Is Mike Johnson up to the Job?

What’s happening: Yet another government funding deadline looms on November 17, and a new battle between House conservatives and GOP leadership — this time, with Mike Johnson rather than Kevin McCarthy in the driver’s seat — is beginning to take shape.

The elephant in the room: Despite early conservative optimism about Johnson, the new speaker’s proposal for a two-step clean continuing resolution — without meaningful spending cuts — has invited disappointment and frustration from some on his right flank.

• Ohio congressman Warren Davidson panned the proposal’s “status quo policies, and status quo funding levels,” tweeting: “Disappointing is as polite as I can muster. I will be voting NO.”

• Texas’s Chip Roywarned that if the House GOP agreed to a clean CR “without extracting meaningful cuts or policy changes,” it would mean “more debt & more funding of tyranny.”

• The Center for Renewing America’s Russ Vought called the CR a “bad bill, bad strategy,” tweeting that it “fully funds Biden’s woke & weaponized bureaucracy” and doesn’t “even try” to “force a national debate on the border & DOJ’s excesses.”

Impeachment takes a backseat: Johnson has also reportedly balked at the prospect of a Biden impeachment inquiry, telling moderate Republicans in a closed-door meeting that there was “insufficient evidence at the moment to initiate” the impeachment process, according to the *Washington Post.*

Republicans in disarray: While Johnson recently expressed cautious support for opening an impeachment inquiry into Alejandro Mayorkas, eight Republican defectors derailed a Monday effort to introduce articles of impeachment against the Homeland Security Secretary, causing more exasperation from conservatives in the caucus.