After 22 days of blocking, 14 candidates and 4 nominees, white smoke finally came out of the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday. Republicans put an end to their divisions and unanimously elected a relative unknown, Mike Johnson, as Speaker of the lower house of Congress.
At 51, this ultraconservative elected official from Louisiana, pro-Trump and anti-abortion, succeeds Kevin McCarthy and becomes one of the most powerful people in the American political system, second in the line of presidential succession after Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Threat of a “shutdown” by mid-November
Relatively inexperienced, Mike Johnson was elected in 2016 in the wake of Donald Trump. After the failures of Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and the centrist Tom Emmer – the candidacy torpedoed by Donald Trump on Tuesday – the new Speakera managed to seduce his family with one main quality: he never displayed personal ambition and hasn’t made a major enemy in seven years.
In an America more divided than ever, Mike Johnson does not really embody unity. In 2020, he was one of the main architects in the House to try to decertify Joe Biden’s victory. Fiercely opposed to abortion and gay marriage, this evangelical Christian has spoken out against continued aid to Ukraine. And if he had supported the agreement avoiding a default on the American debt, he voted against the budget extension which had made it possible to avoid a “shutdown” of the federal administration, a burning issue which must be resolved by mid-November.