House Begins 119th Congress with Speaker Election

The House on Friday will convene the 119th Congress, starting with an election for Speaker of the House, swearing in of lawmakers, and passing the rules for the chamber.

The House will convene at 12:00 P.M. Eastern to begin the 119th Congress, which will start with a quorum call, prayer, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Immediately following the procedural opening of the chamber, the House must elect a Speaker, and the chamber cannot conduct business until it elects the leader of the legislative body.

A candidate for Speaker must receive 218 votes to become the leader. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is the presumptive first choice to lead the House after President-elect Donald Trump endorsed the Louisiana Republican.

However, that does not mean that Johnson will necessarily glide towards becoming Speaker. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has promised to vote for someone else, and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and others, have said that many lawmakers still have misgivings about voting for the Louisiana lawmakers for Speaker.

Johnson will have a razer-thin margin to become the next Speaker. The House can take an unlimited number of votes to elect a Speaker.

It took 15 rounds of voting to elect then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker in January 2023.

Assuming the House elects Johnson as speaker, then the House will swear in lawmakers and delegates, and then proceed to adopt the rules for the 119th Congress.

The Rules package contains many notable changes as how the House operates.

The new threshold to offer a motion to vacate, the parliamentary procedure to remove the Speaker, requires that a member of the majority party — in this case, Republicans — and eight additional members of that same party sign onto the motion to vacate to remove the Speaker.

This is a drastic change to insulate Johnson from being potentially ousted. The prior rule required only one House lawmaker to introduce the motion to vacate.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, scolded Republicans for only allowing members of the majority party to offer motions to vacate.

“Their proposed changes would, for the first time in American history, shield the Speaker from accountability to the entire chamber,” McGovern said.

“The American people did not vote for whatever the hell this is — and you better believe that Democrats will not let Republicans turn the House of Representatives into a rubber stamp for their extremist policies,” he added.

The House package also dissolves the congressional Diversity & Inclusion Office, which was a longstanding target for Republicans.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will now be called the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The Office of Congressional Ethics will be changed to the Office of Congressional Conduct.

The rules package also authorizes subpoenas for Attorney General Merrick Garland and other Justice Department officials to investigate the Biden family’s finances.

The package also sets up roughly a dozen Republican bills on issues such as securing the southern border, requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, barring a ban on fracking, and more.