In the last month, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has pulled off what at one time seemed like an impossible feat.
Despite an unruly conference and his own inexperience, he managed to usher through the House three sets of bills that fractured Republicans for much of the 118th Congress.
Each piece of legislation, on foreign aid, 2024 spending, and warrantless surveillance, represented a strike against him in the eyes of the hard-liners considering his ouster. They required compromise with the Democrats and, in some cases, lacked the votes of a majority of House Republicans.
But Johnson has emerged on the other side of the turmoil in a position of strength. He is likely to survive an ouster attempt, should it materialize, and has moved to display GOP unity on Columbia’s anti-Israel protests and other issues that have divided Democrats.
Johnson entered the speakership in October without the well of loyalty enjoyed by his predecessor. He was a relative unknown, having been the fourth choice of Republicans exhausted by three weeks of division over who should replace Kevin McCarthy.
His elevation had more to do with his lack of enemies than the alliances he had built in just four terms in Congress.
That created trouble for him, especially on federal spending. He inherited the same band of rabble-rousers who considered a deal McCarthy cut on the debt limit a betrayal. But Johnson also faced displays of defiance that McCarthy never did.
A group of New York Republicans mirrored the tactics of the Freedom Caucus in January when they threatened to tank a procedural vote on the House floor to gain leverage in a debate over tax reform.
Johnson endured a series of setbacks and delays on these and other standoffs.
In December, he planned to bring competing bills on the government’s warrantless surveillance program to the floor before GOP infighting forced him to pull them both. Without a path forward, Congress extended the reauthorization deadline into April.
Meanwhile, his attempts to corner Democrats on foreign aid fell flat. Johnson passed a stand-alone bill for Israel, split off from a larger Ukraine package that conservatives opposed, but his decision to include cuts to the IRS gave Senate Democrats political cover to ignore the legislation.
He later failed to pass an Israel bill without the offsets.
The perceived missteps compounded what had already been a chaotic Congress before Johnson ever picked up the speaker’s gavel. Hard-liners have taken down seven “rule” votes, three under McCarthy and four under Johnson, since Republicans took over the House last year, a once unheard of act of rebellion against leadership.
But Johnson, who has been forced to learn on the job with little grace extended to him, has seemingly succeeded in doing something McCarthy could not. He has protected himself from his right flank while passing legislation that threatened to pull his party apart.
Johnson brought former President Donald Trump over to his side on the foreign aid despite his misgivings on funding the war in Ukraine.
He embraced Trump’s idea of turning part of the assistance into a forgivable loan, all the while abandoning his earlier demand that border security be part of a Ukraine deal, seen as denying Trump a campaign issue as he runs against President Joe Biden in the fall.
The accommodations, cemented by a trip to Mar-a-Lago this month, reflected Johnson’s desire to get on the same page as his party’s standard-bearer and likely made House passage possible.
His apparent failure to do so on the warrantless surveillance program led to an angry post in which Trump called on Republicans to “kill FISA” the same day Johnson brought the reauthorization up for a procedural vote.
Trump, who lumps the program in with attempts to spy on his campaign in 2016, eventually got on board with further changes, namely a shorter extension that convinced GOP hard-liners not to stand in the bill’s way.
Johnson’s appeals to Trump helped Republicans find a way past their infighting. But it also helped, to some extent, neutralize the anger from his right flank. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) continues to threaten a motion to vacate, which triggers a vote on whether to remove him as speaker, but some Republicans believe the upheaval would be larger had the former president not intervened.
On repeated occasions, Trump has either warned against ousting Johnson or expressed confidence in the job he is doing.
Ironically, the bigger saving grace for Johnson is House Democrats’ willingness to keep him in the speaker’s chair. A number of them have openly said they would provide the votes to offset Greene and her allies as a gesture of gratitude for bringing Ukraine aid, essential to Biden’s foreign policy agenda, to the floor.
That prospect has only fueled conservative venting that Johnson has formed a “coalition government” with the Democrats. But it’s just one leg of a governing strategy that Johnson has pursued as he comes into his own as speaker.
Johnson has sought to hand Republicans modest wins, shaping bills to the extent he can in divided government. His price for Ukraine aid was a measure to force the sale of TikTok, something originally met with resistance in the Democratic-led Senate.
Meanwhile, Johnson has shown hard-liners deference in the way he structures legislation. In the spending fight, he demanded two sets of funding deadlines to avoid the perception that Democrats were jamming them with a massive omnibus.
But his decision to move past the legislative gridlock, first on government funding, which passed Congress in March, and then on FISA and Ukraine a month later, also reflects a decision not to let the demands of his GOP opponents become a stumbling block.
That has worked for him, in part, because he is cut from the same cloth as those Republicans. He entered the speakership as a self-described arch-conservative who opposed Ukraine aid. By comparison, McCarthy had developed a reputation as a political chameleon before he assumed the same post.
Hard-liners are willing to extend Johnson more slack given he inherited a messy situation, and many still call him a “good man” despite their strong disagreements.
One of the biggest reasons Johnson will, in all likelihood, serve out the remainder of his post, however, without a true threat to his leadership is simply a matter of circumstance.
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With all the fiscal cliffs and must-pass legislation behind them, save for an extension of the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority in May and a possible extension of government funding in September, Johnson is for all intents and purposes a lame duck speaker.
Combined with the possibility of losing their two-seat majority in November, or sooner, if they devolve into another speakership fight, many are reluctant to depose him when all of the biggest fights of the 118th Congress are already in the rearview mirror.
