Far-right House members suggest Johnson's woes may not be over

Source: The Independent

Wednesday 13 November 2024 22:09 GMT


Republican members of the House of Representatives emerged from their caucus meeting on Wednesday with their moods bolstered by the successful retention of their majority - but with clear signs that a post-election unity period may be short-lived. There’s clearly no appetite among the GOP’s party elders for another drawn-out leadership fight similar to the one that consumed the party in the fall of 2023, or the more than a dozen votes required to elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker at the beginning of that same year.

But that isn’t likely to stop the party’s rowdy and camera-ready rank-and-file members, who indicated to reporters on Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson had yet to consolidate the kind of support he would need to avert such a conflict in January. On Wednesday, he won unanimously on the party’s secret ballot — whether that will hold through January, or through the first year of Trump’s presidency — remains to be seen.

“I’m sure…yeah, I think there will be some opposition [to Johnson],” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told reporters as she departed the meeting. She declined to name any possible challengers to the speaker, or say whether or not she’d be supporting Johnson on a secret ballot.

She and other members including Marc Molinaro described a jovial, light-on-policy vibe in Wednesday’s meeting, which was attended by President-elect Donald Trump and members of his incoming administration, including Elon Musk, who is set to lead a likely White House advisory council called the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. “Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him. Until I don’t like him,” Trump said, jokingly, according to members in the room. He would also joke that he planned to poach a few more members from the chamber for his Cabinet, a prospect GOP leadership has looked at with chagrin.

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/speaker-johnson-trump-gop-meeting-b2646657.html