House SpeakerJohnson Elected Speaker of the House, Ending Weeks of Chaos
Mike Johnson, a little-known social conservative from Louisiana, did what three nominees before him could not: win over support from mainstream Republicans and the far right.
transcript
Republicans Elect Mike Johnson as House Speaker, Ending Party Chaos
After weeks of infighting that saw Republicans reject three nominees, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana secured enough party support to become speaker of the House.
“The Honorable Mike Johnson of the state of Louisiana, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress.” “First, a few words of gratitude. I want to thank Leader Jeffries. I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people. I know we see things from very different points of view, but I know that in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what’s right. And so we’re going to find common ground there, all right. I want to express my great thanks for our speaker emeritus, Kevin McCarthy. He is the reason we’re in this majority today. [applause] Last thing I’m going to say is a message to the rest of the world: They have been watching this drama play out for a few weeks. We’ve learned a lot of lessons. But you know what? Through adversity, it makes you stronger. And — yeah, and we want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear. The people’s House is back in business.”
Reporting from Capitol Hill
transcript
Republicans Elect Mike Johnson as House Speaker, Ending Party Chaos
After weeks of infighting that saw Republicans reject three nominees, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana secured enough party support to become speaker of the House.
“The Honorable Mike Johnson of the state of Louisiana, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress.” “First, a few words of gratitude. I want to thank Leader Jeffries. I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people. I know we see things from very different points of view, but I know that in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what’s right. And so we’re going to find common ground there, all right. I want to express my great thanks for our speaker emeritus, Kevin McCarthy. He is the reason we’re in this majority today. [applause] Last thing I’m going to say is a message to the rest of the world: They have been watching this drama play out for a few weeks. We’ve learned a lot of lessons. But you know what? Through adversity, it makes you stronger. And — yeah, and we want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear. The people’s House is back in business.”
Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana won election on Wednesday to become the 56th speaker of the House of Representatives, as Republicans worn down by three weeks of infighting and dysfunction turned to a little-known conservative hard-liner beloved by the far right to end their paralysis.
The elevation of Mr. Johnson, 51, an architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election and a religious conservative opposed to abortion rights, homosexuality and gay marriage, further cemented the Republican Party’s lurch to the right. It came after a historic fight that began when the hard right ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3, and raged on as the divided House G.O.P. nominated and then quickly discarded three other candidates to succeed him.
Exhausted from the feuding, which unleashed a barrage of recriminations and violent threats against lawmakers, both the right wing and mainstream Republicans finally united to elect Mr. Johnson, 51, in a 220-to-209 vote.
The vote put him second in line to the presidency, capping an extraordinary period of twists and turns on Capitol Hill. It marked a victory for the far right that has become a dominant force in the Republican Party, which rose up this month to effectively dictate the removal of an establishment speaker and the installation of an arch-conservative replacement.
Republicans jumped to their feet and applauded on Wednesday after Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, the interim speaker, declared that Mr. Johnson was the “duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives.”
In a speech that traced his ascent up the political ladder in Louisiana to Congress, Mr. Johnson pledged to try to “restore the people’s faith in this House.” He cited sending aid to Israel, fixing a “broken” southern border, and reining in federal spending as his top legislative priorities.
“The challenge before us is great, but the time for action is now,” Mr. Johnson said shortly after he was elected. “And I will not let you down.”
Evoking his evangelical Christian faith, Mr. Johnson repeatedly referred to scripture in his speech from the House floor.
“The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority,” he said. “He raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment.”
In a nod to the simmering frustrations among the hard-right flank of the party that ultimately deposed Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican, Mr. Johnson pledged that his office “is going to be known for decentralizing power.”
Elected to Congress in 2016, Mr. Johnson is the most junior lawmaker in decades to become speaker.
He may also be the most conservative. Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, is the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee and sponsored legislation that would effectively bar the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity at any institution serving children younger than 10 that receives federal funds. He supports a national abortion ban and has co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban.
Mr. Johnson served on former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment defense team, playing a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results. He was also an architect of Mr. Trump’s bid to object to certifying them in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Trump praised him on Wednesday after his election, calling the Louisiana Republican “a fantastic gentleman.”
“He’s going to do a great job,” Mr. Trump said.
Democrats were scathing in their assessment of Mr. Johnson’s ascent to the speakership. Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the Democratic conference chairman, said that the speaker fight had devolved into a contest over “who can appease Donald Trump.” At that line, a handful of hard-right Republicans stood and applauded.
They heckled mainstream Republicans facing tough re-election contests next year in swing districts as they rose to vote for Mr. Johnson. After Representatives Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro, both of New York, each voted for the Louisiana Republican, a Democrat could be heard yelling out: “Bye-bye!”
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.
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.
After President Biden was told during a White House news conference that a new speaker had been elected, Mr. Biden said: “I hope that’s true. Because we have to get moving.”
Asked whether he was concerned, given the Republican speaker’s history, that he would try again to overturn the election in 2024, Mr. Biden answered flatly: “No. Just like I was not worried the last campaign would overturn the election.”
In a statement later on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said: “We need to move swiftly to address our national security needs and to avoid a shutdown in 22 days. Even though we have real disagreements about important issues, there should be mutual effort to find common ground wherever we can.”
In the end, it was Mr. Johnson who was able to bring together both the party’s hard-right and mainstream flanks that had taken turns sinking speaker candidates. But the unity was in part a product of burnout among House Republicans, who in spite of their differences grew eager to put an end to the weekslong spectacle of mass dysfunction and paralysis that many said had left their constituents distraught.
“From an outside point of view these last few weeks probably look like total chaos, confusion, no end in sight,” said Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 Republican who within hours of being nominated for speaker on Tuesday was dumped by his party’s hard-right flank. “But from my perspective, this is one of the greatest experiences in the recent history of our republic.”
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.
“While there are issues where we differ, we must get back to governing for the good of the country,” Mr. Lawler wrote on social media, posting a photo of himself and Mr. Johnson shaking hands.
A bloc of Republicans had objected to the speaker bid of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, because of his role in helping lead Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. But some said they did not have the same concerns about Mr. Johnson.
Representative Ken Buck of Colorado said that Mr. Johnson was not involved in postelection efforts to invalidate the results, even though Mr. Johnson was a critical player in those activities. “People can make mistakes and still be really good speakers,” Mr. Buck said.
And the hard-right Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, setting into motion the three-week stretch of chaos that left the House without a leader, said Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the top job made their decision to depose the California Republican worth it.
“This affirms the path that we took,” Representative Bob Good of Virginia said.
Reporting was contributed by Luke Broadwater, Robert Jimison, Kayla Guo, Michael D. Shear and Erica L. Green.
While introducing Speaker Johnson at the news conference, Representative Tom Emmer, who was dumped from his speakership bid by the hard right on Tuesday, called the bitter process Republicans just went through over the past three weeks “open, honest, transparent and a true display of what democracy looks like in action.”
“From an outside point of view these last few weeks probably look like total chaos, confusion, no end in sight," he said. "But from my perspective, this is one of the greatest experiences of the recent history of our republic."
In a statement, President Biden congratulated Speaker Johnson, and said they needed to “move swiftly to address our national security needs and to avoid a shutdown in 22 days.” He added: “Even though we have real disagreements about important issues, there should be mutual effort to find common ground wherever we can."
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident Biden, when asked about Johnson’s history of rejecting the 2020 election results, said he was not worried about Johnson attempting to overturn the results of the next presidential election. “Just like I was not worried the last campaign would overturn the election,” Biden said. “They got 60 lawsuits, and all the way to Supreme Court and every time they lost. I understand the Constitution.”
Johnson does not take questions from the press. He is, however, now taking many selfies with Republicans.
Johnson said Republicans would "dispense with all of the usual ceremonies and celebrations” and get to work. “You’re going to see an aggressive schedule in the days and weeks ahead,” he said.
“We went through a lot to get here, but we are ready to govern and that will begin right away,” Johnson says in his first news conference as speaker.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhile Republicans are celebrating finally electing a speaker, across the Capitol, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, chimes in with a reminder of the impending mid-November government shutdown looming unless Congress can pass legislation to keep it funded. “I look forward to meeting with Speaker Johnson soon to discuss the path forward to avoid a government shutdown,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.
Schumer continued: “When I meet with him, I will convey that bipartisanship is the only way we can deliver results for the American people. The only way to avoid a government shutdown, pass critical supplemental funding, and deliver common-sense investments to the American people is bipartisanship.” Remember that McCarthy came to the same conclusion on his own earlier this fall — that the only way to avoid a shutdown was to work with Democrats — and that Republicans ousted him for it.
“We are unified and so proud to have elected Mike Johnson as speaker of the People’s House,” Elise Stefanik says to kick off a news conference on the Capitol steps.
Democrat Jamie Raskin, who serves on the Judiciary Committee alongside Speaker Johnson, is brutal in his evaluation of Johnson and Republicans more broadly, saying the new speaker has “much better manners” than G.O.P. firebrands but “is a MAGA extremist in substance.”
The dominating religious tenor of Johnson’s remarks, Raskin added, “demonstrates that there are no public policy values that unify the Republican caucus anymore. They don’t have a secular program. And so they have fallen back on theocracy as the final binding mechanism of their cause.”
“This affirms the path that we took,” Representative Bob Good of Virginia, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, tells reporters.
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Johnson says he has a message to American allies abroad watching the chaos of the speaker fight in the past few weeks: “Adversity makes you stronger.” That’s similar to what former Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after winning the gavel following 15 rounds and five days of votes.
For about 18 months, Speaker Mike Johnson, along with his wife, Kelly Johnson, have hosted a podcast that explores their faith and current events, touching on a wide range of subjects including the congressional effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the right to abortion and former President Donald J. Trump’s legal woes.
The podcasts, spanning 69 episodes, offer an extended window into Mr. Johnson's views and politics, as he co-hosts the program with his wife, a licensed pastoral counselor. In it, the man who has just been elected speaker, an evangelical Christian, talks at length about his vehement opposition to abortion rights, calls the Democratic agenda socialist, and rails against the prosecution of Mr. Trump for his efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.
“You have a Democrat county prosecutor there who is engaging in, just, stagecraft,” Mr. Johnson said on the podcast in August, after Mr. Trump was criminally charged in Fulton County, Ga., with attempting to overturn his election loss in the state. In the episode, Mr. Johnson said it was an “outrageous development” and complained that Mr. Trump had to surrender to the county jail on “completely bogus charges.”
The first episode of the program, published in March 2022, was titled, “Can America be Saved?”
“We call this show ‘Truth Be Told’ because that’s what we are going to do on this program,” Mr. Johnson said in the opening episode. “We are going to get right to the heart of all these pressing issues and questions. And we will review current events through the lens of eternal truth.”
The podcast has featured numerous guests including Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mr. Johnson’s mentor; Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and some of the Johnsons’ children
After the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in May of last year, the Johnsons hosted an episode that explored the “future of life in America,” while also sharing their personal jubilation about the news of the pending decision.
“This is the one that we have felt for some time may be finally the chance we have to overturn the atrocity of Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Johnson said. He said his phone had been ringing constantly because of his career in constitutional law working on abortion cases for conservative groups. He said Roe had given “constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children in America.”
About a year ago, after Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterm elections, Mr. Johnson discussed how some of his allies were feeling “dejected and depressed about what’s happened.” But he spoke optimistically about Republicans regaining control of the House, and the ramifications.
“We will stop the socialist agenda, we will control the purse strings, and you will see some pretty vigorous investigations and oversight because that is a really important responsibility of the Congress in our constitutional system,” he said.
“Congratulations to Rep. Mike Johnson” former President Donald J. Trump said in a post on Truth Social, adding that Johnson will be a "GREAT 'SPEAKER.'"
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTDon’t hold me to it, he’s still talking, but so far no mention of the Biden impeachment.
After a reporter told President Biden at a news conference that a new speaker had been chosen, he said: “I hope that’s true. Because we have to get moving. We have to get moving.”
After Israel, Johnson says addressing the “broken border” will be the second priority of House Republicans.
Johnson says that he will bring to the floor “in just a little while” a resolution in support of Israel. “We’re going to show not only Israel but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas" is "wretched and wrong,” he said.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTJohnson’s speech is light on policy and heavy on personal history. He has talked about his own history — first in his family to graduate from college, lost his father to cancer three days before he was first elected to Congress — but said little about what he plans to do in the new job. It’s also heavy on God: he is an Evangelical Christian, and he says that he doesn’t think anything is a coincidence and hints that God has put him where he is today.
Johnson notes that his wife, Kelly, is not in Washington for the celebration given the short notice and the fact that she couldn’t get a flight.
Johnson praises former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, unceremoniously deposed three weeks ago. Says “he is the reason we are in this majority today,” a nod to his political skills.
Johnson is known for combining his hard-line views with a gentle style. We’re seeing a little bit of that here, with his gracious words toward Jeffries, promising to work together and find common ground.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTDoubtful that Johnson could have imagined this moment just a day or so ago as those higher on the leadership ladder were competing for the speaker’s post.
Johnson begins his remarks saying he looks forward to working with Jeffries, and that he knows the Democratic leader “in his heart” loves and cares about the country.
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If Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was the most prominent public face of the congressional effort to fight the results of the 2020 election, his mentee, the newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, was a silent but pivotal partner.
The election on Wednesday of Mr. Johnson, 51, to the post second in line to the presidency has focused new attention on his behind-the-scenes role in trying to overturn the election results on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump.
A social conservative, Mr. Johnson played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results.
In December 2020, Mr. Johnson collected signatures for a legal brief in support of a Texas lawsuit, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, that tried to throw out the results in four battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the suit, but not before Mr. Johnson persuaded more than 60 percent of House Republicans to sign onto the effort. He did so by telling them that the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was “anxiously awaiting” to see who in Congress would defend him.
A constitutional lawyer, Mr. Johnson was also a key architect of Republicans’ objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Many Republicans in Congress relied on his arguments.
In 2020, Mr. Johnson embraced Mr. Trump’s wild and false claims of fraud. In a radio interview, he asserted that a software system used for voting was “suspect because it came from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.”
Mr. Johnson also falsely claimed the election was “rigged.”
“You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that,” Mr. Johnson said.
No credible evidence has ever emerged to support the conspiracy theories about Dominion and another voting machine firm having helped to ensure Mr. Trump’s defeat. In April, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit by Dominion over reports broadcast by Fox that Dominion machines were susceptible to hacking and had flipped votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.
On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, Mr. Johnson had honed his arguments undermining the election to be more palatable. He presented colleagues with arguments they could use to oppose the will of the voters without embracing conspiracy theories and the lies of widespread fraud pushed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Johnson instead faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional.
After a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters, believing the election was rigged, stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and injured about 150 police officers, Mr. Johnson condemned the violence. But he defended the actions of congressional Republicans in objecting to Mr. Biden’s victory.
He wrote a two-page memo of talking points meant to buck up Republicans, and lamented that the violence had almost eclipsed his careful arguments. “Most of the country has also never heard the principled reason,” he wrote.
Over a year later, on “Truth Be Told,” the Christian podcast he hosts with his wife, Kelly, Mr. Johnson continued to argue that he and his colleagues had been right to object to the election results.
“The slates of electors were produced by a clearly unconstitutional process, period,” he said.
Mr. Johnson came to Congress in 2017 with support from the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, though he has never joined the group.
In an interview this year, he referred to Mr. Jordan, a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, as a “very close friend” who “has been a mentor to me since I got here.”
Mr. Johnson said Mr. Jordan called him when he was running for office, because “he knew I was a conservative,” contributed money to his campaign and invited him to Washington for a meeting with him and other Freedom Caucus members.
“He started providing advice to me,” Mr. Johnson said. “So now we’ve become very close.”
In 2020, the two men and their wives traveled to Israel together and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Johnson has also made a close ally of Mr. Trump, and he served on Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense team.
On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church speaking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump called. Mr. Johnson had been in touch with the president’s team on his myriad legal challenges seeking to overturn the results, “to restore the integrity of our election process,” according to a Facebook post by Mr. Johnson recounting the exchange.
“We have to keep fighting for that, Mike,” he said Mr. Trump told him.
“Indeed we do, sir!” Mr. Johnson said he replied.
Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.
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