Donald Trump endorsed Mike Johnson for House speaker this week, giving the Louisiana Republican a boost as he seeks to retain his gavel. But with an exceedingly slender GOP majority, and conference hardliners suggesting they may go against him—at least unless he is willing to make some concessions—his hold on the speakership remains uncertain ahead of the vote Friday.
Johnson went into the holiday break on unsteady ground, having to cobble together a last-minute funding plan to avert a shutdown after the deal he brokered with Democrats was upended by Elon Musk. Things haven’t exactly stabilized for him in the new year; several Republicans refuse to commit to voting for him—even as the president-elect called him a “good, hard working, religious man” and gave him his “Complete & Total Endorsement.”
“Right now, I don’t believe that he has the votes on Friday,” Texas Representative Chip Roy, who was critical of Johnson during the year-end funding fight, said on Fox Business this week. “I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues,” Roy added, saying he was concerned Johnson’s leadership could “limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda.”
At least a dozen have expressed reservations about keeping Johnson on as speaker, and one—Thomas Massie—has already vowed to vote against him. “I respect and support President Trump,” Massie posted earlier this week, “but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan.”
If just one other skeptical Republican joins Massie, it could block Johnson, and set up the kind of intra-party battle for the gavel that his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, had to endure two years ago. McCarthy ultimately prevailed at the time—but only after making a series of compromises that members of his conference would use to oust him 10 months later.
Johnson may be able to avoid that fate. He’s attempted to tamp down on the potential GOP revolt by promising his detractors “process reforms,” as told Fox News on Thursday. His speakership will also benefit from a relatively unified GOP conference, as well as the support of Trump, who told reporters outside a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago that he would make calls to lobby members on Johnson’s behalf. “He’s the one that can win right now,” Trump said. And Johnson—for all the frustration he’s inspired on the right lately—is far more of that flank than the more chameleonic McCarthy was. The speaker may talk to Democrats when a shutdown is looming—but he’ll also, say, put forth a rules package that weakens the minority party’s power by allowing only Republicans to put forth a motion to vacate the speaker. “Instead of electing a Speaker of the House,” Democrat Jim McGovern, ranking member of the Rules Committee, said of that proposed change, “they have decided to elect a Speaker of the Republican conference—held hostage by their most extreme members.”
Of course, the new rules package would also give Johnson a buffer against his own extreme members—raising the motion to vacate threshold from one member to nine. If he gets in again, he’ll have more breathing room than McCarthy. Those members also have another consideration they didn’t two years ago: the certification of Trump’s victory, which could be delayed by a protracted fight over the speakership. “We could never have held up McCarthy two years ago for concessions if a Trump certification hung in the balance,” disgraced former Congressman Matt Gaetz, who led the push to oust McCarthy, posted Monday. “Now, it does.” At this point, it seems more likely than not that House Republicans will ultimately fall in line behind Johnson. The question, then, would be how much pain they can inflict on him along the way—and what compromises they can extract.
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