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EXCLUSIVE: Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is signaling openness to making it harder for House lawmakers to punish each other via a censure resolution.
The congressional leader sat down for an interview with Fox News Digital on Friday, the first week the House returned since the beginning of the 43-day government shutdown began on Oct. 1.
But the five-day legislative week was marked by volatile politics, with three separate lawmakers forcing votes on rebuking one of their colleagues — out of five total threats to do so.
“There is a large groundswell of bottom up consternation about that. The members are so frustrated by what this has become — and I mean across the Republican conference, and I think on the Democrat side as well,” Johnson said. “I’ve told everybody I’m open to those discussions, because I’m more frustrated than anyone about how this is devolved. I think we’ve got to protect the institution.”
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Johnson said those talks have focused specifically on raising the threshold it takes to push a censure.
Currently, any one lawmaker can introduce a censure resolution against another. Both Republicans and Democrats have also wielded a mechanism this week known as a “privileged resolution” to force an immediate vote on rebuking a colleague.
Johnson said there’s “a lot of ideas” being floated on changing the system.
“I’ve had members from across the conference bringing me their thoughts and ideas on that, and we’ll be going through that in a deliberative fashion to figure out what makes the most sense,” he said.
The speaker did not directly commit to a House-wide vote on legislation to change the rule on censure, but he said, “I think most of the discussion thus far, again this is coming from members, is that we should raise the threshold so that it can’t just be a one-off individual quest by someone. You’ve got to have some agreement by some small group of members to do it.”
“That would probably make it a more meaningful and useful tool, and not one that’s abused,” Johnson said. “We don’t have consensus around any particular idea, but it is something that the vast majority of the members of the body are talking about right now.”
He also pushed back on media reports that suggested he wanted to change rules around discharge petitions, another mechanism rank-and-file lawmakers can use to force their will on House leaders.
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Johnson said it was not something he was even considering at the moment.
A discharge petition allows lawmakers to initiate a vote on a measure despite leadership’s objections, provided that petition has support from a majority of the House.
It was most recently used successfully by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., on a bill forcing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Johnson ended up voting for the bill along with all but one House lawmaker, despite airing concerns about its language possibly not doing enough to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims and other innocent people whose names may be caught up in the process.
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He told Fox News Digital, however, that he is not looking at making changes to that process.
“Somebody quoted me as saying, ‘I’m going to raise the threshold for discharges’, but that hasn’t even been part of the discussion and not something that I’ve anticipated,” Johnson said. “This discussion has been solely focused on the censure, because it’s so commonly used now.”
Censures are traditionally a rare rebuke reserved for the most egregious instances of violating House decorum. They’ve been used more and more frequently, however, in today’s increasingly tense political environment.
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