House Republicans announced Wednesday night an agreement to raise the threshold to invoke a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, in exchange for amendment changes.
The motion to vacate rule currently allows just a single member of Congress to call for a no-confidence vote against the speaker. The new agreement raises that threshold to nine.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus and governing-focused GOP Main Street Caucus had been in talks – along with Speaker Mike Johnson – about changes to the motion to vacate, according to three Republicans involved in the discussions. An internal party rule change would defuse the procedural weapon used to remove Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, from power. In exchange, GOP lawmakers would not push for changes that would punish members for voting against rule.
If Johnson can successfully raise the threshold, it would eliminate a key problem for him in the next Congress, where CNN projected on Wednesday that Republicans will have a majority in the House. The GOP conference would need to approve the deal on Thursday.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said the new agreement would be able to “eliminate the controversial issues” in order to “deliver on” President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
“We know who our speaker designate is right now, and we’ve been able to work across the conference to eliminate the controversial issues that could have divided us and move forward together to deliver on the president’s agenda,” Harris said. “That’s it. That’s what the American people expect us to do, and the first steps were taken today, very concrete steps.”
South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, a member of the Main Street group, said the agreement will remove amendments “that probably would have divided this conference.”
“We had an opportunity to set the motion to vacate at a higher than number one, that motion to vacate will be set at nine in return for getting rid of some amendments that probably would have divided this conference. Andy did a good job of explaining to Main Street leadership why those amendments would have divided the Republican conference,” Johnson said.
The motion to vacate is a rarely used procedural tool – and McCarthy is the only speaker to have been ousted through the passage of a resolution to remove them. But threats over its use can be a powerful way to apply pressure to a speaker.
To win over critics and secure the speaker’s gavel last year, McCarthy and his allies made a series of concessions to conservatives, which included restoring the ability of any one member to offer a motion to vacate. House Republicans removed McCarthy as speaker in October 2023 and, after three weeks of infighting, elected Johnson to lead the conference.
