Speaker Mike Johnson was pleased. It was April 10, and the House of Representatives had just taken a major step toward passing the “one big, beautiful bill” that would preserve the Trump tax cuts, fund border security and defense, unlock domestic energy production, and avoid a Democratic Senate filibuster. “It’s a good day in the House,” Johnson told reporters after the vote. “I told you not to doubt us, but the media always does, the Democrats always do.”

He has a point. If you’ve read the mainstream press—a hazardous exercise, for sure—Johnson’s speakership has been on life support since Halloween. His political obituary has been written countless times. Yet he keeps coming back. Johnson hasn’t just kept his job. He’s flourished in it.

What’s his secret? The truth is Johnson has several advantages. Some are personal, while others are structural. Perhaps his most important strength is likability. Johnson is that rare political animal: a modest, level-headed elected official. He has a sense of humor. He seems to get along with everyone. He wins praise from across the conservative spectrum, from President Trump to former Speaker Paul Ryan. Though his critics on the populist right often disagree with his decisions, they don’t attack his character. And usually, they vote with him.

Johnson’s affable nature is why he became speaker in the first place. After eight Republicans joined with Democrats and toppled Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an unprecedented revolt on October 3, 2023, the House GOP was rudderless and adrift. Four days later, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel. House Republicans looked helpless. Aid to Israel was delayed. The party struggled to find consensus.

It took three weeks for Republicans to coalesce around Johnson, then serving as conference vice chair. Unlike his predecessor, Johnson had no ties to the pre-Trump GOP. He had no real enemies. In fact, many people had never heard of him at all.

The New York Times rushed to fill the void. It portrayed Johnson as a Bible-thumping Neanderthal eager to turn America into the Republic of Gilead. “The new House speaker,” ran the sub-headline of one multi-bylined Times piece, “has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.”

Break out the smelling salts.

Tarring Johnson as a “White Christian nationalist” might work for the Times and MSNBC crowd, but it didn’t catch on among the public at large. Why? Because Johnson’s agreeable manner gives him a Teflon-like quality. Nothing sticks.

Within weeks of acquiring the speaker’s gavel, Johnson oversaw passage of an Israel-only aid package. He passed a spending bill. The rebels who overthrew McCarthy groused but didn’t challenge Johnson. It wasn’t that they were happy. It was that there was no alternative.

The absence of a plausible challenger continues to buoy the speaker. In April 2024, to satisfy critics, Johnson proposed a two-year extension of the anti-terrorist warrantless surveillance program. It passed. Then he used a weekend session to authorize, after months of delay, billions in military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The right’s anti-Ukraine faction was
outraged.

Yet their fury was ineffectual. In May, Marjorie Taylor Greene forced a vote to remove Johnson as speaker. It flopped. Majorities of Republicans and Democrats voted against her. Once again, Taylor Greene had undermined her party for no purpose other than online attention and small-dollar donations. She inadvertently revealed that McCarthy’s ouster had spoiled Congress’s appetite for insurgency.

By this point, too, Johnson benefited from America’s political structure—starting with the power of the presidency. His frequent travels to Mar-a-Lago for consultations with Donald Trump granted him a layer of protection. Trump backed him against Taylor Greene, for example. Having the leader of the Republican Party and MAGA movement in your corner matters. It’s part of the reason Johnson spends so much time with the president, accompanying him to court houses, UFC mat-ches, and football games.

Johnson may be the most straitlaced member of Trump’s retinue, but he’s also among the canniest. He understands that nothing unifies the GOP like support for Trump. And a reelected president with a 91 percent approval rating among Republicans holds incredible sway over the GOP rank and file.

Since January, Johnson has leveraged Trump’s stature to preserve his job and advance the House Republican agenda. He passed a rules package that makes it more difficult to remove a speaker. Then Trump intervened to secure Johnson’s reelection to the speakership, calling holdouts who threatened to paralyze the House. It worked. Johnson was reelected on the first ballot, with every Republican vote except the incorrigible Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Then Johnson won the intraparty fight over whether to have one big, beautiful reconciliation bill or two. The House passed its budget resolution in February, a continuing resolution in March, and the joint budget resolution in April. Meanwhile, Johnson reached a compromise with Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who demanded that new mothers be granted the ability to vote by proxy.

At every turn, Johnson’s progressive naysayers have sown doubt about his abilities. Their hatred of the president causes them to miss Trump’s appeal to Republicans, and thus Johnson’s sway. Also, they get the math wrong.

One might assume that the slim House majority—at this writing, 220 Republicans to 213 Democrats—would make it harder for Republicans to pass substantial legislation. Yet Johnson has been able to pass bill after bill. It turns out that narrow margins make it easier for Johnson and Trump to identify potential holdouts and pressure them to get to yes. Paradoxically, a larger House majority would be more difficult to corral. Rebels could find strength in numbers. Not today.

Johnson has the calendar on his side, too. Presidents typically get at least one major policy goal through Congress during their first year: Reagan’s tax cut, Clinton’s budget, George W. Bush’s tax cut, Obama’s stimulus, Trump’s tax cut, and Biden’s stimulus. The party that controls the White House has an incentive to enact its agenda ahead of the next election.

The 119th Congress is no different. If it fails to enact the Trump agenda, the chance that Republicans hold on to the House in 2026 is close to zilch. Johnson turns fear of this possibility into motivation. Republicans get in line.

Not that Johnson is home free. Congress must find a way to raise the debt ceiling. The tax-and-spending bill needs to pass. And no one will be secure if Republicans are walloped in the midterms. 

Perhaps now, though, the Beltway will stop underestimating Johnson.

Last December, relating a conversation he’d had with Elon Musk, Johnson joked, “I said, ‘Hey, you want to be speaker of the House? I don’t know.’ He said this may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is.”

No doubt. Yet Johnson brings to the job something that’s often missing in Washington: competence. He’s governed effectively while maintaining his dignity—nothing less than a miracle in the age of Trump.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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