The Speaker has promised to push forward with a Ukraine aid package once the House returns from a two-week break.
Representative Don Bacon acknowledged Sunday that it is “possible” that Speaker Mike Johnson will lose the top House job over an impending vote on aid to Ukraine. “I’m not going to deny it,” the Nebraska conservative told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
The comment comes as the House enters the second half of a two-week recess, which came on the heels of a tense fight over a government funding bill that barely averted a shutdown. Johnson entered the break promising to “turn our attention” to Ukraine, an issue that has divided the fractious House GOP caucus and kept the U.S. government from approving an aid package, even as the Senate passed a $95 billion bill in February.
George Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has long been staunchly opposed to U.S. aid to Ukraine, filed a motion to vacate Johnson’s speakership right as the House went into recess, warning that Johnson “should not bring funding for Ukraine” to the House floor. Greene has yet to say when she plans to move forward with the motion.
There is no way that rule would get removed without Democratic support.
The Dem rules got removed at the start of the 118th Congress because the GOP had the majority, and it was all done by the GOP as a condition for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership.
The Dems had nothing to do with it.
The Democrats have always had much saner rules regarding the Motion to Vacate the Speaker of the House than the GOP has ever had, and the previous set of rules that this new and insane GOP rule replaced was instituted and upheld by Dems throughout the time Nancy Pelosi was Speaker.
Thus, there is literally NO reason for Dems not to support going back to their own much saner rules on the subject, there was no Dem participation is striking this rule, and no historical reason to believe Dems would do anything else.
The only issue is whether the Democrats are willing to negotiate with a rump Republican party for support and what that support will entail. It seems like Democrats are willing to negotiate with Johnson in a way they didn’t feel they could with McCarthy.
Iirc, they offered to negotiate with McCarthy, but he turned them down (according to him, anyway). Though by that point he had already broken several promises to them so if they really didn’t even try I wouldn’t be surprised either.
The Dems did try to negotiate with McCarthy and he stabbed them in the back.
Dems aren’t the ones keeping the rule around.