What Does Mike Johnson Think His Job Is?

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This morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson finally broke his silence on the scandal engulfing Representative Max Miller of Ohio. Well, sort of—Johnson didn’t have much to say.

“I haven’t spoken to Max about this in the last few days. Of course, I will,” he told Politico. Johnson said that Miller, a fellow Republican, was taking the allegations seriously (despite evidence to the contrary) and that a House Ethics Committee process should “play out.” (Miller requested the investigation this week, an apparent stalling tactic.) Johnson added, “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time. It’s not my business to get engaged in it.”

This raises the question of what Johnson does think the speaker’s business is. One might imagine that the Miller situation would concern Johnson for several reasons. Johnson positions himself as a staunch social conservative and defender of morality; Miller has been accused of domestic abuse against his ex-wife and toddler daughter, and of illegal drug use. (Miller has denied the abuse allegations and said that although he has used illegal drugs in the past, he no longer does.) For his caucus, it’s a big distraction from any midterm messaging that the Republican Party might wish to do in the last 100 days before elections. The scandal also puts another GOP seat in play in November; Miller said on CNN last night that Donald Trump had told him that it would be a “tough” race to win. If Miller drops out by Monday afternoon, Republicans in Ohio can replace him on the ballot, but it’s not clear how quickly the Ethics Committee process will move.

If Johnson doesn’t think that his job includes protecting the moral reputation of the House, his small and endangered House majority, or the prospects of the Republican Party more broadly, he must have some other idea about his role. What that might be is mysterious.

Passing legislation would seem like an obvious answer, but the 119th Congress has been one of the least productive in history. Legislators have succeeded in enacting just 104 laws since January 2025. That’s the lowest number by far since at least 1947—only the 274 laws passed last Congress even come close. This is especially remarkable because Republicans hold control over both chambers. Legislative leaders have also yielded some of their power over budgets, one of their most basic duties, to the White House. Even worse, 2025 saw the longest complete shutdown of the federal government in history, as legislators failed to fund the government for 43 days.

Some of the blame for this unproductivity belongs to the Senate, where the GOP edge is narrow and where rules mean that a Democratic minority can more easily block legislation. But senators are at least filling their time with other official duties, such as confirming presidential appointments, that the House doesn’t have. Another basic congressional duty is oversight of the executive branch, but the House has done little to investigate or shed light on what the administration is doing, much less hold it to account. In May, Johnson called a recess rather than hold a vote condemning Trump’s war in Iran, after it became clear that the nonbinding measure would pass. (The House has since passed a similar resolution.)

Johnson isn’t setting some sort of broader agenda for the legislature either. That, too, has been left to Trump, who seems to have been interested in only two bills: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last year, and the SAVE America Act, currently and perhaps permanently bottled up in the Senate. Johnson’s deference to Trump has reportedly led the president to joke in private that he has “two jobs: being president and being speaker.”

That’s rather demeaning for Johnson, but given how Trump dominates the House, one might expect that Johnson would pay close attention to what the president says and does. Yet Johnson has a consistent pattern of pleading ignorance when asked about controversial statements or actions by Trump or his administration. In a characteristic example, Johnson dodged a question in October about cuts to funding for special education: “I’ve been so busy on this; I’ve not had a chance to dig into the details.” Busy on what, precisely?

In fairness to Johnson, he’s working in a difficult environment with just a seven-seat majority, a rebellious right flank, and a mercurial president. But he does have some power when he wants to use it—as became apparent this week. On Monday, the House Ethics Committee found that Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, a Republican, had “engaged in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers” and had likely “violated House rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.” (Edwards denied that any of his conduct had been intended as a sexual or romantic advance.) Yesterday, CNN reported that House leaders were pressuring Edwards to drop his reelection bid. Early this morning, Edwards did just that.

By attempting to remain distant from the Miller scandal, Johnson is allowing Miller to claim, as he did in an interview last night, that “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else—they’re standing behind me.” Johnson’s reluctance to become involved in a messy, lurid story like this one is understandable, but it’s also one of the burdens that falls on leaders. By declining to bear it, Johnson may help ensure that he doesn’t have to worry about the duties of the speaker when the new Congress opens next January.

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Today’s News

Abdul El-Sayed defeated Representative Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, marking a significant win for the party’s progressive wing after a tight race. He will face Republican Mike Rogers in November in a battleground contest that could help determine control of the Senate.
The cyclosporiasis outbreak has reached six more states, bringing the total to 15 states. The CDC said there are more than 22,000 confirmed or suspected cases, 517 hospitalizations, and two deaths linked to the outbreak.
The White House has declassified FBI records showing that the bureau opened a 2017 investigation into whether President Trump had been acting on Russia’s behalf when he fired then–FBI Director James Comey, according to administration officials. They said that the inquiry had ultimately found no evidence to support the theory.

Evening Read

Illustration with collage of black-and-white image details of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, al-Adel, and World Trade Center towers, with map of Pakistan, aerial view of city, and red scribbled details. — Illustration by Mark Harris*

What Happened to al-Qaeda?

By Graeme Wood

Since September 11, 2001, al‑Qaeda has pulled off exactly one fatal attack inside the United States. If you remember the details of that attack, you probably spend too much time thinking about terrorism. On December 6, 2019, in Pensacola, Florida, a 21-year-old Royal Saudi Air Force officer took out a legally acquired Glock pistol and killed three U.S. sailors at a naval air base, before police arrived and killed him. The shooter, an affiliate of al‑Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, had been on the base for flight training. I was in Taif, Saudi Arabia, at the time, and the Saudis I met said they were sorry about the incident but relieved that after 18 years of terrorist R&D, the most ferocious blow al‑Qaeda could strike on the path of jihad was not much worse than the kind of mundane workplace violence that we Americans regularly inflict on ourselves.

Read the full article.