Trump-backed Mike Johnson remains House speaker after Republican holdouts flip votes at last minute
Mike Johnson has become speaker of the House after a dramatic delay caused by a handful of insurgent Republicans who revolted against him during the first vote of the 119th Congress.
Johnson ultimately earned the vote of 218 Republicans, the bare minimum needed to win the speaker’s gavel, after discussions with two holdouts — Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas — who ended up flipping their votes at the last moment. According to CNN, Trump called both lawmakers while the voting was still open and urged them to throw their weight behind Johnson.
Thomas Massie, the idiosyncratic libertarian Republican from Kentucky, led the opposition against Johnson, voting instead for House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Norman initially voted for Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Self voted for Byron Donalds of Florida.
While Johnson had plenty of hard-right Republicans on his side, a handful of conservative lawmakers sat out the initial vote, including Chip Roy of Texas, who stood in the middle of the aisle as his name was called and remained silent. Roy ultimately voted for Johnson at the end of the roll call.
At first, it appeared Johnson would have to wait for a second ballot as the House stood still for a nearly 90-minute period, during which he conferred with the recalcitrant members in the GOP cloakroom.
At approximately 2:30 p.m., Norman and Self emerged from the cloakroom and walked to the clerk’s desk at the foot of the speaker’s rostrum.
After a brief exchange, the acting clerk called the House back to order and both members were recorded as changing their votes, giving Johnson the majority and the gavel it confers.
The reversal leading to Johnson’s victory comes after President-elect Donald Trump endorsed Johnson and said he would make calls on Johnson’s behalf in the days leading up to the vote for a speaker, which must be completed before the House can conduct any further business.
Trump weighed in to congratulate Johnson on Truth Social just minutes after the vote, writing that the newly-minted speaker had earned “an unprecedented Vote of Confidence in Congress.”
He added: “Mike will be a Great Speaker, and our Country will be the beneficiary. The People of America have waited four years for Common Sense, Strength, and Leadership. They’ll get it now, and America will be greater than ever before!”
But the House under Johnson’s leadership may not be sailing into smooth waters despite his work to avert the chaos that ensued when it took a record 15 ballots to elect former speaker Kevin McCarthy two years earlier.
Republicans have only 219 seats, a slim majority, meaning a single defection on their side can block their agenda. That number will whittle down in the coming weeks as Republicans like Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida leave to join Trump’s administration. And the special elections required to fill those vacant seats won’t take place for months at minimum.
With such a narrow margin, the Republican majority will need to either work in total lockstep to pass legislation or work with Democrats to get anything done.
That would not be out of character for Johnson, formerly a relatively unheralded backbencher, who came to power as a compromise candidate after the unprecedented ouster of McCarthy in October 2023.
