Just minutes after House Speaker Mike Johnson took a breather after quashing a brief conservative uprising and winning re-election on Friday, far-right lawmakers sent him a letter.
It wasn't a happy occasion.
They wrote that they voted for him only to “firmly support President Trump and ensure the timely certification of the electors.”
“We have taken this action despite our sincere reservations about the Speaker's performance over the past 15 months,” the ultra-Conservative House of Commons Freedom Caucus MPs said, citing three key points regarding Mr Johnson. Attached is a list of the grievances and seven policies that Johnson was asked to adopt.
Welcome to the 119th Congress.
“I'm hopeful that wrestling matches in the chamber will kind of become the norm,” Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Ariz., said as he walked out of the House chamber after Johnson was elected speaker.
Mr. Johnson has had one of the toughest jobs in Washington since taking the top House job after many of his fellow conservatives ousted his predecessor. Now, with complete Republican control of the government and President-elect Donald J. Trump's enormous domestic challenges at stake, Mr. Trump faces his toughest test yet.
Mr. Johnson will be responsible for advancing Mr. Trump's economic plan, which lawmakers say will include raising the nation's borrowing limit, extending tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump in 2017, and cutting federal spending. It includes one or more large bills that they hope to accomplish at the same time. , and introduced a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
At the same time, he will be dealing with a mercurial president who has already shown a penchant for crushing parliamentary negotiations and imposing new demands at the eleventh hour. And despite his respect for Trump, he has already signaled he intends to push back against Trump on key votes and has little regard for the political fallout of stirring up internal party drama. , will do so while trying to corral an unruly group of lawmakers. party.
Mr Johnson's majority will shrink further in the coming weeks. He faces difficult votes, having lost two reliable Republicans, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Michael Walz of Florida, who are leaving the House to work in the Trump administration. If the number of candidates is collected, only one person will be allowed to leave the party.
In addition, expectations are rising about what Mr. Trump can accomplish with the Republican trifecta.
“I'm not saying any of the other things we're going to do will be easy. In fact, they're going to be very tough,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Florida. “But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things done, and I think that's a driving force. Sometimes we're tough I'm going to vote.”
Johnson's supporters like to say never bet against him, after the Louisiana Republican was re-elected Friday in one vote despite being tortured. I repeated these words.
But it was clear that the wrangling on the House floor over Johnson's appointment as speaker was just the beginning of a battle over the tax, budget and immigration bills that Republicans were preparing to pass.
Chief among the demands made Friday by the House Freedom Caucus is that the bill “does not increase federal borrowing” “before substantial spending cuts are agreed to and implemented” and Trump He is asking House Republicans to approve it.
Nor did they commit Mr Johnson to ensuring that “any settlement package would reduce spending and the deficit in real terms on the dynamic score of tax and spending policy under recent growth trends” He also complained about this.
The demands are almost certain to spark a bitter fight within House Republicans over how to frame Mr. Trump's landmark bill. The extension of the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 alone is estimated to cost about $4 trillion. Offsetting these cuts with the immigration policies Republicans are pushing to include would impose significant spending cuts that could face pushback from moderate Republicans who certainly have a say. be.
Already, some mainstream conservatives who just won tough re-election races in battleground districts and maintained the Republican majority in the House of Representatives are venting their frustrations on their hard-line colleagues.
“Ninety-five percent of us are angry that 5 percent are doing this to Mike Johnson and to the entire conference. Who are they?” Nebraska's Don Don Congressman Bacon said. “We're 95 per cent, but they're acting as if they're part of the House of Lords or the Assembly. And we don't like that.”
“We were quite happy with them,” he added. “Most of us don't want to work with them, we don't want to work on their bills, because it's all about them.”
That may suit them, but it will only make Mr. Johnson's job of rallying a Republican majority around Mr. Trump's priorities even harder.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina was one of two Republicans who initially opposed Mr. Johnson's election as speaker during the full House session on Friday, but ended up changing his vote and decided to vote on the tax and budget bill. He told reporters that he felt Johnson's message. In the end, we didn't have to spend taxpayer money.
“I think Mike Johnson already knows that, but that's not going to happen,” Norman said, adding that he respects how the speaker addressed his concerns.
“He said, 'Look, if I don't perform the way I say I should and if I'm going to push through what you say, take me out,'” Norman continued. “He said, 'I never thought I'd get this job anyway.'”
Karon Demirdjian and Maya C. Miller Contributed to the report.
