Challenges as Johnson reelected speaker

WASHINGTON — Republican Mike Johnson narrowly won reelection as House speaker on Friday but the GOP faces a tough road ahead, given its razor-thin House majority.

The final vote tally saw Johnson secure 218 votes, the bare minimum required for victory in the 435-seat House of Representatives after Johnson flipped two holdouts who switched to support him.

Several conservative Republican lawmakers had previously voiced opposition to Johnson's reelection. Even though President-elect Donald Trump has publicly endorsed him, it was not enough to prevent three votes of opposition in the initial results.

In the November 2024 US House elections, the Republican Party managed to retain a majority, but it became even slimmer. Republicans currently hold 219 seats, while Democrats control 215. This has created the most narrowly divided Congress in nearly 100 years.

This bitterly divided Congress is unlikely to see much cooperation between parties, which means Republicans could well lack the votes to implement the many campaign promises of Trump, observers note.

"It will be very difficult for House Republicans to get even a bare majority on their own, even on what should be pretty simple votes," Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, told Xinhua.

Noting that Johnson's victory was a win for Trump in that he endorsed Johnson, Galdieri said: "Once it becomes clear how hard getting anything out of this House is, expect the Trump-Johnson relationship to get rocky."

Johnson, 52, from Louisiana, was initially elected speaker of the House of Representatives as a result of Republican infighting.

Weak grip

Johnson's weak grip on the gavel has threatened not only his own survival but Trump's ambitious agenda of tax cuts and mass deportations as Republicans sweep to power in the House and the Senate. The stark vote tally laid bare the challenges he faces.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who followed through with his "no" vote, recently said that Johnson is not fit for the job of House speaker, and if he continues to hold the position, it will ultimately cause the Republican Party to lose its slim majority.

Meanwhile, Trump's opponents are gearing up for a major fight over the next four years, determined to stop the President-elect's agenda in its tracks.

Skye Perryman, head of Democracy Forward, a left-leaning legal organization, told CNN that Democrats will have a hard fight to block Trump's agenda, but added that "there are real opportunities with both where the American people are on issues as well as with where the judicial landscape is".

On Saturday, Trump named Stanley Woodward, an attorney who has defended several of the incoming president's top aides and associates as well as people charged in the Jan 6, 2021 attack, to join his White House legal team.

Trump's transition team said in a statement that Woodward would serve as an assistant to the president and a senior counselor, and would work closely with Trump's White House chief of staff, previously named as Susie Wiles.

It came as Trump is facing an unprecedented scenario in US history.

Trump will be sentenced on Jan 10 in the criminal case in which Trump was convicted on charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star but is unlikely to face jail time or other penalties, a judge said on Friday.

Justice Juan Merchan's ruling means Trump will be required to appear at a court hearing just 10 days before his Jan 20 inauguration. Before Trump, no US president — former or sitting — had been charged with or convicted of a crime.

The judge said Trump may appear at his sentencing either in person or virtually.

Trump's communications director Steven Cheung reiterated that the case, which Trump has long described as illegitimate, should be dismissed outright.

Agencies - Xinhua