After Democrats’ strong showing in Tuesday’s deep-red Tennessee special election — losing by single digits in a district Trump won by 22 points — political pundits and anonymous Republican lawmakers have begun predicting a large GOP exodus from the House of Representatives after the winter break.

Already, Speaker Johnson has a razor-thin margin, and numerous Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have announced their retirement.

“More than two dozen GOP lawmakers have already announced their decision to leave their seats at the end of the term, and the number is expected to grow in the coming weeks as lawmakers visit their families for the holidays, complicating Republican efforts to fend off a blue wave and keep their slim majority,” The Hill reported on Wednesday.

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According to the House Press Gallery, 24 Republicans have announced they are retiring or seeking another office.

“Ultimately, the number of Republican retirements that we see compared to 2018 — I would imagine it would be close to the same number when all is said and done,” Erin Covey, House editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told The Hill. The news outlet noted that in 2018, “Republicans got clobbered.”

“Overall,” The Hill added, “34 House Republicans chose not to seek reelection and 14 had resigned during their term in the 2018 cycle. Democrats ended up winning control of the House that year.”

Some have suggested that Speaker Johnson could lose his gavel before the end of this Congress if Republicans continue to resign.

Reasons for leaving Congress are myriad. Some, like U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), the former White House Physician to the President, “noted many of his fellow colleagues he knows are stepping away to spend more time with their families.”

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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told the Hill that House Republicans are “consigned to be automatons.”

“They just have to do whatever Trump wants them to do. What fun is that, if you’re an adult?” he asked.

But one House Republican has a different take on what The Hill is calling House Republicans’ “exodus problem.”

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), who just took office in April, welcomes the expected changes to the GOP conference.

“Fresh blood is good,” he told The Hill. “I don’t think people serving for 50 years is a great thing, so I think turnover is a good thing.”

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday night intervened in the very public feud between Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik over legislation to protect political candidates being investigated by the FBI.

After days of Stefanik, who is running for governor of New York, publicly attacking Johnson, she announced early Wednesday morning that she was the victor.

Stefanik wanted her bill attached to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the U.S. Department of Defense. Johnson did not want the legislation included.

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“After a productive discussion I had last night with President Trump and Speaker Johnson, the provision requiring Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office will be included in the IAA/NDAA bill on the floor,” Stefanik declared on Wednesday. “This is a significant legislative win delivered against the illegal weaponization of the deep state.”

Politico reported that some involved “credited President Donald Trump for playing mediator after the New York Republican threatened to ‘tank’ the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act as part of her public targeting of Johnson.”

Politico’s Jason Beeferman reported on Wednesday that Stefanik’s “victory (and sudden peace) in her public fight” with the House Speaker “comes after she told me last night that Johnson ‘has catastrophic, plummeting support among Republican voters.'”

Some critics noted that the bill does little for the people she represents.

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Stefanik had “accused the speaker Tuesday of personally excluding her measure from the defense bill and lying about it,” Politico also noted. “Johnson said those allegations were ‘false’ and countered that bipartisan committee leaders had not agreed to add it.”

On Tuesday, Stefanik had tweeted, “true to form, the Speaker texted me yesterday claiming he ‘knew nothing about it.’ Yeah right. This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”

Also on Tuesday, Politico declared Speaker Johnson’s House was “spinning out of control.”

“Stefanik’s rare move to publicly accuse the speaker of being a liar and then, in a separate provocation, signing on to an effort to force a vote on legislation Johnson has kept bottled up is the latest symptom of a House Republican Conference seemingly on a razor’s edge,” the news outlet noted.

“Increasingly, rank-and-file House Republicans are bringing their spats with Johnson into the open, suggesting the speaker is losing further control over his restive members as his already slim majority threatens to narrow further and potentially devastating midterm elections loom.”

Axios added that “Stefanik’s stance sets up another test of Johnson’s ability to hold together his razor-thin majority as he navigates one of Congress’ must-pass bills.”

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President Donald Trump is urging U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block any release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigation into the president’s alleged mishandling of hundreds of classified documents, in a case that had been charged in part under the Espionage Act.

On Tuesday, Trump argued in a court filing that Smith’s report should never be made public, in what would be a deviation from previous practice, Politico reported.

The president urged Cannon, whom he nominated to the bench, “to extend her 11-month-old order blocking the Justice Department from releasing the full report, which Smith submitted shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.”

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In the court document, Trump’s attorney, Kendra Wharton, wrote that allowing the report to become public would “perpetuate Jack Smith’s unlawful criminal investigations and proceedings.”

Politico noted that the president’s filing “is infused with the typical disdain Trump has expressed for his former prosecutors, labeling Smith a ‘so-called special counsel’ and saying the case was ‘marred by numerous deficiencies and repeated abuses of office.'”

Smith dropped all charges against Trump after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a highly controversial ruling, found that presidents have extensive immunity from prosecution for official acts.

READ MORE: GOP Touts ‘Gulf of America Act’ in Bold New List of Party ‘Accomplishments’

“Trump’s request is a break from the Justice Department’s handling of all special counsel reports in recent decades,” Politico added. “Typically, those reports are provided to Congress and made public, even when they have included damaging findings about the incumbent administration.”

The day after Trump was inaugurated, Judge Cannon denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to share Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with Congress. Her order came just hours after Trump signed an executive order to hold former government officials accountable for “unauthorized disclosure” of “sensitive” information, and “for election interference.”

Cannon refused to allow members of Congress to review Smith’s final report. Trump was investigated for alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return sensitive, classified, and top-secret documents, reportedly including nuclear and defense secrets. The FBI executed a lawful search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence to retrieve some of the documents.

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