Mike Johnson: Why House GOP Is Souring on Their New Speaker
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Mr. Johnson immediately faces a host of challenges that dogged his predecessor, Mr. McCarthy. He is confronting a mid-November deadline to pass a measure to fund the government to avert a shutdown. And he will need to lead a conference deeply divided over foreign policy as Congress considers the Biden administration’s $105 billion funding request for Israel, Ukraine and the southern border. Hakeem Jeffries made history as the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress, addressing the 118th Congress for the first time in the early hours of Saturday morning. With House Republicans’ majority, comes a newfound power to set the agenda — investigative and legislative.
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The House is now voting to pass a resolution in support of Israel in the war against Hamas – the first measure to come to the floor to be passed after Speaker Mike Johnson was elected this morning following three weeks of a speakerless-House. The House passed a resolution in support of Israel in the war against Hamas – the first measure to come to the floor after Speaker Mike Johnson was elected earlier Wednesday following three weeks without a speaker. Additionally, since many speakers held office for multiple terms, often with non-consecutive periods, the time listed for each speaker represents the total length of their time as speaker. It is important to note that the period between the adjournment of one Congress and the convening of the next Congress is not included in the calculations. For instance, Nathaniel Macon served as speaker during both the 8th and 9th Congresses, but the eight-month gap between the two Congresses is not included in his service duration.
Gaetz struggles to explain what he’s achieved with push to oust McCarthy
A party caucus or conference is the name given to a meeting of or organization of all party members in the House. The Republicans came out of the 2000 elections with a further reduced majority but made small gains in 2002 and 2004. The power of the speaker was greatly augmented during the tenure of the Republican Thomas Brackett Reed (1889–1891, 1895–1899).
Republicans nominate Mike Johnson for speaker after spurning Emmer.
His predecessor, Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts, also had the top job for less than five years. But when he left after the 1924 session, his party was still firmly in control and had just elected President Calvin Coolidge to a full term. She could activate a vote at any time so Johnson should know he is skating on thin ice. Not helping matters is Johnson’s decision last week to lock arms with George Santos before a two-thirds majority of the House chose to expel him from the chamber, a dicey vote that left swing-district Republicans in a lurch. During the speaker battle, Trump proved more adept at hurting candidates than helping them win — his early endorsee, Jordan, flamed out on the floor. But Johnson's ability to avoid Trump's ire cleared a hurdle for him within the House GOP, which is attuned to the wishes of the "MAGA" base.
Mainstream conservatives who backed Mr. Johnson said they hoped to quickly move to pull the House out of its funk. Almost immediately after Mr. Johnson was elected, lawmakers began debating a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel and condemning Hamas, which passed overwhelmingly. Mr. Johnson has opposed continued funding for the war in Ukraine, which has emerged as a bitter fault line in the G.O.P. and in the spending battles that he will have to navigate in the coming days.
Johnson isn’t quite at that point but he may have already lost his chance to show he can lead his caucus with anything approaching unity. And, once again, House Republicans seem to be readying the moment when they will incinerate one of their own over disagreements that are not easily distilled to easy-to-understand conversations in the districts that will decide the balance of power come early 2025. The fight is entirely one of Washington’s making, and only the insiders understand why Republicans can’t stifle internal dissent at a moment when Americans are looking at D.C. In the middle of an international crisis, he tried to leverage a request for aid to Israel to score cuts to the IRS budget that will likely never get a vote in the Senate let alone President Joe Biden’s signature into law.
The House has been in a state of uncertainty and chaos since Oct. 3, when rebels forced a vote to oust Mr. McCarthy as speaker. Eight Republicans backed that move along with Democrats, who remained united behind their own leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Republicans had cast aside two previous winners of their closed-door nominating process — Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio — before settling on Mr. Emmer. He has also opposed continued funding for the war in Ukraine, which has emerged as a bitter fault line in the G.O.P. and in the spending battles that any new speaker will have to navigate in the coming days. Representative Mike Johnson, a little-known social conservative from Louisiana, emerged on Tuesday night as the latest contender for the post after Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid only hours after securing the nomination.
Even a glance at the history of Republican speakers since World War II would tell him that. Yet none of that has solved the problems that McCarthy found himself ill-equipped to solve. The structural deficiencies that fueled Johnson’s improbable rise to the lush Speaker’s office remain. It’s like Goldilocks doesn’t have just three bowls of porridge in front of her at the moment; she has an entire oatmeal factory that no one knew existed.
However, despite having the right to vote, the speaker usually does not participate in debate and only votes on the most significant bills. Gingrich managed to restore many of the powers of the speakership but clashed repeatedly with Clinton and even with Republican leaders in the Senate. In 1997, in his second Congress as speaker, he barely survived a largely covert challenge from within his own leadership team. And just shy of his fourth anniversary in the job, he was voted out by the full House Republican conference in December 1998. Privately, lawmakers are grousing that Johnson is embracing his “four-corner” role—that is representing all House Republicans in the closed-door conversations with House Democrats’ top hand and the two parties’ leaders from the Senate. Yes, party leaders in both chambers and in both shades of jersey should be playing to win.
House conservatives are signaling they’ll give the newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson some runway and flexibility as the House barrels toward a November 17 spending deadline to fund the government. Albert's successor, Democrat Tip O'Neill, was a prominent speaker because of his public opposition to the policies of President Ronald Reagan. Republicans made O'Neill the target of their election campaigns in 1980 and 1982 but Democrats managed to retain their majorities in both years.
Though it was not certain he had the votes to be elected, he said he planned to call for a floor vote on Wednesday at noon. Jeffries’ position was made official after the conclusion of a prolonged floor fight that culminated in Republican Kevin McCarthy becoming House speaker. On the other hand, when the speaker and the president belong to opposite parties, the public role and influence of the speaker tend to increase. As the highest-ranking member of the opposition party (and de facto leader of the opposition), the speaker is normally the chief public opponent of the president's agenda. In this scenario, the speaker is known for undercutting the president's agenda by blocking measures by the minority party or rejecting bills by the Senate. The speaker in the United States, by tradition, is the head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, outranking the majority leader.
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"This is a time for all of us to act responsibly, and to put the good of the American people and the everyday priorities of American families above any partisanship." Any candidate for speaker can lose only a handful of votes and still win the speakership because Republicans hold such a small majority in the House. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and someone Mr. Johnson has described as a mentor, was the next member to be elected speaker designate in a secret ballot.
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If Jordan does win them over, it’s still not nearly enough to secure the speakership, given 22 Republicans voted against him on the second ballot and more are expected to oppose him on the third ballot. But Jordan is hoping to show some sign of progress ahead of the next vote, now planned for Friday. Pro-Palestinian student protesters set up a tent encampment at Columbia University last week. On Wednesday Johnson denounced the treatment of Jewish students on the campus and called for the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, to resign if she cannot bring the protests under control.
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