GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called up a resolution to remove Republican Speaker Mike Johnson on the House floor Wednesday evening, a move that starts the clock to force a vote over ousting the Louisiana Republican from his leadership post. It's a major challenge to the speaker even though he is expected to prevail with help from Democrats.

Now that Greene has put the process in motion, the House will have to consider the issue within two legislative days. House GOP leaders are expected to quickly take up and move to kill Greene’s motion, which could happen as soon as today.

A floor vote to oust Johnson would require a majority to succeed, but a motion to table — or kill — the resolution is expected to be offered and voted on first.

In the wake of Johnson’s push to pass a major foreign aid package over the objections of hardline conservatives, House Democratic leadership announced that Democrats would help Johnson keep his job by voting to table if the issue arose.

A failed vote will give Johnson an opportunity to argue that it is time to move on from the issue. But support from Democrats will open Johnson up to even more criticism from his right flank.

There are still plenty of other GOP partisans who’ve made clear that they don’t want Trump in power — former Rep. Liz Cheney, former Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Mitt Romney, former Vice President Mike Pence, et al. — but they haven’t yet announced what they intend to do in the fall.

And then there’s the most interesting group of them all: Republicans who’ve taken the extra step of announcing their support for the Democratic incumbent. As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted this week:

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a frequent critic of Donald Trump’s lies about how election fraud cost him the 2020 election, endorsed President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. In an op-ed Monday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Duncan’s remarks read like a clarion call, urging sane conservatives not to align themselves with a self-centered wannabe authoritarian.

“Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan wrote......

I kept a close eye on this dynamic four years ago, and found quite a few GOP partisans — former Republican National Committee chairs, former Republican cabinet secretaries, former Republican governors and former Republican members of Congress — who publicly expressed support for the Biden-led Democratic ticket.

Will we see something comparable between now and Election Day 2024? Watch this space.

Soon after, the suspected felon said he would not be deterred by the prospect of jail time. In fact, as my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, Trump suggested he was prepared to “sacrifice” himself on the alter of the First Amendment.

“This judge has given me a gag order and said you’re going to jail if you violate it. And frankly, you know what? Our Constitution is much more important than jail,” he told reporters outside the courtroom later that day. “It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”

He did not appear to be kidding.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1787579798111322151

To be sure, the posturing wasn’t altogether new. It was just last month, for example, when Trump used his social media platform to declare that it would be a “great honor” to be jailed for violating a gag order. As part of the same boast, the former president compared himself — in apparent seriousness — to Nelson Mandela.

There are, however, two important things to keep in mind.

First, court-imposed gag orders are not unconstitutional. Trump is an accused criminal out on bond. As Judge Tanya Chutkan recently explained to one of the former president’s lawyers, the defendant is currently “under the supervision of the criminal justice system, and he must comply with the conditions of release. He does not have the right to say and do exactly as he pleases.”

Trump would have the public believe that his free speech rights have been curtailed, which has inspired him to champion the Constitution. That’s ridiculous.

Second, I can’t help but notice that the presumptive GOP nominee hasn’t exactly been eager to back up his chest-thumping with any actual, concrete steps.....

So, on the one hand, the public sees the former president presenting himself as a martyr, boasting about his eagerness to make a great “sacrifice,” and assuring Americans that it’d be a “great honor” to end up behind bars.

And on the other hand, the public also sees Trump sheepishly backing down, apparently terrified by the prospect of jail time.

It’s against this backdrop that Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is leading a new push — to defund special counsel Jack Smith’s office. Roll Call reported on the Georgia Republican’s clash with House Speaker Mike Johnson, and what she wants in exchange for letting him keep the gavel.

... Greene’s top priority, she said, was a promise to “defund” the office of special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith, who is pursuing the prosecution of former President Donald Trump on charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election and retaining classified documents.

This dovetails with related legislation from Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida that would have the effect of stripping funding from the prosecutor’s office.

Johnson, not surprisingly, hasn’t committed to defunding anything, though the Louisiana Republican appeared at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday, dismissed the overwhelming evidence prosecutors have assembled against Trump, and insisted that Congress would “address” the former president’s prosecutions “in every possible” way.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1787861735174734030

.....Simply as a matter of procedure, such a move would need to pass the Democratic-led Senate and be signed into law by President Joe Biden, and it’s probably safe to say that they’d have some concerns about defunding Smith’s office.

What’s more, it’s an open question as to whether such a measure could even pass the House: The GOP’s majority is tiny, and some Republican incumbents from competitive districts would likely be reluctant to link arms with their radical colleagues on such a gambit, especially knowing it would be ignored in the Senate.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that for some Republicans, this is a serious idea worthy of their time and consideration. Confronted with compelling evidence of alleged felonies, these GOP members believe the proper response is to not only intervene in ongoing criminal cases, but also to use the levers of power to defund prosecutors.

We continue to learn quite a bit about the contemporary Republican Party’s approach to the rule of law, and none of it’s good.

Late last week, however, the news wasn’t quite as great as it’s been recently: The preliminary data showed an economy that added 175,000 jobs in April, as the unemployment rate inched up, from 3.8% to 3.9%.

And it was at that point when Donald Trump, who told the public two days earlier that Biden-era job numbers should be seen as “fake,” seized on the data from April to claim that the White House is “destroying” the country.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1786418528184115259

......In fact, in Trump’s first year in the White House, the average number of jobs created by month was 176,000 — almost identical to the tally from last month. The average number of jobs created by month across the first three years of Trump term (before Covid) was 177,000, which, again, is nearly identical to the tally from last month, which he described as a “disaster.”

The total number of jobs created across Trump’s first three years was roughly 6.3 million, while the total number of jobs created across Biden’s first three years was roughly 14.7 million......

The only way to take the Republican’s rhetoric about job growth seriously is to ignore every relevant piece of information and forget everything we know about his own record.

In fact, in Trump’s first year in the White House, the average number of jobs created by month was 176,000 — almost identical to the tally from last month. The average number of jobs created by month across the first three years of Trump term (before Covid) was 177,000, which, again, is nearly identical to the tally from last month, which he described as a “disaster.”

The total number of jobs created across Trump’s first three years was roughly 6.3 million, while the total number of jobs created across Biden’s first three years was roughly 14.7 million.

The only way to take the Republican’s rhetoric about job growth seriously is to ignore every relevant piece of information and forget everything we know about his own record.