A second House Republican has joined the effort to oust the speaker, Mike Johnson, escalating the risk of another leadership election just six months after the Louisiana congressman assumed the top job.
Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, announced on Tuesday that he would co-sponsor the motion to vacate resolution introduced last month by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia.
“[Johnson] should pre-announce his resignation (as Boehner did), so we can pick a new Speaker without ever being without a GOP Speaker,” Massie said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The former House speaker John Boehner resigned from Congress in 2015 after a fellow Republican, then congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, filed a motion to vacate the chair. In October, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker in history to ever be formally removed from his job via a motion to vacate vote.
Speaking to reporters after a Republican conference meeting this morning, Massie predicted that Johnson would lose the vote on the motion and would become the second speaker to lose the gavel.
“The motion is going to get called, and then [Johnson] is going to lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy,” Massie said.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson remained defiant that he would not resign and accused his critics of undermining Republicans’ legislative priorities.
“I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said. “It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country. It does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda.”
Massie’s announcement comes one day after Johnson unveiled a plan to advance a series of foreign aid bills through the House, following months of inaction on the issue. In February, the Senate passed a $95bn foreign aid package, which included funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian efforts.
Johnson proposed splitting up the package into four separate bills with some notable changes, such as cutting the humanitarian aid included in the Senate proposal and sending money to Ukraine as a loan. The speaker plans to hold separate votes on the bills and then combine them into one package to simplify the voting process for the Senate, which will need to reapprove the proposal.
The plan won some tepid praise from many members of the House Republican conference, but the plan to bundle the bills into one larger funding package sparked frustration among hard-right Republicans. Greene, who had already indicated she might force a vote on the motion to vacate over the issue of Ukraine funding, said she would not support Johnson’s plan and echoed Massie’s suggestion that the speaker should resign.
“We’re only going to allow Republican leaders who understand the Republican agenda for this country is America first, not America last,” Greene told far-right activist and podcast host Steve Bannon on Tuesday. “And that’s why Speaker Johnson needs to resign. He needs to do the right thing, and we need time to elect a new speaker of the House.”
Assuming Johnson does not resign, his strategy for surviving a motion to vacate will be tricky. After Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin resigns on Friday, Republicans’ majority will decrease to just one member. With Massie and Greene against him, Johnson will need some Democrats to help him to remain in the speaker’s chair.
Several centrist Democrats have already indicated that they would come to Johnson’s assistance if a motion to vacate vote were called, and at least one of them repeated that intention on Tuesday.
“My position hasn’t changed,” Congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat of Florida, said on X. “Massie wants the world to burn, I won’t stand by and watch. I have a bucket of water.”
If the motion to vacate were successful, the House may once again devolve into chaos. After McCarthy’s removal in October, the chamber was forced to a standstill for weeks on end, unable to advance any legislation until a new leader was selected. Johnson emerged victorious from an exhausting election process that forced three speaker nominees to withdraw from contention, and now his tenure may end after just six months.
Asked about whether he was willing to risk a repeat of the chaos seen last October, Massie argued it was Johnson’s responsibility to avoid that outcome.
“What I’m trying to do is provide a path where it becomes obvious to him that he doesn’t have the votes,” Massie said. “I think it’s obvious to him privately. I think he’s just plowing ahead and seeing how many of these goalposts he can pass before he’s no longer speaker.”
