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Good morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to The Daily Punch, brought to you by Punch Bull News. It's Wednesday, January 1st, 2025. Happy New Year. Let's get into the mix. Here are your Washington headlines of the day. Number one, inside speaker Mike Johnson's quest to remain speaker.

Number two, Schumer's advice for incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune. And number three, House Ethics drops cases against four members.

Welcome back. Hope you had a wonderful break. We are doing just a.m. Editions this week, and we are teeing up what is going to be a very busy news cycle. There are 19 days until Donald Trump

is sworn in for his second term as president, and just two days until the 119th Congress kicks off. That's where we're going

to begin this morning. Let's talk about the main event. Choosing a speaker, the House will vote

Friday to elect a speaker for the 119th Congress. Important, Donald Trump has endorsed

Speaker Mike Johnson for another term. But Trump told reporters

Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago that he isn't calling anyone on Johnson's behalf, but he will, if

necessary. Johnson, of course, is in a tight spot to say the least. There are roughly a dozen House Republicans who have

expressed skepticism about electing the speaker to another term. And with the paper-thin

GOP majority, that's problematic. So let's talk about some of our questions that we're focused on

this week we will be reporting out.

The first is pretty obvious. Can Johnson win?

Second, will it take multiple ballots for him to secure the speakership?

Third, does Johnson weaken himself so much in his quest to keep the speaker's gavel that he can't govern?

And last, probably most importantly, does Trump pull back if he sees Johnson's weaknesses?

In addition to his Trump enforcement, Johnson's greatest attribute is that there's still no

...