New Congress: Same As The Old One?

As America mourns the victims of the New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans, La., the nation’s capital is preparing to welcome the 534 members of the 119th Congress to town to be sworn in tomorrow. (As a reminder, one House lawmaker, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican from Florida, already has resigned his seat.)

The 10 new U.S. senators elected this past November will be inaugurated as the upper chamber of Congress’s first order of business. As CBS News has noted, members of the U.S. House of Representatives also “are expected to be sworn in [but] first, they’ll have to elect a speaker, which has not come easy for a divided Republican Party in the last two elections to pick their leader.”

Will Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), whose district includes most of western Louisiana, be reelected speaker of the House at an important time for his state and his party?

Let’s look at the state of the race.

What Is The Role Of The Speaker Of The House And How Are They Elected?

Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution outlines the role of the speaker of the House. As the National Constitution Center has explained, while “the Founders’ vision appeared to be for the speaker to serve” mainly “as a parliamentarian and peace maker, more along the lines of the Speaker in the British House of Commons,” today the speaker is more powerful, serving many important functions. Among the speaker’s duties are:

• Serving as the majority political party leader in the House;
• Controlling the order of all institutional business on the House floor;
• Negotiating between the House, the U.S. president, and the Senate, and serving as the point person for the House’s role in originating and passing legislation and controlling “the power of the purse” to tax and spend taxpayer money; and
• Serving as the second in line, after the vice president, to the commander-in-chief under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and playing a role in the 25th Amendment’s process of dealing with the event of a presidential disability.

The U.S. Constitution provides that the members of the lower chamber of Congress get to choose who serves as their speaker. As the National Constitution Center also has explained, the members of the majority party usually meet to determine who will be their candidate for speaker during party meetings held before a new Congress convenes. Then, hopefully, the members of the full House will confirm this selection by an individual roll call vote on the first day of the new Congress. (Up until 1839, lawmakers used secret ballots to elect the speaker. Today they state their preference publicly through a voice vote that’s televised nationally on C-SPAN.)

Of course, at the beginning of the last Congress, the 118th, which began in January 2023, that scenario was not the one that played out. That year, the Republicans who were in the majority went to the floor vote with several lawmakers running for the position. It took 15 ballots for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to be elected to the speakership. He lasted less than 10 months.

In 2023, the protracted battle for speaker simply meant the House could not move on to its legislative business. This year is different since one of the House’s first acts of business after electing the speaker is to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election.

President-Elect Trump’s Fate Hangs In The Balance

The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that the U.S. House and Senate meet in a joint session to certify the Electoral College results of presidential and vice presidential elections. This year, that joint session is supposed to occur on Jan. 6, just three days after the 119th Congress convenes and the first ballots are cast in the speakership race, and 14 days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to be sworn back into the Oval Office.

In 2023, the speakership race that resulted in Rep. McCarthy’s election did not end until the early morning hours of Jan. 7. In October 2023, when Rep. McCarthy was ousted, it took three weeks for Republicans to ultimately elect Rep. Johnson as speaker.

In other words, as a Wall Street Journal article published yesterday, noted, “The stakes for tomorrow’s speakership vote “are high.” Indeed, “If House Republicans can’t swiftly unite to install Johnson or another person as speaker, the ensuing chaos could prevent Congress from functioning and — if the drama drags on long enough — potentially threaten Trump’s ascension to the presidency on Jan. 20.”

In the event a joint session of Congress does not certify the election results by Jan. 20, Inauguration Day — a scenario that The Wall Street Journal admits is “far-fetched,” but not impossible — the Presidential Succession Act would kick in. Without a vice president or speaker of the House, that means the third in line for the presidency, the Senate president pro tempore, would become commander-in-chief.

Each Congress, the role of president pro tempore is filled by longest-serving senator from the party that has a majority of seats in the Senate. In the 119th Congress, that would be Sen. Charles Grassley, the 91-year-old Republican senator from Iowa.

Perhaps knowing the stakes in the speakership race are so high, on Monday, Dec. 30, President-elect Trump endorsed Rep. Johnson for the top role in the U.S. House. Elon Musk also threw his support behind Rep. Johnson.

Will those endorsements be enough?

The Current State Of The Speaker’s Race

So far, no other Republican has thrown their name into the race for speaker of the House, but Democrats will nominate their current leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), as their choice to lead the chamber.

To prevail over Rep. Jeffries, Rep. Johnson would need 218 total votes if every member of Congress expresses a preference for speaker. (On this roll call vote and all others, House members may show no preference by voting “present.” These votes are not counted in the overall total, so if members vote “present” tomorrow it will affect the total number of votes needed to win the speakership.)

With Republicans holding a narrow 219-215 majority in the House, that means Rep. Johnson can only afford to lose votes from two GOP lawmakers.

He already has lost one: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). On social media, Rep. Massie said, “Johnson is not up for this task.” The lawmaker also warned Rep. Johnson could cost Republicans the House majority if he is allowed to set the legislative agenda. “[We] want a speaker who inspires the public and who can make our case in the media, so we can keep the majority for the second half of Trump’s term,” Massie wrote, “Johnson nearly led us to the minority in what was a banner year for Trump.”

Several other House Republicans also have not yet said how they will vote. That list includes Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who chairs the powerful House Freedom Caucus. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rep. Harris wants Rep. Johnson to make structural changes that will make it easier to reduce government spending and to give priority to internal GOP debate before legislation can be introduced on the floor. Rep. Harris also told The Wall Street Journal a “significant number” of House Freedom Caucus members are similarly unconvinced.

According to Roll Call, “Another Republican signaling skepticism of Johnson is Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz, who said in a statement Monday that she would ‘still need to get assurances that [Johnson] won’t sell us out to the swamp.’” More specifically, Rep. Spartz said she wants Rep. Johnson to publicly commit to creating ‘at least temporary structures’ in the chamber for authorizations, reconciliation offset policies and spending audits, as well as a concrete plan on how to work for Trump’s agenda.”

A third holdout is Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) who took to the House floor in December to criticize Rep. Johnson’s leadership in the 118th Congress. “From Roy’s point of view, Johnson failed to deliver on several issues that the Texas Republican advocated for – tight spending restraints, holding firm on the SAVE Act and strict border restrictions,” Punchbowl said this morning before concluding, “A call from Trump to Roy would probably do little good” in swaying Rep. Roy to support Rep. Johnson’s bid for speaker.

As a reminder, Republican leaders, including Rep. Johnson, lost the support of nearly three dozen Republicans in last month’s vote on the final fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution. Those lawmakers are still smarting from what they view as the GOP leadership’s capitulation on a spending package and feel Rep. Johnson has abandoned them – and GOP principles – on the government spending debate. They could exact their revenge tomorrow.

There is one bit of good news for Rep. Johnson if he is reelected to the speakership tomorrow: Yesterday, House Republicans unveiled a proposed rules package for the 119th Congress that would raise the threshold to introduce a motion to vacate, the measure that was used in October 2023 to oust Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. As AXIOS explained, instead “of any single House member being able to force such a vote, now any such motion will have to be introduced by a Republican joined by eight additional GOP co-sponsors.”

To benefit from that rule, however, Rep. Johnson will first need to survive tomorrow.