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House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to reporters during a weekly press conference at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2024.
The toughest job in America?
It’s a bit surprising that anyone wants to be Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Six months ago, Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by fellow Republicans after he dared to cooperate with House Democrats on funding the government. His replacement, Mike Johnson, now faces a battle to retain the gavel as he attempts to navigate between Democrats and an increasingly fractured GOP with rabble-rousers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene raising objections to foreign aid and threatening the Speaker’s job.
Facing threats from Republicans opposed to an aid package for Ukraine supported by the Biden administration, Johnson has cooked up a plan to “damn-the-torpedoes,” as Politico puts it, and go forward with the bill and two separate votes on additional aid packages: one for Israel in the wake of Iran’s attack and one for Taiwan. He also intends to pass two other bills (five in total), including one to increase border security and another that takes aim at Russia, Iran, and TikTok.
“My philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may,” Johnson said about his plan to bring the bills to a vote this week. And fall they may as the MAGA crowd prepares reprisals, including meddlesome amendments or even a motion to vacate and boot Johnson from his position.
So now begins the battle between Johnson and hardliner Republicans, which in the next few days will shape not just the three bills in question and global geopolitics, but how Congress operates – or doesn’t.
The speaker struggle stands in contrast to a recent kerfuffle in Canada, where Speaker Anthony Rota resigned after his office welcomed a Ukrainian veteran who fought for the Nazis during World War II into the House of Commons. Rota was quickly replaced by Liberal member of Parliament Greg Fergus, and business in the Commons soon returned to its boisterous but mostly functional baseline.Democratic congressional candidate for New York's 3rd congressional district, Tom Suozzi, campaigns in Westbury, New York, U.S., February 13, 2024.
Democrats win back George Santos’ House seat
Democrats prevailed in New York’s snowy special election on Tuesday, narrowing the GOP’s razor-thin House majority and boosting Joe Biden's party ahead of the November presidential election.
Their candidate Tom Suozzi, a mainstay in Long Island politics, defeated the Republicans by firing up an angry base following the fiascos of disgraced former Republican Rep. George Santos. After voting for Biden in 2020, the district has voted red ever since. Regaining the seat gives Democrats some much-needed good news as Biden suffers from lackluster polling numbers.
For Republicans, the loss narrows their House majority to 219-213, limiting the breathing room their unruly House coalition will have to pass legislation.
Suozzi's campaign focused on immigration, Israel, inflation, and abortion. It remains to be seen how the district vote broke down, but it’s clear Suozzi’s moderate reputation, his push for stricter immigration rules, and a boatload of national and grassroots funding helped him win the day.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally ahead of the New Hampshire primary election, in Portsmouth, NH, on Jan.17, 2024.
Trump bigfoots House Speaker Johnson
On Sunday, the retirement of Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, will leave House Speaker Mike Johnson with the smallest House GOP majority in American history. For his part, Republican GOP front-runner Donald Trump knows weakness when he sees it, and the former president, fresh off a resounding victory in the Iowa caucuses, has made clear this week that he, not Johnson, will set the party’s 2024 congressional agenda.
“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Wednesday. That’s a clear message from Trump that Johnson must not cut a compromise deal with Senate Democrats that would provide money for both US southern border security and Ukraine’s continuing ability to repel Russia’s invasion.
Beginning with next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Trump appears set to tighten his already strong election-year hold on the Republican Party, and Johnson’s negotiating leverage – with both Democrats and Trump – will only narrow. In the 10 months to Election Day, border security and Ukraine aid won’t be the only subjects on which Trump will call the legislative shots.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, gives a press conference in the Capitol on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023, after leading a vote to avoid a government shutdown.
Shutdown averted, but deal contains no aid for Ukraine
New Speaker Mike Johnson managed to wrangle enough votes to avoid a government shutdown late Tuesday, relying on 209 Democrats and 127 Republicans to pass a bill to allow the US government to keep functioning into 2024. The Senate approved the measure on Wednesday, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature. Had the House not acted, the government would have run out of money at midnight on Friday.
Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has been speaker for less than a month. He took over after a convoluted internal struggle that followed the ouster of Kevin McCarthy by members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, who were pushing for the Republicans to shut down the government to force the Biden administration to spend less money. Johnson ended up presenting a similar stopgap bill to the one that Republicans could not swallow from McCarthy.
The agreement Tuesday takes the pressure off, but it will likely be a brief respite. The funding will run out for some programs — military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department — on Jan. 19, while other programs are funded until Feb. 2. The brinksmanship over the next round will begin again soon, and Republicans — who are pushing for spending cuts and tougher border security measures — are not likely to give way easily. Intense struggles within the GOP make it hard to predict what Congress will do after the Thanksgiving break.
The bill did not include military aid for Israel and Ukraine. Democrats have sought to link military aid for Israel – for which there is bipartisan support – to support for Ukraine, which a growing number of Republicans are likely to resist.
The continued success of Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression hinges on continued military support from the United States. In Europe, meanwhile, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has threatened to veto EU aid packages for Ukraine. So both sides of the Atlantic are seeing political struggles that may ultimately decide what happens on the ground in Ukraine.Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-LA., returns to his office in the US Capitol on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.
Mike Johnson has a plan to avert the shutdown – will it work?
Is it better to kick two cans down the road rather than one? House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is about to find out in the first big test of his speakership. With another government shutdown deadline looming on Friday, the House plans to vote today on Johnson’s plan to keep the US government from plunging over the fiscal cliff – again.
The background: We’ve been here before, recently. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) avoided a shutdown in September only by relying on Democratic support for a bill that kept government spending flat. But he paid for it with his job: Far-right members led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had demanded deep spending cuts, and when they didn’t get their way, they ousted the speaker for the first time in US history.
The new approach: Johnson, who comes from the right wing of the GOP himself, isn’t trying McCarthy’s approach. Instead of asking members to vote on a single bill to keep the government running, Johnson has proposed what is known as a “laddered” approach that will fund government spending on military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department — where there is broad consensus on funding levels — through Jan. 19, 2024, while delaying a decision on the rest of the government’s funding until Feb. 2, 2024.
Johnson got the House Rules Committee to approve his unorthodox approach on Monday, but that was the easy bit. He’s now got to shepherd through a proposal that can pass the Democratic-controlled Senate (which will reject spending cuts) without angering the same far-right caucus that unseated his predecessor (which wants deep spending cuts).
“Johnson has more runway than McCarthy, but more runway is not a license to do anything you want,” said Eurasia Group’s US Director Clayton Allen. “Johnson is trying to find a way forward that does not blow up his position with the GOP conference.”
That path may require suspending the normal rules of the House to move the bill through. If he can cobble together a two-thirds majority of Republicans who are ok with no spending cuts right now and Democrats who want to keep the government funded even if they don’t love the two-step structure, far-right GOP members can still vote “no” but can’t offer amendments or otherwise delay the passage of the bill, thereby avoiding a shutdown.
And by separating the few easy spending items from the rest for early next year, Johnson is offering those same members another chance to get their desired cuts a little later, perhaps with some additional leverage to negotiate with the Senate. Will it be enough of a concession to save his bacon? That’s what we’re about to find out.
Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) addresses the U.S. House of Representatives after he was elected to be the new Speaker at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., October 25, 2023.
A speaker at last
As former US President Gerald Ford once told his fellow Americans, “Our long national nightmare is over.” On Wednesday, House Republicans united to elect Mike Johnson of Louisiana the new speaker of the House of Representatives.
How did Johnson bring Republicans together as several candidates before him could not? First, his inexperience is a plus. He’s never served in a senior leadership position in the House, the kind of post that forces choices that make enemies. In fact, now serving just his fourth two-year term, he is the least experienced speaker since John G. Carlisle, who served in the 1890s.
Second, unlike Tom Emmer, the most recent candidate to fall short, Johnson is an ally of Donald Trump. In fact, he was active among a group of House Republicans who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor.
Finally, though Johnson has established a solid conservative voting record, more moderate Republicans may well have agreed to support him with the expectation that he can bargain in good faith with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown next month and advance bills to send aid to Israel and Ukraine.
The bad news for Johnson is that the post remains a precarious one. The rule remains that a single disgruntled Republican member can open a process to oust him, just as Matt Gaetz of Florida did with former speaker Kevin McCarthy. If four of the other 220 House Republicans agree, he will lose his job.
For now, Republicans are likely fed up with acrimonious closed-door meetings and failed votes. That will earn Johnson the grace period he needs to move legislation forward. But the essential problems of Republican disunity and the limits of the speaker’s sustainable power will continue.
US Rep. Mike Johnson is surrounded by fellow members as he speaks to reporters after securing the nomination for House Speaker from the Republican conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 24, 2023.
The House Republican circus rolls on
It took five rounds of voting on Tuesday to make Tom Emmer of Minnesota the Republican nominee for speaker of the US House of Representatives … and about four more hours to persuade him his candidacy was doomed. Though he won a clear majority of House Republicans (117 of 221) in the final round of voting, he knew it wouldn’t be easy to earn the backing of 217 of 221 Republicans needed to win a majority of the full House.
That’s mainly because Emmer has a powerful Republican enemy: Donald Trump. Emmer voted to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory, and Trump has sought revenge by waging an aggressive campaign to discredit Emmer within the GOP caucus. By late afternoon on Tuesday, Trump had tweeted his opposition, and the game was up. Emmer had bowed out.
Late Tuesday night, House Republicans then voted to make Mike Johnson of Louisiana their fourth nominee for speaker. Can he get the 217 votes needed to win the job?
If he too falls short, House Republicans may finally decide they’ve had enough of closed-door meetings and secret ballots, and decide instead to empower the current temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, to serve for a specified period up to several weeks. That would allow the House to negotiate with Democrats on the budgetary questions needed to keep the government from shutting down next month and to consider bills granting aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Or, they could go back to square one and start voting all over again, and your GZERO Newsletter team can just keep writing this same story every few days.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer
House Republicans will vote yet again
For three weeks, the US House of Representatives has failed to function as Republicans fight over who should serve as speaker. The government will shut down in less than one month unless someone can win the 217 votes needed to lead the House and then advance a bill to fund the government, a bill that passes the Senate and earns the president’s signature. Bipartisan calls for aid to Israel and Ukraine are also held up until the majority of Republicans elect a speaker.
Later today, House Republicans will vote by secret ballot on eight new candidates from among their members. In alphabetical order, they are:
- Jack Bergman (Michigan)
- Byron Donalds (Florida)
- Tom Emmer (Minnesota)
- Kevin Hern (Oklahoma)
- Mike Johnson (Louisiana)
- Gary Palmer (Alabama)
- Austin Scott (Georgia)
- Pete Sessions (Texas)
Of these, Emmer, Donalds, Hern, and Johnson appear to have the best chance to win.
Emmer, who currently serves as majority whip, looks to have the broadest support, but former president/front-running GOP candidate Donald Trump adamantly opposes him. (Emmer voted to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Of the other eight candidates, only Austin Scott joined him.)
In each round of voting, the lowest vote-getter will be dropped until there’s just one left. But as Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio have discovered, the winner of this process must go on to secure 217 of the 221 total Republican House members to become speaker.