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Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.
In today’s issue:
- What do the Speaker Johnson holdouts want?
- Top education issues to watch in 2025
- Lawmakers reflect on dramatic Congress and legacies
- U.S. fires multiple “precision” strikes in Yemen
What do the holdouts want? What can sway them?
Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) fate rests with a handful of House Republicans who, despite a clear endorsement from President-elect Trump, are opposing or withholding support for the Louisiana Republican ahead of the Speaker election on the House floor on Friday.
Those who remember the drawn-out Speaker’s election two years ago may be feeling déjà vu. It took 15 rounds of voting over four days to elect former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in January 2023.
But unlike that saga, which came after months of calls from the House Freedom Caucus for structural changes and other commitments from McCarthy, there is a lack of specific demands from the holdouts — most of whom are seeking a clear “plan” from Johnson. Many have felt burned by how he handled numerous major bills over the last year.
It’s also tougher math for Johnson, who can afford only one Republican defection in the razor-thin majority, assuming all members are present and voting for a candidate. (More details on Speaker math here.)
Johnson said on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Monday that he has been in contact with the holdouts.
“We’re in constant conversation about all this. I think that those members and all of them want to be a part of these solutions. They made big promises to their constituents in this campaign cycle, and we got to deliver upon them,” Johnson said. “Now it’s the media and the left that wants to divide us and distract us. We can’t fall into that trap.”
In the lead-up to the Speaker election, here are five holdouts to watch:
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas): Roy was a key figure in negotiating agreements that eventually resulted in McCarthy’s election, such as increasing representation of hardline conservative members in key committee posts and lowering the threshold to force a vote to oust the Speaker.
But this time around, it is not clear what specific commitments Johnson could make to appease Roy. The Texas congressman voiced frustrations about how Johnson has handled numerous issues over the last year in a Fox Business interview on Tuesday, such as frustrations about spending that the House approved that was not accompanied by spending cuts and that the House’s 72-hour rule to review legislation before passage was repeatedly circumvented.
“We need to have a plan before January 3rd. The Speaker needs to speak to it if he wants to have all of our support,” Roy said.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.): Massie is the only lawmaker so far to say he will vote for a candidate other than Johnson, and he has signaled that Trump’s endorsement is not swaying his position. On Tuesday, he said that Republicans will lose the House in 2026 if Johnson remains Speaker, dismissing arguments that Republicans could not find a viable alternative in a timely manner.
“He was only electable the first time because he hadn’t held any type of leadership position, nor had he ever fought for anything, so no one disliked him and everyone was tired of voting. He won by being the least objectionable candidate, and he no longer possesses that title,” Massie wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Keep watch, though, on whether Massie softens his position on Johnson at all. He could register his displeasure without doing more to threaten Johnson’s gavel if he votes “present” rather than for another candidate.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.): The Ukrainian-born congresswoman is a major wildcard in the Speaker vote, given her history of odd positions and flip-flopping that keeps members guessing.
Earlier this month, Spartz declared that she would not sit on House committees or participate in House GOP conferences — “I will not be involved in circuses,” Spartz said in a statement — because she would rather focus on helping “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) efforts.
She has called on Johnson to make public commitments on spending issues, such as creating an “emergency fiscal working group,” and a plan to deliver on Trump’s agenda beyond what Johnson has already outlined publicly. Johnson spoke with Spartz for about 45 minutes on Monday, he said on Fox News.
“We’ll have a meeting with him. We had discussions. But I don’t trust that he’s going to do it. So I think that he publicly needs to say what he’s going to do,” Spartz said on “Bannon’s War Room” on Tuesday.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.): Harris, the newly reelected chair of the House Freedom Caucus, had a key role in negotiating an internal House GOP deal to raise the threshold to trigger the “motion to vacate” the Speaker to nine members, helping Johnson get unanimously renominated as Speaker in November.
And even as Johnson was facing backlash on an initial short-term funding bill, Harris said he still supported Johnson. But that changed a few days later, when Harris said he was “undecided on what leadership should look like in the 119th Congress,” citing concerns about new spending not offset by cuts.
How Harris handles the Speaker vote will set the tone for his leadership of the Freedom Caucus over the next year.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.): Biggs has the same spending and process gripes with Johnson that many of his Freedom Caucus colleagues like Harris and Roy have.
“There are some issues I think that need to be worked out, specifically dealing with the budget issues,” Biggs said on Fox News shortly after Trump endorsed Johnson on Monday.
But Biggs has historically taken a more aggressive stance in key Speakership matters than Roy and Harris. He voted “present” on the 15th Speaker ballot in January 2023 that handed McCarthy the gavel, and he was one of eight Republicans who ousted McCarthy nine months later.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY
▪ Blackouts hit more than a million people in Puerto Rico on New Year’s Eve. ()
▪ Outbreaks of norovirus were unusually high in December, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (New York Times)
▪ The U.S. leveled sanctions on Iran and Russia in response to their efforts to influence the 2024 election, the Biden administration announced Tuesday. (The Hill)
LEADING THE DAY
© Associated Press | Chris Szagola
WHAT TO WATCH IN EDUCATION: 2024 was marked by significant events in state education and university policies, as lawsuits regarding the separation of church and state in public schools trickled up while protests over the Israel-Hamas war spread to every corner of the country.
While school protesters and encampments grabbed headlines for weeks, other storylines, including students staying behind the learning curve from the pandemic, Free Application for Federal Student Aid fallout and student loan forgiveness, rounded out the top five issues on the education front in 2024, The Hill’s Lexi Lonas Cochran reports.
One of the struggles for schools and educators is that eighth-grade students are still a full year behind in both math and reading, according to research group NWEA’s data that was released over the summer. Apart from the difficulties in learning, emergency funds that institutions received during the COVID-19 pandemic expired in the fall.
“I’m not totally optimistic we’re going to see additional funding from Congress, but I do really, really believe it is necessary,” said Lindsay Dworkin, the senior vice president of policy and government affairs at NWEA.
“I think when the pandemic began, when the funding was first approved, it was absolutely not clear how much disruption there would be and what would happen to student learning,” she added.
RISING DEMOCRATIC STARS: Following a series of losses in the 2024 elections, Democrats are looking for the party’s new leader in a seemingly wide-open search. Some heavyweights like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro have already been floated as potential 2028 Democratic presidential nominees or as new voices to guide the party through President-elect Trump’s second term.
Apart from the two swing-state governors, Democrats have other rising leaders to watch in 2025, including three other governors: Jared Polis of Colorado, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Wes Moore of Maryland, The Hill’s Jared Gans reports. In the Senate, the party has Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) along with Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) in the lower chamber.
- Here’s how Democrats can build a winning media message, by Brian Rosenwald, a political historian, MSNBC.
WHERE AND WHEN
- President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will depart Wilmington, Del. and travel to Camp David.
- The Senate meets on Thursday at noon in a pro forma session. The House meets on Friday at 11 a.m. for its final session of the 118th Congress before adjourning sine die. The 119th Congress convenes at noon on Jan. 3.
ZOOM IN
© Associated Press | Alex Brandon
LAWMAKERS ARE REFLECTING on one of the most politically dramatic sessions of Congress in recent memory — and on their legacies.
In addition to the never-before-seen coup that ousted McCarthy as Speaker, the 118th Congress saw the most expensive primary in history and Democrats forcing President Biden to withdraw his presidential campaign. NBC News’s Scott Wong (an alum of The Hill) and Frank Thorp V interviewed and photographed McCarthy, Johnson, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) for their story on the most bizarre Congress in recent memory.
Bowman said the millions spent to defeat him in his primary validated his progressive politics: “I must be doing the right thing, fighting for the right things, and they are desperate and scared.”
But he did have one regret. “Wish I hadn’t pulled the fire alarm. That’s it,” Bowman said.
MCHENRY ALSO REFLECTED on his evolution from “attack dog-in-training” to the pragmatic House Financial Services Committee chair who took a deliberately hands-off approach to being Speaker pro tempore after McCarthy was ousted, in an exit interview with Politico.
“You can either be on all the shows and in all the floor fights, or you can actually be in the right rooms where the decisions are made,” McHenry said. “So my first two terms were a learning experience about how the institution worked — touching the hot burner, right? In my second term, I discovered that I wasn’t being effective, that this was not moving my colleagues to vote with me. It was not building capacity internally. It was not helping me move legislation. It wasn’t helping move policy. And that’s when I stopped.”
OUTGOING SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (I-Ariz.) in an interview with PBS News said that Congress “is not as interested in getting things done as it used to be” — but said that money in politics is not the main factor in that decline.
“Look, it’s hard to win a primary if you’re not marching the goose-step thing. And the tolerance for individual thought and diversity of opinion is low,” Sinema said.
ELSEWHERE
© Associated Press | Osamah Abdulrahman
U.S. STRIKES IN YEMEN: The U.S. military fired multiple “precision” strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Tuesday. CENTCOM said U.S. forces hit the nation’s capital, Sana’a, and coastal locations in Yemen controlled by the Houthis on Monday and Tuesday. On both days, U.S. Navy ships and planes targeted a Houthi command and control facility along with advanced conventional weapon production and storage facilities that housed uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) and missiles, according to CENTCOM.
“These facilities were used in Houthi operations, such as attacks against U.S. Navy warships and merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” CENTCOM said.
Additionally, CENTCOM said Navy and Air Force planes destroyed a Houthi coastal radar site, one-way attack UAVs and seven cruise missiles. No U.S. personnel or equipment were injured or damaged.
“The strikes are a part of CENTCOM’s effort to degrade Iran-backed Houthi efforts to threaten regional partners and military and merchant vessels in the region,” CENTCOM wrote.
AFRICA: Africa is currently marred with more conflicts than at any stage since 1946, according to Sweden’s Uppsala University data analyzed by the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway. The continent is experiencing 28 state-based conflicts in 16 different countries, according to experts at the two institutions (Wall Street Journal).
- The Associated Press: Zimbabwe has abolished the death penalty, punishment that was last utilized nearly 20 years ago.
OPINION
■ 2024 was the worst year ever for campus free speech. Can we make 2025 better? by Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Fox News.
■ A China-Taiwan war would start an economic crisis. America isn’t ready. by Eyck Freymann and Hugo Bromley, guest essayists, The New York Times.
THE CLOSER
© Associated Press | Mark Humphrey
And finally …
On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebel states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
But as the National Archives notes, the proclamation did not end slavery nationwide and had limited impact. Slavery did not officially end nationwide until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.
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