WASHINGTON – House Speaker Mike Johnson is moving closer to peril after another hard-line conservative publicly came out in favor of forcing the Republican leader out of office.
Shortly after unveiling a plan to provide foreign aid to key U.S. allies, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., came out forcefully against the House speaker’s proposal during a closed-door conference Tuesday morning, announcing he would support an existing effort. to oust Johnson.
Massie, along with conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., are calling on Johnson to step down from the top job. If he doesn’t, they threaten to trigger a House vote that could oust the president and plunge the House into a new leadership vacuum. Last year, Johnson accepted the position, placing him second in line to presidential succession, after a handful of Republican rebels voted last fall to impeach Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his position.
“There’s no shortage of people” who could replace Johnson, Massie said, calling the speaker “some guy that no one in America has ever heard of.”
Massie’s support for what is known as a motion to nullify – a procedural vote to impeach the president – jeopardizes Johnson’s job, as Republicans control the House with a slim majority and the Conservative anger continues to grow against the embattled president.
Johnson, at a weekly leadership news conference, was defiant and said he would not resign.
“It’s an absurd idea in my opinion that someone would bring forward a motion to overturn when we’re just here trying to do our job,” Johnson said. “I consider myself a wartime orator, in the literal sense of the word. I knew it when I picked up the hammer. I didn’t think it would be an easy path.
After the resignation of a Republican lawmaker from the lower house on Friday, Republicans will be just one vote ahead along party lines in the House. That means Greene and Massie could single-handedly oust Johnson if all Democrats join them in impeaching the president, as they did last year.
This time, however, Democrats could save Johnson from the fury of the right depending on how Johnson presents foreign aid to his allies, including Ukraine and Israel.
“Massie wants the world to burn, I will not stand idly by. I have a bucket of water,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, opposing a motion to release.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, would not say Tuesday whether his party would vote to help save Johnson’s job, but noted that he was not “looking forward to » to appoint House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. .Y., to speak again and navigate another leadership crisis. Right now, Aguilar added at a news conference, the focus is on foreign aid.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Second lawmaker calls to oust president, putting Johnson’s job in jeopardy
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