The Republican House is finally back to official work.They kicked off their short week with a conference meeting in which Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly asked Republicans to stop publicly being mean to him on social media. That did not go over well. In fact, it backfired and the House was once again thrown into chaos.
“Conservative Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) emerged furious, telling reporters that Johnson ‘should never have been hired,’” Axios reports. Davidson also told reporters that he walked out of the meeting early because he did not want to stick around to hear Johnson and leaderships’ “drivel.”
The contentious meeting Wednesday featured a dispute between Johnson and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who might still be smarting about how badly he lost his own bid to be speaker. The hardliners in the conference are angry at Johnson over his agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. They made that clear both in the meeting and by taking the fight to the floor, once again shutting the House down.
Thirteen House Republicans voted against a procedural bill to start debate on three bills that aren’t even related to the funding fight. They pulled a trick that had only been used once previously in the last two decades to bring legislative business in the House to a halt. This is exactly what the maniacs did to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy when they were mad at him for trying to avoid a government shutdown. We all remember how that ended.
“We’re making a statement that what the deal, as has been announced, that doesn’t secure the border and that doesn’t cut our spending, and that’s gonna be passed apparently under suspension of the rules with predominantly Democrat votes is unacceptable,” Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good of Virginia told reporters Wednesday after the vote. The ever-present implication behind that now is that they can take another speaker down if they feel like it.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was one of the 13 and has been Johnson’s chief detractor on social media, most recently tweeting a graphic that showed a picture of Johnson and Schumer with a wad of burning cash, writing “doing nothing is better than doing what the @HouseGOP is ready to do.” He wasn’t feeling particularly chastised by Johnson on Wednesday.
Asked if he will keep this obstruction up, he told reporters, “We’ll see … Right now, the point here is that we’re not remotely satisfied.” That’s pretty close to the response Roy recently gave on whether he was gearing up to oust Johnson. “[T]hat’s not the road I prefer,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “[W]e’ll see what happens this week.”
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