House Speaker Mike Johnson’s political future hangs in the balance as he trudges forward with his plan to push billions in foreign aid through the lower chamber. The move may cost him his speakership.

Tensions flared on Capitol Hill Thursday morning after Johnson (R., La.) trudged forward with his plan to hold votes on separate bills to fund Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, prompting stiff resistance from GOP hardliners who are publicly bashing Republican House leaders ahead of an expected vote on Saturday.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), who is sponsoring a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership along with Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), said Johnson is prioritizing foreign aid to Ukraine and other foreign nations over American needs. She has yet to trigger a vote on her motion.

Earlier Thursday, rumors began swirling that Speaker Johnson’s team and other leadership aids are considering including language in the rule to raise the current motion-to-vacate above its current one-person threshold. Ex-speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to that one-person snap vote threshold back in January 2023 as part of a back-room deal to secure the speaker’s gavel — an agreement that ended up laying the groundwork for his ouster and now imperils the political fate of his successor just six months into his term.

Other members of House GOP leadership are signaling they are on board with potentially amending the current single-vote threshold, though the details of a possible rules change remained murky as of Thursday afternoon.

“I don’t know the details of what’s in the rule,” Representative Richard Hudson (R., N.C.), the head of House Republicans’ campaign arm this cycle, told National Review in a brief interview on Thursday. “But I would just say I think it’s really an imperative that we change the motion to vacate because the one-person threshold is just too low,” he said, adding that the current rule “makes no sense.”

News of a potential rules change was met with stiff resistance from hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, who now hold immense leverage over the entire lower chamber given the party’s slim majority.

“If he wants to change the motion to vacate, he needs to come before the Republican conference that elected him and tell us up his intentions and tell us what this little change to the motion to vacate is going to be,” Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), the member who filed the motion to vacate against Johnson last month, told reporters Thursday afternoon. Greene has yet to force a vote on her motion.

As of Thursday afternoon, Johnson hadn’t publicly committed to raising the threshold for introducing a motion to vacate. But if he does, some Republicans warn the move will trigger the procedure. “We notified him that any effort to change the threshold of motion to vacate would likely induce the motion to vacate,” said Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.).

Johnson forcefully defended the nearly $61 billion in Ukraine aid on Wednesday, despite the ouster threat. If the package passes and is signed into law, Israel and Taiwan will receive $26 billion and $8 billion, respectively.

“My philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may. If I operated out of fear of a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

The speaker indicated the legislative package will be coupled with a revised TikTok divestment bill, a move that will increase the legislation’s chances of passage in the House.

Under the new proposal, the China-based ByteDance will be forced to sell TikTok to a U.S. owner within nine months of the legislation going into law; otherwise, TikTok will be banned from 170 million U.S. users. Previously, the deadline was six months after the House passed the TikTok sale-or-ban bill last month. The legislation has yet to be considered in the Senate.

President Joe Biden endorsed Johnson’s package Wednesday, only further weakening Johnson’s standing among his rightmost flank. The Freedom Caucus sent a memo to Republican offices urging members to oppose the rule on foreign aid package over concerns that the package mirrors the Senate-passed supplemental and prioritizes Ukraine over efforts to secure the southern border.