Electing a speaker is first test for GOP with razor-thin control of House
On paper, Republicans have it all in Washington: A trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress, undergirded by a conservative Supreme Court. President-elect Donald Trump has promised a blitzkrieg of executive actions and legislation after he takes office Jan. 20.
But as the new Congress convenes on Friday, questions hover over the GOP’s ability to govern effectively the House of Representatives, which it controls by the thinnest of margins.
Why We Wrote This
The Republican Party controls Congress, yet its narrow majority makes reelecting House Speaker Mike Johnson harder – and reveals fissures within the GOP.
The party’s first order of business is to elect a House speaker, with current Speaker Mike Johnson the only declared candidate. He needs a majority of the full House, in which Republicans hold 219 seats to 215 for Democrats.
Mr. Johnson’s pathway appeared to clear when Mr. Trump this week endorsed him as the next speaker. But while only Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky publicly opposes Mr. Johnson’s candidacy, others remain on the fence and could abstain or vote against.
“In the end, everything in Congress comes down to numbers, and they [Republicans] have no wriggle room at all,” says Julia Azari, a politics professor at Marquette University.
On paper, Republicans have it all in Washington: A trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress, undergirded by a conservative Supreme Court. President-elect Donald Trump has promised a blitzkrieg of executive actions and legislation after he takes office Jan. 20.
But as the new Congress convenes on Friday, questions hover over the GOP’s ability to govern effectively the House of Representatives, which it controls by the thinnest of margins. The chaotic passage of a year-end funding bill by the outgoing Congress, into which Mr. Trump and his advisers inserted themselves, could be a preview of a bumpy two years ahead.
The party’s first order of business is to elect a House speaker, with current Speaker Mike Johnson the only declared candidate. He needs a majority of the full House, in which Republicans hold 219 seats to 215 for Democrats after the resignation of Florida’s Matt Gaetz, who was under investigation by the chamber’s ethics committee.
Why We Wrote This
The Republican Party controls Congress, yet its narrow majority makes reelecting House Speaker Mike Johnson harder – and reveals fissures within the GOP.
On Monday, Mr. Johnson’s pathway appeared to clear when Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Mr. Johnson “has my Complete & Total Endorsement” as the next speaker. But while only Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky publicly opposes Mr. Johnson’s candidacy, others remain on the fence and could abstain or vote against. (Democrats are expected to vote en masse against a GOP speaker.)
The uncertainty over the speakership exemplifies the GOP’s broader challenge in the House where razor-thin margins, factional feuding, and ideological rifts have already led to dysfunction and drift in the last Congress, which passed the fewest bills in decades. The departure this session of two more members, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, to join the Trump administration will shrink the party’s margin further (down to 217 seats to 215) until special elections are held and make it even harder for Republicans to pass legislation without Democratic votes.
“In the end, everything in Congress comes down to numbers, and they [Republicans] have no wriggle room at all,” says Julia Azari, a politics professor at Marquette University.
Failure to elect a House speaker this week could delay the Jan. 6 certification by Congress of President-elect Trump’s victory. Analysts say the House could pass a resolution to empower the clerk, or elect a speaker on a temporary basis, to fulfill the chamber’s constitutional role.
“They could muddle through that way. But it won’t be easy,” says Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you can’t get all the people in the party on the same page for picking a speaker, there’s no guarantee they’re going to agree [to] some sort of workaround plan.”
Still, analysts say Mr. Johnson is likely to prevail as speaker, both because of Mr. Trump’s endorsement and because his right-wing opponents lack a viable alternative. He has argued that he’s the right leader to navigate the House’s choppy waters. “We know how to work with a small majority. That’s our custom,” he told reporters last month. “This is a team effort. … We’ve got to all row in the same direction.”
Divisions among congressional Republicans
Mr. Johnson became speaker in October 2023 after California Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own caucus under a rarely used “motion to vacate” measure. Ten months earlier, Mr. McCarthy had needed 15 ballots to win the speakership contest and had to make concessions to right-wing members, which included allowing any member to trigger a motion to vacate. Mr. Johnson is proposing to amend the rules to require that a minimum of nine GOP members be needed to force a vote.
The tumult under Mr. McCarthy, who left Congress last year, was driven by the House Freedom Caucus, whose lawmakers align with Mr. Trump on many issues but are deficit hawks. Many balked last month at supporting a stop-gap funding measure that would have raised the debt ceiling. The president-elect wanted Congress to raise the ceiling before he took office so that Republicans would have more flexibility to pass tax and other fiscal bills.
Two versions of the bill failed to pass due to Republican opposition in the House. Congress finally averted an imminent government shutdown by passing a bipartisan bill Dec. 21 that President Joe Biden then signed into law. That bill, which included $100 billion for disaster relief and an extension of a farm aid package, was opposed by 34 GOP lawmakers in the House.
This fiscal battle presages more bruising votes to come, since Congress will be asked to authorize more spending this year. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that the United States will hit its borrowing limit in January, forcing the government to use “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting. These measures will buy time for Congress to extend borrowing limits, with a looming deadline anticipated in the summer.
Republicans who ran for office promising to reduce the size of the federal government aren’t minded to cut deficit-financed deals, says Mr. Kosar, a former staffer at the Congressional Research Service. Forcing Congress to pay for its spending “is kind of an existential issue to them. It’s also a part of their brand. And so it’s very difficult, I think, for some of them to compromise on things like raising the debt limit.”
Pressure from Trump and Musk
The rise of the Freedom Caucus and infighting within the GOP caucus predate Mr. Trump’s first presidency. But he has sought to leverage these divisions to impose his will on Republicans in Congress in ways that previous presidents haven’t been able to, or have done behind closed doors. Lawmakers who cross him know they could face primary challengers at the next election, given his popularity with the party base.
That the president-elect wields an effective veto over whom the House elects as speaker is unusual, says Jeffery Jenkins, a political scientist at the University of Southern California and co-author of “Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government.”
“Trump has remade the GOP – and Republican leaders are very aware of that. So there is more of a recognition that they must work with him – and seek his approval,” Professor Jenkins says via email.
Managing party factions has traditionally been the role of congressional leaders, since they are supposed to understand the priorities of their members and their constituencies, says Professor Azari, who studies the relationship between presidents and parties.
Mr. Trump’s becoming the point of coordination in his party has “erased the internal logic of speaker politics, which is distinct from presidential politics,” she says. “Now the expectation is that the president is the focal point of the political system. I don’t know what would reverse that.”
As with much of how Congress operates, this power dynamic is all about the numbers, says Mr. Kosar. “If you’ve got a 30-member margin, it doesn’t really matter if 10 people are crossing their arms and making demands, or running to the president and saying, ‘Hey, can you help back us in this fight?’” he says.
By contrast, a speaker who can’t afford to lose a single member in a floor vote is in a perilous spot. Mr. Johnson’s challenge to pass a spending bill last month was exacerbated by criticism from Elon Musk. The billionaire Trump ally, and co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, had whipped up opposition to it on his social media platform X. After the final bill passed, Mr. Johnson said that he had spoken to Mr. Musk and got his approval.
Mr. Johnson told reporters that he’d jokingly asked Mr. Musk if he wanted to be the speaker. “He said, ‘This may be the hardest job in the world,’” the speaker recounted, adding, “I think it is.”
