Mike Johnson on Friday became the first Republican speaker to win the position on a first ballot since 2017. For a good hour or so, that first-ballot victory appeared to be lost: Three Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, and Keith Self—voted for someone else, when Johnson could afford only one defection. After some arm-twisting behind closed doors and a choice phone call or two, though, Self and Norman changed their votes to Johnson, and Washington’s weekend was salvaged. Why did this one go more smoothly than the speaker race in January 2023, when Kevin McCarthy needed 15 ballots to win the office, or the one in October 2023, when Republicans took weeks to replace McCarthy? Because Republicans now, unlike in 2023, have a leader—President-elect Donald Trump—who’s calling the shots and taking down the names of those who defy him. We’ll see how difficult it is for Speaker Johnson to navigate legislation through this historically small majority. But having Trump in office to bark orders is a welcome new tool for House Republican leadership after its hellish past two years.

Trump, despite having been disappointed with Johnson’s handling of a government funding bill before Christmas, endorsed Johnson because Johnson has always had Trump’s back and Trump always returns the favor. Kidding! Trump supported Johnson for a couple of reasons. The going explanation is that Trump simply had a lot to get done, had already been working with Johnson and his leadership team in trying to map out an agenda, and didn’t want to waste time on a repeat of 2023’s speaker election nightmares. The argument for Johnson that had the highest stakes for Trump, though, was that prolonged speaker drama could have interfered with his election certification and inauguration. Though there are work-arounds, the House can’t conduct business—including, possibly, certifying the election results on Jan. 6—until it elects a speaker. If there’s no certification by Jan. 20, in fact, the next in the presidential line of succession would fall to the Senate president pro tempore, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, who, after playing the “long game” for 91 years, would usher in a new era of Corn Totalitarianism. The Surge has to believe that if someone hadn’t laid out this scenario to Trump—a lengthy speaker search means you might not be president on time!!!—Trump probably would’ve enjoyed watching Johnson twist in the wind for weeks, for kicks.

While normal people spent the holidays exchanging gifts and enjoying friends and family, sickos handcuffed themselves to their computers to argue about immigration. After Trump announced that Indian-born entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan would join the White House as an immigration adviser, right-wing media personality Laura Loomer went on a tirade about how Krishnan wants to lift the cap on visas for certain skilled workers. In this case, Loomer represented the wing of MAGA attracted to Trump’s immigration rhetoric because it doesn’t want more brown people in the United States; Loomer specifically referred to “third world invaders from India.” This clashed with a newer wing of MAGA—rich tech guys, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—who simply adore H-1B visas. Musk said the cap on such visas needed to be sharply increased because of the “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent” in America, deeming it the “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Ramaswamy wrote an unintentionally hilarious screed about how the nation lacks elite engineering talent because its culture is rotten and its children are lazy mediocrities. (The mask of right-wing populism rests very delicately.) Trump eventually waded into the foofaraw, siding with his new rich friends, telling the New York Post: “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.” Don’t expect that to be the final word. Trump is operating with a broader coalition of disparate interests than he has before, and its inherent contradictions will reveal themselves ferociously. Though not always during Christmas dinner.

All but one hard-right conservative in the House, despite not liking Mike Johnson’s leadership and being incurably addicted to self-aggrandizing drama, fell in line behind the speaker because Donald Trump told them to. That left it to Thomas Massie, the veteran Kentucky legislator who believes that the government shouldn’t do very much at all, to lead the charge of pointless resistance. The day before the vote, Massie told TV host Matt Gaetz (prepare to hear that descriptor a lot) that there was no way he would ever support Johnson for speaker. “You can pull all my fingernails out, you can shove bamboo up in them, you can start cutting off my fingers,” he said, kind of grossly. “I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow, and you can take that to the bank.” Why would Massie be so cavalier when others aren’t? In part because he’s always been his own man—and that iconoclasm has already earned him a Trump-backed primary challenge, which he survived. That gives him, in his mind, a certain immunity that frees him up. As he told Politico in a December interview, a Trump endorsement of an opponent will “move the needle 20 points in a race. But if you were going to win 80–20 percent you can be OK.”

On a similar note about coalitional tensions: The policy over GLP-1s, an emerging class of anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic, is going to be a fascinating battleground on which to watch administration policy play out. Because another new entrant to the MAGA tent now is the burgeoning post-COVID rank of people who distrust anything from the pharmaceutical industry. Their leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s in line to serve as the next HHS secretary, has no interest in GLP-1s, while the would-be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Dr. Oz,” thinks they’re swell. Add into the mix—once again—Elon Musk, who’s revealed he’s been taking a GLP-1 and posted in December: “Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public. Nothing else is even close.” It would seem to us that if Trump—who eats McDonald’s and salty ketchup steak for every meal and does not exercise—were playing arbitrator, he’d side with the Wonder Drug. But! If he scrapped a proposed rule to expand Medicare and Medicaid coverage of anti-obesity drugs, the savings could be repurposed for his tax cuts. So much to consider! Needles scare us.

We feel vile even using the New Orleans mass murderer’s name to lead an entry. But a point needs to be made. In the hours after the New Year’s attack on Bourbon Street pedestrians that left 15 people dead and plenty of others injured, Fox News initially reported that the truck used by the driver had crossed the border through Eagle Pass, Texas, two days prior. That was incorrect, and although Fox News did correct itself within a couple of hours, the damage had already been done. “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump posted, suggesting that the killer—an American citizen and military veteran from Texas—was an immigrant lacking legal status. Neither Trump nor many of those who repeated his claim have taken down their initial posts. An error of this magnitude, and the amplification of the error, in the wake of tragedy should be met with some measure of accountability. A scolding newsletter entry will have to do.

The Florida ex-congressman did not show up on Friday to be sworn into the term that he won in November. Indeed, when the House clerk read a letter announcing that he would not take the oath, the chamber (mostly Democrats) broke into enthusiastic applause. No, Matt Gaetz is committing to the Pundit’s Life now, a solemn path. Gaetz—not yet having enough scar tissue to warn him away from making big predictions—posted on Friday morning, before the speaker’s vote: “Mike Johnson will be elected Speaker today. On the first vote. People might like or dislike that. I’m just reporting the news.” Poor Matthew suffered a pile-on when it looked as if Johnson hadn’t gotten the votes. Massie—in what may have been a subtle joke about Gaetz’s sex scandal—responded to him, “This one didn’t age well.” After Norman and Self changed their votes, though, Gaetz was vindicated, Massie appropriately ate crow. Punditry is a tough, ruthless business, but Gaetz nailed this one. People might like or dislike that. We’re just reporting the news.