How Mike Johnson won again

The success of President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda will depend on whether Republicans can close ranks in Congress. They almost failed on their very first vote.

Mike Johnson won re-election as a House representative by the narrowest of margins this afternoon, and only after two Republican holdouts changed their votes at the last minute. Johnson won on the first ballot with exactly the 218 votes he needed to secure the necessary majority. The effort he put into retaining the speaker’s gavel portends an uphill battle for Trump, who backed Johnson’s bid.

Johnson fell short of a simple majority after a preliminary count in the House, which chooses a speaker in a long televised roll call in which each member’s name is called. Three Republicans—Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Keith Self of Texas—voted for other candidates, and another six refused to vote at all in protest of Johnson’s leadership. The six who initially sat out at roll call cast their votes for Johnson when their names were called a second time. But it took nearly an hour for Johnson to turn Norman and Self. After siding with Johnson on and off the House floor, the three men walked together to the front of the House chamber, where Norman and Self changed their votes to put Johnson over the top.

The tense vote marked the second consecutive Congress in which the formal, usually ceremonial opening of the House became highly dramatic. Two years ago, conservative holdouts forced Kevin McCarthy to endure 15 rounds of voting and days of horse-trading before allowing him to become speaker. With the help of Democrats, the same group ousted him nine months later, leading to Johnson’s election as his replacement.

McCarthy’s chief nemesis was then-Representative Matt Gaetz, who resigned during his brief bid to become Trump’s attorney general (and ahead of a bombshell report from the House Ethics Committee alleging he had sex with a 17-year-old, among others . requirements). The Republican playing Gaetz’s role this time was Massie, a septuagenarian Kentuckian with a libertarian streak who vowed to oppose Johnson even under threat of digital amputation. (“You can start cutting my fingers off,” Massie told Gaetz Thursday night in his former colleague’s new capacity as host on One America News Network.)

Yet the members who opposed Johnson were not as numerous or entrenched as McCarthy’s opponents. And while Trump supported McCarthy two years ago, he was more politically invested in Johnson’s success today. A drawn-out battle for the speakership could have threatened his legislative agenda and even delayed the certification of his election. (The House cannot function without a Speaker, so it would not have been able to formally open and count the Electoral College ballots as required by the Constitution on January 6.)

Even with today’s relatively quick decision, Johnson’s fight to remain speaker is an ominous sign of the GOP’s ability to adopt Trump’s priorities in the first few months of his term. The majority that narrowly elected Johnson will be temporarily slimmed down when the Senate confirms two Republican lawmakers to Trump’s cabinet, creating vacancies pending special elections to replace them. And GOP divisions have already emerged over whether the party should launch its government trifecta with a push to strengthen the southern border or combine that effort with legislation extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Republicans have a larger buffer in the Senate, where they control 53 seats. But in the House, the GOP edge is two seats smaller than it was at the start of the last Congress, and only one or two members will have the power to defeat party votes without the support of Democrats. Johnson’s main critics, including Massie, Norman and Self, support Trump’s agenda in the abstract, but they are not loyalists to the president-elect. (Neither Massie nor Roy endorsed him in the GOP primary last year.) They are far more hawkish on spending than Trump, who showed little concern about deficits in his first term and has pushed Republicans to raise or even eliminate the debt ceiling before he takes office — a move that could ease the passage of expensive tax cuts.

Minutes before the vote today, Johnson sent to X a list of commitments apparently intended to mollify a few of the GOP’s holdouts. He promised to create a pair of task forces to review federal spending and work with Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency to implement “recommended government and spending reforms.” Johnson did not specify any cuts or identify how much money he would propose cutting from the budget.

His promises were not enough, and Johnson reportedly necessary Trump’s help in securing the final votes. Afterwards, the speaker’s critics made it clear that the divisions on display today had not been fully resolved. Leaders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus released a statement saying they had endorsed Johnson “despite our sincere reservations” only because they wanted to support Trump’s agenda. One of those members, Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who initially withheld his vote for Johnson, warned the speaker that “there are many members beyond the three who voted for another who have reservations.”

Johnson’s opponents complained that he has been too quick to make deals with Democrats — a perennial gripe that House conservatives have with Republican leaders. But their brief rebellion today offered a reminder of how much influence Democrats can retain in Trump’s Washington. During the past two years. Republicans, who nominally controlled the House, could not pass any significant legislation without help from Democrats. Their majority is even smaller now.

Speaking to the House of Representatives after accepting the speaker’s gavel this afternoon, Johnson noted that the Democratic minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, had offered to work with Republicans on one of Trump’s top priorities — securing the border. “I reckon so,” Johnson said. If today’s battle was any indication, the re-elected Republican speaker, along with the re-elected Republican president, might trust the Democrats more than they want.