Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of House Republican leadership and gubernatorial candidate in New York, is warring with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., over how the GOP’s narrow House majority should be managed heading into 2026.
What started with Stefanik leveling an accusation that Johnson was “protect[ing] the deep state” by allegedly blocking a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act has turned into an all-out offensive on Johnson’s leadership. Stefanik has now claimed Johnson’s leadership of the House GOP has left the conference “rudderless,” and that if there was another vote for House Speaker today, Johnson would not have the vote.
“He certainly wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” Stefanik said of Johnson in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership. It’s that widespread.”
Stefanik went so far as to suggest former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was better at the role. “Whereas Kevin McCarthy was a political animal, Mike Johnson is a political novice and, boy, does it show, with the House Republicans underperforming for the first time in the Trump era,” Stefanik said.
The New York Republican added that President Donald Trump “is the leader of the Republicans and he certainly doesn’t need Mike Johnson.”
In response to Stefanik’s remarks, Johnson told reporters Wednesday, “I’m not sure how to comment on what Elise is doing or what the rationale behind this is, but you can talk to Republicans in Congress. 99.9% are united. We’re working together to keep delivering our agenda and that’s my focus.”
The speaker added that, “I think we’re leading and delivering. I’ve made the point. We’ve had the most consequential congress in the modern era and objectively I think it’s one of the top five of all time. So we’ll put the record up against all that.”
The dispute first bubbled up Monday, when Stefanik said Johnson was “getting rolled by House Dems” because, according to Stefanik, Johnson had refused to put a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would require the Federal Bureau of Investigation to tell members of Congress if they are being investigated.
Johnson, Stefanik asserted, was “siding with [House judiciary committee Democrat Rep.] Jamie Raskin against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state.”
Johnson was asked about the social media spat over the provision on Tuesday.
“I don’t exactly know why Elise won’t just call me. I texted her yesterday,” said Johnson. “I explained to her on a text message as soon as I heard this… it has to go through committees of jurisdiction… there’s a four corners engagement and agreement that’s required.”
Johnson said that House and Senate leaders of the committees of jurisdiction were not able to agree on the provision, and for that reason it was not included. But Johnson also said he was not aware of how the debate over the provision had progressed. “In this case—I found out last night, this wasn’t even on my radar—that that apparently didn’t happen,” he said.
By Wednesday, after a discussion with President Donald Trump and the Speaker, Stefanik had gotten what she wanted, announcing that the provision would be returned to the bill.
“He [Johnson] and I had very successful discussions last night. It’s a provision that he supports. Jim Jordan, the four corners—other than Jamie Raskin—they supported the provision, which, and first of all, it’s good policy,” she said Wednesday morning on CNBC.
Discharge Petition
Stefanik, who is running for governor in New York in 2026, is also supporting a discharge petition—a means of forcing a bill to come to a vote if leadership or committees are not advancing it—from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., that would force consideration of a new bill to crack down on stock trading among members of Congress.
Stefanik is one of ten Republicans to sign on to the petition so far, which will require 218 signatures in order to succeed.
“This bipartisan, commonsense, good governance discharge petition will finally crack down on the corrosive decay of a Congress that is failing the American people,” Stefanik said in a statement of the petition.
Discharge petitions, which have become increasingly common this Congress, are not beloved by all, and are often seen as a flouting leadership’s agenda.
“I am not a fan of the discharge petition. That is a tool of the minority,” House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., told The Daily Signal Tuesday when asked about its increasing prevalence.
“I come from the business world. If you have an idea, if you have a product or a piece of legislation that you want to get on the floor, it’s your job to sell it, right?”
McClain admitted that getting buy-in from enough Republicans to advance a bill can be difficult with the GOP’s narrow majority in the House.
“We have a very diverse conference, right? We have people who are in very, very ruby red seats and then we have people that are in not so ruby red seats that maybe Biden won by eight points,” McClain said. “So that is an interesting piece to navigate, but at the end of the day, you got to navigate it.”
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., who formerly chaired the Main Street Caucus and was instrumental in raising the threshold for a motion to vacate the Speaker’s office, also expressed a dislike for the discharge petition becoming more common.
“I’m not a big fan of discharge petitions. Let’s be clear, discharge petitions empower the minority,” he told The Daily Signal Tuesday.
Of major concern to these Republicans is the idea that members of their own party could empower Democrats to take contentious votes in the run up to the 2026 midterms.
“They allow a small group of Republicans, five or 10, to empower the Democrats to control the floor… it’s a tool that I’m not a fan of. But there are a lot of tools that I don’t particularly like that occasionally have their uses. I would not want to entirely get rid of the discharge petition. I would say I wish members were a little more reticent to look to that discharge petition any time they didn’t get their way.”
The Daily Signal was referred to public statements when contacting Johnson’s and Stefanik’s offices.
