Speaker Johnson warns that effort to oust him ‘would be chaos in the House’

By Kristin Wilson, Haley Talbot and Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson warned on Wednesday that an effort to oust him from his leadership post would not be helpful for the Republican majority and “would be chaos in the House.”

Johnson, who has faced pushback from conservatives over his handling of government funding, argued that it was important to keep the government open and cautioned against any push to strip him of the gavel.

“It doesn’t serve our interest, I didn’t think, to not fund the government and shut it down at this critical time,” he said at a news conference. The speaker went on to say, “That just wasn’t an option. I don’t think that would be helpful to us from a political standpoint for the Republican Party to continue to govern, to maintain, keep and then grow our majority in November. I thought that would have been a great hindrance to it. And so that wouldn’t be helpful, and nor does the motion to vacate help us in that regard either. It would be chaos in the House.”

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to remove Johnson from the speakership, but has not yet moved to force a vote on it.

Johnson and Greene met on Wednesday after the House GOP leadership news conference.

After meeting with Johnson, Greene said she aired her grievances with him and told him not to move forward with any aid to Ukraine and to drop his FISA plans. Leadership has been seeking to adance a FISA reauthorization and reform bill in the chamber this week.

“He does not have my support and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine. Those are the two things that we’ll all be watching,” she told CNN’s Manu Raju.

She declined to say when she would move forward with a vote to push Johnson from the speakership. Greene said, “he discussed having a kitchen cabinet group that would be a group of advisers for him, asked me if I was interested and I said I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.”

Specifically, the congresswoman said she told the speaker not to move forward on a FISA bill that allows for warrantless surveillance and, separately, aid for Ukraine.

“There’s two issues that are coming up, they’re extremely important: FISA and Ukraine. If he funds the deep state and the warrantless spying on Americans, he’s telling Republican voters all over the country that the continued behavior will happen more,” she said.

She added: “Number two, the funding of Ukraine must end. We are not responsible for a war in Ukraine. We’re responsible for the war on our border, and I made that clear to Speaker Johnson.”

Johnson has attempted to ease tensions amid the threat over his ouster. “With regard to Marjorie Taylor Greene, she’s a colleague, I’ve always considered her a friend,” he said at the earlier news conference. “Marjorie and I don’t disagree, I think, on any matter of philosophy – we’re both conservatives, but we do disagree sometimes on strategy with regard to what we put on the floor and when.”

In midst of FISA fight, Johnson still keeps options open on Ukraine

As the fight over FISA intensifies and takes center stage this week, Johnson continues to keep his options open on the best way to pursue additional aid for Ukraine even as he faces threats against his job from Greene. Sources close to the process told CNN that Johnson has not made any decisions on the path forward and instead is maintaining an open line of communication with his members.

Johnson has also continued to keep a line of communication open with the White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Given the divide in the GOP on the issue of Ukraine, it’s expected that if Johnson decides to actually move on aid for the country, he’ll need Democratic votes to pass it.

It’s yet another sign that Johnson faces no good options on Ukraine. If he moves forward with a Senate-passed bill, which is improbable but what Democrats are pressing him to do, he’d be attacked by his right flank and possibly face his ouster. If he pushes for changes that could satisfy some conservatives, he’s likely to come up short of the votes he needs in the House and the bill would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Johnson has publicly floated several ideas to use money from seized Russian assets for Ukraine, to structure some of the payments to Ukraine as a loan and to ease lieuqfied natural gas exports to try and win over Republicans. But threading the needle between getting some conservative wins and getting enough Democratic votes to get the bill over the finish line remains a complicated pursuit.

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