One year since Kevin McCarthy was booted from the House speaker’s office after Congress voted in a bipartisan way to prevent a federal government shutdown, the new House Speaker Mike Johnson finds himself courting, but so far avoiding, a similar political fate. Johnson is leading the House this week to vote on legislation to fund the government and ensure no interruption in federal services, but he’s similarly abandoning demands from his own hard-right Republican colleagues and relying on Democratic votes and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to push the package to bipartisan approval. While Johnson appears to be in no imminent threat of being ousted — the way McCarthy lost his position in a historic vote last fall when eight hardline Republicans engineered a motion to vacate the speaker — the new leader’s ability to hold on to the speaker’s gavel for the long term is not at all certain. “It’s a tough job,” said McCarthy, who is now retired from Congress and watching from the sidelines. The government funding vote provides a notable capstone to what has been an extraordinary and tumultuous session of Congress with the House Republican majority that swept to power in January 2023, as lawmakers now prepare to face voters. The outcome of November’s election will determine the White House and control of Congress, and may very well decide Johnson’s political future. Colleagues are weighing whether to keep Johnson or try someone else as their leader ahead of internal party voting expected later in November after the election. “The vast majority support Speaker Johnson — it’s a shame that we’ve got like 10 people that always hold this over his head,” said Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, among the more centrist Republicans. “He’s a good man. He’s got a great heart,” Bacon said. “I think he’s learned a lot this year.” On the job for the past 11 months, Johnson had been an unlikely choice for the speaker’s gavel. The Louisiana congressman was a relatively unknown low-rung party leader, first elected to office in 2016 alongside Donald Trump, when he emerged as Republicans’ last-ditch consensus choice to replace McCarthy. Republicans had fought behind closed doors over who should become their new speaker after they took the historic step of ousting McCarthy — passing over their Majority Leader Steve Scalise, their GOP Whip Tom Emmer and hard-right Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, among others — before Johnson stepped up and won support, with Trump’s blessing. Johnson, a lawyer, had led one of Trump’s main legal cases challenging President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and could play a prominent role in the 2024 election amid potential legal challenges to the outcome. As the new speaker, Johnson inherited a bitterly divided House GOP majority and worked quickly to pick up the pieces. He cleaned out the speaker’s staff at the Capitol, moved in his own team — and closely aligned himself with Trump, throwing his support behind the indicted former president’s bid to retake the White House. Johnson prioritized several House initiatives, from the Biden impeachment inquiry to the House impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, that aligned tightly with Trump’s agenda. But the annual spending fights over the federal budget always loomed over Johnson’s term. With the Sept. 30 deadline signaling the end of the […]