Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is reportedly weighing a plot to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson before she retires in early January and is quietly gauging if she has the nine votes inside the Republican party to trigger a vote.
“Marjorie is approaching members to get to nine who will oust the speaker,” an anonymous source told MS Now. “And if we don’t get to work on codifying Trump’s agenda, anything can happen.”
Greene, who plans to leave Congress after her dramatic public feud with Donald Trump over the Epstein files, denied the outlet’s reporting, calling it “not true.”
The Georgia Republican previously tried to oust Johnson last year in protest at a foreign aid deal for Ukraine, and she has been a consistent critic of Johnson’s work throughout the second Trump administration this year.
She has accused the “weak” speaker of lacking a plan to lower healthcare costs, unnecessarily keeping the House out of session during the government shutdown, and sidelining GOP women throughout the controversy over the Epstein files and beyond.
It’s unclear if she would have the support to pursue the alleged leadership shake-up plan this time around, though there have been stirrings of discontent from within the party against Johnson.
Earlier this month, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is running for governor of New York, told The Wall Street Journal that Johnson lacks support.
“He certainly wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” she said. “I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership. It’s that widespread.”
Greene’s announcement she would retire prompted other Republicans to speak anonymously of widespread dissatisfaction within the caucus.
“More explosive early resignations are coming,” one unnamed senior House Republican told Punchbowl News last month. “It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower.”
Johnson himself has acknowledged the often-chaotic atmosphere inside the House.
“I haven’t had a vacation day in two years. I haven’t been off in two years, literally,” he recently said on a podcast. “Last Christmas, I was taking calls from members with their drama. It takes everything out of whomever serves in the position, and by extension, their family.”
“You’re sort of like a firefighter, in a way,” he added. “You put out fires every hour.”
President Trump, for his part, has said he approves of Johnson’s work, calling him a “fantastic speaker” this week and praising his ability to hold together a “very small majority.”
The GOP’s slim majority in the House is under press going into the 2026 mid-term elections, amid widespread concern over affordability and healthcare costs, the latter issue for which the Republican party still has not settled on a long-promised plan.
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