When the comparatively unknown Consultant Mike Johnson received the speaker’s gavel final yr, many rank-and-file Home Republicans seen him as a transitional determine whose chief job was to tug the celebration out of a funk of paralysis and dysfunction.
A yr later, after barely holding on to his majority and cementing an in depth political partnership with President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Johnson is on monitor to maintain the gavel for a second consecutive time period. On Wednesday, he received his celebration’s nomination for speaker unanimously, after the ultraconservatives who tormented and in the end ousted his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, determined to not run a protest candidate.
However the path forward for Mr. Johnson stays fraught. Republicans are on monitor to carry one more paper-thin majority within the subsequent Congress, and regardless of the speaker’s entreaties, Mr. Trump has already eroded that quantity by selecting three Home G.O.P. lawmakers for positions in his administration.
Mr. Johnson nonetheless should win a majority vote on the Home flooring in January to maintain the speakership, a process that may very well be upended by just some rebels. And will he formally win the gavel, he’ll face the problem of making an attempt to push by way of sweeping laws — to droop the debt ceiling, fund the federal government and rewrite the tax code — with few votes to spare.
His tough balancing act started virtually the second he received his colleagues’ help this week to proceed as speaker. In an try to purchase himself extra respiratory room, Mr. Johnson brokered a handshake cope with right-wing Republicans to alter a rule that for the previous two years has allowed a single member of the Home to drive a snap vote to take away the speaker.
