The package also formally disbands the Diversity and Inclusion Office and restores gendered language to the House rules.
A rules package that will make it harder to remove the House speaker was passed in the chamber along party lines on Jan. 3.
The 215–209 vote happened hours after Republicans handed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) the gavel, entrusting him with steering the party’s historically narrow majority.
Under the rules of the previous Congress, a single member of either party could force a vote on a motion to vacate the speaker. The new policy not only increases that threshold to nine members, but also stipulates that those members must be from the majority party.
“A vote for these rules means that only Republicans have the ability to call for the removal of a speaker,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said on the House floor.
“They are doing something totally unprecedented for the first time in history. They are changing the rules to take away a basic right of the minority. That’s nuts.”
Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) said the majority is simply exercising its right to make rule changes.
“I know it’s been a while since they’ve been in the majority, but when you win the majority, you do have the opportunity to make the rules,” Houchin said.
The “motion to vacate” change was the result of intraparty negotiations between two of the GOP’s most prominent factions—the conservative Freedom Caucus and the more centrist Main Street Caucus.
The Freedom Caucus was instrumental in securing the previous one-member requirement in 2023 in exchange for allowing former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to become speaker. That deal was McCarthy’s undoing, paving the way for his ouster later that year.
Johnson survived a similar challenge last May, and in the run-up to Jan. 3, it appeared he might not have the votes to secure reelection. But with the help of President-elect Donald Trump, he managed to sway two of three final holdouts to change their votes and elect him as speaker.
“The president was real helpful,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of those initial holdouts, told The Epoch Times of his phone conversation with Trump.
“His message to me: Mike is the only one that’s got the likability factor to be elected speaker. I get that.”
Norman said Johnson assured him and Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) that he would fight to implement the incoming president’s agenda and allow more voices at the table during spending negotiations.
“In that small room, he convinced me and Keith—Keith was a hard nut and I was a hard nut—and he said, ‘I will. I will do that. Just give me the chance,’” Norman said.
Aside from bolstering Johnson’s position, the 37-page rules package also formally dissolves the House’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, restores the use of gendered language, renames the Office of Congressional Ethics to the Office of Congressional Conduct, and redesignates the Oversight and Accountability Committee as the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Arjun Singh contributed to this report.