Now that Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, what happens next?

Photo montage of Mike Johnson and the Capitol building

(Image credit: Illustrated / Getty Images)

published 26 October 2023

There was no white smoke issuing from a Capitol chimney, and no choreographed pageantry of a royal coronation, but after three weeks of internal strife and public disarray, lawmakers in Washington elected little-known Louisiana Republican Rep. Mike Johnson as 56th speaker of the House of Representatives, finally filling the void left by ousted California Republican Kevin McCarthy. With barely any national name recognition just one day earlier, Johnson is now third in line to the presidency, and one of the most politically powerful people on Earth. He is also, as Politico's Calder McHugh put it, a "social conservative’s social conservative" who has argued that "homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural" while serving, per New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait, as the congressional "mastermind" of former President Donald Trump's 2020 election subversion effort.

With long ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson is "the most culturally conservative lawmaker to ascend to the speakership in decades, if not longer," according to McHugh, and a "speaker for the MAGA movement," Axios reported. Although he was unanimously backed by his Republican colleagues this week, Johnson's path forward as speaker is by no means an easy one; his barely-there congressional majority is complicated by the ongoing intra-party struggle between MAGA hardliners and their comparatively moderate GOP counterparts, while Democrats have shown lockstep unity during the past few weeks of speaker drama. So where do Johnson, the Republicans, and Congress as a whole go from here?

Johnson's speakership win "immediately raised new questions about whether Johnson would help or hinder Republicans’ efforts to hold onto their fragile majority next year," The Washington Post reported, citing a lack of national fundraising skills and relationships as fueling "fears that he won’t be able to raise as much money to help the party hold the House" as his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, had. Republicans also worry that Johnson won't be able to "unite the conference or even staff his own speaker’s office fast enough," according to separate analysis from the Post. Ultimately Johnson "inherits many of the same political problems that have tormented past GOP leaders," according to The Associated Press. For as much as he earned his party's unanimous support in the speaker vote, that "goodwill toward Johnson blurs the political fault lines challenging the Louisianan’s ability to lead" the GOP for the remainder of the term.

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Democrats, meanwhile, are eager to pounce on the "blank slate" afforded by Johnson's low national profile, and are working to define him by his extremities ahead of the 2024 election, Axios reported. Johnson is a "rare and volatile combination of unvetted [and] conservative talk show host," one Democratic strategist told the website, pointing to "years of material, freestyle right-wing rhetoric, that nobody has looked under the hood on." By that same measure, however, some of the hardline Republicans who helped oust McCarthy see Johnson's speakership as a decisive victory for their gambit; "I promised the country that we would end up with a speaker who was more honest and more conservative," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whose motion to vacate set off the recent speaker battle, boasted to the Post. "We have."

For as much as the faultlines and future minefields still exist for Johnson, the "goodwill" referenced by AP does, at least in the short term, seem to bode well for a GOP weary of embarrassing public feuds. As hardline House Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry (R-Penn.) explained to CNN's Manu Raju when asked about a short-term spending bill — the same issue that prompted Gaetz's deposition of McCarthy to begin with — "there was a trust factor with leadership last time." With Johnson holding the speaker's gavel, "you’re going to see a different viewpoint now."

Whether that goodwill lasts, Johnson himself has committed himself to an "ambitious schedule" in a letter to House Republicans, proposing 12 individual spending bills between now and the budget deadline of November 17. Acknowledging the challenges of his new office, Johnson stressed the need to "unify our membership and build consensus" across the GOP. If successful, he added, "we can achieve our necessary objectives."

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.