House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Friday declined to give any definitive statement on whether his conference would help Mike Johnson (R-LA) keep his job in the event that “Moscow Marjorie Taylor Greene” pushes forward with a motion to vacate the Speaker.
“We've been very honest in our assessment of the situation from the very beginning — including in the declaration that I made in late February — and at the appropriate time as House Democrats, we will have a conversation about how to deal with any hypothetical motion to vacate,” Jeffries said during a news conference, where reporters asked about the motion to vacate. “Moscow Marjorie Taylor Greene, [Thomas] Massie, and [Paul] Gosar are quite a group. Are quite a group. And I'm sure that will play some role in our conversation.”
Jeffries repeatedly said, however, that he is more focused at the moment on passing the foreign aid bills Saturday. The House is set to vote on four separate bills to approve foreign aid assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as a bill to give ByteDance more time to divest its control of social media app TikTok. The bills are similar to a bipartisan foreign aid package that the U.S. Senate approved earlier this year.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus had opposed considering the bills because it would send more aid to Ukraine — instead calling for passing measures to tighten the U.S.-Mexico border — and had threatened to invoke the motion to vacate Johnson as the Speaker if he goes through with his plans.
Gosar on Friday became the third House Republican to back a motion to oust Johnson from his post, joining Greene and Massie — meaning Johnson, operating with a tiny House majority, would need Democratic votes to keep his job, if the motion is brought up for a vote and all House members are present. The same scenario befell his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, but Democrats voted with a small group of far-right Republicans to give him the boot.
