running the asylum — and the security of the whole world is hanging in the balance.
