House Republicans Elect Jim Jordan as Leader, Replacing Johnson After Midterm Losses

House Republicans chose Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio as their leader for the next Congress on Tuesday, defeating Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana in a closed-door, secret-ballot vote of the House Republican Conference. Jordan prevailed 106-73, according to multiple lawmakers and aides who disclosed the tally after the vote, capping a leadership fight triggered by the party's loss of its House majority in last week's midterm elections.

The vote replaces the leadership team that has run House Republicans since 2023. Speaker Mike Johnson, who took the gavel that October after Kevin McCarthy's ouster, is stepping aside from leadership and has not said whether he will remain in Congress. Jordan is expected to formally take the title of House Minority Leader when the 120th Congress convenes in January, at which point Republicans will sit in the House minority for the first time since 2023.

A Combative Chairman Over an Institutionalist

Jordan, 62, has chaired the House Judiciary Committee since January 2023 and was a founding chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. He has run for a top House GOP post twice before — losing the 2018 minority-leader race to Kevin McCarthy and, in October 2023, winning the Republican Conference's speaker nomination only to fall short on the House floor after multiple rounds of voting. As Judiciary chairman, Jordan built a committee record defined by aggressive use of subpoena power: he created a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to investigate federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, subpoenaed tech and banking executives over content-moderation and financial-"debanking" practices, and, in 2024, took the unusual step of issuing a subpoena to a sitting special counsel, Jack Smith, demanding records related to Smith's prosecutions of Trump. In a letter to colleagues announcing his candidacy, Jordan argued the conference needed a sharper edge after the midterm defeat, writing that Republicans had "operated without a clear plan to survive the hour or the day in front of us" and casting himself as "battle-tested on the oversight front."

Scalise, 61, has held a House GOP leadership post continuously since 2014 — serving as majority whip, minority whip and, since 2023, majority leader, the chamber's second-ranking Republican post, where he has overseen the floor schedule and day-to-day operations. He was critically wounded in the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice and was treated in 2023 for multiple myeloma, which he has said is in remission. In his own letter to members, Scalise pointed to his record raising $67.9 million for House Republicans' 2026 midterm effort and wrote that "overcoming adversity is nothing new to me."

Republicans enter the new Congress with their smallest House conference in years after losing more than 40 seats in the November 3 midterms, a defeat several lawmakers have attributed to backlash against the administration's economic and immigration record. President Trump did not publicly back either candidate before the vote, leaving the party's rank and file to settle the race on their own.

Reaction Inside a Diminished Conference

Supporters of Jordan's bid argued the conference needed a more combative messenger after the losses, rather than someone tied to the legislative strategy that preceded them. In his candidacy letter, Jordan framed the task ahead in confrontational terms:

Our job cannot be merely to spotlight how radical this new Democratic Party is — offense, not defense, wins elections.

Scalise's allies countered that his legislative experience and fundraising network made him better positioned to hold the conference together and defend vulnerable seats ahead of 2028. Neither man's office issued a public statement after the tally was announced, and the vote — conducted by paper secret ballot inside the Capitol — produced no official, publicly released count from the conference itself; news organizations reported the 106-73 margin based on lawmakers and aides briefed on the result.

The outcome is also being read as a signal of how the party's most online and ideologically combative wing has gained strength relative to its committee-chair, institutionalist wing, even in defeat. House Republicans also held separate, simultaneous elections for two other leadership posts, each carrying its own practical weight for a minority conference: whip, contested by Reps. Tom Emmer of Minnesota and August Pfluger of Texas, a job that will fall to counting votes and organizing floor strategy against the incoming Democratic majority rather than for it; and conference chair, contested by Reps. Lisa McClain of Michigan, Erin Houchin of Indiana and Greg Steube of Florida, the post responsible for running weekly conference meetings and coordinating the party's messaging operation.

What Happens Next

The practical stakes of Tuesday's vote are different from a normal leadership contest, because the winner is taking charge of a conference moving into the minority rather than retaining control of the floor. The House's own description of its leadership structure illustrates the gap Jordan is stepping into: the speaker is both the chamber's presiding officer and the leader of the majority party, while the top out-of-power post is described simply as representing that party's members on the floor. Unlike a speaker, a minority leader controls no committee gavels, sets no floor schedule and holds no formal authority over which bills reach a vote — the levers that will instead pass to the incoming Democratic speaker in January. Jordan's job will be to unite a fractured and newly diminished conference, decide how aggressively to resist the incoming majority's agenda, and begin plotting a path back to a House majority in 2028.

House Democrats are set to hold their own leadership elections next week, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York expected to be elected speaker-designate and Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts expected to become majority leader, formalizing the transfer of the gavel when the new Congress is sworn in in January. Jordan has signaled he expects an "emboldened" Democratic majority to pursue extensive oversight of the Trump administration once in power, a dynamic that will shape the opening months of his tenure as minority leader. The committee gavels Jordan and other Republican chairs currently hold, including his own Judiciary Committee chairmanship, will pass to Democrats in January as well.