Mike Johnson keeps the speaker's gavel after Donald Trump convinces House Republican holdouts

to switch their vote. And we are just days away from witnessing something remarkable. Vice

President Kamala Harris presiding over Congress's certification of Trump's re-election. Next.

This is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

This coming Monday, January 6th, to be exact, Kamala Harris will preside over Congress as it ratifies the election of Donald Trump.

Two weeks later, Trump takes the oath of office and immediately plans to

implement his agenda, but he'll also confront a long list of pre-existing challenges, including,

as we saw this week in New Orleans, the continued salience of the Islamic State Terror Group.

Joining me tonight to discuss these issues and more, Peter Baker, the Chief White House correspondent

for the New York Times.

Leanne Caldwell is an anchor for Washington Post Live and a co-author of the early brief.

Francesca Chambers is a White House correspondent for USA Today, and David Ignatius is a columnist

for the Washington Post. Thank you very much, all of you. Happy New Year to all of you. Thank you for being here.

Very serious opening days of this year, I have to say. I want to turn, before we get to New

Orleans and the attack, I want to talk about action on the Hill today. Leanne, why don't you

give us a little understanding about how Mike Johnson managed to become

speaker again, despite a lot of tempestuous emotions in the Republican caucus?

Yeah, so ultimately it was not necessarily a repeat of two years ago, the four days and 15 rounds of Kevin McCarthy trying to win the Speaker's gavel.

But it was still dramatic.

He did it on the first round, but ultimately it came down to Donald Trump.

There were some holdouts, people who didn't want to vote for Mike Johnson, voted for someone else.

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