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A senior Texas Republican congressman has said that the House speaker, Mike Johnson, does not yet have the votes to be re-elected to the speakership ahead of an election to be held later this week.
Representative Chip Roy told Fox Business’s Varney & Co that he was undecided on supporting the Louisiana Republican, despite Donald Trump issuing a full-throated endorsement of Johnson on Monday.
“I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda,” Roy said.
Related: Republican congressman says party should drop ‘food fight’ over leadership
“Right now, I don’t believe he has the votes on Friday.”
The president-elect voiced his support for Johnson in a Truth Social post on Monday.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!” he said.
Republicans are hoping to avoid the leadership chaos and infighting that marred the previous Congress, the 118th, resulting in the lowest amount of legislation being passed in decades.
But a historically small GOP majority in the new Congress means that Johnson can afford only a single Republican defection. Democrats have signaled they don’t plan to offer Johnson a lifeline after a bruising government spending battle earlier this month.
The New York Republican congressman Mike Lawler said on Sunday that members of his party who were considering voting against Johnson were “playing with fire”.
But several congressional Republicans appear to be doing just that, including Andy Harris of Maryland, Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
In his TV interview, Roy said Johnson was a friend and that “maybe he can answer the call and deliver an agenda and a plan”. He recommended Florida’s Byron Donalds or Jim Jordan of Ohio, chair of the House judiciary committee, as potential alternatives.
“Byron Donalds is a good man and a good friend. I nominated him two years ago. Jim Jordan’s a good man and a good friend. There are other members of leadership in the conference who could do the job,” Roy said.
Roy said that while he “respects” Trump’s support of Johnson and he liked the speaker, he had concerns with a number of his actions, focusing on the government budget battle that was dogged by procedural infighting.
“We had to have Elon [Musk] and Vivek [Ramaswamy] and the president and JD [Vance] come in to kill a 1,500-page monstrosity, cut it down to 100 pages. It still spent $110bn unpaid for,” Roy said.
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