GOP Rep. Massie doubles down against Speaker Johnson

Rep. Thomas Massie underscored he won’t support Mike Johnson in January, eliminating the wiggle room the House speaker has in keeping his job. 

Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, is bracing for what will likely be a bruising battle for his gavel on Jan. 3 when lawmakers return to Washington and vote for their speaker. If he can’t keep his job, it could set off a rumble while the House GOP searches for a replacement.

It could derail the early days of President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, prevent swearing in new members and even delay the Jan. 6 certification of Mr. Trump’s election to a second term.

Mr. Massie, Kentucky Republican and longtime Johnson detractor, scoffed at that last point.

“I will vote for someone other than Mike Johnson,” he posted Friday on X. “I’m not persuaded by the ‘hurry up and elect him so we can certify the election on J6’ argument. A weak legislative branch, beholden to the swamp, will not be able to achieve the mandate voters gave Trump and Congress in November.” 

Mr. Johnson’s latest woes stem from last week’s drama in Washington over another short-term funding extension. Mr. Trump, tech billionaire Elon Musk and congressional Republicans skewered the original plan with Democrats, arguing it was filled with liberal wins. 

But the conference still couldn’t coalesce around a Trump-backed plan that would have punted the debt limit to 2027 and instead passed a slimmer version of Mr. Johnson’s original spending package. That chaos jarred both sides of the aisle. 

Mr. Massie is the only House Republican who has publicly said he won’t vote for Mr. Johnson. But House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland and Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas took to social media to express their displeasure with the speaker’s handling of the spending fight and raised doubt over whom they will support on Jan. 3. 

If Mr. Trump were to weigh in on the situation, good or bad for Mr. Johnson, it would seal his fate. But the president-elect has stayed relatively quiet on the subject of the speaker since lawmakers passed the stopgap bill last week. 

Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, warned that if Mr. Johnson is booted, the House would end up “with a speaker of the House who is much, much more liberal than Mike Johnson.”

“He’s undoubtedly the most conservative speaker of the House we’ve had in our lifetime,” Mr. Cruz said on his “Verdict” podcast.

With Mr. Johnson having lost the one vote he could afford to lose on Jan. 3, Democrats could again play an outsize role in whether he keeps his gavel. When Mr. Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, tried to oust Mr. Johnson this year, Democrats came to his rescue. 

But that goodwill may have dried up because of the implosion of the original spending deal. 

“There will be no Democrats available to save him or the extreme MAGA Republicans from themselves based on the breaching of a bipartisan agreement that reflected priorities that were good for the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki.