Marjorie Taylor Greene aims to force vote to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson

May 1 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday stated her plan to try to force a vote to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson at some point next week, accusing him of "betraying" his conservative principles.

"So next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate," Green, R-Ga., promised Wednesday morning. "Absolutely calling it."

The effort to remove Johnson, R-La., signals further turmoil in the GOP-lead House during a presidential election year where voters are surely set to pick either President Joe Biden or Greene's ally, former President Donald Trump.

"I can't wait to see Democrats go out and support a Republican speaker and have to go home to their primaries and have to run for Congress again," Greene said at a press conference outside of the Capitol building in between two different pictures of Johnson embracing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

Greene in March had filed a motion to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson over his willingness to work with Democrats on a handful of issues and after his successful effort to advance a bipartisan budget plan to avert a government shutdown.

The motion is similar to the one that led to the ouster of former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that led to the House being paralyzed for weeks as it struggled to pick the next speaker before settling on Johnson.

But Greene's intent to remove the Louisiana Republican as speaker is very likely to fail before it gets to a vote.

After a Tuesday meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, of Massachusetts, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, of California, said House Democrats will vote to "table" Greene's motion to vacate the speakership.

The letter said that if Greene does go ahead to invoke the motion to vacate Johnson's chair, "it will not succeed."

"I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may," Greene said Wednesday behind a podium that had a sign which stated: "Hakeem Jeffries endorsed Mike Johnson the uniparty speaker."

Johnson in an interview with NewsNation's "The Hill" set to air Wednesday, was dismissive of Greene's effort to remove him as speaker.

"I don't think she is proving to be, no," Johnson said when asked if he thinks Greene is a "serious lawmaker."

"I don't spend a lot of time thinking about her," he says in the interview set to be viewed Wednesday.

But so far only two other House Republicans -- Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., -- have joined in Greene's effort to oust Johnson as speaker.

In April, Massie became the first House Republican after Greene to join her effort to oust Johnson when he said during a closed-door meeting of the GOP conference that he would publicly back Greene's motion to vacate in the effort to remove Johnson from the speakership.

Although there reportedly was very minimal reservation by Democrats to vote against Greene's proposal, it was made clear that their intent was not to specifically save Johnson's speakership but to kill Greene's plan by House procedures.

"None of the discussion that we had in caucus was about saving Mike Johnson," Aguilar told reporters after Tuesday's meeting of House Democrats.

"The underlying motion to vacate was not discussed. The motion to table was," Aguilar had said.

But Jeffries told his members to vote their conscience on the issue, according to sources in the room during Tuesday's meeting with House Democrats.

On Tuesday, Greene took to social media -- in response to Democrats' letter to shut down her motion -- to taunt Johnson and Democrats ahead of Wednesday's Capitol news conference to announce her plan to go ahead to force a vote.

"Mike Johnson is officially the Democrat Speaker of the House. Here is their official endorsement of his Speakership," she posted on X.

In their Tuesday letter, House Democrats said how for months "House Republicans irresponsibly delayed critical security assistance to our democratic allies in Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, while simultaneously blocking humanitarian assistance to civilians in harm's way in places like Gaza."

She called on Johnson to either resign, switch parties or "continue voting for Biden's open border invasion of America, endless wars, full term abortion on demand, trans agenda on children, warrantless spying on the American people, weaponizing government against President Trump and his supporters, and every other Democrat wishlist item he's handed over."

Greene wrote that "Americans deserve to see the Uniparty on full display. I'm about to give them their coming out party!" she said Tuesday.