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The House of Representatives faced a tumultuous year in 2025. House Republicans praised key legislative successes, but many have noted that the reward system for “disruptive” behavior from colleagues and a three-seat majority have made legislating much more difficult.
There’s no question Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a complicated job. Taking the gavel from an ousted predecessor and constant threats of removal is enough to put anyone in a sweat, but many of his GOP colleagues think he’s handling matters as best he can, given the historic, razor-thin majority under which he operates.
Strategists and members note he also has to contend with the iron fist with which President Donald Trump governs. The president has taken many liberties since reentering the Oval Office, using executive orders to sidestep Congress and enact much of his agenda.
“I think you’re seeing [Johnson] try to keep things as tame as possible without making it too interesting,” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying congressional dysfunction. “I think he understands people’s frustrations and is able to be genuinely sympathetic and accommodating as much as he needs to keep moving things forward.”
Some rank-and-file members have grown increasingly frustrated, looking back over 2025 at how the speaker accommodated lawmakers who broke rules and caused spectacles on the House floor.
“I do think a tight margin gives one or two members more power than [if] we have a few free agents out there who aren’t team players, and so they take advantage of a three-seat majority,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said.
Lawmakers proud of big-ticket items but frustrated at pace of individual wishes
At the end of the year, House Republican leadership boasted the 119th Congress had been the “most productive and successful in the modern era” and “one of the top five of all time.” Johnson has also praised the House for returning to “regular order” in areas such as government funding.
Centrist members such as Bacon and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) said they were proud of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, particularly the tax reform portion. Malliotakis, a Ways and Means Committee member, said she thinks the GOP has been “very productive” from that standpoint.
“It’s been less than a year,” she said. “We were trying to fix four years of mess under [former President] Joe Biden, and it’s going to take more time. There’s more that we need to do. But we got off at a very good start this year, considering a very slim majority.”
But, she said, there is growing frustration among the rank and file that leadership is not advancing smaller priorities that aren’t “controversial, or don’t cost money.”
“We focused on very big items that united the conference and were promises we made during the election, which is critical, but I think that we could have also helped members more get their individual smaller priorities out,” Malliotakis said. “We should have been churning out more legislation.”
Congress has passed 57 bills that Trump has signed into law, with 343 bills passing the House in the 119th Congress thus far.
Hundreds of bills have been introduced by lawmakers from every ideological spectrum, including priorities Trump has previously said he supported. But they never come up in the House for a vote, leading members to feel frustrated that their bills sit in committee and never get a shot at being law.
Malliotakis pointed to one of her bills establishing a Women’s History Museum, which had already been authorized by Congress and the president in 2020. She said it would pass on “suspension,” meaning it skips some legislative hurdles and would just get one final passage vote.
“The president even indicated during Women’s History Month that he supports the legislation,” the congresswoman said. “And so, why is it still sitting in committee? Why am I having such a hard time getting a floor vote on something that will pass on suspension?”
Much of the legislative schedule of this House is dictated by what the White House says, Wallach said — and in Trump’s eyes, “we don’t need anything more from Congress” now that the first reconciliation bill has passed.
This puts Johnson in a bind, Wallach said, which understandably upsets the rank and file.
“If the president is so clearly the captain of this ship and he pretty much sees Congress as something he hopes doesn’t cause him too much trouble, that’s a frustrating thing for members who want to get things done for their constituents,” Wallach said.
“And I think it’s a difficult position for Mike Johnson, who wants to be deferential to the president because, in a very real way, that’s his job,” he added.
Anarchy descends on House floor
The House experienced an unprecedented breakdown in decorum last year, largely exemplified by a holdup of floor votes, the increase in censure and discharge petitions, and the private concessions extracted from the speaker to keep the peace.
Johnson had to call in Trump or members of his administration to solve problems throughout much of 2025, including persuading members to switch their votes. The president reportedly yelled at Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) to change her vote on the budget resolution last year, which the congresswoman has said is a “complete lie.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to give assurances to Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Tim Burchett (R-TN) that money for certain nongovernmental organizations would not go to the Taliban to flip their votes on a procedural vote for the National Defense Authorization Act.
For some rank-and-file members, these methods are “anarchy” and disrespectful to the institution. It has been ongoing since the summer, and many members do not think it has gotten any better.
“You’re showing rank and file members that if you’re disruptive, you can get more out of leadership,” Malliotakis said. “And that’s the unfortunate message that has been allowed to be sent, because if you bring down the rule, all of a sudden, you get a private meeting with the speaker or the president, or you get a commitment for a vote on one of your priorities.”
Bacon said he thinks the party fracturing over rules votes is the biggest breakdown in decorum he’s seen during his time in the House.
Johnson has had six rule failures under his leadership since taking the gavel from ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In the last two weeks of the 2025 session, Johnson almost added a seventh rule failure to his docket twice: once during the NDAA fight and another rule involving a permitting reform bill.
If those rules votes had failed, the House would no longer have been able to move forward and vote for final passage on those bills, which essentially would have stalled the legislative chamber’s work for that week.
“They try to hold the whole House hostage, four or five of them, that creates a lot of hostility from the rest of the Republicans,” Bacon said. “It used to be that you voted for the rule and then you voted your conscience on the bill, and now I don’t feel like there’s any rules to the rule, and it hurts the majority tremendously.”
“We have people that think that gives them an advantage and gives them leverage,” the Nebraska congressman added. “Unfortunately, I think sometimes our leadership allows that, but I get it. They have a three-seat majority. It’s not easy.”
Many conservative lawmakers have told the Washington Examiner previously that they will hold up proceedings to make policies “more conservative” and very rarely do it for personal gain. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) took aim at outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Dec. 16, 2025, when she threatened to sink the NDAA rule, and, to get her to flip, she was promised a vote on one of her bills.
“Marjorie was given this vote to buy her vote on the NDAA. … That’s the kind of s*** that happens around this institution, and I’m sick of it,” Roy said during a Rules Committee hearing.
When asked by the Washington Examiner how the speaker has operated in 2025, Roy said he won’t “grade the speaker” but acknowledged Johnson is “navigating a complex environment.”
“I think our success or failure will be written by how well we do in the first half of the [new] year,” the congressman said.
Pacifying ‘extremes’ at detriment of centrists
Strategists attribute this breakdown in decorum to a decadeslong problem in which norms in every Congress are “getting put aside.”
“The volume has been turned up to a very high level, and it’s created this very dysfunctional atmosphere no matter who’s in charge,” said Ron Bonjean, a longtime GOP strategist and former top spokesman to the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader.
Despite over 20 years of House rules erosion, many strategists and lawmakers agreed that the ousting of McCarthy set the pitch in motion.
“Mike Johnson has to deal with the problem, but it’s not a Mike Johnson problem,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said. “There’s a Speaker Johnson because there is a problem.” He pointed out that McCarthy had to go 15 rounds before receiving enough votes to become speaker, only to be the first speaker ever ousted by a motion to vacate by eight of his Republican colleagues.
“What happened to him was utter bulls***, and it was bulls*** that was caused by troublemakers, and there are more troublemakers, and the causing of trouble is their reward,” Heye said.
Bacon attributed the anarchy to the slim margins: “No doubt about it, when we had a 40-seat majority, things ran smoother. [Former Florida Rep.] Matt Gaetz had zero power. But with a four-seat majority, it gave him power. But in a normal Congress, nobody would listen to that guy at all.”
The rise in censures and the rise in discharge petitions also point to an unruly House. Casey Burgat, associate professor and director of legislative affairs at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, said Johnson is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Whatever you do to pacify the extremes, you’re going to upset the moderates,” he said. “If you appease the moderates, you’re going to upset the extremes.”
Burgat added the “extremes” are the ones willing to do things centrists often aren’t known for: “Be loud and vocal, buck their leadership, vote down rules, really put sand in the gears of legislating.”
But now, he said, members are realizing, “Hey, I can actually get this done if I’m willing to buck my leadership.”
“So they’re making the calculation that the internal downsides of going against their leadership is not worth them continuing to just put on a happy face and saying, ‘This is OK, not to be done,’” Burgat said.
