The push to oust Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House—only months after he first took the job—is gaining momentum and threatening to throw the GOP-led House into chaos yet again.
In a closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday morning, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced to his colleagues that he would be co-sponsoring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) resolution to vacate the speakership, according to a source in the room.
In a brazen challenge, Massie directly asked Johnson to resign—a request the Speaker declined.
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Massie, a staunch conservative with libertarian leanings, specifically cited Johnson’s decision to advance federal government spy powers legislation and his push to provide aid to Ukraine as his justification for supporting Johnson’s removal.
“There are people riding him like a horse here. They don't care when the horse collapses,” Massie said of Johnson, moments after he left the private meeting. “I do because it's going to throw our conference into turmoil.”
Greene introduced the motion to vacate the speakership last month, but has so far declined to begin the process of forcing a vote on the floor.
But if the motion to vacate is called soon, Massie predicted that Johnson is “gonna lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy” when he was booted last October.
No matter what, Johnson’s margin for error is much narrower than McCarthy’s was. Right now, he can only lose two GOP votes in a vote on his fate without Democratic help. By Friday, with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) set to resign, he can only lose just one Republican.
The Kentucky Republican’s call for Johnson’s removal landed like a grenade at the start of what could be Johnson’s most pivotal week yet as Speaker. This week, he’s pushing to hold votes on three separate bills to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
For Massie, an archconservative libertarian who has been historically against foreign aid, this became somewhat of a red line for him.
Hardline Republicans who have their quarrels with Johnson are not publicly committing to supporting a motion to vacate, but some have indicated they are open to it.
For example, when asked if he would support a motion to vacate, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) responded with an evasive “hmmm.”
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the former chairman of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, said he would not support a motion to vacate “right now,” but “the end of the week is going to look potentially very different than right now.”
Amid the backlash, Johnson is projecting an air of confidence and insisting “not concerned about this.”
“I am not resigning,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “And it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion. We are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country.”
Encouragingly for Johnson, there appears to be little appetite more broadly for a second bruising speakership battle, not just within the Republican conference but also in Congress as a whole.
Hard-right Reps. Troy Nehls (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) told reporters that they would not support a motion to vacate and believe it is not warranted.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) said he wished the conference “had a collective memory longer than a gnat.”
“There's nobody that can say vacating Kevin McCarthy’s speakership was good for the Republican Conference, the House of Representatives, or the country, you just can't say. So if we're going to repeat this process, I think it is not going to serve the American people appropriately, and I do not support it,” Van Orden said.
In addition, Democrats have indicated they would help out Johnson—especially if he faces removal after approval of Ukraine aid, which is universally supported by Democrats.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) told The Daily Beast last week he would help out Johnson if needed; earlier on Tuesday, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) indicated he would also come to the defense of the Republican speaker.
“My position hasn’t changed. Massie wants the world to burn, I won’t stand by and watch. I have a bucket of water,” Moskowitz posted on X.
But few Republicans believe that the bipartisan backlash will slow the increasingly high-profile effort to remove Johnson.
“Do I believe that people actually think through their decisions? No,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), who does not support the motion to vacate, said. “I think we have a number of people here that don't think past step one, which is why we have so many problems here right now.”
