In between passing budgets, stiff-arming the Freedom Caucus, dodging Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempted motion-to-vacate, and trying to sell himself as Congress’s great bipartisan hope, Mike Johnson has a new habit of “checking in” at political hot zones where House speakers historically do not go. A few weeks back, he popped up at Columbia University to condemn the pro-Palestinian protests and call for the resignation of the school’s president. Yesterday, he turned up at Trump’s criminal trial in lower Manhattan, leading a chorus of other high profile “surrogates” (Trump’s words) including Vivek and J.D. Vance, all wearing the Trump uniform of blue suits and red ties, to decry the ex-president’s prosecution. In a speech without precedent for a sitting speaker, Johnson opined from the courthouse steps that the judicial system is “corrupt” and the hush money case against Trump is a “sham.”
While being a cheerleader at Trump’s trial may keep Johnson in his good graces, his real motivation, of course, was to signal to restless lawmakers back in Washington that he can still straddle the Republican party’s increasingly multiplying factions: the mainline establishment types, dyed-in-the-wool activists among the G.O.P.’s professional class, the MAGA populists who are trying to tear those other groups down, the extremely online influencer class, and so forth. Back in Reagan’s day, the coalition was referred to as a “three-legged stool.” These days, “it’s more of a beanbag,” joked a Johnson aide. “You could sit on it a hundred different ways.”
In any case, Johnson is clearly mounting his own sort of reelection campaign. In recent weeks, I’m told, Johnson has conducted outreach to several activist groups with major muscle inside Washington: the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, and so forth. Even if he hasn’t delivered on their policy wish list, Johnson has already earned their trust thanks to his prior work for the Alliance for Defending Freedom and at Liberty University, marking him as a lifelong ally of the conservative activist class. “McCarthy was widely perceived as less ideologically committed than Johnson,” noted a conservative writer connected to that world. “That meant less benefit of the doubt.” (It also helps that activist social circles are small and tight-knit: Johnson apparently calls people in this crowd directly on a regular basis, to their apparent shock.)
The expedition to Columbia last month was also tactical, of course. Sure, the G.O.P. has always enjoyed some light hippie bashing, and campus protests have been a major source of engagement on Fox News. More importantly, however, it endeared Johnson to pro-Israel interest groups like AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition that have begun spending against anti-Johnson lawmakers in Republican primaries. On April 30, Johnson announced that he would expand investigations into antisemitism on college campuses across multiple congressional committees—Oversight, Energy and Commerce, Science and Tech, Judiciary, Ways and Means, etcetera—with the dual goals of rooting out “woke university presidents” and, presumably, enlarging the House majority next fall.
Dropping the Mic
It’s too soon to tell whether the Trump trial stunt alone was successful in establishing those bona fides with the trio of internet-savvy MAGA pols who appeared alongside him at the presser. Greene, obviously no fan of Johnson, called it “pathetic,” while Steve Bannon described the cameo appearance as “wimp” lip service. (A true Trump friend, Bannon suggested, would use his powers to open an investigation into the trial itself.) And there remains a core group of two dozen or so hardliners in the House who remain outright hostile toward Johnson’s actions as Speaker: delivering few conservative victories in budget negotiations with Democrats, pushing Ukraine funding through the House, sidelining them in deliberations and steamrolling the Rules Committee. But Trump’s ongoing public support for Johnson has gone a long way, and he’s repeatedly affirmed Johnson’s position that the House majority is too small to waste time fighting among themselves.
Johnson, of course, would very much like to expand his margin in November so that he finally has some leverage over Democrats, regardless of who occupies the White House next year. Growing the House majority is a goal he’s “very optimistic” about, I’m told, especially after he survived Greene’s vote-of-no-confidence with overwhelming support from his own caucus (and just enough Democrats). But he would also like to keep his gavel so that he can enjoy that majority: Any set of changes in November—Democrats retaking the House, Republicans taking the Senate, a second Trump or Biden administration—could throw open the doors to Republicans challenging Johnson for leadership. And there are already intimations of potential rivals moving against him.
Both Punchbowl and Axios have run stories in recent weeks talking up hardliner Jim Jordan’s increasingly public angling for a leadership role of some kind, citing his sudden generosity with writing checks to incumbents and his private criticism of Johnson’s tactics. Rep. Tom Cole recently gave an interview to Politico praising Jordan’s effectiveness, newfound gravitas, and even bipartisanship on FISA renewal—perhaps countering his reputation as a bully and Tea Party bomb-thrower.Johnson faces potential threats from the center of the party, too. It hasn’t escaped notice on Capitol Hill that Steve Scalise, another speaker contender during the 2023 leadership bakeoff, announced that his personal PAC would match every $50,000 donation that House members made to the N.R.C.C., up to a million dollars—a goal he hit within hours. That sort of generosity could certainly be seen as an attempt to flex against Johnson. And it didn’t go unnoticed by the speaker’s office, either. Immediately after Scalise’s announcement, Johnson made it known that he would transfer $4.5 million to the N.R.C.C.—his largest single transfer to the fundraising organization, and the political equivalent of dropping the mic.