Republicans have at long last elected a House speaker: Representative Mike Johnson, a fundamentalist Christian who was also once called a key “architect” in Congress’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
Johnson finally secured the speaker’s gavel after Republican infighting left the House without a speaker for 22 days. He secured 220 votes.
Johnson is a four-term congressman representing Louisiana. His win also represents the rise of the MAGA front in the Republican Party. Earlier Wednesday morning, Donald Trump endorsed Johnson as House speaker—after quickly killing Mike Emmer’s nomination the day before.
And even if the 119th Congress was exactly the same as this one, the House Republicans can only do so much.
First, they would need to object to Electoral Votes with a Senator. (Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be hard for them to do.) Next, the House and Senate would separate to vote on each objection. Only if both chambers voted to set the Electoral Votes aside would they be set aside.
With a Democratic Senate, this won’t happen.
So the House Republicans can slow things down, but they won’t be able to overturn elections. This isn’t to say that there aren’t threats on the state and local level. There are. And if the Republicans gain control of the House and Senate, I could see them sustaining objections because “it must be fraud if Biden won,” thus giving the election to Trump. That just shows why it’s more important than ever to vote blue.