House To Consider Raising Threshold For ‘Motion To Vacate’ Against Speaker

House Republicans unveiled on Wednesday a rules package for the 119th Congress that, if adopted, would make it more difficult to cast out a speaker for at least the next two years.

Lawmakers in the lower chamber are slated to consider the measure on Friday after the House votes on the speakership. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is running to keep the gavel and has been “working the phones” over the Christmas break while some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have been searching for an alternative pick or discussing possible concessions from the current speaker, according to Punchbowl News.

Near the top of the 36-page rules package is a provision requiring nine majority party members to initiate a privileged “motion to vacate” the speaker of the House. That would be a sizable increase from the current threshold of one member who could force a no-confidence vote that could lead to a speaker’s ouster. CBS News reported that leaders of the Freedom Caucus and the Main Street Caucus announced in November that they had reached a deal on raising the threshold.

Lawmakers have tinkered with the threshold for the motion-to-vacate procedure multiple times over the past several years. A Democrat-led House changed the rule in 2019, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) began her second stint as speaker, to do away with a one-member threshold in favor of requiring a majority of either party to bring a motion to vacate to the House floor after Republicans filed one against then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in 2015 before he eventually stepped down.

But the House rules package approved for the next Congress, agreed upon by a new GOP majority that secured then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) the speaker’s gavel following 15 rounds of voting in January 2023, restored the ability of a single member to trigger the process that could lead to a no-confidence vote in the speaker. And, by early October 2023, the House had booted McCarthy from the role after the House passed a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown.

A weeks-long stalemate ended in late October 2023 when the House elected Johnson as its 56th speaker. Johnson is now running to stay in the role boosted by President-elect Donald Trump‘s endorsement but is also facing resistance from a couple of Republicans holding out support after yet another clash over spending. A simple majority is needed for victory. The GOP narrowly won control of the House in the 2024 election, and it was, as of Wednesday, unclear if any Democrats would cross the aisle and support Johnson.

The new rules package has a number of other provisions beyond tweaking the motion-to-vacate threshold, including the authorization of subpoenas related to investigations into President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, setting up consideration of a dozen bills that focus on issues ranging from immigration to imposing sanctions in response to the International Criminal Court going after any “protected person” of the United States and its allies and renaming the Office of Congressional Ethics to the Office of Congressional Conduct.