Speaker Mike Johnson is still dealing with Kevin McCarthy's baggage

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Four and a half months on the job, House Speaker Mike Johnson is still struggling with the baggage of the tumultuous Kevin McCarthy era.

The Louisiana Republican is trying to fund the government and avert a shutdown based on a budget deal McCarthy and President Joe Biden struck last year that infuriated conservative hard-liners.

Johnson inherited McCarthy’s Rules Committee, which decides how bills make it to the House floor but which McCarthy stacked with conservatives to help defuse their anger. That's forced Johnson to bypass conservatives on the committee and work with Democrats to enact must-pass legislation.

And Johnson is grappling with a Biden impeachment inquiry that was unilaterally set in motion by his predecessor — even though it appears to be losing steam.

“The former Speaker left us in a really bad spot, and Johnson has to negotiate under the set criteria of the former speaker and the leadership,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, one of the eight GOP rebels who helped depose McCarthy. “And then some of those in the former speaker’s leadership group are, frankly, stabbing Johnson in the back — or in the front.”

Johnson is now gathering with his fractious and minuscule majority at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, hosting his first House Republican retreat as speaker as he works through the difficult to-do list that McCarthy left for him. Given their two years of infighting and the four-hour drive to the annual confab, only about half of them came.

McCarthy's Rules Committee

One nagging obstacle for Johnson is the House Rules Committee, a carry-over from the McCarthy days. The panel is typically stacked with loyal foot soldiers closely aligned with leadership since GOP