Johnson Links GOP Majority Bid to Faith and Power

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes Republicans will keep their narrow majority in the U.S. House in the Nov. 3 midterms, even with Democratic momentum, voter frustration and close races. At a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine, he cited crowds he said he’d seen on the campaign trail, Republican candidates and nearly half a billion dollars he’d raised for House Republicans. He also pointed to his faith. “We run to win, and that's biblical: You run to win,” he told the Associated Press. “And I believe that we will.”

The narrow majority

Johnson said he was on track to visit more than 20 states and 40 congressional districts through November. The political mood, he said, reminded him of the 2024 election that gave Republicans control of Congress and the White House. “It's not going to be a giant majority,” he said. “But I genuinely believe that we will have a working majority.” Johnson has said he expects Republicans to buck the pattern in which the president's party often loses seats in midterm elections.

A handful of seats in a shrinking number of competitive districts could decide the House majority. Johnson recently sent lawmakers home early rather than face a vote forced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Lawmakers were also trying to halt the Iran war, which Congress had not authorized.

Johnson dismissed criticism that Congress had yielded power as Trump sought to expand executive authority. “Absolute nonsense,” he said. “We did not yield Article 1 authority to the president,” he said, referring to constitutional powers. “We used our own,” he said, to advance Republican priorities over Democratic opposition.

Trump's agenda and party discipline

Johnson routinely fields 1 a.m. calls from President Trump; the two spoke the night before Trump rallied in Alaska. In Johnson's three years as speaker, he has held the Republican majority together to advance Trump's agenda, despite high prices, the Iran war and the challenge of leading one of the narrowest House majorities in modern times.

Johnson led passage of a bill with major tax breaks and social-service cuts, often without a vote to spare. Republican Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina joined the campaign swing and said: “So many times everybody had written off, there was no way he was going to be able to pull off a particular vote. Yet he always seems to pull out the win in the end.”

Johnson first became speaker in 2023 after renegade Republicans ousted his predecessor, then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. The article said Trump had purged House Republicans seen as disloyal, including Massie, who lost his primary, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who retired early after breaking with Trump over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Asked how he would maintain party discipline, Johnson said he was preparing changes to House rules: “There's going to be some changes that are going to make the machinery work smoother.”

Faith and the campaign

Johnson has focused his campaign on Democrats he portrays as “communists.” A handful of far-left liberals backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were on the ballot. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader who would be in line for the speaker's gavel if Democrats won control, was preparing a first-100-days agenda for the new Congress, which would convene in January if control changed.

Johnson said Republican plans included “less taxes, less regulation.” Trump, he said, “wants to go big for his legacy.” Johnson also said, “My faith is a huge component of how I think and how I act and what I do.” He led a public prayer on the National Mall as part of the nation's 250th anniversary. “I pray for God's will. And I believe God's will is for us — and not the communists — to be in charge of America,” he said, citing 1 Corinthians 9:24. Lisa Mascaro wrote the article for the Associated Press.