For a moment there on Friday afternoon, Mike Johnson’s speakership looked a little dicey. But following multiple huddles and some last-minute intervention from President-elect Donald Trump, two GOP defectors changed their votes and Johnson was once again elected speaker of the House of Representatives.
The re-elected speaker won’t have much time to celebrate, however. This might turn out to be his easiest day on the job in this congressional session.
Indeed, the next weeks (or months) may end up feeling a lot like “Groundhog Day.” Each morning the same thought: Will this be the day my fellow Republicans try to oust me?
With the slimmest of GOP majorities, it certainly won’t be easy to govern.
With the slimmest of GOP majorities, it certainly won’t be easy to govern. Republicans in the House have no problem with intraparty conflict. And when not trying to whip lawmaker votes, Johnson must contend with the whims of Trump. As we saw with the shutdown debacle last month, Trump and his advisers can be unpredictable, with that unpredictability manifesting in contradictory and at times wildly inefficient tangents.
Right now, the biggest obstacle to Trump’s agenda is the Freedom Caucus. Made up of some of the most extreme members of the House, this group has proven repeatedly that it is not all that interested in governing. Rather, lawmakers like Reps. Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Lauren Boebert prefer to act as disrupters, sabotaging the passage of negotiated legislation while offering few viable alternatives. (The lone remaining GOP holdout in the speaker election was Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning contrarian who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but who has allegedly been called a a “dangerous nuisance” by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.)
Less than an hour after the somewhat dramatic election concluded, 11 members of the caucus posted a public warning letter to Johnson on social media.
“Today we voted for Mike Johnson as speaker of the House because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors,” the group wrote. “We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the Speaker’s track record over the past 15 months.”
Returning to the shutdown example, Trump’s last-minute attempt to suspend the debt ceiling for two years in December was shunned by 38 Republican members of the House, many of whom are also members of the Freedom Caucus. While it is likely these members knew the legislation would fail because Democrats were also opposed to it, the message was clear: Even some MAGA Republicans are willing to defy Trump in the 119th Congress.
In the end, bipartisan legislation that went through weeks of negotiation was scuttled in the eleventh hour following a social media backlash led in large part by unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk — a man as unpredictable as Trump but beholden to essentially no one.
The speaker is also well aware of the catch-22 presented by Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. To get real work done, the speaker will need to work with Jeffries — something he’s been able to do successfully in the past. Because while there is a good chance that the speaker can deliver all of the required Republican votes for Trump’s tax cuts and immigration proposals, he will need to work with Jeffries on spending bills and the debt ceiling.
Yet the more effective this partnership becomes, the more the speaker faces potential threats from inside his own party. Effective governance is no longer the goal of this House GOP, and certainly not when it requires public compromise.
So Johnson will need to, once again, work to keep our government open and our national bills paid while also looking over his shoulder for yet another motion to vacate.
On Friday night, the speaker sought to remedy that last problem with his new rules package. One rule change requires any motion to vacate to include eight co-sponsors, all of whom must be Republicans. Putting aside the very problematic precedent that only Republicans are allowed to offer such motions, the speaker seems to be ignoring the idiom about strength in numbers.
For the time being, Johnson holds the gavel. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. And even with Trump’s endorsement, Johnson may end up a scapegoat sooner rather than later.
