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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to vacate Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Ms Greene previously vowed to bring this motion against Mr Johnson this week. She met with the speaker twice this week alongside her ally, GOP Representative Thomas Massie.
Her motion is privileged, which means the House would have been forced to vote within 48 hours. However, a vote to table her motion commenced almost immediately after Ms Greene finished speaking.
Democrats and some GOP members have vowed to help save the speaker by voting to table the motion.
As the moderate representatives gaggled on the steps of the Capitol while the motion was announced, Ms Greene’s boyfriend Brian Glenn looked on.
“I love it,” Mr Glenn told The Independent.
Ms Greene’s motion comes after she criticised Mr Johnson for working with Democrats to pass a series of foreign aid bills, allocating funds to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
On Tuesday, Ms Greene told The Independent the speaker has been “working with Democrats the entire time.”
“[The Democrats] are ready to deliver the votes to save his speakership, because they support him because of what he’s delivered for the Democrats and the Biden agenda,” Ms Greene told The Independent.
Ms Greene and Mr Massie gave Mr Johnson a list of demands in their two meetings earlier this week. The duo asked Mr Johnson to block future aid to Ukraine, as well as defund Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probes into Donald Trump. Mr Smith is investigating the classified documents case and the 6 January riots.
These asks were largely symbolic because the US Senate and President Joe Biden would likely block them.
GOP members criticised Ms Greene’s motion moments after she announced it.
“It’s a gimmick, it’s a joke, it’s laughable,” Republican Representative Max Miller told reporters on Wednesday. “We have real work to do.”
“It’s going to sow discord…and by the way, it’s going to fail,” GOP Congressman Dusty Johnson said outside the House chambers.
The other side levelled similar criticisms on Tuesday while it was still unclear when Ms Greene would bring her motion. Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California criticised Greene for seeming wobbly on pushing Mr Johnson out.
“I can just speak for our side — we’re gonna be the side that wants to get s**t done, we’ll be united, we’ll deliver the votes,” he told The Independent. “And as I said, it looks more like a motion to vacillate than a motion to vacate because she can’t decide what she wants to do other than try and be famous.”
Mr Johnson, a GOP representative from Louisiana, became speaker in October 2023. He won the leadership position after 22 days of turmoil in the House of Representatives following the removal of former speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Last week, Ms Greene vowed to bring the motion to vacate against the speaker. Ms Greene and Mr Massie blasted work between Mr Johnson and Mr Jeffries as a culmination of the “uniparty.”
“The uniparty is ‘Make Ukraine Great Again,’” Ms Greene said on 1 May. “The uniparty is about funding every single foreign war. They think this is the business model that needs to be done.”
