House Speaker Mike Johnson will not try to stay on as the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives after his party lost its majority in Tuesday's midterm elections. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told his staff on a phone call on Wednesday morning, November 4, that he will not run for House minority leader in the next Congress, according to reporting by Reuters, the Associated Press and NBC News, each citing people familiar with the decision.
Source: Reuters, Nov. 4, 2026
The decision, reported within hours of the election result, opens the first contested race for the House Republican leadership since 2023. Democrats won control of the House — the Associated Press called the chamber for Democrats at 1:26 a.m. ET on Wednesday, according to Roll Call — and also took the Senate on Tuesday, leaving Republicans in the minority in both chambers when the new Congress opens in January.
Johnson has been speaker for three years, ever since Republican hardliners ousted Kevin McCarthy from the post in October 2023 and the party, after weeks of paralysis, settled on Johnson as a compromise candidate. He governed with one of the narrowest majorities in modern House history — 218 to 214 by Reuters' count — and spent much of the 2026 campaign insisting Republicans would expand that majority, not lose it.
Scalise and Jordan Enter the Race
Two senior Republicans moved within hours. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, also of Louisiana, told colleagues in a letter on Wednesday that he will seek the minority leader post, proposing task forces that would go out and listen to people in what he called “Real America” and turn what they hear into legislation on issues including Social Security and Medicare. “We have big tasks ahead, and tested leadership is needed now more than ever. I am ready to lead this conference,” Scalise wrote, adding in the letter that his number one goal as Republican leader would be to win back the majority.
Source: Reuters, Nov. 4, 2026
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio also announced his bid in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday, putting law and order, low taxes and traditional values at the top of his platform. “To restore our majority, we must restore voters' faith in our ability to deliver on these principles,” Jordan wrote, according to Reuters.
The contest carries a piece of unfinished business from 2023: both Scalise and Jordan mounted bids for the speakership after McCarthy's ouster that year, and both failed, before the conference turned to Johnson. Three years later, the same two men are the leading candidates to lead the party — this time in the minority.
President Donald Trump told reporters he would stay out of the Republican leadership election. “The speaker was fantastic. The people under him were fantastic. All good people,” he said, according to Reuters. In a Tuesday interview reported by Axios, Trump had praised Johnson but declined to endorse him for the leadership job, saying: “He's going to have to make that decision.”
Johnson's move is also a reversal. As recently as October, he had said he planned to remain the top House Republican even if the party lost its majority, Axios reported. On election night in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, he told supporters the historical odds had always been against the president's party: “It's only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle. It's very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept here tonight.”
How the Vote Works — and the Dates That Matter
House Republicans will choose their leader in an internal party election expected on Tuesday, November 10, with candidates required to declare by noon on Friday, November 6, according to reporting by NBC News, Politico and Axios. Unlike a speaker, who must win a majority of the entire 435-member House, a minority leader needs only a majority of his own party's conference — a far smaller electorate, made up of the Republicans who won election or re-election on Tuesday.
Johnson remains speaker until the new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027, when the gavel is expected to pass to House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York — the development that followed directly from Tuesday's House result. NBC News reported that Johnson's own future plans are not known; he has made no on-the-record statement about Wednesday's decision, which was disclosed by people familiar with his staff call rather than in a public announcement.
What happens next is a compressed, week-long campaign fought in private: whip counts, conference calls and promises about fundraising and the 2028 fight to win the House back. Whoever wins on November 10 will lead the Republican opposition to a Democratic Congress for the final two years of President Trump's term — setting the party's message on the economy, immigration and oversight from the minority side of the aisle.