One thing is obvious about Speaker Mike Johnson’s success in getting the House holdouts to vote for the Senate budget framework: He couldn’t have done this without President Donald Trump.
After it was clear that he didn’t have the votes to pass the bill, Johnson spent the rest of the night trying to get the holdouts on the phone with the president, which, according to multiple lawmakers, made the difference.
This effort marks the fourth time this Congress that Johnson has relied on Trump to help whip his conference. Trump first called holdouts to help Johnson’s speakership in January. He called detractors to the House’s budget resolution in February and, again, to pass a funding measure in March.
Now, frustration is building among House lawmakers that Johnson is unable to command his own conference without significant investment and capital from the White House.
“You think the president likes being the president and the speaker’s babysitter?” Rep. Max Miller asked NOTUS.
“I don’t trust him, and I don’t know how the rest of this body can move forward with him if he continues to act in this manner,” Miller added of Johnson. “I want the president to be as successful as he possibly can be, and I want to see his agenda get through. I think the biggest detriment to his agenda is Speaker Mike Johnson.”
Rep. Ralph Norman was one of the conservative holdouts. When Johnson put Trump on the phone, he urged Norman and other conservatives to get behind the measure, and that made the difference.
“The conservatives drove this,” Norman told NOTUS. “We’ve never had this before, and it was the right thing to do at the right time.”
In addition to Trump’s appeal, Norman said Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, met with the key lawmakers on Wednesday and outlined the plan to get to $1 trillion in deficit cuts. Conservatives also heard from James Braid, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, who laid out the same plan.
“We want to [do] as much as we can, but we know that there’s a lot to work out there,” one White House official acknowledged to NOTUS about the cuts.
When asked why “no” votes changed their tune, House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison responded: “The House is going to be the one leading on this, and the budget committee is going to be the one to take the first steps.”
It wasn’t just the usual Freedom Caucus types who needed the extra convincing from Trump and the administration. On Wednesday, when the House adopted a rule by one vote, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who hasn’t been consistently voting since her nomination for ambassador to the United Nations was withdrawn, was the deciding vote. But she almost didn’t vote at all.
People close to Stefanik believed Johnson was starting to waver on his promises that she could rejoin leadership and get plum committee assignments, three people with knowledge of the matter told NOTUS. One of the sources said this tension was why she hadn’t been voting. So when Republican leadership needed her vote to advance the budget framework, it wasn’t Johnson who persuaded her — it was the White House who called Stefanik and asked her to be the deciding vote.
“When is the White House going to realize, the House Republicans absolutely love and respect the president, but they fucking hate and have no respect for the speaker,” one GOP member told NOTUS.
As for the Senate resolution, Trump did not take his foot off the gas all week. Beyond the personal calls to members, he publicly assailed the holdouts for “grandstanding” at a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser on Tuesday night and issued a Thursday morning Truth Social post blasting them.
With the pressure, the holdouts’ main argument — that they were just attempting to best execute the Trump agenda — became an increasingly difficult argument to make.
Majority Leader John Thune’s involvement was also critical.
Many of the dozen or so holdouts who flipped Thursday cited Thune’s on-the-record commitment to seeking $1.5 trillion in cuts as essential to persuading them to back the resolution. Though Thune left himself plenty of wiggle room — he said the target was merely his “ambition” — hearing the leader say, on camera, that he would attempt to match the House’s $1.5 trillion floor was important.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris told NOTUS that Thune’s statement Thursday morning was similar to his comments during a meeting with House conservatives on Wednesday. However, Harris said it was important that Thune say it publicly.
The press conference, Harris said, “formalized some of the things we discussed.”
Rep. Lloyd Smucker — a fiscal hawk on the Ways and Means and Budget committees — also pointed to Thune’s comment as critical to his ultimate decision to back the resolution.
“Once we receive commitment from our speaker, our leader, the Senate and the White House, that’s what brought a lot of people on board, including myself,” he said.
Just because the holdouts secured those commitments doesn’t mean the next phases of passing reconciliation will be easy for Johnson. The speaker’s willingness to play ball with hardline conservative members has not gone unnoticed by some of the House moderates concerned about potential slashes to Medicaid and other programs.
Johnson huddled on the House floor with moderates, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Nick LaLota, Jeff Van Drew, Nicole Malliotakis and Juan Ciscomani, during the vote. The conversation — which lasted approximately 20 minutes — appeared heated at times.
Though the moderates all voted for the Senate’s budget resolution, they issued a warning to Johnson before the House begins officially drafting reconciliation text.
Van Drew told reporters moderates reminded Johnson that many members of the caucus are staring down competitive midterm elections to win in 2026, and deep cuts to programs like Medicaid would spell problems at home.
“We have to be thoughtful and mindful that we’re also going to have an election in a year and a half,” Van Drew said. “I’ll make it in my district; it might not be pretty, but I’ll make it. There’s people, if we do the wrong things, that are not going to make it.”
“We have to be mindful of them and stop this,” he continued. “This was just a resolution today, in plain English, doesn’t mean all that much. It’s just philosophical. It’s the reconciliation.”
“We’re saying don’t screw us into reconciliation,” Van Drew said of the moderates’ message to Johnson, “because if we get screwed, we are not voting for it.”
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Reese Gorman, Daniella Diaz and Riley Rogerson are reporters at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.