Republican Representative Mike Gallagher announced Friday that he will leave Congress in just a few weeks, leaving his party’s majority in the House in its most precarious position yet.
Gallagher’s departure will leave House Republicans with 217 seats in the chamber, compared to Democrats’ 213. The GOP has already struggled to pass any legislation, and Gallagher’s resignation means the GOP now has just a one-vote majority. That number is likely to shrink even more in coming months as more Republican lawmakers leave early.
Gallagher was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party. A four-term lawmaker, he was chosen to lead the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Republicans also viewed the young Wisconsin representative as their “best shot” to unseat Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin.
But Gallagher had been at odds with his party on several key issues recently. He rejected the conspiracies that the 2020 election had been rigged, and slammed the January 6 insurrection as “banana republic crap” (although he ultimately voted against impeaching Donald Trump).
Crucially, in a stunning upset, Gallagher voted against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February.
“I whipped ‘no’ for over a month,” Gallagher said at the time, explaining he was worried his caucus didn’t have the votes to pass articles of impeachment and would just embarrass itself by plowing ahead.
Gallagher made his announcement the same day that Representative Ken Buck, one of the few other Republicans to oppose impeaching Mayorkas, leaves Congress. When he announced his early retirement last week, Buck had hinted that more Republican resignations were imminent.
“I think it’s the next three people that leave that they’re going to be worried about,” Buck said. Two more to go.
This article has been updated.
NBC raised eyebrows Friday when it announced that former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel will join the network as an on-air contributor.
McDaniel, who stepped down from the RNC at the start of this month, will provide conservative political analysis on NBC and its affiliate MSNBC. She makes her on-air debut on Sunday.
NBC News political coverage chief Carrie Budoff Brown explained that McDaniel was chosen because she can provide “an insider’s perspective on national politics and the future of the Republican Party.”
That insider knowledge is apparently enough for NBC to overlook the rest of McDaniel’s history. Although she disagreed with Donald Trump in recent months, McDaniel was still one of his biggest allies in the party. She repeatedly elevated his claims and conspiracies, including that the 2020 election had been rigged and that mail-in voting allowed for fraudulent ballots to be cast.
McDaniel was elected RNC chair in 2017, at first with Trump’s support, although the former president insisted she drop her maiden name (Romney) to win his support and show loyalty. She was reelected four times and helped to transform the party into the mirror of Trump that it is now.
But Trump eventually turned on her because she refused to crown him the Republican presidential nominee and instead opted for a contested primary. Trump eventually clinched the nomination on his own, but not before he decided he’d rather have two absolute loyalists at the helm of the RNC.
The GOP in general has also soured on McDaniel because she failed massively at the two main parts of her job: fundraising and winning elections—thanks in large part to her embrace of Donald Trump.
By the end of October, the RNC had a little more than $9.1 million in its coffers, the smallest amount in nearly a decade. McDaniel insisted there was “nothing unusual” about the low funds.
Republicans also suffered wave after wave of bruising losses, from the 2022 midterm elections to, most recently, the special election for former representative and serial fabulist George Santos’s seat in New York. The party has largely blamed McDaniel for the defeats, even as many of the failed candidates mostly embraced Trump’s policies and talking points.
So, given the facts that McDaniel was both bad at her job and is now on the outs with her own party, it’s unclear what analysis of value she has to offer NBC. Instead, her hiring looks more like a shameless grab for viewers.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday, offering a sudden challenge to his leadership after supporting his bid for the role just four months ago.
The Georgia lawmaker reportedly filed the motion to vacate Johnson just moments before the House of Representatives voted to pass a $1.2 trillion omnibus bill. It is not yet clear if Greene filed the motion as privileged, which would require time on the House floor.
Moments after the news broke, Greene claimed she’s not yet calling for Johnson to vacate while acknowledging the motion’s filing. Instead, Greene considers it a “warning” and a “pink slip.”
“I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and throw the House in chaos,” Greene told a crush of reporters outside the Capitol building. “But this is basically a warning and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time, and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.”
Still, even though it’s a warning, Greene did concede that she will force the vote.
“There’s not a time limit on this,” she continued.
“But I’m not saying that that won’t happen in two weeks or it won’t happen in a month or who knows when,” she said. “But I am saying the clock has started, it’s time for our conference to........