Friend,

As you know, I've spent much of this year negotiating with my Republican colleagues over a critical foreign aid package. Earlier this month, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans came together to support our democratic allies in Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, and provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in harm’s way in places like Gaza, Haiti, and the Sudan.

Achieving a bipartisan compromise these days is all too rare. As retribution for Speaker Johnson's decision to work with Democratic lawmakers like myself, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. Greene, Putin's strongest ally in the House, is hoping to imperil Speaker Johnson's job and throw our chamber back into chaos.

Mike Johnson and I disagree on plenty of issues. For the next few months, I'll work to elect more Democrats to the House and ensure that Hakeem Jeffries is our next Speaker.

But I still believe that bipartisanship should be rewarded. For the Congress to work properly, we need a Republican Party that's serious about the project of governing. Americans of both political parties deserve a House of Representatives that can tackle the business of the people without devolving into popularity contests.

That's why my Democratic colleagues and I announced today that we would vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's motion. I didn't come to work this week expecting to save Mike Johnson's job, and I look forward to Democrats taking back the gavel this November. But in the meantime, I'm choosing sanity over chaos.

— Jim