Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Speaker Mike Johnson a habitual liar.
Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has told people she is so frustrated with the Louisiana Republican and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has gone around Mr. Johnson in a bid to force a vote he has declined to schedule on a bill to ban members of Congress from stock trading.
Less than a year out from midterm elections in which Republicans’ vanishingly small majority is at stake, Mr. Johnson’s grasp on his gavel appears weaker than ever, as members from all corners of his conference openly complain about his leadership. Some predict that he may not last as the speaker for the rest of this term.
Republican women, in particular, have been publicly challenging Mr. Johnson and taking issue with his priorities and his style.
Their dissatisfaction is indicative of a broader splintering of a restive group of G.O.P. lawmakers who are perpetually unhappy with their leaders, but appear to be reaching a breaking point with the current man at the top.
“Rarely have things been completely harmonious in the conference, but it does seem like there is an unusually high level of discontent,” said Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican who has been at odds with Mr. Johnson over the redistricting battles that will likely put him out of a job next year.
He added: “The overriding issue is the House has not been at the forefront of driving policymaking, or the agenda in Washington. That is naturally going to be frustrating to members who ran for Congress to make an impact on issues they care about.”
The rifts have opened as Republicans preparing to face voters in next year’s elections are increasingly worried that they have squandered a year in which their party had total control of government.
Many G.O.P. lawmakers are unhappy with the passive role the speaker has played in the redistricting arms race that has spread across the country and upended districts they know how to win. Even more are angry at his decision to send the House home for nearly eight weeks before and during the government shutdown, limiting what they have been able to accomplish. Members in competitive districts are desperate for a vote on extending expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Mr. Johnson is resisting.
Ms. Stefanik told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Mr. Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if a vote were held tomorrow, adding that disaffection with him among Republicans was “that widespread.”
Ms. Stefanik declined to speak on the record for this article.
Mr. Johnson declined to comment, as well. But a senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of prolonging an intraparty feud, said that after Mr. Johnson had provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide described as “a fake job and a fake title,” he would have expected her to be more gracious.
(After President Trump asked Ms. Stefanik earlier this year to withdraw as his nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Johnson created a new post for her called “chairwoman of House Republican Leadership,” although their relationship had collapsed.)
But Ms. Stefanik is not alone among Republican women in feeling aggrieved by Mr. Johnson. Some of them said privately that the speaker had failed to listen to them or engage in direct conversations on major political and policy issues, suggesting that doing so was a cultural challenge for Mr. Johnson — an evangelical Christian who has often voiced firm views about the distinct roles men and women should play in society.
In a recent podcast interview, for instance, he said that women were not able to compartmentalize their thoughts, and that the member whom he would trust most to cook him Thanksgiving dinner was Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan.
Ms. McClain, the No. 4 Republican, said that the notion of any gender divide in the conference was “an absurd suggestion” that reeked of Democratic bias. Mr. Johnson, she said, “has treated me with nothing less than respect. He values my opinion, not as a woman, but as a trusted colleague.”
But some House Republican women are privately predicting that Mr. Johnson’s speakership will end this term, either as a result of Republicans losing their slim majority before Election Day, or because Mr. Johnson is ousted by his own members, like his predecessor.
“I stand with Elise,” Ms. Mace, who is running for governor in South Carolina, said in a text message on Wednesday morning, a day after Ms. Stefanik’s enmity boiled over into a public feud with Mr. Johnson over a provision she wanted included in the annual defense policy bill.
Ms. Stefanik announced on social media on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had intervened, and that she had prevailed. After a three-way phone call, she said, Mr. Johnson had agreed to include the measure she was demanding that would require disclosure when the F.B.I. opens investigations into political candidates.
That was after she had written on social media that she was receiving “just more lies from the Speaker,” and that Mr. Johnson often falsely claimed to know nothing about an issue. She called it “his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”
Some Republicans said the flap was more a personal feud than an institutional problem with Mr. Johnson.
“I’m disappointed that Elise chose this path,” Representative Claudia Tenney, Republican of New York, said in an interview. Ms. Tenney, a close ally of Mr. Johnson’s, said that taking public shots at the speaker was “very unprofessional, and would not be tolerated in any other professional setting.” She suggested that Ms. Stefanik was still bitter over the handling of her cabinet nomination.
Still, the description sounded familiar to multiple Republican lawmakers who recounted a sense of resignation and defeatism in their ranks regarding the speaker. One of them, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Mr. Johnson’s standing, summed up his members’ assessment as “eye rolls, and no better options.”
Mr. Johnson, who was thrust into his job two years ago with almost no experience in leadership, has struggled under the weight of running the House and campaigning for members to keep his tiny majority.
In a party that has lagged in female representation and had problems appealing to women, Republican speakers before him had made it a priority to promote women through fund-raising and recruiting, and by elevating them to leadership roles.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that recruiting women had been key to his success in gaining seats through two cycles.
“My formula for success was simple: recruit and add more women, minorities and veterans to the House Republican conference, so that our conference would look more like America,” he said.
Mr. Johnson, his critics said, has done less of that than his predecessors.
This year, there were only three women in the incoming Republican freshman class: Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota, Sheri Biggs of South Carolina and Kimberlyn King-Hinds of the Northern Mariana Islands. By comparison, there were seven Republican women in the incoming freshman class of the previous Congress.
There is currently just one woman chairing a House committee: Representative Virginia Foxx of South Carolina, who leads the Rules Committee. She said that the insinuation that there was mounting ire from women directed at Mr. Johnson was “brainless as it is ignorant.”
In the last Congress, three women chaired committees. Before that, there were eight.
A spokesman for Mr. Johnson said in response that several female House Republicans were part of his joint fund-raising committee, and had received an average of nearly $400,000 so far this year. In next year’s midterm elections, the spokesman added, House Republicans have women running in 10 of the top districts they are eyeing. He also noted that Mr. Johnson had appointed three women to serve on the coveted House Intelligence Committee.
Still, some women in Congress said they were particularly frustrated by their treatment when they signed the discharge petition that ultimately forced a vote to compel the Justice Department to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The pressure on them to remove their names from the petition, some of them said, was coming not only from Mr. Trump and the White House, but from Mr. Johnson.
Last month, Ms. Greene announced that she would resign from Congress in January. Her frustration had been simmering.
“When I talk about weak Republican men, I am pretty much talking oftentimes about the leadership in the House and Senate,” Ms. Greene said in an appearance on “The View” last month. “And they are just not getting our agenda done.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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