Johnson won the speakership — but Trump won the day

Mike Johnson pulled off a feat on Friday that few in Washington expected, winning re-election to the House speakership on the first ballot. It was probably one of his easiest tasks this year.

After Johnson successfully flipped two conservative opponents into his corner, winning the gavel with the bare 218 votes he needed, House Republicans are now hoping to move on to prioritizing President-elect Donald Trump’s policy goals. Extending tax cuts, beefing up border security and expanding oil and gas development are at the top of the list.

That all depends on how skillfully the Louisiana Republican can manage a fractious majority whose right flank nearly turned on him before the 119th Congress began, despite his public endorsement from Trump. Johnson initially appeared to have lost two more votes than the single one he could spare, but quick talks on the House floor with holdout Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Keith Self, R-Texas, turned a likely defeat into a last-second victory.

Perhaps the biggest winner in Johnson’s first-ballot triumph, however, was Trump — who spoke with Norman and Self just before they changed their positions. According to a source familiar with the interaction, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., put the president-elect on the phone with Norman before he switched his vote to Johnson, from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Trump’s successful lobbying in the speaker’s race followed his stumble in late December, when he urged GOP lawmakers to address the expiring US debt ceiling as part of a year-end spending deal only to get rebuked by more than three dozen of them. And it marks, perhaps, a return to his firm grip on the party just 17 days before his inauguration.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Semafor that he harbored some concerns about House colleagues struggling “to elect a leader that the vast majority of Republicans want” and how it might affect the agenda.

“I do worry about that, although I worry about it less when Donald Trump is sitting in the Oval Office,” he said.

Lawmakers were optimistic about re-electing Johnson eventually, but many seemed prepared to go beyond one round of votes. The House nearly had a case of deja vu from 2023, when former Speaker Kevin McCarthy needed 15 ballots and a flurry of concessions to win over his conservative critics and win the gavel that they later stripped from him.

Johnson will have a bigger cushion than McCarthy did for any future internal rebellion against him; the House is set to change its rules later Friday to require nine Republicans to force a vote to oust the speaker, up from a single member during the last two years. Even so, the high number of Republicans initially unwilling to say Johnson’s name during the balloting indicates that his skeptics have the power to force that vote if they become disenchanted enough.

Eleven conservatives released a letter after Johnson’s re-election stating that they backed him “because of our steadfast support of President Trump,” making clear that their allegiance to the speaker was meager at best.

“We have a majority that is very, very thin. So when you have a very thin majority, [that] makes things difficult,” Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., told Semafor, adding that he now wants to “move on to the agenda items that are so important.”