Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation from Congress is exposing the deep fissures and roiling discontent in the GOP’s ranks. Two days after becoming eligible for a lifetime pension, and amid continued feuding with her former idol and the broader MAGA movement, she announced her plans to quit the House of Representatives.
Where will she direct her prodigious energies moving forward? Cable news punditry, perhaps? A 2028 run, almost certainly. Will she become a new figurehead for those mystical “moderate” Republican women often sidelined by their male peers?
Wherever she lands, and whoever she lands on, it’s likely to impact the extremely tight, seriously stressed GOP majority—218 to 214 once she leaves in January. It’s widely predicted that the party will lose its majority in the House come next year’s midterms. But will it even survive that long? A special election on Tuesday in Tennessee to fill a very red seat will likely stay Republican, but not by double digits. Democrats have overperformed in a series of special elections, and there could be more challenges as Republicans who see their power ebbing and think Trump has gone too far will be looking for the exits.
It’s called getting out while the getting’s good. But unlike the Senate, where vacancies are quickly filled by gubernatorial appointments, the House requires a special election, which leaves any given seat empty for at least a month.
MTG singled out Speaker Mike Johnson for blame, highlighting how he shut down the House for two months to avoid the Epstein vote, blocking members from doing their work in Washington while collecting their taxpayer-funded salaries at home. (She has also lambasted Johnson for his failure to address how unaffordable life is becoming for many Americans.) Once praised for his ability to keep his most conservative members in line while pacifying more moderate members, it’s clear Johnson has run out of string.
“He’s been a weak Speaker, but because the leader of the party is such a forceful leader, it almost doesn’t matter,” said Dave Wasserman, Senior Editor and Election Analyst at the Cook Political Report. Until now. Johnson’s duck-and-cover approach to the job worked for a time when Trump was riding high, but deflection only goes so far.
Members of the GOP caucus across the political spectrum are furious that Johnson has consistently put the White House’s interests ahead of theirs. And now they’re fighting back. He was embarrassed by the discharge petition that allowed the rank and file to bring the Epstein files to the floor over his opposition. Members also used a discharge petition to allow parents of newborns to appoint a proxy vote earlier this year—and another, to force a vote to ban members from insider stock trading, is in the works.
It’s not only Johnson who’s running out of string. After Democrats caved to end the government shutdown, Trump claimed victory. But the spotlight shone on Obamacare premium increases did its job, laying clear the financial burden it would lay on Americans and prompting Trump to propose extending subsidies for two years (coupled with some cost-savings the GOP would, theoretically, like).
But according to The Wall Street Journal, Johnson was left to call Trump with word that House Republicans would not support such a deal. The White House was forced in turn into a damaging retreat in turn, even as a KFF poll showed 74 percent of Americans saying Congress should extend the subsidies—including 50 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of MAGA Republicans.
(The same poll shows almost three-quarters of those surveyed would blame Trump and the GOP if the subsidies are not extended, compared to just 23 percent who would blame Democrats.)
Oh, the irony. Just as Trump is trying to do the right thing, offering an olive branch to the 22 million people about to be priced out of their insurance, his own followers won’t do his bidding.
If he wonders why that is, he should look at the damning insight offered by a senior unnamed House Republican in a recent interview with Punchbowl News: “This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen,” the lawmaker raged. “That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file.”
This anonymous Republican says the “arrogance” of the White House team is “off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened… Morale has never been lower.”
An overall disrespect for public service, nurtured by the Trump administration, has cast a pall on Congress. “There’s a sense among Republicans that they’ve gotten done what they’re going to get done under this president,” said Wasserman.
And then there are the mostly unspoken security concerns. “Members’ families don’t want them to hold town halls and be in public following what we saw in Minnesota and Utah,” says Wasserman, alluding to the killings of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband and their dog this past July, and the murder of Charlie Kirk in September. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, an up-and-coming legislator from Maine who worked across party lines, announced early this month he would not be running for reelection, citing “increasing incivility” and recent acts of political violence.
When MTG said she had received death threats, Trump said he didn’t think her life was in danger, adding, “I don’t think anybody cares about her.” He’s wrong about that. Her successful challenge to the powers that be has exposed the weakness of both puppet and puppet master. And it makes her a force to be reckoned with, too.
That puppet, in Johnson, is likely to stay put—since nobody else wants the job. He is not the first speaker to lose the confidence of his caucus, but would be the first to lose the majority outright if special elections don’t go his way. Former Speaker John Boehner fought off multiple coup attempts from right-wing diehards before he stepped down in 2015, mid-Congress, singing “Zippity-doo-dah!” Can Johnson find a similarly happy tune, whether he stays or goes? Unlikely.
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