Can Mike Johnson keep his job?

Congressional Republicans do not often love their leaders. They booted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 and replaced him with the then-nearly unknown Mike Johnson. Now Johnson faces a revolt from high-profile women in his ranks.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) hold on the speaker’s gavel “appears weaker than ever,” said The New York Times. Public anger has come from GOP figures like Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a member of Johnson’s leadership team, as well as Reps. Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), who circumvented Johnson to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban. House Republicans are often fractious, “but it does seem like there is an unusually high level of discontent,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.) to the Times. Johnson “wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” Stefanik said to The Wall Street Journal.

Female GOP lawmakers have “less representation in leadership” and hold just one committee chairmanship in the lower chamber, said NBC News. The women “feel they have been passed over for opportunities” and believe Johnson has repeatedly undercut them. “We aren’t taken seriously,” said one anonymous female Republican to NBC. Johnson’s team is pushing back. The speaker has “helped recruit and support women running for office,” a spokesman said. It is a conflict Johnson needs to resolve. Republicans have a slim majority in the House, and he cannot afford any defections.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

“The GOP women are humiliating Mike Johnson,” said Joe Perticone at The Bulwark. It started when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) backed the petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. It has come to a head with Stefanik, angry with Johnson over her proposal to require the FBI to disclose when it investigates congressional candidates. All of it is a sign that House Republicans are on the verge of “entering into open rebellion” against their leader. The party’s women are “giving Johnson the bird” while GOP men in the House are living with the “indignity of being subservient cogs in the party machinery.”

It is not shocking that a party built on President Donald Trump’s “macho, politically incorrect swagger” is having trouble with women in its ranks, said Matt Lewis at The Hill. Johnson in particular is an evangelical “fond of lecturing about ’distinct roles’ for men and women.” He also makes an easy target for Republicans frustrated by the party’s political challenges, but who will not challenge Trump directly. Is the speaker a “retrograde misogynist” or just a patsy? “Either way, the ending is the same.”

What next?

Johnson is “imploring” his members to “stop venting their frustrations in public,” said The Associated Press. If there are conflicts, “come to me, don’t go to social media,” he said to reporters yesterday. More and more, though, GOP members are “ignoring him,” said the AP. House Democrats are delighted. Republicans are the “gang that can’t legislate straight,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the outlet.