Celsius, All-Nighters and Stalling Votes: Mike Johnson’s Strategy to Get Members to ‘Yes’

“I just want to have a normal, boring Congress, but no one knows what that looks like anymore,” Johnson told NOTUS.

Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson says he didn’t necessarily want to make history and bring the chamber to a standstill by keeping procedural votes open for a record amount of time, while Republicans haggled over their megabill.

“It was not my intention,” he told NOTUS in an interview outside the House chamber Thursday. “It’s not good for us,” Johnson, sleep deprived and hopped up on caffeine, said of the coffee and Celsius energy drinks he’d consumed since 5:00 in the morning Wednesday — but he had no regrets about keeping members in for an all-nighter so he could whip up support for the legislation.

“It was needed just to work through the process,” Johnson said.