Even by the high standards of chaos for the 119th Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson being accused Tuesday by a member of his own leadership team of protecting the “deep state” was a remarkable development.
Rep. Elise Stefanik’s rare move to publicly accuse the speaker of being a liar and then, in a separate provocation, signing on to an effort to force a vote on legislation Johnson has kept bottled up is the latest symptom of a House Republican Conference seemingly on a razor’s edge.
Increasingly, rank-and-file House Republicans are bringing their spats with Johnson into the open, suggesting the speaker is losing further control over his restive members as his already slim majority threatens to narrow further and potentially devastating midterm elections loom.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), who openly challenged Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session for seven weeks this fall and criticized him for not pushing back on the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting campaign, said in a brief interview Tuesday that he saw Stefanik’s anger as part of broader trend.
“I do think that there’s a lot of frustration right now in the House with the effectiveness or lack thereof of this body in recent months,” he said. “The House has … in some cases ceded its own authority, hasn’t taken the lead on a lot of important policy measures and has even taken steps now to limit the agency of individual members.”
For much of his two-year tenure, Johnson has been able to keep a handle on the infighting thanks to President Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, with the president personally intervening at key points this year to settle internecine disputes.
But many sense that is changing as the speaker suffers public setbacks — such as his recent failure to prevent passage of a bill mandating the release of Justice Department files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Things could fray further depending on how the GOP fares in Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee.
“That model only works if no one challenges him and gets away with it,” said one senior House Republican granted anonymity to speak frankly about conference dynamics. “And that’s not what’s happening now. … People are less willing to stay quiet.”
In particular, several high-profile GOP women have clashed with the speaker over various issues in recent months. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado were instrumental in pushing through the Epstein bill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida filed her second discharge petition of the year Tuesday, seeking to force a vote on a bill banning member stock trading that the speaker has so far declined to advance. And several women in the House GOP raised concerns about leaders’ handling of Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who is facing multiple accusations regarding his conduct and ethics.
Stefanik is in another category altogether. A year ago, she was the No. 4 House GOP leader before relinquishing her post in anticipation of her confirmation as ambassador to the United Nations. But Trump withdrew her nomination amid concerns about the thin GOP majority — a move for which Stefanik has privately faulted Johnson.
Johnson granted her an unelected junior leadership role as a consolation prize, but she has decided her political future will not lie in the House, launching a campaign for New York governor instead of seeking re-election. And now she appears to be all-in on a scorched earth campaign against the speaker.
“Elise is running for governor and frankly does not give a fuck anymore about playing nice,” said a second House Republican granted anonymity to speak frankly about the dispute.
The precipitating cause for Stefanik’s public outburst, in her telling, was a leadership-level decision to exclude legislation requiring that Congress be informed of counterintelligence probes into candidates for federal offices from the annual defense policy bill — a must-pass measure to which lawmakers are keen to attach their personal priorities.
After Stefanik posted her displeasure to her X account, Johnson tried to tamp down the furor Tuesday. The speaker, who sometimes jokes he’s more of a mental health counselor, told reporters he couldn’t understand why Stefanik “didn’t just call me” and that the two could have handled the dispute in private.
“Just more lies from the Speaker,” Stefanik retorted, again on X, mocking Johnson’s claims of ignorance. “This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”
House Republicans close to Stefanik argue there are more GOP members who are upset about the congressional notice provision falling out of the Pentagon bill. Notably, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he had not yet thought about whether he would join Stefanik in withholding his support for the bill over its exclusion.
“We want this protection in there,” he told reporters. “I think it makes sense.”
Just hours after Stefanik’s comments, Johnson faced down a brief revolt over a procedural measure on the House floor led by hard-line Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and other incensed Republicans that would have derailed GOP leaders’ floor plans for the week.
As that crisis was still unfolding, Luna launched her discharge petition to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban — and Stefanik quickly announced she was signing on to the move undermining the speaker’s authority.
Members of Johnson’s leadership circle and other senior Republicans were privately shocked by Stefanik’s sharp public criticism of the speaker — and that she didn’t later decide to delete them — according to three people granted anonymity to describe conversations that unfolded Tuesday.
Johnson’s staff have reached out to Stefanik’s team and are seeking to resolve the spat privately, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The speaker’s allies argue the disgruntled Republicans are just that — people with axes to grind against Johnson.
But Stefanik is getting backup from other malcontents inside the House GOP, including Greene, who was once seen as being on the opposite pole of the Republican conference. Both women were kept in close consultation by the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and have since fallen out with Johnson.
After helping to engineer the successful Epstein files vote, Greene announced her imminent resignation — itself a slap at Johnson, given the tight GOP majority — and publicly railed against the House’s diminished power and Johnson’s speakership. She weighed in again Tuesday after Stefanik aired her accusations about the Pentagon bill.
“No surprises here,” Greene said in her own X post. “As usual from the Speaker, promises made promises broken. We all know it.”
