June 30, 2026, 2:26 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON – It’s a challenging time to be the nation’s No. 3 leader, even with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s political party in command.
Sometimes it’s a challenging time because of that, with President Donald Trump testing and pushing the boundaries of executive power. Other times it’s because of circumstances beyond any one person’s control.
Johnson reflects on the tug-of-war between the legislative and executive branches in an era of intense political polarization, as he sits for an exclusive interview with USA TODAY on June 29 in the U.S. Capitol ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
“There’s a natural friction that is there between the branches. Sometimes there’s a tug and pull, and sometimes they work in coordination better,” says Johnson, a close ally of Trump.
The voters chose to give Republicans control of the House, Senate and White House in the 2024 election. “And when the voters deliver that kind of mandate, and they deliver unified government to one party, there’s an expectation, I think, that they will work seamlessly to fix the problems,” he adds.
Johnson has had a front-row seat to much of the turbulence and uncertainty that Americans have experienced over the last decade, from a global pandemic and the subsequent financial crisis to the 2021 attack on the nation’s Capitol that saw Trump-supporting rioters try to force their way onto the House floor.
He became House speaker in October 2023 because of the acrimonious ouster of his Republican predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, by a hard-right faction of lawmakers.
‘That’s how unified government works’
A constitutional lawyer for nearly 20 years before he ran for a seat in Louisiana’s state legislature, Johnson began his congressional career at the start of 2017, arriving in Washington the very same month as Trump. The timing, he says, has helped the two GOP leaders understand one another.
“Now, that’s not to say that I won’t vigorously defend Article I,” Johnson says of the part of the U.S. Constitution that lays out the composition and powers of the legislative branch. “It’s the most important. It’s listed in the Constitution for that reason – to keep the executive in check.”
But, he explains, “a lot of the disagreements that we would have between the legislative and executive branch, we’re handling behind the scenes, because that’s how unified government works.”
Yet, more often than not, those disagreements have spilled into public in Trump’s second term, as Republican lawmakers grapple with voters’ expectations and a president who demands extreme loyalty from everyone around him.
Is that kind of fealty that the framers of the Constitution had in mind? Johnson argues that the question is not unique to Trump.
“While loyalty is a premium to him, clearly ‒ he openly talks about that ‒ that’s not unusual among presidents,” Johnson insists. “He has a way… of making demands that’s very forthright, but he knows how to get things done.”
Johnson says that Trump solicits counsel and considers counteropinions from his allies and advisers, including GOP members of Congress.
But the president routinely makes demands of lawmakers in his party that run counter to their policy positions and has backed primary challengers against those he deems insufficiently supportive.
This month, Trump insisted that lawmakers in his party impose new voting restrictions by passing the SAVE America Act. Until he gets what he wants, Trump said he would not sign a bipartisan housing bill that passed Congress with overwhelming majorities.
Republican lawmakers and Trump have also quarreled over the war in Iran and whether the president has a constitutional duty to seek approval from Congress for the hostilities.
Johnson brushes off the skirmishes, broadly speaking, as part of the governing process.
“The friction has worked well. It’s led us to great outcomes,” Johnson said of intraparty battles. “And I would challenge the premise that this executive or this time has expanded beyond its scope.”
And yet, Trump himself said on social media earlier in the day that a Supreme Court’s decision allowing him to fire the leaders of most independent agencies “is the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.”
Unprecedented divisions
While voters put Republicans in control of Congress and the presidency, polls indicate they aren’t too happy with their leaders. The president’s approval rating was hovering around 38% in a June survey taken by Quinnipiac University, with independents and Democrats driving much of that dissatisfaction.
Congress is doing much worse. A mere 12% said in a May Gallup poll that they were happy with the job being done by the legislative branch. Johnson’s approval rating in a December survey was 35%.
Public trust in American institutions as a whole, including the federal government, has been on the decline as political polarization spreads. There are many reasons for that, Johnson says, citing the introduction of the 24-hour news cycle, smartphones, social media and an increasingly online populace.
“We have challenges that are unprecedented that previous generations of Congress did not have to contend with,” Johnson tells USA TODAY. “Let’s be frank about it: It’s been a toxin to our political system and it makes things very, very difficult to get done.”
Johnson says that in previous generations, Americans saw and received the same information every single night. Now, he says there are endless sources of information and algorithms that are designed in such a way that people are driven further and further into their ideological corners.
“Your views are reinforced by what you see on your phone,” he says, “and that’s very different than the person sitting next to you.”
That makes it difficult for people to separate fact from fiction, for them to trust in their institutions and even the people who are elected to represent them, he adds.
‘Everybody needs to turn the volume down’
The polarization has coincided with a belief held by most Americans that politically motivated violence is also on the rise.
Trump has been the target of multiple assassination attempts. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in 2025 while speaking on a college campus. A Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband were killed in their home. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked in 2022 by a hammer-wielding assailant.
Johnson had a close brush with violence during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April when a gunman opened fire in a Washington, DC, hotel. The speaker was in a hallway not far from the area where the shooter, who’s suspected of targeting Trump and members of his administration, was apprehended.
“I think people are prone to say crazy things and when they see people in authority echoing those things, it tends to spur on violence,” Johnson says of the physical attacks. “You can point fingers in all directions, but in a general sense, I think everybody needs to turn the volume down.”
The solution to hateful and divisive speech is not censorship, he asserts, invoking his background as a constitutional lawyer.
“I think the more that we have dialogue, the less we are prone to violence,” he says, bringing up Kirk’s death. “I think it’s a very important part of maintaining a government of, by and for the people that we’ve got to hear from one another, even those we disagree with, and work through our differences. The more we do that, the better off we are.”
