A Premature Farewell to the Ignominious Speaker Mike Johnson

Is it too soon to say farewell to Speaker Mike Johnson? The Democrats are almost universally expected to win the House in November’s midterms, which would mean we’ve essentially seen the last of him in that role. Assuming these expectations are correct, there might even be debate over whether he gets the title of GOP minority leader. And while there will be a lame-duck session of the 119th Congress after the election, that’s shaping up to be a festival of recriminations, the last stand of GOP members who just lost their seats, thanks at least in part to Johnson.

What an ignominious tenure he has had. Remember, Johnson wasn’t the Republicans’ first choice as speaker when they retook the House. He wasn’t even their fourth. Kevin McCarthy won in January 2023, after more than a dozen votes, but was forced to resign nine months later. The House GOP then fielded three other representatives—Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and Tom Emmer—none of whom could get the votes. Finally, the pious Johnson, with his schoolboy looks and his empty legislative record, became the chosen front man for a fractious House GOP caucus, united only behind Trump.

Johnson may seem mild-mannered, but I found his early statements as speaker scary. “People are curious, ‘What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’” he said in his first interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “I say, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’” The Nation’s Katha Pollitt lamented his “18th-century values.” But I didn’t expect Johnson to be able to accomplish much, and that turned out to be correct.

Only two weeks ago Johnson was seen boasting, at Donald Trump’s fake “midterm convention,” that the 119th Congress was “the most productive in 80 years.” By most available metrics, that’s untrue. According to GovTrack, the 119th Congress has enacted 429 pieces of legislation, compared with 619 in the 118th Congress and 1,236 in the 117th. The fact-checking site Snopes rated Johnson’s claim “false.”

What else can Johnson claim as a legacy? He tried to bottle up legislation calling on the Trump administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, but had to put it to a vote because so many Republicans were fed up with the stonewalling. He needn’t have worried, because the Justice Department released those files so haphazardly and incompletely that Congress has so far been unable to make a case for additional prosecution measures.

In September, after dodging questions about caucus member Max Miller of Ohio, accused of abusing his wife (who is, awkwardly, the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno), he stood up for Miller. “He has been a great member of Congress,” Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju. “He has some issues in his personal life he’s working through.” Maybe he’s counting on Miller’s vote in January.

Johnson does deserve some credit—I’d call it blame—for presiding over the longest government shutdown in history. Oh, and one more thing: shepherding Trump’s “One Big [Destructive] Bill” to a party-line reconciliation victory. Some of the bill’s worst program cuts, to Medicaid and the SNAP program, won’t be fully felt until after the election. The bill’s architects and stewards, like Johnson, thought that was politically wily. What they didn’t predict was that states and counties would begin preparing for the cuts this year, so we’re already seeing sharp increases in childhood hunger and healthcare needs. That will not help vulnerable Republicans in November.

By adjourning the House’s September session early, Johnson also ducked action on artificial intelligence, even as bipartisan rancor rises over the AI giants’ irresponsibility, as well as the tech machers’ own worries about what they’ve unleashed on the world. “They can self-regulate. They don’t need the government to ​tell them to slow it down. If they want ​to slow it down, they should,” Johnson said recently. There’s a leader seizing the day.

When the House returns for its lame-duck session after the midterms, it could take up AI or cryptocurrency legislation, but that’s highly unlikely. In fact, Republican Representative Thomas Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna announced in mid-September that they will have enough votes to force a vote on their Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which would give Epstein’s victims, as well as state and local prosecutors, access to more information in those files. Massie will almost certainly have more support for his move to impeach scandal-ridden Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. If November is a complete disaster for Republicans, both of those pieces of legislation could be a vehicle to punish Trump, and Johnson.

It’s actually fun to imagine the GOP blame game that will follow a midterm drubbing. One issue alone: Johnson’s backing Trump’s ridiculous midterm convention, which saddled vulnerable members with two nights of deadly presidential narcissism. Johnson was a headliner, but NPR found that fewer than half of GOP candidates in competitive House races were alongside him on the list of speakers at the Dallas event. Will the losers who come back to the lame-duck session be anxious to do their speaker’s bidding?

I don’t think so.