Speaker Johnson under attack from his own as mood darkens in House GOP
By Annie Grayer, Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, CNN
(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
But now, the battered House leader is entering what could be the most difficult stretch of his speakership — facing attacks from all sides with little reinforcement from his most important ally, President Donald Trump.
His job is safe, for now, since House Republicans have no appetite for a nasty battle to replace the Louisiana Republican with their slim majority. But whether he can remain the leader of his conference after the midterms is not yet certain and very well could rest on whether Trump wants to keep him.
Conservative as well as centrist Republicans are privately demanding major shifts in their party leader’s tactics — with some no longer afraid of calling Johnson out publicly and using him as a political punching bag to air their own grievances, giving him little room to maneuver.
The Republican leader and his team have been inundated in recent days by irate members who are insisting he change course before the critical 2026 midterm year, approaching him on the floor, demanding private meetings and phoning his leadership team, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. They want Johnson to take a far more aggressive approach with putting bills on the floor, particularly on the economy and emphasizing “affordability” — and put the GOP back on offense politically and deflect the onslaught of Democratic attacks.
“I certainly think that the current leadership, and specifically the speaker, needs to change the way that he approaches the job. We need to actually go back to leading the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley, a vulnerable California Republican who has emerged as one of the speaker’s most outspoken critics.
In one recent private conversation with a GOP lawmaker, Johnson was told his leadership was “slipping away,” that the frustration members are feeling is “boiling over” and that “morale has never been lower.”
Johnson’s headaches have been accumulating for weeks. His own members are fighting to take control of the floor using arcane procedural tools to advance their own agenda. They’re blaming him for a nationwide redistricting battle they fear will backfire on their party. They’re angry that the House remained out of session for nearly two months during the record-breaking government shutdown, a strategic decision Johnson made in his fight against Senate Democrats.
More immediately, GOP leaders still lack a plan to address enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this month, with Johnson’s own members telling him he’s running out of time to make a play call. But his conference’s warring wings are at sharp odds on how to proceed on the potent election-year issue of health care.
These frustrations are coming to a head with the GOP itself in a state of crisis: Their president’s approval ratings are sinking. The party’s signature agenda legislation – Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” – sucked up months of attention and dominated debate in the Capitol. But since Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill became law, Johnson’s House has been consumed with a battle over releasing the Jeffrey Epstein case files — a law that was enacted over his furious objections — and the 43-day government shutdown. And his leadership team has yet to put forward an agenda for his conference to pursue for the months ahead.
With the midterms fast approaching, it will also be more challenging to find consensus on any new legislative priorities. But as 2026 nears, members are concerned that they’re losing ground on their economic message, while Trump has been distracted with an array of controversies and left Congress to figure out its next steps.
“What I’m trying to stress to everyone in our conference is that we need to go big or go home. The American people are expecting us to deliver and we can’t tinker around the edge, particularly when it comes to health care,” GOP Rep. Eric Burlison, a hard-right Missouri Republican, told CNN. “I think we can easily do that if we just have the guts to do it.”
“Being speaker is hard. It’s not an easy job. It might be the worst job in politics to be honest with you,” added GOP Rep. Byron Donalds. “But what I would say for the speaker is just make quick decisions.”
Johnson’s allies don’t dispute the poor mood in the conference, though they believe voters will appreciate the GOP’s tax and spending cuts legislation more as midterm messaging ramps up. They acknowledge that the House GOP’s biggest hurdle is its slim margins, which have left Johnson with almost no room to maneuver.
“You get through it one day at a time and one vote at a time,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole told CNN, praising Johnson and his team for effectively passing an entire GOP agenda in a single bill earlier this year — even when “you don’t have a lot to work with.”
But Johnson has Trump’s support and the comfort of knowing that no one else is vying for the job.
“No, I’m not worried about my standing at all,” Johnson said on Wednesday, downplaying recent comments from GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik that he wouldn’t have the votes to remain in the job if one were held now.
“We are moving forward with this agenda. You can talk to individual members. Look, we have a large body. There’s 220 or so people in this conference, and lots of different opinions. Everybody’s not delighted with every decision every day. But that’s, that’s Congress. That’s the way the system works,” he added.
Asked if he planned to run again for speaker or minority leader in the next Congress, Johnson was bullish: “Absolutely,” he told CNN.
Some of Johnson’s allies are sympathetic to his dilemma.
GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk compared being House speaker to “herding ravenous tigers” and added: “I mean you didn’t see people lining up for it last time. It’s a thankless job. It really is.”
Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma offered another colorful comparison: “My grandfather used to have a phrase about putting tomcats in a gunny sack and giving it a shake.”
Johnson’s allies say frustration toward the speaker is often par for the course in Congress, and that his strategy of allowing members to drive the process, while sometimes slow, at least is better than trying to steamroll members.
“Too many leaders in the past have tried to short circuit the process and it never works out very well,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington told CNN. “Not saying it’s easy, I’m just saying you’ve got to let members work through this, and that’s what’s happening right now.”
‘The House is not in the driver’s seat’
On Tuesday, in their first week back from the Thanksgiving break, members huddled for their usual, weekly closed-door meeting but many walked away without being given the opportunity to speak their mind, multiple GOP lawmakers told CNN.
It set the tone for what many found to be a particularly frustrating week.
Instead of voting on a bill that would reflect the GOP economic agenda, members were perplexed to find that the main bill of the week would be an attempt to regulate college athletics. That bill ultimately got pulled from the floor over party differences, in another example of how an unruly conference has created headaches for leadership.
Behind the scenes, Johnson heard from multiple members this week urging him to make a decision on a health care plan.
“I spoke briefly to the speaker yesterday that we need to do something on health care. And he said that they’re coming up with a plan,” GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who said he has confidence in Johnson, told CNN.
“We’re always second guessing. But doubting him? There are people that want something done and are not seeing, for them, they’re not seeing progress. But when he tells me that ‘Hey, they’re working on it, they’re working on a plan,’ I have confidence in him,” Gimenez added.
Johnson vowed on Thursday that he will put forward his party’s plan next week. But many of his own members aren’t clear what will be included, privately complaining that his leadership team has waited far too long and now has little chance of staving off the health care cliff before December 31. Few members expect the House GOP’s plan to include any version of extending the enhanced subsidies, which will result in spiking costs for millions of Americans.
“We’re trying to get consensus on it. It’s a complicated matter. Lots of opinions on it,” Johnson told reporters Thursday, summing up where talks were. He said he hopes to have a plan by early next week.
Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee, where GOP Rep. Matt Van Epps won by a significantly narrower margin than Trump did in 2024, also raised alarm bells in Republican circles.
GOP Rep. Tim Burchett called the results of the special election in his home state a “wake-up” call and warned that Republicans need to craft a better message speaking to affordability concerns.
Some House Republicans explained that the growing discontent within the conference with Johnson comes partially from his willingness to cede the chamber’s power under pressure from the president.
“That 43-day shutdown just froze getting work done here, and with our majorities, we feel like we got to get work done. And so that kind of wasted a bunch of our time in the majority status,” GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa said.
As a result of Johnson’s decision to keep the House in recess for weeks on end during the shutdown, Kiley said, “we’ve been missing in action in a lot of ways. The House is not in the driver’s seat when it comes to key policy areas” — arguing the chamber has “explicitly ceded its authority on certain issues.”
Pressed on if he thinks Johnson will be chosen again to lead the conference in 2027, Kiley responded, “Who knows what the world’s gonna look like? Then we’ll revisit those questions when the time comes.”
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who has clashed with Johnson over a number of issues, including his push to force the release of the Epstein case files, said he thinks the frustration with the speaker is “born out of his pledge to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.”
“You have a lot of intelligent, hard-working people who gave up a lot of things to be here in Congress, only to find out that all they get to do is come here and rubber stamp whatever Donald Trump wants, and that’s kind of humiliating,” he said, adding, “That’s why you have so many people running for statewide office and retirements being announced, because nobody wants to be a rubber stamp. You could get a monkey to do this job.”
Another GOP lawmaker, granted the anonymity to speak freely, warned of more retirements to come.
“Over the holidays, when members spend time with their families, they think, ‘Why am I coming when there’s no agenda being accomplished?’”
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