The success of President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda will depend on whether Republicans can rally together in Congress. They almost failed in the first vote.

Mike Johnson narrowly won re-election as House Speaker this afternoon, only after two Republican holdouts changed their votes at the last minute. Johnson won the first round with exactly the 218 votes he needed to secure the required majority. The effort he put into retaining the speaker’s gavel represents a tough job for Trump, who supported Johnson’s bid.

After an initial vote in the House of Representatives, in which a speaker is chosen in a long, televised roll call in which each member’s name is called, Johnson fell well short of a majority. Three Republicans – Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas – voted for other candidates, and another six refused to vote at all in protest of Johnson’s leadership. The six who were not present initially cast their votes for Johnson when their names were called a second time. But it took nearly an hour for Johnson to turn Norman and Self. After huddling with Johnson on and off the House floor, the three men walked together to the front of the House, where Norman and Self changed their votes to put Johnson over the top.

The tense vote was the second consecutive Congress in which the formal, usually ceremonial opening of the House of Representatives turned extremely dramatic. Two years ago, conservative holdouts forced Kevin McCarthy to endure 15 rounds of votes and days of horse-trading before he was named speaker. With the help of Democrats, the same group ousted him nine months later, resulting in Johnson being elected as his successor.

McCarthy’s biggest nemesis was then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, who left office during his brief bid to become Trump’s attorney general (and in the wake of a sensational House Ethics Committee report that alleged, among other things, he had sex with a 17-year-old year old). claims). The Republican who played Gaetz this time was Massie, a seven-term Kentuckian with a libertarian streak who has vowed to oppose Johnson even under the threat of digital amputation. (“You can start cutting off my fingers,” Massie told Gaetz on Thursday night in his former colleague’s new role as anchor at One America News Network.)

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But the members who opposed Johnson were not as numerous or narrow-minded as McCarthy’s opponents. And although Trump supported McCarthy two years ago, today he was more politically interested in Johnson’s success. A protracted battle for the speakership could have jeopardized his legislative agenda and even delayed the confirmation of his election. (The House of Representatives cannot function without a speaker, so it would not have been able to officially open and count Electoral College ballots on January 6, as required by the Constitution.)

Even with today’s relatively quick resolution, Johnson’s struggle to remain speaker is an ominous sign of Republicans’ ability to deliver on Trump’s priorities in his first months in office. The majority that narrowly elected Johnson will temporarily shrink once the Senate confirms two Republican members of Trump’s Cabinet, creating vacancies pending special elections to replace them. And divisions have already emerged within the Republican Party over whether the party should begin its governing trifecta with a push to strengthen the southern border or combine that effort with legislation extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Republicans have a larger buffer in the Senate, where they control 53 seats. But in the House, the Republican lead is two seats smaller than it was at the start of the last Congress, and without Democratic support, only one or two members will have the power to thwart party-line votes. Johnson’s main critics, including Massie, Norman and Self, support Trump’s agenda in the abstract but are not supporters of the president-elect. (Neither Massie nor Roy endorsed him in last year’s GOP primaries.) They are far more restrictive on spending than Trump, who barely cared about deficits in his first term and pushed Republicans to raise or even raise the debt ceiling before he takes office – a move that could make it easier to pass costly tax cuts.

Minutes before today’s vote, Johnson posted on X a list of pledges apparently aimed at appeasing some of the Republican holdouts. He promised to create two working groups to examine federal spending and work with Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency to implement “recommended government and spending reforms.” Johnson gave no details about cuts or how much money he would cut from the budget.

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His pledges were not enough and Johnson reportedly needed Trump’s help to reach the final votes. The speaker’s critics then made it clear that the divisions visible today have not been fully resolved. Leaders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus released a statement saying they only supported Johnson “despite our sincere reservations” because they wanted to support Trump’s agenda. One of those lawmakers, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who initially withheld his vote for Johnson, warned the speaker that “in addition to the three representatives, many more representatives voted with reservations for someone else.”

Johnson’s opponents complained that he was too quick to make deals with Democrats, a perennial criticism that House conservatives have of Republican leaders. But their brief revolt today was a reminder of how much influence Democrats could retain in Trump’s Washington. In the last two years. Republicans, who nominally controlled the House of Representatives, were unable to pass significant legislation without help from Democrats. Their majority is now even smaller.

As Johnson addressed the House of Representatives this afternoon after accepting the speaker’s gavel, he noted that the Democratic minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, had offered to work with Republicans on one of Trump’s top priorities – security the border. “I’m counting on it,” Johnson said. If today’s fight was any indication, the re-elected Republican speaker and re-elected Republican president might be relying on the Democrats more than they would like.