Results: Doing 'the right thing' may cost Johnson his speaker's gavel

It took less than six months for Speaker Mike Johnson to reach his existential moment. The Louisiana Republican has arrived at fateful but familiar crossroads where he must either choose to honor a conventional vision of US national interests or side with the wrecking ball antics of his party’s far-right bloc. It’s a choice with which his immediate predecessors – Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and John Boehner – wrestled before him. Their refusal to lead the US into debt or financial crises or to compromise America’s global role ended up driving them into political oblivion. Now, as Johnson tries to pass billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — vital to protecting US allies from Russian, Iranian and Chinese totalitarianism and preserving US power and prestige – he’s having to put his own job on the line to confront GOP extremists who accuse him of betraying the party’s base. “When you do the right thing, you let the chips fall where they may,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday ahead of three critical days that could decide whether he can cling to his gavel. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/doing-thing-may-cost-johnson-040025378.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAL4QHPDnf41gSFbh06