House Republicans could soon be experiencing some serious déjà vu.
On Friday, January 3rd, the newly elected Congress will meet for the first time and vote on the Speaker of the House. Like last term — when it took 15 rounds to elect GOP Chairman Kevin McCarthy — this contest could be messy because of a narrow Republican majority and conservative opposition to incumbent Mike Johnson, who is again his party’s nominee for the job.
At stake is the Republicans’ ability to do almost anything in the near term. The House cannot function without a speaker, meaning key tasks such as the certification of the Jan. 6 presidential election are at risk of delays. Any speech drama also sends a clear message about the lingering divisions in the party and how they could pose a real challenge to the GOP’s attempts to pass real policy in the coming year.
Republicans have a 219-215 majority — one member less than expected from the former Republic. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has said he won’t be back — so Johnson can afford to lose one GOP member if all Democrats vote against him, which they likely will. (A candidate must receive a majority of all votes to secure a seat, so if all 434 members vote to elect speaker, Johnson will need 218 votes to win. If some members vote “present,” the math becomes more complicated.)
Already, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said he would not support Johnson and others such as Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Andy Harris (R-MD) and Scott Perry (R-PA) abstained.
Johnson has sought to lock down the support he needs in recent weeks, including securing the support of President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, as well as that of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has moved to weigh conflicts in Congress. But it’s not yet clear whether that support will be enough to win over his skeptics, who are angered by Johnson’s reliance on Democratic votes to pass funding bills and frustrated by the leadership’s lack of transparency on major legislation.
The House needs a speaker to function
Any chaos of speakers effectively impedes the basic functions of the House.
As established by the 1789 Act, a speaker is required for everything from swearing in members to organizing committees to passing new laws. Ultimately, the election of the speaker—which is by public roll call—must take place before any other congressional action.
The fight for McCarthy’s election in January 2023 offered a glimpse of the possible consequences: As the election process dragged on for several days, members became concerned about their inability to provide essential services and receive secret briefings because they had not yet technically been sworn in. .
Unlike 2023, however, this term also has considerations beyond the day-to-day work of Congress. The speaker’s role will likely need to be filled for the House to certify the results of the presidential election on Monday, and failure to do so could delay confirmation of Trump’s victory. As CNN reported Thursday, Johnson’s allies cited that concern as the reason his opponents backed down.
If the House does not elect a speaker by Jan. 6, lawmakers could try to push the certification date later in the month or try other unprecedented alternatives, such as electing a temporary speaker, to clear that procedural hurdle. But according to George Washington University professor Sarah Binder, an expert on congressional rules, it’s not certain that a member of the House of Representatives, the nonpartisan official who advises Congress on interpreting the rules, would agree to such solutions.
Binder notes that there are ways the House could use a temporary speaker to conduct urgent business, but that a member could decline to do so. If they did, lawmakers would likely follow the ruling, as MPs’ decisions usually carry significant weight. (An MP’s advice is non-binding and lawmakers have ignored it in the past, but those cases have been rare.)
The potential chaos is a preview of Republican divides — and the struggles to come
Any dispute between the speakers also signals how deep Republican divisions continue to be and how messy efforts to advance their policies are poised to be. It also shows the strength of the party’s right wing, which has twice held the speakership contest hostage in 2023 to lay claim to coveted committee positions and the power to oust the House leadership.
“It’s a reflection of the fundamental disagreements and factionalism within the House Republican Conference,” Binder told Vox. “Whether we date it to Donald Trump, whether we date it to MAGA, whether we date it to the Tea Party (movement in 2009) or beyond … (or) anti-establishment activist conservatives, the Republican Party has been shaped by this for a long time. central faction.”
McCarthy’s contentious election—and administration—last term provided a vivid glimpse of these fault lines. In January 2023, it took several rounds of voting over four days – the decision was decided in the early morning of 7 January – before McCarthy was elected speaker, thanks to conservative opposition to his leadership. To win the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy eventually offered significant concessions to far-right members, including seats on the rules committee and the ability for any Republican member to unilaterally force a vote to remove the speaker.
The right wing of the party eventually succeeded in ousting McCarthy from the speakership in October 2023, prompting another round of infighting. It then took more than three weeks for Republicans to recapture the position, with multiple nominations and multiple votes before Johnson’s elevation.
McCarthy’s decision to work with Democrats to pass a short-term financial measure precipitated his ouster, and since then Johnson has also had to rely on Democratic votes on many occasions to keep the government open and pass large foreign aid packages because his own conference was simply too fragmented to to agree on them.
Those divisions, along with tight margins in the House — soon to narrow further as two House Republicans join the Trump administration — will be tested again and again in 2025. Republicans’ first hurdle will be the speaker race, but any GOP efforts to advance ambitious immigration and tax laws during the Trump administration, or even keeping the situation open, could prove difficult.
“The stakes are higher for them (now),” Binder says, “because they have Trump in the White House and they have a political agenda.”
