Trump backs under-fire Speaker after first meeting

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he would push for legislation that would require voters to prove they are US citizens after meeting Donald Trump on Friday.

It was their first public meeting since Mr Johnson became speaker in November.

It comes as some members of Mr Johnson’s party are calling for him to be removed from his leadership post.

But the former president says he believes the speaker is doing a “very good job”.

House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Mr Johnson three weeks ago.

Ms Greene accused the speaker of aligning with Democrats on the issue of Ukraine aid.

“We’re getting along very well with the speaker and I get along very well with Marjorie,” Mr Trump said after the meeting at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

“It’s not an easy situation for any speaker, I think he’s doing a very good job and he’s doing about as good as you’re going to do.”

Mr Trump began his remarks by attacking President Biden over the issue of immigration, which Mr Johnson linked to the declared subject of the meeting, “election integrity”.

Mr Trump has continued to attribute his 2020 presidential defeat to ballot fraud, but he has provided no evidence to substantiate his claims, which have been rejected by courts and elections officials from both parties.

At the news conference Friday, Mr Johnson said he would push forward with a bill that would require voters to prove that they are US citizens and require states to remove non-citizens from voter rolls.

The speaker alleged that Democrats “want to turn these people into voters” and suggested, without listing evidence, that immigrants were being pushed to register to vote by local welfare benefit offices.

Non-citizens are barred from voting in US federal elections, and studies including from the conservative Heritage Foundation have found that cases of immigrants illegally voting are extremely rare.

“We’re going to introduce legislation to require that everyone who registers to vote in an election must prove that they are a US citizen,” Mr Johnson said, although he stopped short of claiming that illegal voting by immigrants was a major ongoing problem.

“We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur,” he said.

The former president’s endorsement came at a politically fraught time for the speaker, who is facing Ms Greene’s efforts to push him out of his job.

In a letter written on Tuesday to her Republican colleagues, Ms Greene warned that she will not tolerate Mr Johnson “serving the Democrats and the Biden administration” over his own party “and helping them achieve their policies”.

She has accused him of helping Democrats to pass spending legislation, but his recent effort to provide Ukraine more military aid appeared to spark her objection.

On 22 March, she filed her motion to remove Mr Johnson, saying that he had “betrayed” Republicans.

But she has not yet indicated if or when she plans to force real action on the motion – in the form of a floor vote.

Mr Trump and his campaign will want to avoid another chaotic leadership battle among Republicans in the House of Representatives before the US presidential election in November. Polling showed that the fight in October undermined voters’ confidence in the party.

Mr Trump derailed the speaker’s effort to renew a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act earlier this week, but a revised bill passed the House earlier Friday.

The law allows agencies to collect foreign intelligence on US soil, if a special court agrees. Mr Trump said he was “not a fan” of the legislation but noted that the bill had been amended to require re-approval in two years.

The speaker is also planning to bring a Ukraine military aid bill to a vote next week, months after existing aid funding lapsed.

When asked about the issue, Mr Trump said: “We’re looking at it right now, and they’re talking about it, and we’re thinking making it in the form of a form of a loan instead of a gift.”

He claimed, as he has repeatedly in the past, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the current conflict in the Middle East would not have happened if he was still in the White House.