Congressman Mike Johnson secured a major victory for President-elect Trump and his agenda after he was re-elected as House speaker on the first ballot in a prolonged vote on Friday. 

Mr. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who is strongly backed by Trump, received 218 votes, while the Democrats’ nominee for speaker, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, received 215 votes. 

However, the outcome of the vote was not without drama, as three Republicans initially voted for another candidate, while Mr. Johnson could only afford to suffer one defection from his party. 

After what appeared to be a looming defeat for the speaker, the vote was kept open as Mr. Johnson tried to win over two Republicans who voted for another candidate to avoid heading to a second ballot. After some time, Congressman Keith Self and Congressman Ralph Norman changed their votes to back Mr. Johnson, giving him a win on the first ballot. 

In a speech shortly after the vote, Mr. Johnson said he was grateful for the “confidence this chamber has placed in me.”

Following a moment of silence to honor the victims of the New Year’s Day attack at New Orleans, he extolled the “core principles that made America what we are,” such as individual freedom, limited government, and the rule of law.

“The path of prosperity has long been paved with policies that put America and Americans first, and that is what we will champion in the 119th Congress,” he said. “We have a mandate and that was shown in the election cycle. The people want an America First agenda. They do.”

He vowed to work to secure the border, tackle inflation, and “restore America’s energy dominance.”

Trump offered his congratulations to Mr. Johnson. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote, “Congratulations to Speaker Mike Johnson for receiving an unprecedented Vote of Confidence in Congress. Mike will be a Great Speaker, and our Country will be the beneficiary. The People of America have waited four years for Common Sense, Strength, and Leadership. They’ll get it now, and America will be greater than ever before!”

With Republicans’ razor-thin margin in the House, Mr. Johnson could only afford to lose one Republican vote if all lawmakers showed up. Congressman Thomas Massie previously said he would not vote for Mr. Johnson. Republicans won 220 seats in the 2024 election. However, after Congressman Matt Gaetz resigned, they had a 219-215 majority.

In December, Mr. Johnson’s bid to retain the speaker’s gavel appeared to be in peril after a fight over a spending bill that would keep the government funded through March. A bipartisan 1,500-page spending bill was scuttled after Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy criticized it. The House voted 366-34 to pass a shorter spending bill that did not include a provision to raise the debt ceiling, as Trump had demanded. 

However, the last-minute scramble that occurred to cobble together a spending deal and avert a government shutdown before the holidays raised questions about whether Mr. Johnson would be able to get almost every Republican on board with keeping him as speaker or whether there would be a chaotic repeat of 2023 when lawmakers went through 15 rounds of voting to elect Speaker McCarthy. 

Mr. Johnson was elected speaker in October 2023, weeks after the House was thrown into turmoil by Mr. McCarthy’s ouster that was orchestrated by a small group of Republicans. 

Mr. Johnson said during an interview on Fox Business Thursday that he believes a “constitutional crisis” could occur if the House did not quickly choose a speaker on Friday. 

“Yeah, we would have ourselves a constitutional crisis, I would argue,” he said. “You have to have a speaker to begin and commence the Congress itself.”

Conservative Republicans have sought commitments from the speaker on spending cuts or naming Congressman Chip Roy as the House Rules Committee chairman. Moderate Republicans warned against making such promises in exchange for votes for the speaker’s gavel. Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska told Politico that such deal-making would be like “putting Stalin in charge of Amnesty International.”

The speaker told CNN that he would listen to recommendations from Republicans about improvements on how bills move forward on the House floor, but he said he would not make any deals to secure votes.

The vote was closely watched to see if Mr. Johnson would be able to wrangle the often fractious caucus to get lawmakers on board to pass Trump’s agenda swiftly. Winning the speaker’s gavel on the first ballot is seen as a potential signal that he could get Republicans on board to pass one big reconciliation bill to pass the bulk of Trump’s plans in a single fell swoop.

In a boost for Mr. Johnson’s hope of keeping his job as speaker, he had received Trump’s “complete and total” endorsement. The president-elect had told CNN he believed Mr. Johnson would secure enough votes to continue in the post.