WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson will be stepping aside from Republican Party leadership after the GOP’s wipeout in the midterm election, declining to seek support to stay on as House minority leader in the new Congress, according to two people familiar with his decision Wednesday.
Johnson is expected to retain his seat as a rank-and-file member of the House from Louisiana when the Congress convenes in January. He won reelection from his Shreveport-area district for an eighth term in office.
It’s a swift rise and fall for Johnson, often seen as an accidental speaker, who nevertheless drew close to President Donald Trump and led the House GOP during a tumultuous era, with one of the slimmest majorities in modern times.
And it sets up a fierce internal party battle for the new GOP leader after Democrats swept to power.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, is running for the leadership post, according to a person familiar with his plans. The people who told The Associated Press about Johnson’s and Scalise's decisions insisted on anonymity to disclose them.
House Republicans are expected to elect their new leader when members-elect gather in Washington next week, in what will likely be a familiar showdown between two who reached for the top spot before — Scalise of Louisiana and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Johnson’s sunny assertions that Republicans would defy history in the midterms, as voters traditionally have punished the president’s party in power, failed to hold. Instead, Republicans were trounced as Democrats swept to the House majority, leaving Johnson without a path to power.
The powerful speaker’s gavel now is expected to pass to Democrats, who are preparing to nominate House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York for the job, second in line to the president. The House speaker’s election is among the first votes of the new Congress, on Jan. 3, 2027.
From Shreveport to Washington
Johnson first won the speaker's gavel in 2023 after his colleagues ousted the previous GOP speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California, in a first-of-its-kind coup in House history.
A lower-level member of House leadership, Johnson in many ways fell into the job after Republican colleagues could not agree on a next-in-line successor to McCarthy. He had distinguished himself before the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by organizing support for Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Once in office, Johnson quickly pulled closer to Trump — so close that Johnson candidly recounts their almost daily phone calls and chats, often offering his impressions in the president's voice.
Johnson led passage of the GOP's signature package of tax breaks and social services cuts that Trump signed into law. He protected the president and his administration from embarrassing votes, including a recent effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, by simply sending lawmakers home.
House leadership elections ahead
Johnson's decision sets up a potential repeat of the leadership battles that have played out in recent years between the House GOP's conservative and far-right flanks.
Scalise, the majority leader, has long courted backing from the House GOP's conservative wing, particularly business and energy sector lawmakers. Jordan, the brawling former wrestler who helmed the Judiciary Committee, has long been preferred by the hard right, including some from the Freedom Caucus.
Both Scalise and Jordan reached for the speaker's gavel once McCarthy was forced aside in 2023, but they failed to win majority support from their colleagues, splitting the votes. At the time, Johnson emerged as the consensus candidate who became the House speaker.
