Pressure Mounts on House Speaker Mike Johnson Amid GOP Tensions and Agenda Challenges

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House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing significant pressure from within his own party as Republicans grapple with a demanding agenda heading into the final months of the year. According to PBS NewsHour, Congress is dealing with a lengthy to-do list that includes budgets, health care, and foreign affairs, all while leadership contends with growing frustration and even open rebellion among GOP ranks.

The tension centers on Johnson's leadership style and his perceived alignment with President Trump. Representative Elise Stefanik from New York publicly called Johnson a liar this week, while Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene backed her up by writing that the speaker breaks his promises. Greene has announced her resignation, citing concerns about how Johnson handled the recent government shutdown by keeping the full House out of session for nearly two months and blocking popular bills, including one that would release the Epstein files.

Republican Thomas Massie has been vocal about his frustrations, stating that Johnson has been doing whatever President Trump wants and that Trump has essentially been in control of the House. Other Republicans are increasingly using discharge petitions as a tool to circumvent Johnson's authority. Representative Anna Paulina Luna announced this week that she will attempt a discharge petition on a bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress. These discharge motions require a majority of House members to sign a petition to force a floor vote on a bill, and while they rarely succeed, five have made the threshold in the last two years.

Johnson points to the razor-thin Republican majority as a key challenge, noting that with such slim margins, leadership cannot operate the way they did in previous years when they had much larger majorities. Despite his arguments about the constraints he faces, multiple Republican sources have been privately discussing their discontent and even raising the possibility of removing him from his position, though no one has gone that far publicly yet.

On a related electoral note, Republicans achieved a narrow victory in a special election for Tennessee's 7th Congressional District on December 2nd, but the results were concerning for the party. Matt Van Epps, a veteran and former Army helicopter pilot, won by nine points in what is considered deep red territory. However, this represents a thirteen-point slide for Republicans compared to the previous Republican congressman's performance, and Democrats viewed their competitive showing as encouraging for future races.

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