Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) stunning decision to resign from Congress sets off a political grenade for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as he works to keep his grip on an already delicate GOP majority in the House.
Greene’s decision comes at a pivotal moment for Johnson, who is counting on every Republican vote to pass key funding bills by the end of January to avert another costly government shutdown. It also comes as he’s looking to advance other measures central to President Trump’s agenda.
Greene’s resignation on its own doesn’t change how many votes Johnson can afford to lose on any party-line vote. The GOP’s 219-213 majority means he can afford to lose two Republican votes on any legislation, assuming that all members are present and Democrats are unified in opposition. And that calculus is not expected to change much in the weeks ahead.
Republicans are favored to win the Tennessee special election to fill the seat vacated by former Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) on Dec. 2, maintaining Johnson’s two-vote cushion after Greene’s departure on Jan. 5. A Jan. 31 Texas special election runoff that Democrats will likely prevail in also keeps that number at two.
But the Georgia Republican’s departure could nonetheless complicate things.
Johnson has already struggled to unify his conference, most recently during a vote on the Jeffrey Epstein files that occurred after a small group of Republicans, including Greene, joined with Democrats to force his hand. He’s also contending with growing resistance from Republicans who have signaled they are willing to buck him on issues related to a congressional stock trading ban and sanctions on Russia.
Greene’s move could embolden her colleagues to challenge the Speaker on key legislation, or even reconsider their own term in Congress.
To be sure, Johnson has repeatedly shown he can corral his fractious conference to pass legislation in the face of strident internal opposition, including funding bills and Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“Mike Johnson as Speaker has never known easy. He has never had a working majority during his entire tenure,” said Republican strategist Brian Robinson. “So it’s certainly nothing new, and with such a razor-thin majority, you’re going to have wins and losses, and because you still have to govern, you still have to get things done. So I think that they have to take risks that you wouldn’t take if you had a majority that was in the 230s or 240s as far as putting something on the floor that may or may not pass.”
But Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill that Republicans will “deal with it,” just as they have done in the past.
“We never counted on Democrat votes anyway,” Norman said. “So the fact that it’s closer, we still have the gavel, we still have the ability to navigate the way the legislation should go, and to push what President Trump is doing, which is a good thing. So would it be better to have her in there voting with us? Yes, and she has for the most part, up until recently, she’s gotten on opposite ends of the spectrum with the president, but on the major issues, she’s been with us. But you know, it is what it is. She made her decision based on her situation. So, you know, we’ll deal with it.”
So far, Congress has passed three full-year appropriations bills, which fund military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch through Sept. 30. One of Johnson’s biggest challenges will be passing nine appropriations bills or a short-term stopgap measure to fund the rest of the government by Jan. 30.
If the votes occur after Greene leaves, Johnson will have one fewer Republican in the chamber. He can already anticipate opposition from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a conservative fiscal hawk.
Funding isn’t the only item on Johnson’s agenda, though. He told Fox News Digital last week that he wants to codify Trump’s executive orders through the end of the year, continue “doing regulatory reform to end the Biden-era regulations,” and make headway on Trump’s affordability agenda.
“There’s a lot of initiatives left on the table, things for us to do and a short amount of time to do it in. But we’re really bullish about the ideas that we’re bringing forward over the next few weeks and in the coming months about reducing the cost of living,” Johnson said.
His leadership will be put to the test these next few months in achieving these initiatives, amid other challenges he faces from within his caucus.
Some Republicans have filed discharge petitions, a rarely used mechanism aimed at forcing floor action on widely supported bipartisan legislation, following the success of the Epstein petition endorsed by Greene.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told The Hill last week that she is ready to introduce a discharge petition on the issue of a congressional stock trading ban. And Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) last week submitted a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation imposing punishing sanctions on countries enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Any move from Johnson to oppose these petitions could spark a fierce battle, as his slim majority leaves him vulnerable to even a handful of defections.
But at “some point, if you have a mass majority in the House to include Democrats … the will of the House will win,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who’s helping lead the effort with Fitzpatrick. Trump said late last week that he was OK with a vote on the legislation, dubbed the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025.
The temperament of the House has also gotten “ugly,” Bacon said. Just last week, Democrats and Republicans voted on measures to rebuke their colleagues.
The congressional gridlock in the past few months has pushed some members to retire, seek other offices or resign from their current role.
Greene said in her statement, “Americans are used by the Political Industrial Complex of both Political Parties, election cycle after election cycle, in order to elect whichever side can convince Americans to hate the other side more. And the results are always the same. No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman.”
And some Republicans seemed to be in agreement with her. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) wrote on the social platform X, “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of truth to what Marjorie had to say. I can’t blame her for leaving this institution that has betrayed the American people.”
Should members choose to mirror Greene’s decision, the Republican margin would narrow even more.
However, Bacon said Greene’s exit is in a way good for Johnson.
“I do think that in the longer run, this is going to strengthen his hand,” Bacon said. “You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the biggest nemeses of Speaker Johnson, and we have a chance to be a stronger team because we’ll be less divided in the long run.”