It’s not every day that a simmering feud among top House Republicans erupts so publicly, threatening to derail one of Congress’s most important annual bills. But that’s exactly what happened this week, as Representative Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a prominent Trump ally and candidate for New York governor, clashed with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over a legislative provision she’s been championing for years. The provision would require the FBI to notify Congress whenever it opens a counterintelligence investigation into a candidate for federal office—a response to Republican concerns about the FBI’s 2016 probe into the Trump campaign and Russia.
The drama began on Monday, December 1, 2025, when Stefanik took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that her measure had been stripped from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the must-pass defense policy bill. She didn’t mince words: “Unless this provision is added back into the bill to prevent illegal political weaponization of the intelligence community in our elections, I am a HARD NO. I have always voted in support of the defense and intelligence authorization bills, but no more,” Stefanik wrote, as reported by The New York Post. She accused Johnson and other Republicans of being “rolled by the Dems and deep state.”
Her frustration was palpable. Stefanik’s provision, which she’s been pushing since the aftermath of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, was designed to force transparency from federal law enforcement when political candidates are under scrutiny. The issue is deeply personal for Stefanik, who rose to national prominence grilling then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and has since become a leading critic of what she calls the “illegal weaponization” of intelligence agencies.
By Tuesday, December 2, the dispute had gone from heated to volcanic. Stefanik accused Johnson of “blocking” her initiative, claiming he was “siding with [Democratic Rep.] Jamie Raskin against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state,” according to Axios. She declared the NDAA “DOA unless this provision gets added in as it was passed out of committee.”
Speaker Johnson, for his part, seemed genuinely baffled by the uproar. “All of that is false,” he told reporters, according to Punchbowl News. “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. I explained to her on text message since 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 maintained that the decision to remove Stefanik’s provision was made by the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, not by him personally.
But Stefanik wasn’t buying it. She doubled down on X, calling Johnson’s statements “just more lies from the Speaker.” She added, “This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.” Stefanik’s public rebuke was echoed by fellow House GOP rebel Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted, “No surprises here. As usual from the Speaker, promises made promises broken. We all know it.”
The provision’s removal was reportedly influenced by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who threatened to whip Democrats against the NDAA if Stefanik’s measure remained. According to Axios, a House Republican source said, “Raskin is threatening to tank the whole thing if it’s not thrown out.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was supportive of Stefanik’s proposal, but the bipartisan tradition of the defense bill meant all four top members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees had to agree to its inclusion—a consensus that ultimately wasn’t reached.
Stefanik’s opposition to the NDAA was no small matter. The House Republican majority is razor-thin, with Johnson able to lose only two GOP votes on a party-line vote. Stefanik, a senior member of both the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, had never voted against a defense or intelligence authorization bill before. Her threat to tank the NDAA sent shockwaves through the Republican caucus, especially as other members, including Greene, signaled their support.
The feud also highlighted deeper fractures within the GOP. Stefanik, who was appointed Chairwoman of House Republican Leadership by Johnson earlier this year, has seen her relationship with the Speaker sour as she prepares to leave Congress and run for New York governor. Their alliance, once strong—both served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial—has been frayed by recent power struggles and Stefanik’s belief that Johnson delayed and ultimately killed her nomination to be UN ambassador to preserve his slim majority.
Adding another layer to the drama, Stefanik signed onto a discharge petition on December 2 to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, a move that bypassed Johnson entirely and underscored her willingness to buck party leadership. The procedural tool forces legislation to the floor even without the Speaker’s support, signaling that Stefanik is prepared to chart her own course as her time in Congress winds down.
By Tuesday night, after conversations with both President Trump and Johnson, Stefanik announced that her provision would indeed be included in the NDAA. This apparent resolution guaranteed her support for the bill but introduced a new risk: losing key Democratic votes needed to pass the measure. As Axios noted, “While this guarantees Stefanik’s backing for the must-pass bill, it risks losing key Democratic support potentially needed to get it across the finish line.”
The episode offers a vivid snapshot of the current state of House Republican politics: fractious, unpredictable, and shaped by personalities as much as policy. Johnson, who has struggled to maintain discipline within his caucus amid a string of high-profile departures and public spats, now faces the challenge of steering the NDAA through a divided House. As for Stefanik, her willingness to air grievances publicly—and to leverage her influence at critical moments—suggests she’ll remain a force to be reckoned with, even as she sets her sights on Albany.
With the NDAA expected to come up for a vote in the coming weeks, all eyes will be on whether this fragile truce holds—or whether the next chapter in the Stefanik-Johnson saga is just around the corner.
