The US House of Representatives has finally found its speaker: conservative Mike Johnson was elected president on Wednesday October 25 after weeks of chaos and internecine quarrels. A fierce ally of Donald Trump – he supported legal attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election – Mr. Johnson won an internal Republican vote on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, he managed to get 220 votes in the poll.
The election of this elected official from Louisiana ends a three-week impasse that paralyzed Congress, preventing the institution from resuming negotiations to prevent a shutdown of the federal administration and responding to President Joe Biden’s request for aid to Ukraine and Israel. Mike Johnson was the fourth Republican to be chosen by his party in twenty-one days to replace Kevin McCarthy, impeached in a historic vote.
Mike Johnson entered the House of Representatives in 2017 after sparking controversy with legislation seen as hostile to LGBT people in Louisiana. The father of four also voted against codifying federal protections for same-sex marriage last year. And he was the leader of more than a hundred Republicans who signed a legal memo supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election in four states won by President Joe Biden.
ABC News asked him Tuesday evening about the complaint, which the Supreme Court refused to rule on, but he simply answered “next question” while his colleagues booed the journalist. Mr. Johnson was notably supported by Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, both of whom failed to make the ballot.
Mr. Johnson is the least experienced speaker in more than a century, having never chaired a committee. He will immediately have to manage discussions to avoid an administration shutdown, not only with seasoned negotiators like Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, but also members of his own party. He will also have to navigate between the positions of his Republican colleagues, who have been showing deep disagreements for weeks, particularly regarding the funds requested by President Biden for Ukraine and Israel.