Marjorie Taylor Greene is lighting a match under House GOP leadership again, this time torching Speaker Mike Johnson for brushing off questions about Rep. Cory Mills, just as a Florida judge slapped the Republican congressman with a protective order over alleged threats against his ex. Greene blasted Johnson’s “hypocrisy,” accusing him of ducking accountability for a lawmaker with a restraining order while posturing as a guardian of House standards.
The spark came after Johnson’s prickly response when reporters asked about Mills, who is accused of threatening to release sexually explicit videos of Miss United States Lindsey Langston and warning he’d attack future partners after their breakup. “Let’s talk about something serious,” Johnson said as he tried to move on, then called Mills “a faithful colleague.” Greene pounced, noting that Johnson presided over the expulsion of George Santos and demanding to know why Mills gets a pass. “There’s clearly proof behind her accusations if a judge is issuing a restraining order,” she said. “This is a serious matter, and it needs to be taken seriously.”
Mills denies the harassment and threat allegations. The order bars him from contacting Langston and from coming within 500 feet of her home or workplace as the case proceeds. The Florida court action, rare against a sitting member of Congress, has ricocheted across the Hill and put Johnson squarely in Greene’s crosshairs.
But Greene’s rebellion reaches beyond one scandal. She’s breaking with party leadership on the shutdown fight and the looming expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, warning that letting the enhanced tax credits lapse would spike premiums for millions, including her own constituents. “Republicans have no plan,” she told Axios, blasting Johnson for failing to hold a single conference meeting on the issue as the deadline nears. Analyses show ACA premiums would more than double next year without an extension, one reason some Senate Republicans have started floating a short-term renewal.
Greene has teamed up with libertarian firebrand Rep. Thomas Massie on a discharge petition to force the full release of long-shrouded DOJ documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein. She says many Republicans won’t touch it out of fear of “being yelled at by the president” or “iced out by leadership.” The petition has drawn unusual GOP support and is hovering near the signatures needed to trigger a vote, despite Johnson urging members to steer clear and let committees handle it. Greene, for her part, says she wants the names read into the Congressional Record.
Johnson, managing a razor-thin majority during a shutdown slog, is trying to triage culture-war flare-ups, an internal revolt over health care subsidies, and now a member entangled in an abuse case. Greene is testing how much pressure the conference will tolerate from its most combustible star, one who helped power the MAGA base and now delights in scalding the leadership it produced.
Politically, the calculation is brutal. If Johnson shields Mills while scolding Democrats, the hypocrisy charge sticks. If he moves against Mills, he risks detonating another intra-party feud while the House staggers through crisis governance. Meanwhile, Greene is positioning herself as the truth-teller willing to say the quiet part out loud on health costs and transparency, while daring Johnson to prove he can police his own.
