WASHINGTON — It was just past 3 a.m., a few hours before the House vote on President Donald Trump’s top priority in Congress, his “big, beautiful bill.” House Speaker Mike Johnson was rushing through the Capitol halls with his security guards and aides in tow. For a moment, he paused.
Would you like to see the prayer room? he asked an Associated Press reporter.
The question was in response to another question about his leadership style: whether his religion, his Christian faith, had been guiding him through the tumultuous process.
“This is like a cathedral at night,” he said, walking toward an almost-hidden door. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the Capitol.”
He punched in the key code and stepped inside.
The room, transformed in the 1950s, sits just off the suite of second-floor offices of the House speaker, centered in the Capitol, on its west end closest to the National Mall.
“Been here a lot this week, right there on my knees,” Johnson said. “Just praying. … That’s what the founders did.”
As Wednesday night had melted into Thursday morning, none other than George Washington, the first president himself, watched over the room, his tall figure bent on one knee in the stained-glass image high above a small altar.
“In times of great challenge, they got on their knees and they sought divine guidance, and that’s what we do,” Johnson was saying. “Because I’m convinced that God’s given us a chance to save this great republic.”
Johnson is a conservative Christian and among the more outwardly religious of House speakers. He was an accidental choice to lead Republicans, selected after his GOP colleagues ousted their previous speaker almost two years ago. When Johnson emerged as the pick, Republicans gathered around him and prayed. He considers himself a “servant” leader.
Determined to push Trump’s bill to House passage, the speaker set his intention. He created a self-imposed deadline, Memorial Day, that seemed overly optimistic. And he just kept moving forward, despite robust opposition from Democrats and skeptics within his own GOP ranks.
As the deadline neared, he did not let up. He prayed.
“I feel like I have sort of a vision of where we’re supposed to go, and you just set the course and you just patiently get everybody there,” he explained.
The speaker is sometimes in a question-answering mood. A conversation unfolded.
Aren’t you afraid of flopping? he was asked.
“I don’t really have fear,” he said. “I mean, I know that we have to accomplish this mission in order to save the country.”
The speaker was explaining how this is “the greatest nation” and his own belief in its “foundational principles.”
“And what I think we’re trying to do here is restore them,” he said. “Piece by piece, that’s what we do here every day.”
But your legislation is being criticized, hammered for doing so many things. People will lose access to Medicaid and food stamps.
The Congressional Budget office estimates that under proposals in the bill, some 8.6 million people will no longer have health care, and 3 million a month will stop receiving the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
“They’re counting the people the work requirements are going to apply to,” he said. “They would be, would be choosing, you know, not to work.”
But some of the people — particularly older, single men — may not be able to find work or go back to work.
The new 80-hours-a-month work requirements or community service would be for able-bodied adults without dependents through age 64, with various exceptions. Some parents of children older than 7 would also need to fulfill the work requirement to receive SNAP food stamp assistance.
“We have finite resources,” he said. “So the vulnerable populations are who we’re trying to take care of.”
Do you worry that’s counter to your own beliefs?
“We are helping people,” he said. For an able-bodied man to work, “it’s good for his own personal dignity. It’s good for his purpose. It’s a win-win-win.”
The debates in Congress come during a time of great soul-searching in the United States and the world. People are divided as ever, politically and economically, yet also yearning for a sense of community and togetherness that seems to be slipping further out of reach.
House Democrats, who have fought Johnson and his party every step of the way in opposing what they call the “big, ugly bill,” were not about to cede any moral ground to Republicans or to Trump.
“This is the United States of America — the wealthiest country in the history of the world. It is indecent to rip food out of the mouths of children and everyday Americans,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during his own lengthy floor speech ahead of the vote.
Before invoking the Gospel of Matthew 25:35-40, Jeffries said Congress could do better than this “unconscionable” and “un-American” bill.
“I do believe that there are people of faith on both sides of this chamber,” said Jeffries, of New York.
“Jesus talks about the importance of standing up for the least, the lost, the left behind, the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the homeless, the people who are confined, strangers in a foreign land,” he said. “It cannot be the case that one goes to synagogue or goes to the mosque — or one goes to church, as I do — but one goes to church to pray on Sunday and then comes to Washington, D.C., to prey on the American people the rest of the week.”
All of that would come hours later, spoken as the bill was on its unstoppable path toward passage. For now, at this late moment, Johnson’s reflections were drawing to an end. He was shutting the prayer room door behind him.
So how did you do it? How did you get your Republicans to fall in line?
“Just a lot of patience,” Johnson said.
What about your meetings with Trump at the White House?
That would be for another day, he indicated. With the room closed, the speaker of the House had shared the keycode so others could seek out prayer in the Capitol if needed. He headed around the corner, through the side halls of the Capitol, back to his office.