Between recesses, the House elected MAGA Mike Johnson to be speaker. As we have already seen, the first thing he did was call for a resolution giving Israel a blank check to commit genocide in Gaza. Then he recessed the House until Wednesday. And the first think he wants to deal with when they get back to work is… Israel. (He also claims Moses was in the House chamber when he was elected speaker. What makes him less crazy than the Maine MAGA-mass murdered who also claimed he was hearing voices?)
But there is a way for a member to get around him and get something onto the floor that isn’t about Israel: a privileged resolution, which has to be voted on within 2 legislative days of its introduction (and can only be debated for an hour)… and three members have done so. Privileged resolutions that have to be voted on Wednesday or Thursday:
1- Anthony D’Esposito's to expel George Santos
2- Marjorie Traitor Greene's to censure Rashida Tlaib for comments about Israel
3 Becca Balint's to censure Traitor Greene for racism and all the other crackpottery she’s going off about all the time.
In fact, it's worth watching Vermont progressive Democrat Balint introduce the Traitor Greene measure on the floor of Congress. It realy is masterful and sums Traitor Greene up to a T:
After Balint made that terrific speech, Marjorie Traitor Greene tried to belittle it: “I don’t know who this freshman Democrat is. They must have terrible fundraising numbers because they’re pulling some ridiculous stunt… Looks like four pages of slander, because I looked at the first few lines and I was like, ‘That’s not even true.’”
MAGA Mike has already said he opposes expelling Santos because the GOP majority is too small. He has the discretion to rule that a resolution is not privileged, but he’s unlikely to do that in this case. He also has the discretion to postpone the vote on a privileged resolution for up to 10 legislative days but, in practice, it’s rare for a privileged resolution to be postponed for more than a few days. Or he can have it referred to committee, though that would take a vote of the full House and I’m guessing that’s what they plan to do, at least in the Santos case, which too many Republicans just do not want to have recorded votes on.