A high-level rift in the Republican-controlled House appears to be healing — but it took President Donald Trump to get involved.
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik caused an uproar this week with a pair of social media posts Monday and Tuesday, accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson of telling “lies” about her and working with Democrats to kill a measure she introduced to curb FBI abuses of its powers to investigate political candidates.
By Wednesday, Stefanik was singing a different tune.
Great news!
After a productive discussion I had last night with President Trump and Speaker Johnson, the provision requiring Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office will be included…
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 3, 2025
Her provision, already included in the Intelligence Authorization Act that passed the House in September, will be included in the National Defense Authorization Act when the two bills are attached, according to The Hill.
In a post on the social media platform X, where she has almost 650,000 followers, Stefanik announced what she called “great news.”
“After a productive discussion I had last night with President Trump and Speaker Johnson, the provision requiring Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office will be included in the IAA/NDAA bill on the floor.”
When the affair blew up on Tuesday, Johnson appeared to have been blindsided.
Jake Sherman, founder of the news outlet Punchbowl News, published an X post with Johnson’s comments.
JOHNSON on Stefanik:
“All of that is false. I don’t exactly know why Elise won’t just call me. I texted her yesterday. She’s upset one of her provisions is not being made, I think, into the NDAA…. As soon as I heard this yesterday, I was campaigning in Tennessee, and I wrote… https://t.co/EfvRoarJ4o
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 2, 2025
“As soon as I heard this yesterday, I was campaigning in Tennessee, and I wrote her and said, What are you talking about? This hasn’t even made it to my level,” Johnson said, according to Sherman.
As for Tuesday’s conversation involving Stefanik and the White House, Johnson’s office declined to comment on the contents of a private phone call, according to Politico.
But the apparent truce, engineered with Trump’s intervention, puts a lid for now on what could have been an embarrassing rupture among House Republicans.
Stefanik is a rising star in the party who was very nearly Trump’s nominee to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
As the leading candidate for the Republican nominee in next year’s race for governor of New York, her already-high profile was likely only going to grow.
With Johnson holding the speaker’s gavel only by virtue of the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, a dispute with Stefanik was something neither he nor his party could afford.
And for Republicans nationally — with memories of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 campaign and the bureau’s “Arctic Frost” investigation that cast a wide net over Trump supporters following the 2020 election — the idea of a Republican House speaker siding against attempts to limit political abuses would not sit well.
Stefanik wasn’t shy about declaring victory Wednesday, but also signaled that she wasn’t finished yet.
“This is a significant legislative win delivered against the illegal weaponization of the deep state,” her post said.
“And, of course, while this is an important step, there is so much more work to do.”
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