MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Republicans look for culprits after defeat: Speaker of Congress steps aside and Vance points to Iran

Johnson, 54, a congressman from Louisiana, has been Speaker since October 2023, when his colleagues chose him as a consensus candidate after the ousting of his predecessor

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson, a Republican, said he will not seek to continue leading his party in the new Congress, while Vice President JD Vance blamed the Iran war for the Republican defeat in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an explanation President Donald Trump called “largely true” even as he defended the conflict.

Johnson, 54, a congressman from Louisiana, has been Speaker since October 2023, when his colleagues chose him as a consensus candidate after the ousting of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. The Speaker is third in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president, and has been one of Trump’s most loyal allies in Congress. With the Democratic victory, he will lose the post when the new House convenes on January 3, and Republicans will become the minority.

Johnson told his staff on Wednesday that he will not run to lead Republicans in that new phase. In a letter to colleagues he cited the toll three years in the job have taken on his family. “While the outcome of this midterm is not what we’d hoped and fought for, a new battle is just beginning,” he wrote. Congressmen Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Steve Scalise, the majority leader, have already announced bids to succeed him, in a vote expected next week. Trump called Johnson “fantastic” and said he had not asked him to step aside.

Vance, seen as a contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, blamed the defeat on the Iran war and rising gasoline prices. “If you want to argue it was worth it — that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it — go ahead. But everyone knows why we lost,” he wrote on X. Asked about the post, Trump replied: “I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit, short term.” But he defended the war, now more than eight months old: “The Iran thing we had to do, and we continue to do it. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Republicans have lost at least seven Senate seats and could lose nine if results in Mississippi and Alaska, still being counted, are confirmed, according to El País. In the House, dozens of seats remain to be called, although Democrats have already passed the majority. The result also opens the race within the Republican Party to succeed Trump, who cannot run again in 2028.