What’s New
Some Republican allies of House Speaker Mike Johnson are urging President-elect Donald Trump to publicly reaffirm support for him to avoid a lengthy battle to replace him that could delay the certification of Trump’s election victory in January.
Newsweek has contacted spokespeople for Trump and Johnson for comment via email outside usual business hours.
Why It Matters
The first vote of the new House, when lawmakers are sworn in on January 3, is on electing a speaker. Then, on January 6, the House will meet to certify the results of the 2024 election.
Republicans elected Johnson as House Speaker in October 2023 after they were unable to agree on a replacement for three weeks after ousting the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
But Johnson is now facing a rebellion from House Republicans over his handling of government funding. The GOP’s slim majority in the lower chamber means Johnson can afford few defections if he wants to keep his hold on the gavel.
Mike Johnson (R-LA) (L) talks to Donald Trump at Northwest Stadium on December 14, 2024 in Landover, Maryland. The speaker’s allies are urging the president-elect to publicly reaffirm support for him.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
What To Know
It is not clear whether Trump is still backing Johnson after a stopgap spending bill passed Congress last week without the president-elect’s core debt demands in the package.
A bipartisan bill pushed by Johnson had failed on Wednesday after criticism from Trump and Elon Musk.
The president-elect demanded that a provision raising the nation’s debt limit be included in the legislation. Republicans complied, but the Trump-backed bill failed overwhelmingly in a House vote on Thursday evening.
Trump told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Johnson would “easily remain speaker” for the next Congress if he “acts decisively and tough” to eliminate “all of the traps being set by Democrats” in the spending package.
An amended bill without the debt provision passed the House on Friday, and was passed by the Senate early on Saturday, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown before Christmas.
Johnson told reporters after Friday’s vote that Trump was “certainly happy” with the final deal, though the president-elect has not indicated as much.
And he told ABC News last Tuesday that he is “not worried about the speaker’s vote.”
“These are the hard choices that lawmakers have to make, but we will get the job done, as we always do. We will. We will keep moving forward, and in January, we have a new lease on all this,” Trump said.
What People Are Saying
Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told Fox News Digital: “If we have some kind of protracted fight where we can’t elect a speaker—the speaker’s not elected; we’re not sworn in. And if we’re not sworn in, we can’t certify the election.”
Representative Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican, told the outlet: “To ensure President Trump can take office and hit the ground running on January 20, we must be able to certify the 2024 election on January 6. However, without a speaker, we cannot complete this process.”
Representative Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas, told the outlet: “Any time would be great, but right after Christmas if President Trump said, ‘You know, listen’—it would even be really cool if somehow Mike Johnson ended up at Mar-a-Lago for Christmas … wherever the president is.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki on Sunday that there’s a “real risk” that Johnson will fail to win reelection on January 3. “There will be no Democrats available to save him or the extreme MAGA Republicans from themselves based on the breaching of a bipartisan agreement that reflected priorities that were good for the American people.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social early Friday: “Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
What’s Next
While Johnson is facing opposition from some, he remains the favorite to continue as House speaker in January.
Representative Thomas Massie has said he will vote against Johnson’s reelection on January, and several other Republicans say they are undecided, Axios reported.
