Trump-backed Mike Johnson elected House speaker after 22 days - live

Rep Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been elected speaker of the House 22 days after the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

The vice chair of the conference received 220 votes in a chamber with 433 out of 435 seats currently filled. He needed at least 217 votes.

An exhausted Republican Party finally unified behind a single candidate after three weeks of infighting, backstabbing and chaotic wrangling.

The House GOP has churned through 14 candidates, and now four nominees – including Mr Johnson – in 22 days since the ouster of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on 3 October.

Late on Tuesday night, Mr Johnson crossed the threshold needed within the Republican conference when he received 128 votes in an internal ballot.

The feeling that Republicans finally had their speaker stemmed from the absence of acrimony following the nomination of Mr Johnson, replaced by cheers, chants of “Mike! Mike! Mike!” and a sense of relief among weary officeholders.

House Republicans overwhelmingly elected Rep Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be the next speaker of the House after 22 days where the House of Representatives had no leader amid turmoil across the globe and the need to pass spending bills next month.

Mr Johnson, the former deputy whip for House Republicans, won 220 votes on the floor after House Republicans coalesced around him on Tuesday evening. His ascent came after House Majority Whip Tom Emmer dropped out a mere four hours after the House Republican conference nominated him to be speaker.

Republicans from all factions of the conference cheered Mr Johnson and whistled on the floor, chanting his name.

After conservatives, led by former president Donald Trump, revolted against Mr Emmer, he removed himself from the running and after another contest, Mr Johnson emerged victorious.

A former attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, Mr Johnson is considered an arch-social conservative staunchly opposed to abortion. Earlier this year, he introduced legislation that would have made it illegal to transport a person under the age of 18 across state lines to obtain an abortion without parental notification.

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Mr Johnson is an ardent opponent of LGBTQ+ rights. In response, Rep Angie Craig (D-MN), the first openly gay mother in Congress, said “Happy anniversary to my wife,” before casting her vote for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

In addition, in December 2020, Mr Johnson, a lawyer by trade, filed an amicus brief on behalf of himself and 125 other House Republicans for a lawsuit filed by Texas to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Despite his hard-right bent, many Republicans from swing districts cast their vote for him on the floor enthusiastically.

House Republicans elected Rep Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be the next speaker of the House, 22 days after the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Mr Johnson, the former deputy whip, won 220 votes on the floor after House Republicans coalesced around him on Tuesday evening. His ascent came after House Majority Whip Tom Emmer dropped out a mere four hours after the House Republican conference nominated him to be speaker.

Republicans from all factions of the conference cheered Mr Johnson and whistled on the floor, chanting his name.

Who is Mike Johnson?

The vote came 22 days after the ouster of former speaker Kevin McCarthy after Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a motion to vacate the chair, which triggered a non-confidence vote. That in turn triggered a three-week frenzy to find a new speaker.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan then faced off to become the nominee, but as soon as Mr Scalise beat Mr Jordan, arch-conservatives rebelled and pledged to oppose Mr Scalise on the floor, which led to him removing himself from the running.

In response, Republicans nominated Mr Jordan, who failed after three votes last week before Republicans voted in a secret ballot to drop him.

Mr Johnson now faces numerous challenges leading the House. The House must pass some kind of spending bill before 17 November to keep the government open. In the same respect, Republicans and Democrats hope to pass a bill to provide aid to Israel, while many Republicans oppose a supplemental package to aid Ukraine.

After Republicans unanimously elected Rep Mike Johnson (R-LA) to become speaker of the House, Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the conspiracy-mongering congresswoman, had every reason to flash a smile off the floor. She had remade the Republican leadership in her image.

Ms Greene’s role in the coup that led to Mr Johnson – an ardent opponent of abortion who introduced a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation – should not surprise anyone. She is a key figure in the rise of right-wing extremism that pervades the Republican body politic.

What was indeed more surprising was how much the rest of the GOP went along with her to assist Mr Johnson’s ascent. Mr Johnson is a zealot of the highest order, someone who worked for the hard-right Alliance Defending Freedom; an ardent opponent of abortion who wants to restrict the rights of LGBT+ people and who served as Donald Trump’s Howitzer in Congress to overturn the 2020 election results.

But his fervor for theocratic policies did not impede his ability to unite nearly every faction of the very divided House Republican conference. Indeed, many of the Republicans who had previously raised serious objections to creeping fanaticism in the party brushed off these concerns as technicalities.

Mr Johnson’s triumph signifies the wholesale victory of the hardliners within the conference who had engaged in a bitter 15-year-civil war with the House Republican establishment.

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Former president Donald Trump shared private texts between himself and short-lived Speaker of the House hopeful Congressman Chuck Fleischmann on Truth Social.

The texts claimed that all of the GOP Speaker hopefuls were backing Mr Trump, according to Fox Chattanooga.

Mr Fleischmann was among six candidates who were under consideration for House speaker after Majority Whip Tom Emmer exited the race on Tuesday.

The House Republicans ultimately tossed their support behind Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Mr Fleischmann was among those who publicly backed Mr Johnson, writing on Twitter that he would be a “great and strong Speaker of the House” and that he would vote for him when his name goes to the floor for a vote.

About an hour before Mr Fleischmann made the tweet, Mr Trump shared an image of a text the congressman reportedly sent him.

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