This is a developing story.
Democrats have saved Speaker Mike Johnson’s foreign aid package. In doing so, they also may have just sealed the fate of his speakership.
Just before midnight, Democrats on the Rules Committee sided with Republican supporters of the aid package to overcome the objections of Reps. Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, and Ralph Norman—the conservative representation on the Rules Committee. Johnson rushed the rule to the House floor on Friday morning, where Democrats once again sided with the Louisiana Republican. The rule passed on the floor by a vote of 316 to 94, with a majority of yes votes coming from Democrats (165 of them, in fact). Meanwhile, 55 Republicans objected to the rule. Any number of them could join Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Massie on a motion to vacate.
Rep. Warren Davidson was among the 55 Republican objectors. “My constituents in Ohio’s Eighth District are tired of broken promises by Speaker Johnson,” Davidson told The American Conservative in a written statement. “They know Republicans promised to fund a secure border and a smaller government. The Speaker must understand that passing more foreign aid without legitimate border security legislation hurts America. Speaker Johnson must do what he already promised to do.”
Johnson’s betrayal of his own conference is historic. As Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute told TAC yesterday, “It’s one thing for a rule to pass with Democrat support on the House floor. But it’s a different thing to force it out of Rules with minority votes. I don’t think that’s ever happened.”
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“This is worse than John Boehner. If you consider John Boehner the peak level of violence against conservatives,” she added.
“If he forces a rule out of the Rules Committee on the backs of Democrats to fund a war that his conference doesn’t want to fund,” Bovard said, then “nobody’s in charge at that point. You don’t have a majority party at that point.”
Fitting, then, that if there is no majority party that there may soon be no Speaker of the House. If Johnson remains, it will be because he is once again saved by Democrats.