After securing a second term with the gavel, House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to go two weeks without creating an avoidable and unnecessary mess for himself. Unfortunately for the Louisiana Republican, it’s time to reset the clock.
On Wednesday, for reasons he struggled to explain, Johnson ended Republican Rep. Mike Turner’s tenure as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The speaker claimed that he wasn’t acting at Donald Trump’s behest, but the demoted Ohioan told CBS News that Johnson cited “concerns from Mar-a-Lago” when explaining the decision.
A day later, as NBC News reported, the GOP leader chose Turner’s successor.
Speaker Mike Johnson said he selected Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., to serve as the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, one day after Johnson made the stunning decision to oust Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, from the role. Crawford has maintained a low profile during his 14 years on Capitol Hill. In the last Congress, Crawford, a retired Army sergeant, was chairman of the Intelligence subcommittee that oversaw the Central Intelligence Agency.
As for the biggest difference between Crawford and Turner, one thing stands out: The ousted chair of House Intelligence panel championed U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, while his successor from Arkansas voted against aid to our Ukrainian allies.
What’s more, the House speaker introduced several new, Trump-friendly GOP members who’ll now join the committee, including Reps. Ben Cline of Virginia, Pat Fallon of Texas, Greg Steube of Florida, Claudia Tenney of New York and Ann Wagner of Missouri.
It led Politico to describe the developments as Johnson giving the committee a “MAGA makeover.”
Not surprisingly, congressional Democrats were disgusted, especially in light of the fact that the Intelligence panel has traditionally been one of Capitol Hill’s most serious and apolitical bodies. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a written statement describing the speaker’s moves as “shameful,” while Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “totally flabbergasted” by the developments.
But the pushback was not, strictly speaking, a partisan affair. Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, noted that Johnson’s move “left him with an extraordinarily angry House Intelligence committee.” Fox News’ Chad Pergram added, “It is hard to understate the level of anger from some House Republicans at House Speaker Mike Johnson” over his handling of the matter. One GOP member said plainly that the speaker “cost himself some political capital” by ousting Turner as committee chair without cause. Of particular interest at this point is what the aggrieved former committee chair does in the aftermath of Johnson’s decision. Given the vanishingly small GOP majority in the chamber, the speaker might come to regret treating Turner so unfairly. “I think Turner will burn the House down,” one House Republican told NBC News. “He will be a no vote on everything. I mean, he just got totally f—–.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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