House Republicans scramble for a new leader as Johnson steps aside

Speaker Mike Johnson will not seek to lead House Republicans in the minority next year, according to multiple accounts of an all-staff call he held Wednesday morning, ending his two-term speakership and setting off an immediate contest between the chamber's two most prominent conservatives to replace him.

Johnson's decision came less than a day after Democrats won control of the House in Tuesday's midterm elections, costing Republicans the gavel Johnson had held since October 2023. Conceding the chamber Tuesday night at an election-night gathering in Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson told supporters that Republicans "would have to defy more than a century of midterm history" to hold on, adding that the pattern is "very, very difficult to overcome," according to Fox News. By Wednesday morning, according to people on the call, he had told his staff he would not stand for the top House Republican post in the next Congress, a job that traditionally falls to the outgoing speaker's party.

Within hours, two letters landed in the inboxes of House Republicans. Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the conference's No. 2, declared his candidacy for minority leader, writing to colleagues that "last night's election was far worse than any of us expected" and calling for the conference to be honest about what went wrong. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio entered the race the same day, describing himself in his own letter as "battle-tested on the oversight front" and telling colleagues that "we need a Leadership team that is active and engaged, forward-thinking and straight-shooting."

A rematch seven years in the making

The Scalise-Jordan contest revives a rivalry that has simmered since October 2023, when the two men were among several Republicans who sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy's ouster; Johnson ultimately emerged from that chaotic multi-ballot scramble as a compromise choice. Jordan ran for the gavel outright in that fight and lost multiple floor votes before withdrawing, while Scalise briefly won the conference's nomination before stepping aside when he could not lock down enough votes on the floor. Both men have spent the years since consolidating power inside the conference — Scalise as majority leader and a survivor of the 2017 congressional baseball shooting, Jordan as founding chairman of the Freedom Caucus and, more recently, as Judiciary Committee chairman leading investigations tied to the Trump administration's agenda.

House Republicans will settle the race in an internal, secret-ballot election of the conference on Nov. 10, one week after Election Day, under rules the House Republican Conference has used for prior leadership contests. Under those rules, a candidate needs only a simple majority of Republicans in the room, a lower bar than the floor majority required to win the speakership itself — a distinction both men learned the hard way in 2023.

• Majority Leader Steve Scalise is running for minority leader, the top job Johnson is vacating
• Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan is also running for minority leader, setting up a direct contest with Scalise
• Majority Whip Tom Emmer has told colleagues he will run to stay on as minority whip
• Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger is challenging Emmer for that whip post

Steep losses across the map

The leadership shuffle reflects the scale of Tuesday's defeat. Projected Republican losses reported Tuesday night and Wednesday included Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, Rep. Tim Moore of North Carolina and Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, along with National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson of North Carolina, whose job was to protect the majority Johnson's conference has now lost. Johnson's own margin in the chamber had been razor-thin for much of the past two years, surviving multiple special elections and a handful of GOP retirements; by Wednesday, Democrats were projected to hold at least 250 House seats to Republicans' 165, with a handful of races still uncalled, according to NBC News tallies of the results.

The losses have exposed open frustration inside the conference. Rep. Greg Steube of Florida wrote on social media that House Republican leadership had been "embarrassingly weak" and called on leaders to step aside, and an unnamed senior GOP lawmaker was quoted calling for "a complete reset of all leadership." Johnson, who came to Congress in 2017 and spent recent months campaigning for Republican candidates across the country, is expected to remain in the House after winning reelection to his own Louisiana seat, though it remains unclear whether he intends to serve out a full term in the minority or depart early, as several past speakers who lost their gavels eventually did.

"Last night's election was far worse than any of us expected." — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, in a letter to Republican colleagues announcing his bid for minority leader

What the vote will decide

The outcome will shape how House Republicans position themselves against a Democratic majority for the back half of President Trump's term, including how aggressively the conference tries to blunt investigations that Democratic committee chairs are expected to launch once they take the gavels Jordan currently holds on Judiciary. Jordan's campaign is built in part on a pledge to counter those coming investigations; Scalise's message to colleagues has centered more on conference unity after what he called a historically bad night. Neither candidate has publicly estimated how the secret-ballot math inside the conference might break, and aides in both camps spent Wednesday working the phones ahead of next week's vote.

Both men hold their current posts formally through the end of this Congress: Scalise at the Majority Leader's office and Jordan as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, where Democrats are expected to install a new chair once they organize the incoming majority. Johnson will continue to run the speaker's office until the new Congress is seated in January, even as he steps back from seeking the leadership post that follows. Emmer's bid to remain whip was confirmed in a message to colleagues Wednesday, and the Republican Study Committee has not yet issued a formal statement on Pfluger's challenge for that post.

House Republicans are not alone in reorganizing. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday he expects to be elected majority leader in the incoming Democratic-controlled Senate, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has separately said he is seeking the speakership Johnson is giving up — a contest that will play out on the other side of the aisle regardless of who wins the Republican race. For now, the House GOP's immediate future rests on the Nov. 10 vote, the first test of whether Scalise's call for unity or Jordan's call for a sharper-edged opposition better fits a conference bracing for two years in the minority.