General Discussion

Why did Speaker Johnson oust his own party’s Intelligence Committee chair?
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Donald Trump wasn't involved in the decision to oust the chair. There's reason to believe otherwise.

When the Louisiana Republican was pressed for an explanation, Johnson reportedly told his members that the appointments came at the behest of Donald Trump, who wanted unqualified MAGA loyalists on the powerful panel.

It’s against this backdrop that the beleaguered speaker made yet another highly provocative move on the panel formally known as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. NBC News reported:

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has informed Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, that he will no longer be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, according to a GOP leadership source and a Republican lawmaker familiar with the matter. The lawmaker said Turner told him Wednesday that he would not be staying on as head of the critical panel that conducts oversight of the U.S. intelligence community.

Turner confirmed in a written statement that he’d been stripped of his intelligence committee gavel, though the Ohioan did not explain why, exactly, he’d been demoted....

If those reports are accurate, they lead to a rather obvious question: Why would the president-elect oppose Turner staying on as the chair of the intelligence panel? To understand Trump’s possible motivation, consider this paragraph from the Times’ report:

Mr. Turner, a mainstream conservative who has represented southwestern Ohio in the House for more than two decades, has at times been critical of Mr. Trump’s actions. He broke with the majority of his party on Jan. 6, 2021, and voted to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 election. He has also been a leading proponent of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, breaking with the “America First” stance of the president-elect and many others in his party.

Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that among House Republicans, Turner is among the most enthusiastic supporters of backing Ukraine in its war against Russia, and the Ohioan has championed the NATO alliance.....

In 2014, I referred to John Boehner as the “Speaker in Name Only” because the then-GOP leader struggled to get his own members to follow his directives, leaving him effectively powerless when trying to legislate.

More than a decade later, as Johnson owes his tenure to the president-elect, there’s reason to believe the “SINO” title is poised to make a comeback