As of thirty minutes ago, the Daily Beast reports:
On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to formally boot Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) from the office, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The fundamental problem in the House is the GOP is nuts and can’t coordinate its way out of a wet paper bag. More formally, the confidence coalition in the House is extremely different than the supply coalition if we think of the House currently running as a minority government. The confidence coalition is the formal House majority of Republicans while the supply coalition is almost all Democrats and about half of the confidence coalition. This is somewhat expected as anything that passes the House with a chance of becoming law needs to be acceptable to both Senator Schumer and President Biden who are both very attuned to internal Democratic Party dynamics.
The big question is do the Democrats offer to protect Johnson for a price — likely immediate consideration of the Ukraine funding package on Monday morning? Or do they let him swing as they are not part of the Republican confidence coalition.
Facts are Stubborn Little Bastards Open Thread
hrprogressive
Quite literally;
“Give us an immediate vote, and enough votes to pass all of the supplemental funding, all of it, every penny, to all allied nations, with zero border security nonsense in it. Pass that vote first, we’ll let you stay. Don’t pass it, and you can say hello to Speaker Jeffries”.
It’s an offer he can’t refuse.
Butch
Apparently the vote has to happen within two legislative days, and since the House has already left for Eastern recess that’s a couple of weeks from now. FWIW, reprinted from Daily Kos:
https://x.com/LisaDNews/status/1771203720824381837?s=20
JPL
CNN is showing her. She’s not going to hold the vote today, but there’s a good chance Jeffries could become the next speaker when they hold it. She is such a nut job.
Mike in NC
The GQP wants to install Fat Bastard as dictator for life, House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, ever though he’s a racist, fascist brain-dead imbecile. Oh wait, those are his selling points. “I alone can fuck up the planet” he declared.
BruceFromOhio
Damned either way – take the offer of support and hold the Ukraine funding vote, and the fascists will upgrade from knives to guns.
Or refuse the offer, and get knifed anyway.
p.a.
Buckle up. Here come the Congressional Dysfunction headlines.
“Can’t stop the
signaldeflection, Mal”Rusty
I don’t think Johnson will accept Democratic help, it would poison him for reelection. It also perpetuates the myth that only Democrats have agency, that Democrats have to fix Republican problems. Republicans need to own this problem.
Uncle Cosmo
Wouldn’t it be a frackin’ laff riot if the actual demonic tool being employed by the Almighty to advance their earthly agenda isn’t Cheetoh “I Am Your Antichrist” Benito but Empty “Poifick Vacuuuuum” Greene – and it’s headed in the diametrically opposite direction from what the fundaNazis prey [sic] for?
ArchTeryx
@BruceFromOhio: The one good thing would be that Mike Johnson and the sane part of the Repukes forming a governing coalition with Ds would completely and totally neuter the fascists. They can scream and yell all they want from their gerrymandered districts. They want one of theirs running the House, but they don’t. Have. The. Numbers. And not a one of them can count. Pastor Johnson is gonna be the closest they ever get to that goal. If he’s not fascist enough for them, nobody is going to be.
The alternate very likely Speaker Jeffries, if not now, in 2025.
dmsilev
GOP Thunderdome.
For the 2nd time in less than a year.
Assuming that she does succeed in sticking a knife in Johnson’s back, who in the caucus is possibly stupid enough to offer themselves up as the next target? I mean, I have a very low opinion of the average intelligence level of the GOP caucus, but even primitive organisms have some sense of self-preservation.
JPL
In other news, NBC/MSNBC hired Ronna McDaniel as a political consultant.
Anoniminous
Reposted from previous thread:
Dems could vote for Jefferies in the Roll Call vote and wait to see if Dickhead gets enough votes from his own party. If not, and Jefferies wants to save him, have enough switcheroo votes line-up to save his sorry ass.
JPL
@p.a.: It might be time to talk about Biden’s age .
RaflW
“It was not clear whether Senate Republicans would allow the spending measure to pass in time to avoid a shutdown.”
It’s fuckups all the way down, over in GOP-land.
cmorenc
Ironically, now we have not one, but two things we can actually agree with MTG about:
1) The current narrow GOP majority is incapable of governing;
2) Mike Johnson is unworthy to be speaker of the house.
Of course, our reasons for these two things are not the same as hers, but hey, let’s not quibble with MTG while she’s busy shooting the GOP caucus and Speaker in their feet.
MattF
Do you remember when McCarthy was saying publicly how much he loved and trusted Greene? Only to get knifed by Gaetz. I suspect Johnson remembers, vividly. Each of the leading House Republicans has betrayed all the others, repeatedly.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: Fuck NBC/MSNBC for this move.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc: I’m not sure “shooting in the feet” is the right turn of phrase. How about HIMARSing the shit out of lower torsos?
Ken
One downside of Johnson surviving with Democratic votes is that it would give the “no difference between the Democrats and Republicans” faction something more to whine about.
The upside, as others have said, is that the Republicans will become even more fractured and fractious.
Baud
This is worse than when Moses’s brother betrayed him by building a golden calf. #WhatMikeIsThinking
WaterGirl
@JPL: I saw that earlier and thought my head might explode.
RaflW
Damn. The isolationists rammed thru some bullshit: “cutting funding for the State Department and foreign aid programs by roughly 6 percent.”
The Ukraine supplemental needs to fix this. Foreign aid is a tiny part of the total trillions, but matters greatly in our efforts to keep global destabilization from getting even worse than it is. Bastards.
TaMara
@JPL: Oh, fuck me
Sure Lurkalot
@JPL: Oh FFS. Ronna in between Katy Tur and Andrea Mitchell should make some barf inducing teevee.
How many fired and/or disgruntled and/or bullshit “never Trumper” Republicans is MSNBC going to hire? All of them, Katie?
JPL
@WaterGirl: She certainly doesn’t need a bigger microphone to spew her shit. She’s doing fine already.
Anoniminous
Today it’s 219 GOP and 213 Dem. If all the Dems vote Jefferies and the Freedom Caucus does their usual bullshit Jefferies could be elected Speaker.
CaseyL
@JPL:
@Villago Delenda Est:
This might be a good opportunity for me to plug two things:
GroundNews is a website/app that aggregates news from every source it can get its hands on, and sorts them all by bias, reliability, and other criteria.
You can see news stories about one event from many different sources, all at once. You’ll see news stories that major carriers don’t cover at all, because GroundNews brings in news stories from all over the world.
It’s not perfect by any means, but a definite step in the right direction.
I don’t yet subscribe, myself, but only because I already check such a wide variety of sources on my own. But I am seriously considering subscribing. (H/T Dr. Becky, the UK astrophysicist who is promoting them on her YT channel. If you go to her channel and use her link, you can get a discount on GroundNews’ premier subscription rate.)
Chris
The problem is that Johnson owing his survival to Democrats simply makes him even more radioactive among Republicans than he already is, and guarantees him even more problems very shortly down the line. He’s going to find a lot more doors slammed in his face once he becomes known as Johnson the Democrat. So from his point of view the first isn’t a win. Better to gracefully, obsequiously, take your humiliation from the tribe than to be cast out of the tribe entirely.
RaflW
@JPL: She’s an out and out liar and election-denier. MSNBC is smearing faeces on itself here.
WaterGirl
@TaMara: @JPL:
Yeah, that hire will certainly up the level of political discourse.
sigh.
WaterGirl
@RaflW: You’re right. Even if they want to hire a republican, that should be disqualifying.
wjca
What Greene’s motion says to me is: the Discharge Petition is getting close to the required number of signatures, and likely will be there soon.
Think about it. If the motion to vacate the chair passes, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the House can do until a new Speaker is elected. And, as we have seen, House Republicans can drag that out for weeks.
Anoniminous
OK,
The Speaker is required to put the resolution on the legislative schedule within two legislative days – meaning it won’t be until April 10th – forcing a floor vote on the motion to vacate. Then, it just needs a simple majority to pass.
So nothing is going to happen immediately. Well, unless Johnson is a total idiot.
Soprano2
Ugh, off topic but I just got this notification on my phone. I know there’s at least one person on this board that lives in or close to Nashville. I knew it would probably end like this. It’s a good lesson in not getting separated from your group. It’s been a big story here in Springfield because Riley Strain is from here. So sad, I wonder what happened. He must have been really drunk already if the bar kicked him out after only one drink. Sad…..
Joy in FL
@CaseyL: I have a subscription to GroundNews (link in comment #27). I like it. I don’t check it very often because I don’t want to know more than I read on BJ.
An annual Pro subscription is $9.99, so it is a very modest investment. And I’m pretty sure there is a free version.
I recommend it, and if I wanted to know more, it would be a resource I would use more.
Dangerman
Pure attention move by Greene; since jerking off her BF/Hubby in public is so yesterday, gotta get original.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Sure Lurkalot:
It’s only barf-inducing if you watch. ;)
Any time somebody tells me how “liberal” MSNBC is, I realize they’re blowing smoke up my ass b/c such people saying that are RWNJs.
Maybe normies view them that way because they have somebody like Maddow in a 1-hour slot, but that’s massively offset by the likes of Morning Blow, Tur, Mrs Greenspan and now one of Rmoney’s brats.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Once again, MSNBC proves its liberal bias. /s
lowtechcyclist
@Rusty:
What, make the GOP own it when Russia ultimately wears down Ukraine’s defenses? FUCK THAT SHIT. What’s important here is UKRAINE.
The Dems have agency, and should use it if possible to ensure that we can keep Ukraine armed for another year. That’s a damned sight more important than these “who’s really responsible” games.
So if Preacher Johnson is open to a deal where we save his ass this once in return for a floor vote on aid to Ukraine (with or without Israel/Taiwan), I say we do it. I still think we should have made that offer to Qevin six months ago.
West of the Rockies
Is Gaetz on MTG’s side on this?
WaterGirl
@Dangerman: I think you’re thinking of Boebert, not Greene.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
I wish I were in some alternate timeline where it would have been possible for me to have felt the least iota of surprise when I saw that.
But in this one, it’s another day ending in ‘y’, and just one more instance of the media being wired for Republicans. Boring, yet depressing.
Sure Lurkalot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yep. I rarely turn it on and when I do, it’s to turn it off in disgust. Same for NPR except for occasional Terry Gross interviews.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: I agree. Ukraine continues to be in limbo while the Republicans fuck around.
Right now, Ukraine > anything.
Palestinians starving is beyond horrible, and a close second, but Ukraine is the front line for democracy, so to me it’s #1.
Just get it done.
Anonymous At Work
Easy deal: Full Ukraine package, no border security bitter pill, Minority Government Oversight member Gym Jordan and Minority subcommittee member Jimmy “Someday I’ll Find Something Non-Russian” Comer.
Or, MAGA Mike can watch 6-12 rounds of voting for MTG before Speaker Jefferies squeezes off just enough defectors to be short-term Speaker.
PS: During a government shutdown, what are the limits on House members and House activities?
Anoniminous
@Anonymous At Work:
Funding bill passed so there won’t be a shutdown
West of the Rockies
Would a Speaker Jeffries in a 218R/213D House be effective? Might he not just end up on the losing end of everything and look ineffective, or do we believe he’d have the tiny handful of Republicans supporting him to get stuff done?
Anonymous At Work
@Sure Lurkalot: I know of no “Ronna McDaniel”, but I do know of “Ronna Romney McDaniel.” Always worth including her uncle, whom she shivved to keep the job after being a nepo-baby to get the job. Same way that there is no “Boris Johnson” but “Alexander Boris dePfeffel Johnson III”. One is an affable everyman character, the latter is the real and privileged person.
Chris Johnson
@CaseyL: Trae Crowder (the liberal redneck) also likes them! I’ve assumed they are just his sponsor, but maybe he is also a fan of GroundNews.
Anonymous At Work
@West of the Rockies: Any deal for Speaker Jefferies would have explicit directives on that point. Not free-ranging powers but closer to Kevin McCarthy. The defecting Rs would be the ones having laid out their conditions and the conditions might be closer to “Republicans control committees but Democrats control floor schedule”.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anonymous At Work:
Yup. Same with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
lowtechcyclist
@West of the Rockies:
I gather that the Speaker can bring bills to the floor for a vote. There are bills that would pass if they came to a vote, but the Preacher hasn’t allowed that to happen. That would be an improvement over where we are now.
danielx
@Chris:
If indeed that’s Johnson’s view, he might want to check with McCarthy on how that has worked out for him.
West of the Rockies
@lowtechcyclist:
Good to hear. Thanks.
RaflW
Minnesota’s House delegation is weird. Though I suppose Emmer isn’t a full-on bomb thrower/shut-downer.
Aye 4
Angie Craig (D)
Tom Emmer (R)
Betty McCollum (D)
Dean Phillips (D)
Nay 4
Brad Finstad (R)
Michelle Fischbach (R)
Ilhan Omar (D)
Pete Stauber (R)
It’d be messy, buy I wish a progressive Dem would primary Omar. Keith Ellison was a better legislator, progressive but with an understanding of coalition politics. Omar is, IMO, the least effective Squad member, and doesn’t even seem to really want to learn from her more successful peers like AOC.
Ken
Tragically, not the ones that I want, which is that they’re all chained to their seats in the House chamber until the shutdown ends. Bread and water three times a day, and chamberpots emptied weekly.
Shalimar
@Chris Johnson: Some More News (with some ex-Cracked staff) has also been getting sponsored by GroundNews lately. No idea if it is good, but at least they are sponsoring YouTube shows I like.
Baud
@CaseyL:
Thanks.
Citizen Alan
@Uncle Cosmo: This is why I say most evangelicals worship the Devil but are either too ashamed to say it or to ignorant to realize it. I have told evangelicals of my acquaintance to their faces that God must have a sense of humor, because he sent us an Antichrist who is obviously, blatantly an irreligious, imbecilic rapist-monster who has lived his life in way that’s the exact opposite of “Christ-like” … and evangelicals adore him because he gives them license to act the same way while pretending to be the bestest, most purest Christians of all. The Mark of the Beast came in the form of a red MAGA hat.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
I’m curious. What are, say, 5 sources that you regularly use, not counting Balloon Juice?
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
They always believed that the ‘Christians’ who fell for the Antichrist would be the old mainstream Christians – Presbyterians and Lutherans and so forth. They never figured they’d be the suckers who would fall for an Antichrist. Yet here we are.
JML
@RaflW: Emmer’s a pretty awful guy, but he knows the GOP will get crushed for a shut-down.
Ilhan sucks. She’s a terrible narcissist and incredibly ineffective. But she’s got a fanclub in the party that’s hard to uproot, from the lefties patting themselves on the back for electing a young Somali Muslim woman, to the extremists who care more about looking good than accomplishing anything, along with a collection of personal friends who will go after anyone with high levels of viciousness and real threats anyone who dares questions their pal.
So far, none of the real candidates that might challenge her (Scott Dibble?) have wanted to deal with the mountain of crap they’ll get for it, so we’re left with washed up folks like Don Samuels.
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl: That is correct. MTG has not yet been caught giving sexual pleasure to a man not her husband in a public venue. But I would love to ask the vile hag to her face “Now that you’ve seen those blown up images of Hunter Biden’s penis, how does it compare to your close-up inspection of Matt Gaetz’s?”
CaseyL
@Brachiator:
Guardian UK/US
Local news (Seattle Times/King5 News)
ProPublica
Texas Observer
Molly White
Democracy Docket
Status Kuo
Daniel Drezner
Chris Geidner/Law Dork
Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy
A lot of these are either newsletter subscriptions or follows on Mastodon/BlueSky – and many of them I first encountered on Mastodon, where people frequently post links to news sources worth checking.
I have more news follows on Mastodon and BlueSky – too numerous to list, actually.
Jackie
@Villago Delenda Est: Apparently Ronna McDaniel is only going to be providing electoral coverage, per The Hill. This could be interesting, as she could provide an insider’s POV re TIFG’s state of mind. AND TIFG HATES NBC/MSNBC and McDaniel knows this full well. I’ll withhold judgement for now.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4549564-ronna-mcdaniel-nbc-news-contributor/
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I’m picturing McCarthy and Johnson as a poor man’s Statler and Waldorf.
gene108
@ArchTeryx:
They want their people to have complete control of the government, and they will not tolerate a government they do not control.
The Republican Speaker, for them, is just a figurehead, who should fall in line with their demands.
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: Funny. During the previous Speaker-Showdown of 15 votes, the body language between Gaetz and Boebert left me thinking that they might know one another, in the conjugal sense.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: Unless she will be the former MAGA, spiteful Ronna Romney, it’s still not worth it.
topclimber
MTG: “Our Republican Majority is a Complete Failure”
Nominated for rotating tag, even if I am not first.
Marcopolo
@RaflW: All 4 squad members voted no including AOC. Wasn’t just Omar.
All in all, 22 D members of Congress voted no. Think most of them, like Jaypal, were members of the progressive caucus.
David Anderson
@Anoniminous: Nope, to be speaker, you need half of all voting plus one; not the most votes if less than half. The first dozen votes for the first 2 GOP speaker cluster fucks each had Jeffries as the leading vote getter
Eolirin
@Marcopolo: Given that there were real compromises in the bill and their votes weren’t needed, that’s the right way for this to get played.
Uncle Cosmo
Hang on, you tryna tell us they’s a buncha no-counts??
In the immortal voice of Gomer Pyle, USMC: Sirprize!Sirprize!Sirprize!
Anoniminous
@David Anderson:
Majority present and voting. If Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana don’t show or vote “Present” it’ll be 211 to 213.
During the last election Johnson was kept out because neither he nor Jefferies could wrangle a majority due to the Freedom Caucus voting for spoiler candidates.
MisterForkbeard
@JPL: Stuff like this drives me nuts. Because former RNC head is a great pickup if she offered any legitimate value or argued in good faith. But she doesn’t, and we know she doesn’t. That was her entire value as RNC president.
It’s a willful decision to ignore what the Republican Party is, and has openly been for a decade now.
BlueGuitarist
@p.a.:
Appreciate the Serenity reference.
MisterForkbeard
The one caveat I’ve got is that I’m not certain those Rs would actually vote if it meant voting with Democrats. Cooperating with Dems against the express wishes of Trump and the Russian-owned Republican Party is a very tall order for these fuckers.
Betty
@RaflW: I am sure a number of the hosts starting with Nicole Wallace and going through the evening are shaking their heads at this travesty.
Uncle Cosmo
Make it a pinch-hitting gig (with a double move to push the relief bitcher further down the batting order): SotH Jeffries lets the foreign military assistance bills come to the floor, then bills to avoid a shutdown, gets them to the Senate and PUJOTS’s desk for signature, and resigns – with a Parthian shot of “This is what functioning government can look like – and the American people can have it back next January if they vote in a Democratic majority in the House.”
catclub
@JPL: I wish it was more like the catch and kill that the tabloids did for Trump, and just shuts her up.
catclub
@Jackie: I would say that Trump fired McDaniel because she was not enough of a trump lickspittle for Trump. However, she is still far too much of a trump lickspittle for everyone else who is not trump.
Fake Irishman
Dave,
Love the talk about the difference between the formal majority coalition and the actual “supply” coalition that provides the votes to get necessary bills through. I’m sure Ken Shepsle has some sort of really complicated mathematical model explaining it all in a reasonably well known European polisci journal somewhere.
Fake Irishman
@Fake Irishman:
This situation also reminds me a bit of Denmark in the 1980s, where you had a formal center-right governing coalition of four parties, but one of them managed to team up with the opposition social democrats in an alternative majority to run a left-wing foreign policy. It was really strange equilibrium that somehow lasted through two or three election cycles.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Fake Irishman: I find the lack of ideological rigidity refreshing.
Brendan In NC
Question – This will affect the attempts to keep the government running, will it not???
WaterGirl
@Brendan In NC: I believe that passed the House, so if the Senate votes for it as is, and President Biden signs it, crisis averted.
cain
@Rusty: I’m all up for supporting Johnson if he delivers aid to Ukraine and whatever else.
Otherwise, speaker Jeffries it is and we’ll get all of that. The best thing is that MTG will file again and again. She’s going to make herself the most hated member of congress.
gvg
My understanding is that the motion to vacate (If she actually did it, it involves her getting up on the floor and calling for it) then the house has to vote on if they have confidence in Johnson as speaker and he needs a majority. The motion does not automatically remove him or go to who will replace him votes.
1 source said he needs 218 votes but I think it may be out of date because it was referring to McCarty as if he was still speaker. There are only 218 republicans and we can assume MTG is a no. if he needs 218, that means we are doing the new speaker votes. By the way, does anyone know who he listed as interim speaker?
If it’s just a majority that’s 218+213 democrats=431 and 216 is a majority. That means that at least 2 other republicans have to vote no confidence without any democrats. Does she have others who are ready to vote against Johnson? Its not just a matter of hating him, it’s also about is there someone else that can get the votes? (I am confident that answer is no, so does she want chaos only?) Do the other republicans that hate Johnson now, not care that they don’t have a replacement?
Democrats supported McCarthy a few times I think until he didn’t keep his deals with them. What has Johnson done? What are the downsides of a few democrats voting for him? They are all up for re election in the House. Johnson would only be able to request a certain number of democratic votes. The republicans are bad at counting and that caucus likes double crosses anyway so this may be hard anyway.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
It’s a lot to ask that a Republican, particularly MTG, consider the consequences before taking action.
sab
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I only watch MSNBC at night and on weekends. Their weekday fare is pretty much like every other MSM groupthink oitfit primed by Republican operatives.
Subsole
@RaflW:
I would say she is better than Tlaib. At least Omar doesn’t seem to actively hate the rest of the party.
brantl
@JPL: WTF, would they have done THAT? JJCOAC.
brantl
@Sure Lurkalot: When was she a “Never Trumper” ? She fellated him from a trapeze!
unrelatedwaffle
Is power really so great that it’s worth possibly getting knifed in the back constantly? I feel like it doesn’t take very much to be a pretty happy human being: good eats, good friends, a little enrichment in the enclosure…you don’t need to be a god king/queen to have these things, and yet the deeply maladjusted just keep fucking it all up for everyone else with their sickness. There’s just a shitload of broken humans running around out there and I really wish they would just get therapy instead of destroying everything around them.