Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday insisted that the “best days are ahead of us,” just hours after a sharply critical report charged that some “House Republican women are in open revolt” against him.
Speaking from inside the U.S. Capitol, Johnson on Thursday told reporters, “steady at the wheel, everybody,” and, “it’s going to be fine. Our best days are ahead of us. Americans are going to be feeling a lot better in the early part of next year,” according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is staring down a revolt from House Republican women,” NBC News reported, adding: “a number of high-profile Republican women are fleeing the House for other opportunities, weighing retirement or quitting Congress early, fueling some concern that GOP women’s ranks could be depleted in the next Congress.”
Politico this week described Johnson’s House of Representatives as “spinning out of control.”
Suggesting that House Republicans “can’t stand each other,” NOTUS added that “rank-and-file Republicans are increasingly frustrated with their leadership — and much of that frustration is spilling out into the open.”
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose resignation from Congress shocked the political sphere, told NOTUS, “My bills which reflect many of President Trump’s executive orders … just sit collecting dust. That’s how it is for most members of Congress’s bills, the Speaker never brings them to the floor for a vote.”
NBC News cited action taken by U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), filing a discharge petition on banning congressional stock trading, as an effort to “go around Johnson and force a floor vote.”
Publicly, Luna expressed that she is “frustrated” and “pissed” — while also calling Johnson “a good guy.”
Apart from Greene’s broadsides against Johnson, perhaps the most publicly extreme attack on Johnson has been from a member of his own leadership team.
“Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the chair of House Republican Leadership, not only signed on to Luna’s petition but also publicly unloaded on Johnson over an unrelated issue in the national defense bill, suggesting in a series of social media posts that Johnson lied about the matter,” NBC noted.
Stefanik’s feud with Johnson was so damaging that President Donald Trump on Tuesday night had to intervene.
“After a productive discussion I had last night with President Trump and Speaker Johnson, the provision requiring Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office will be included in the IAA/NDAA bill on the floor,” Stefanik declared on Wednesday. “This is a significant legislative win delivered against the illegal weaponization of the deep state.”
Stefanik reportedly had threatened to tank the must-pass national defense bill.
Politico’s Jason Beeferman reported on Wednesday that Stefanik’s “victory (and sudden peace) in her public fight” with the House Speaker “comes after she told me last night that Johnson ‘has catastrophic, plummeting support among Republican voters.’”
Axios reported that “Stefanik’s stance sets up another test of Johnson’s ability to hold together his razor-thin majority.”
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), “has told people she is so frustrated” with Johnson, “and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress,” The New York Times reported. Mace, who is running for governor, adamantly denied she is considering retiring from Congress early.
According to NBC, two House Republican women “said that they feel they have been passed over for opportunities, that their priorities don’t always get taken as seriously under Johnson’s leadership and that they believe that could be driving some of the exits and public fights with him.”
“We aren’t taken seriously,” one of the women said. “You have women who are very accomplished, very successful, who have earned the merit, who aren’t given the time of the day.”