GOP Finally Elects Mike Johnson as Speaker, in Sign of Chaos to Come

House Speaker Mike Johnson ultimately retained his gavel Friday afternoon.

The Louisiana Republican was able to convince Representatives Ralph Norman and Keith Self to swap their protest votes in favor of a second Johnson term, securing the 218 votes required to keep him at the top of House leadership. Since the first vote was never officially gaveled in, Johnson technically won on the first round. One holdout remained, however: Representative Thomas Massie, who proclaimed the night before that he wouldn’t vote for the MAGA acolyte.

“You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson,” Massie said Thursday.

It looked like Johnson had lost at first, ending the initial round just shy of the goal, with 216 votes in the pocket. A handful of aimless Republican votes for other candidates (who weren’t running for the House’s most prized position) made it mathematically impossible for Johnson to win.

Johnson had faced near-impossible margins from the jump: With a full House floor and a unified Democratic caucus, the speaker could only afford to lose one Republican on his path to 218 votes.

Initially, Massie voted for Representative Tom Emmer, Norman voted for Representative Jim Jordan (who quietly weighed running last week before dropping the bid), and Self voted for Representative Byron Donalds. Johnson managed to convince Norman and Self to change their votes.

Representative Chip Roy, another speculated holdout, also caved to the Johnson vote.

“Everything we do needs to set the Congress up for success and to deliver the Trump agenda for the American people,” Roy wrote on X after the vote. “Speaker Johnson has not made that clear yet, so there are many members beyond the three who voted for someone else who have reservations.”

Roy’s ominous post and Johnson’s inability to unite his caucus from the get-go do not bode well for the incoming Congress’s ability to get things done. Republicans can only afford to lose a few votes on each issue. The previous Congress, in which Republicans had a similarly tight House majority, failed spectacularly at accomplishing almost anything, marking one of the most unproductive congressional sessions in the history of the country.

Matt Gaetz’s absence in the House of Representatives on Friday led to cheers from his Democratic peers. The 119th session, highlighted by the contentious speakership election, started with an announcement of new members from House Clerk Kevin McCumber. Once he got to Gaetz, he stopped.

“The clerk is in receipt from the Honorable Matt Gaetz of the state of Florida indicating he will not serve in the House in the 119th Congress,” McCumber told the floor. Clapping ensued, while Republicans looked on.

Gaetz was reelected for another two-year term in November. He then resigned his seat, however, when Donald Trump announced him as pick for attorney general, amid a House Ethics Committee investigation that found Gaetz had “engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.” Republican senators balked, and the nomination was scrapped. There had been some speculation that Gaetz might show up to the speaker vote on Friday.

If the first vote for House Speaker is any indication, even though Representative Mike Johnson was reelected Friday to lead Congress, his trouble keeping the gavel may be far from over.

Johnson nearly failed to win the first vote, with Representatives Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, and Keith Self voting for other candidates.

There were six additional Republican holdouts who declined to vote the first time around, including Representatives Andy Biggs, Michael Cloud, Andrew Clyde, Paul Gosar, and House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris. Eventually, each of those six swung for the Louisiana Republican—but the numbers are starting to add up on another problem.

Norman and Self changed their votes after speaking with Johnson on the House floor.

A new rule Congress is set to vote on as soon as a speaker is elected would raise the threshold for a motion to vacate. If the rule change is implemented, it would require a lawmaker from the majority party to be joined by eight other co-signers from that party to force a vote on removing the speaker.

Nine lawmakers united against the speaker, and they could choose to drop the trap door again anytime they please—so even though Johnson was reelected, his potential firing squad may be beginning to materialize.

This story has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson nearly lost the first floor vote Friday to retain the gavel.

When the vote was unofficially called, a handful of aimless Republican votes for other candidates (who weren’t running for the House’s most prized position) appeared to make it mathematically impossible for Johnson to win.

Johnson had faced near-impossible margins from the jump: With a full House floor and a unified Democratic caucus, the speaker could only afford to lose one Republican on his path to 218 votes. Johnson ended the round just shy of the goal, with 216 votes in the pocket.

But three votes against his bid by Representatives Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, and Keith Self threw that into shambles. Massie voted for Representative Tom Emmer, Norman voted for Representative Jim Jordan (who quietly weighed running last week before dropping the bid), and Self voted for Representative Byron Donalds. Norman and Self ultimately changed their vote to Johnson, clinching the necessary 218.

Representative Chip Roy—a speculated holdout—also changed his vote at the last minute in favor of Johnson.

This story has been updated.

Those who worked tirelessly for President-elect Trump during campaign season may not get the coveted administration jobs they were promised, according to reporting from NOTUS. The lower-level roles that Trump has yet to fill were apparently supposed to go to the bureaucrats of Project 2025. But Trump’s strategic separation from the project put the future jobs of many of those bureaucrats in jeopardy.

Trump has apparently been unclear about what those jobs will even be, and incredibly slow at announcing them. “There’s growing frustration among the would-be’s,” an anonymous Republican told NOTUS. “There’s only three weeks left til inauguration and some people are trying to figure out what their future is going to look like with no clarity.”

The best way to actually get a job in the Trump administration is apparently to be in the right place at the right time. “You basically just blast around [a name] until you get a response, and then you make sure they apply on the inside, and then you follow up weeks later, and you keep on pushing,” a Trump loyalist told NOTUS. “I haven’t heard of a better way to guarantee anything.”