Draft:Attempt to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House

On March 22, 2024, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives through a motion to vacate. The motion is opposed by the leadership of the majority House Republican Conference and the minority House Democratic Caucus.

Taylor Greene officially invoked the motion on May 8, 2024. The motion was tabled (killed) in a 359–43 vote.

Process and replacement
Removing the speaker of the House necessitates the use of a motion to vacate. As part of negotiations for Kevin McCarthy's speakership, any single representative can initiate a motion to vacate. The motion takes the form of a simple resolution. The provision had only been used three times in the House of Representatives. In 1910, against Joseph G. Cannon, in 2015, against John Boehner, and in 2023, against Kevin McCarthy.

A representative must file the resolution and request a vote; as a privileged resolution, the vote must occur within two legislative days. A vote may be blocked if the resolution is tabled or sent to committee. If passed, an internal list penned by Speaker Johnson would appoint a speaker pro tempore until a new speaker was named. An election would then begin.

Background
Following the 2022 midterm elections, the Republican Party won 222 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Democratic Party won 213 seats. The Democratic Party won a narrow, 2-seat majority in the Senate. The Freedom Caucus, a far-right caucus of Republicans, secured roughly 45 seats. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader during the previous 117th Congress, was elected speaker of the House after 15 rounds of voting, but only after giving concessions to his opponents, who were mostly Freedom Caucus members. These concessions included lowering the threshold to file a privileged motion to vacate the chair to one member. The Freedom Caucus persuaded McCarthy to refuse to raise the debt ceiling and threaten a default, leading to the 2023 United States debt ceiling crisis. McCarthy agreed to a deal to end the crisis, which set funding levels for the next two fiscal years, but after conservative opposition, McCarthy announced he would put appropriations legislation on the floor with much lower spending levels, as well as many riders containing conservative priorities. These bills were quickly rejected by the Democratic-led Senate, and Republican disagreements prevented some of them from passing. By September, the federal government appeared poised to shut down, but at the last minute, McCarthy announced he would put a continuing resolution on the floor without any spending cuts or riders, as long as it did not include aid to Ukraine. The CR passed easily despite strong conservative opposition, but Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion to vacate, citing McCarthy working with Democrats and breaking the agreement reached in the January speaker vote. McCarthy was then removed by a 216-210 vote, with 8 Republicans and all voting Democrats voting to remove.

Johnson's speakership
Following McCarthy's removal, the Republican conference voted to nominate Majority Leader Steve Scalise for speaker, but after facing opposition from both moderates and hardliners, he dropped out. Following Scalise's dropout, Johnson considered running for speaker, but declined, endorsing Jim Jordan, a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus in 2015. Jordan won the conference's nomination, but after losing three straight floor votes, the conference voted to remove him as the nominee. Nine candidates, including Johnson, announced a run for speaker, with Majority Whip Tom Emmer beating Johnson in the final round to become the conference's nominee, before dropping out four hours later after it was clear he could not get a majority of the whole house on the floor. Johnson was then chosen as the fourth nominee. On October 20, he was elected speaker, with all Republicans voting for him.

During the more than three weeks it took for House Republicans to elect a speaker, they were unable to pass any appropriations legislation. Johnson announced he would support another continuing resolution to extend funding for some departments until January 19 and others until February 2. Conservatives opposed the measures, but were not ready to offer a motion to vacate.

On January 7, 2024, congressional appropriators reached an agreement on the topline spending levels for 2024 which was not substantially different from the deal negotiated by McCarthy. Hardliners attempted to push Johnson to abandon the deal, initially claiming that he had done so before Johnson clarified that he hadn't. As negotiations continued over the full-year funding bills, conservatives pushed Johnson to instead endorse a full-year continuing resolution, which under McCarthy's deal would result in automatic spending cuts.

On March 6, 2024, the House passed a $459 billion "minibus" spending package containing six of the twelve appropriations bills. The bill provides funding for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Energy, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development. It also provides appropriations for the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other military construction. The rightmost faction of the Republican conference harshly opposed the deal, arguing it did not contain any substantial conservative policy wins. On March 22, 2024, the House passed a second $741 billion minibus to fund the remaining departments, which was also opposed by the right flank of the Republican party.

On April 20, 2024, the House passed a supplemental appropriations bill that included funding for Israel, Ukraine and Indo-Pacific allies and imposed further sanctions on enemies of the United States. The bill was also opposed by the right flank of the Republican party.

Proposals to increase the threshold
When announcing he would not run again for speaker, McCarthy advised the next speaker to change the motion to vacate threshold. This would require a majority vote of the full House. A few of the hardline Republicans indicated an openness to the idea. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that Republicans should get rid of the motion to vacate as it makes the speaker's job "impossible." On October 30, Representative Max Miller introduced a resolution to increase the threshold to 112 members, but as of March 2024, it has not received any cosponsors, and is awaiting a vote in committee. Johnson has not endorsed any effort to increase the threshold, but stated in March 2024 that "there will probably be a change" to the motion to vacate during the next congress.

Motion to vacate
On March 22, 2024, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a resolution to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House, after the latter put up for a vote a minibus spending bill opposed by a majority of the Republican Conference (thereby violating the Hastert convention). The resolution was non-privileged and did not trigger an immediate vote, due to Greene's decision to introduce it through regular channels rather than on the floor. Greene claimed the resolution was merely "a warning" and didn't commit to forcing a vote on it. Over the next month, two Republicans, Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar, joined as cosponsors. Republicans' extremely slim margin in the House means that, if all Democrats were to join the three Republican rebels in voting for Greene's resolution, Johnson would be ousted. However, on April 30, House Democratic leaders announced that they would provide the votes to save Johnson. Opponents of Johnson were initially considered unlikely to force a vote on the resolution unless or until it has enough support to pass, but following the announcement, Greene announced she would trigger the motion to vacate during the week of May 6. The motion was officially triggered on May 8.

Motion to table
Immediately after the motion was invoked, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise asked for a vote to table (kill) the motion to vacate. The vote to table was successful, meaning the motion to vacate was removed from consideration and Mike Johnson was allowed to remain as Speaker.