The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a rules package on Friday that will make it far more difficult to remove a speaker, among other provisions.
Under the new rules package, which cleared the lower chamber in a near-party-line vote, 215-209, a motion to vacate the chair will require a minimum of nine members of the speaker’s same party backing the effort in order to receive a vote.
The threshold for a vote on a motion to vacate had previously been one.
Republican factions reached a deal on the rule change in November as par of an effort to avoid a repeat of the mutiny against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that brought business in the lower chamber to a standstill for some three weeks in 2023.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) exploited the single-lawmaker threshold to force a vote on his motion to vacate the chair, which passed after 208 Democrats and eight Republicans voted in favor of removing McCarthy as House speaker.
The change in the rules package comes hours after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who survived a vote to depose him last April — was re-elected to another term.
Johnson, 52, was surprisingly elected on the first ballot despite several Republicans, unsatisfied with how the speaker handled recent negotiations to keep the government funded, indicating in the days leading up to the vote that they were undecided on his candidacy.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the only GOP member to vote against Johnson after two other Republicans — Reps. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) — flipped their votes at the last minute.
The rules package also included provisions to dissolve the congressional Diversity & Inclusion Office and rename the “House Committee on Oversight and Accountability” as “the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform;” and the “Office of Congressional Ethics” as the “Office of Congressional Conduct.”
In addition to those adjustments, the rules package tees up votes on several GOP-backed pieces of legislation, including a border security bill and a measure demanding proof of citizenship to vote in elections, which already passed the House last year but wasn’t taken up in the Senate.
