House Democratic leadership announced Tuesday that they’ll allow members to block any effort from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and her tiny team of nihilists to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, a reminder of where the power sits in the House.
“We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-TX) said in a statement.
Even among Republicans Greene’s tantrums have been wearing thin for a few weeks now, but since she had Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Thomas Massie of Kentucky as cosponsors, the theoretical threat remained real—Johnson’s margin of error is that small.
So Greene has continued the bombast.
“Johnson will do whatever Biden/Schumer want in order to keep the Speaker’s gavel in his hand, but he has completely sold out the Republican voters who gave us the majority,” she tweeted Sunday. “His days as Speaker are numbered.”
Republicans feared Greene would make her move Tuesday, but as she and Massie were going into a meeting with the House parliamentarian, she said that “the plan is still being developed.” Then she and Massie left, telling reporters that they had been “developing plans.”
Maybe the speaker’s days aren’t so numbered after all, at least not by her doing. There’s always the possibility that more Republicans will quit, turning the majority officially over to Democrats, but it won’t be through Greene’s efforts. Even Freedom Caucus loud-mouth Chip Roy of Texas says it would be a mistake.
“I do not believe that is the direction that the American people want us to take right now,” he told reporters Monday.
That’s likely in part because Donald Trump has given Johnson his support, twice in two weeks, and he rules their world.
Once the fever broke on Ukraine aid and Johnson was forced to do the right thing, most of them, particularly Johnson, have had to accept the reality that Democrats have control where it matters, making sure that the government continues to function and critical legislation gets passed.
But leader Jeffries wants to make sure that Johnson remembers it’s on their sufferance.
“Mike Johnson doesn’t need too many Democratic friends,” Jeffries toldThe New York Times.
He also quipped that Johnson is lucky to have the enemies that he does.
“[Greene] is one of the best things the speaker has going for him because so many people find her insufferable,” he said.
But does Democratic intervention make Johnson weaker among Republicans?
“Republicans will have to work that out on their end,” Jeffries said. “The reality of this particular Congress is that we are functioning in a manner consistent with a bipartisan governing coalition in order to get things done for the American people.”
And Jeffries isn’t going to let Johnson forget it.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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World Leaders Plan Walkout Protest During Trump’s Davos Address
Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.
Several attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland are planning to walk out of President Donald Trump’s speech at the summit on Friday afternoon, in protest of his recent reported remarks about countries whose citizens he deems undesirable immigrants.
In an open letter, Business Leadership South Africa CEO Bonang Mohale denounced Trump’s alleged statement, confirmed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, that more immigrants from “countries like Norway” should come to the U.S. instead of people from “shithole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations.
When Trump arrives in Davos, Mohale wrote, “it will be clear exactly what it is you mean when you lay out your ‘America First’ doctrine. Rather than the laudable ethos upon which modern America is built, namely a nation of immigrants free to strive for excellence and success, regardless of their provenance, it appears you want to pull up the drawbridge for people who are not white, and engineer an exclusive, less diverse America.”
Mohale did not name other attendees who will be boycotting the speech, but said several leaders plan to walk out and encouraged “likeminded peers to do the same.”
According to Quartz, “Leaving Trump’s speech after he starts is probably more powerful than boycotting it entirely, some Davos attendees speculate.”
African business leaders have called on Trump to address and apologize for his comments. The president has denied denigrating African countries, and said of the reports only that he is “not a racist,” while the White House dismissed the incident as evidence of Trump’s “passionate” views on immigration.
Mohale acknowledged Trump’s plummeting approval ratings in the U.S., noting that many in the international community view the president as separate from the broader U.S. population.
“It’s encouraging to us that so many of your countrymen and women, who treasure this ideal of the U.S.—including many from within your own Republican party—are already rejecting your monochrome vision. We join hands with them, in the same spirit of solidarity that many of your citizens showed in rejecting Apartheid and isolating those who sought to entrench racism, segregation and discrimination.”
At Davos, Trump will meet one-on-one with Rwandan president Paul Kagame—also the head of the African Union, which condemned Trump’s comments after they were reported.
The AU demanded “a retraction of the comment as well as an apology, not only to the Africans, but to all people of African descent around the globe.