Marjorie Taylor Greene will not drop threat to oust House speaker, aide says

Anyone who thinks Marjorie Taylor Greene will drop her threat to force the removal of the Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, is “high, drunk, or simply out of their mind”, a senior aide to the far-right Georgia congresswoman said.

“That’s absurd,” her deputy chief of staff Nick Dyer told Politico, adding that Greene was “not going to tell the press” her plans for activating the motion to vacate she filed more than a month ago.

“Anyone who is saying she is backing down is high, drunk, or simply out of their mind.”

Congress returned to Washington on Monday with Greene’s threat hanging over the speaker, her fellow Republican.

Greene filed the motion after Johnson oversaw passage of a government spending bill with Democratic support.

Since then, the speaker has angered far-right Republicans further by overseeing passage of aid to Ukraine, the reauthorisation of government surveillance powers and other moves reliant on Democratic support or seen as too civil to the other party.

Johnson must govern with a tiny majority after his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, became the first speaker ejected by his own party when extreme-right Republicans rebelled last October.

But though Johnson has a hard-right record himself, and was involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, he retains support from the former president and from Democrats set to vote to keep him in his post if Greene decides to strike. Whether Johnson could survive being seen as reliant on Democrats is an open question.

On Sunday, Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, told MSNBC: “The idea of allowing Marjorie Taylor Greene, someone who literally, you know, would let the world burn, you know, with her isolationist foreign policy who has talked about