Trump Transition Updates: Mike Johnson Wins Re-election as House Speaker

They had only voted for him, they wrote, “because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”

“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” lawmakers in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus continued, appending a list of three major complaints about Mr. Johnson and seven policy dictates they demanded he adopt.

Welcome to the 119th Congress.

“I just expect intramural wrestling matches to be kind of the norm,” Representative Mark Amodei, Republican of Nevada, said as he walked off the House floor after Mr. Johnson’s whipsaw election to the speakership.

Ever since he ascended to the top job in the House after many of those same conservatives ousted his predecessor, Mr. Johnson has had one of the hardest jobs in Washington. Now, with total Republican control of government and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s enormous domestic agenda at stake, he is facing his toughest test yet.

Mr. Johnson will be responsible for pushing through Mr. Trump’s economic plans, including one or more huge bills that lawmakers say they want to simultaneously increase the nation’s borrowing limit, extend the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017, cut federal spending, and put in place a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.

At the same time, he will be dealing with a mercurial president who has already displayed his penchant for squashing congressional negotiations and inserting new demands at the 11th hour. And he will do so while trying to corral an unruly group of lawmakers who, despite their reverence for Mr. Trump, have already shown their willingness to buck him on key votes, and who care little about the political fallout of stirring up drama within the party.

Within weeks, Mr. Johnson’s majority will shrink smaller still. He is losing two reliable Republican votes, Representatives Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida, who are leaving the House to work in the Trump administration, meaning he will only be able to afford a single defection on fraught votes.

On top of all of it are towering expectations about what Mr. Trump can accomplish with a Republican trifecta.

“I never said any of the other things that we’re going to do are going to be easy; they’re actually going to be very hard,” Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, said. “But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things accomplished, and I think that’s going be the driving force. Every once in a while, we’re going to take a hard vote.”

Mr. Johnson’s allies like to say never to bet against him, a refrain they reprised after the speaker, a Louisiana Republican, was re-elected after a single, if tortured, ballot on Friday.

But it was clear that the spat on the House floor over Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the speakership was only the opening salvo in a fight brewing over the tax, budget and immigration legislation Republicans were preparing to pass.

Chief among the demands that the House Freedom Caucus issued on Friday was that the bill “not increase federal borrowing” — a move Mr. Trump has called upon House Republicans to approve — “before real spending cuts are agreed to and in place.”

They also complained that Mr. Johnson had failed to promise to ensure that “any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends.”

Such demands will almost certainly set up a bitter fight among House Republicans over how to structure what is supposed to be Mr. Trump’s landmark legislation. Extending the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 is estimated to cost roughly $4 trillion alone. Offsetting those cuts — as well as any immigration measures that Republicans are also clamoring to include — would tee up deep spending cuts that could run into a buzz saw from more moderate Republicans, who are sure to have their say.

Already some mainstream conservatives who just won tough re-election battles in swing districts, preserving the House Republican majority, have vented frustration with their hard-line colleagues.

“It angers the 95 percent of us that 5 percent are doing this thing to Mike Johnson — and to the whole conference; who are they?” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said. “We’re the 95 percent, and these guys act like they’re some House of Lords or something of the conference. And we don’t like that.”

“We have had our fill of these guys,” he added. “Most of us don’t want to work with them, we don’t want to work on their legislation, because it’s all about them.”

That may suit them just fine, but it will only make Mr. Johnson’s job of cobbling together a Republican majority for Mr. Trump’s priorities more difficult.

Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the two Republicans who initially opposed Mr. Johnson for speaker on Friday on the House floor, only to change his vote, told reporters that he felt his message about the tax and budget bill — that it could not end up costing taxpayers money — had been received.

“I think Mike Johnson knows now, that’s not going to be a reality,” Mr. Norman said, adding that he respected how the speaker had handled his concerns.

“He said, ‘Look, if I don’t perform the way I say I’m going to perform, and push the things that you’re saying, put me out,’” Mr. Norman continued. “He said, ‘I never thought I would have this job anyway.’”

Karoun Demirjian and Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.

With potential holdouts hinting at a revolt against Mr. Johnson, it seemed like an overly optimistic statement regarding the fate of an embattled leader presiding over a minuscule majority. But in the end, it turned out that Mr. Gaetz was well-sourced on the story.

Several hours and one prolonged roll-call vote later — after six abstainers finally said Mr. Johnson’s name and President-elect Donald J. Trump called in from his golf course in Florida to persuade two other defectors to switch their votes — Mr. Johnson won the gavel.

The relief was apparent on his anxious face.

It felt like an appropriately wobbly start to what promises to be a turbulent Republican-majority Congress at the dawn of Mr. Trump’s second term.

While Mr. Johnson spent the morning huddling in his office suite near the Rotunda and talking with holdouts, the Capitol was buzzing with first-day-of-school energy.

On the Senate side, Vice President Kamala Harris arrived to swear in 100 senators, including political detractors like Josh Hawley of Missouri and Bernie Moreno of Ohio, who made polite chitchat with the woman they had lambasted just months ago for her “radical agenda.”

A gaggle of daughters who came with Dave McCormick, the Pennsylvania Republican who unseated Senator Bob Casey, the state’s longtime Democratic incumbent, lingered after he took his oath to take a group shot with Ms. Harris, whispering and giggling with her before reluctantly walking off.

Back in the House, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California received a hero’s welcome on her first return to Washington since undergoing an emergency hip surgery after tripping on a marble staircase in Luxembourg. In a stunning move, Ms. Pelosi had traded her signature stilettos for cozy slip-on clogs.

She sat near Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader from New York, who kept his expression stoic through Mr. Johnson’s travails, as if to silently telegraph that the dysfunction unfolding on the floor was at the hands of Republicans, as per usual.

Earlier in the day, as Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, who served as White House doctor during Mr. Trump’s first term, picked up a new congressional license plate and member pin, he said he was feeling dubious about Mr. Johnson’s fate.

“Maybe somebody has to do a protest vote or something to get it out of their system, but they better get it out of their system,” he said. “Trump can do a lot with executive orders but the whole point of this is, we need to legislate.”

With all the drama and speculation, it was easy to forget that until the last Congress, the election of a speaker was little more than a formality. But as the vote began to unfold on Friday, it looked like House Republicans were set to repeat their performance of two years ago, when it took Representative Kevin McCarthy 15 votes and four days to secure the gavel in a once-in-a-century embarrassment of a floor fight.

Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, cast a protest vote for Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the G.O.P. whip, and then Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina called out, “Jim Jordan,” making it seem as if Mr. Johnson would lose on the first round. Soon, Representative Keith Self of Texas would join them in naming someone else.

Milling ensued. So did whipping phone calls from Mr. Trump, who was reached on his golf course in Florida to twist the arms of some of the holdouts.

Typically disruptive members of Congress suddenly stepped up to try and help close the deal. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who last year tried to oust Mr. Johnson, had come around and was photographed talking on the phone to Susie Wiles, the incoming White House chief of staff.

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy last year, pulled the holdouts into a private room so they could talk on speakerphone with Mr. Trump.

After delivering some level of humiliation to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Self and Mr. Norman ultimately flipped and allowed him to win the gavel in the first round of votes — just as Mr. Gaetz had predicted.

Some Republicans tried to look on the bright side.

“He did in one ballot what it took us 15 to do last time,” said Representative Tom Cole, the veteran Republican from Oklahoma. “I think that is a very good sign.”

But that is the beginning of the story, not the end. Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus registered in a letter their “sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months.”

Mr. Trump was more upbeat.

“Mike will be a Great Speaker,” he wrote on social media, “and our Country will be the beneficiary.”

The Green New Deal to which Mr. Johnson referred was proposed legislation that Congress never passed but that Republicans have seized on as shorthand for policies designed to help the United States transition away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. Likewise, there is no mandate that requires Americans to buy electric vehicles. Instead, there are federal subsidies to encourage consumers to buy electric vehicles and new regulations designed to cut tailpipe pollution and get automakers to sell more E.V.s.

Still, Mr. Johnson was clearly signaling that energy policy would be on the front burner. “It is our duty to restore America’s energy dominance and that’s what we’ll do,” he said.

The United States is already the world’s biggest producer of crude oil as well as the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

House Republicans on Friday also made it easier for Congress to give away federal lands to state and local governments, a move that conservation groups warned could lead to Americans’ losing access to parks and other protected areas.

The measure essentially renders public lands as having no monetary value by directing the federal government not to consider lost revenues when it transfers land to a state, tribe or municipality.

While the same provision has been in effect when Republicans controlled Congress in the past, activists worry that under the Trump administration it will result in a sell-off of public lands.

Mr. Trump has promised to expand oil and gas drilling and mining, a goal shared by Republicans who now control both the House and Senate. Environmental groups said they feared the measure approved Friday could open the door to new efforts to liquidate public lands. States often lack the resources to adequately maintain natural areas, they argue, and are more likely to sell formerly federal lands to mining and drilling companies or other private development.

“If those lands get sold off, given to states, you’re going to see large privatization,” said Michael Carroll, the public lands campaign director for the Wilderness Society, an environmental group.

“You’re going to see loss of access and large-scale development,” he said, adding that states would “keep the best and sell off the rest.”

Republicans have long argued that the federal government controls too much land, particularly in 11 Western states, and that states are better stewards because they are more responsive to local communities.

“The federal government is facing significant maintenance backlogs in our national parks and federal lands, as well as the threat of catastrophic wildfires due to lack of forest management,” Representative Bruce Westerman, the Arkansas Republican who leads the House Committee on Natural Resources, said in a statement. “I look forward to working in the new Congress and with President Trump to solve these problems and properly steward America’s rich federal lands.”

Many Republicans also have battled President Biden’s environmental policies, which include protecting more than 26 million acres of land and waters as part of a plan, known as 30x30, to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by the end of this decade. One particularly contentious decision was a move to give equal weight to conservation when deciding on uses — like grazing, mining and logging — for public land. The Biden administration has said it was to trying to strike a balance between commercial activities and conservation efforts. Overall the federal government manages more than 600 million acres throughout the country, the majority of it in Western states and Alaska, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group that represents oil and gas companies that drill on federal land in the West, said she believed the provision makes sense. While public lands may have value, the government also pays a cost to maintain them, she said.

She accused environmental groups of fearmongering, and said most federal transfers of land are “small potatoes,” like easements or other inconsequential areas of land.

“We’re not talking about transferring Canyonlands National Park to the state,” Ms. Sgamma said, adding something that vast and iconic would be “a really ridiculous leap from this rule change to that kind of outcome.”

Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of declaring open season on public lands.

“Never to be accused of subtlety, House Republicans are making clear on Day 1 of the new Congress that they are ready to drive Trump’s drill-baby-drill agenda by making it quicker and easier to sell off America’s public lands to the highest bidder,” Representative Raúl Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, said in a statement.

House Republicans instituted a similar rule when they controlled the chamber in 2017 and again in 2023. But Congress still must approve any transfer of federal land. In 2017, Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, introduced legislation that would have given three million acres of federal land in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming to states.

It prompted a backlash from local communities, including hunters and anglers who worried the change would limit access to recreational activities. Mr. Chaffetz withdrew the bill.

Public lands create revenue for the United States Treasury, which collects fees from drilling, mining and grazing as well as renewable energy development and other activities. That money helps pay for maintenance, firefighting and other needs.

Under the previous House rules, the Congressional Budget Office was required to calculate the costs to taxpayers of any legislation that would transfer public lands to state, local and tribal entities. The new Republican rule waives this requirement. That means a transfer of public lands and waterways would not include an estimate of the cost to taxpayers, which would have to be offset by budget cuts elsewhere under separate House rules.

“As of this moment, there are no credible known threats here in the District of Columbia, but out of an abundance of caution, I have heightened our security posture across the city in light of the recent events,” Ms. Smith said.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, a man drove a pickup truck into crowds in the French Quarter of New Orleans, killing 14 people and injuring many others. Law enforcement officials have described the incident as a deliberate attack. Separately, the same day, one person died and at least seven were injured after a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

On Thursday morning, law enforcement in D.C. arrested a man who they said drove a vehicle along a sidewalk on the Capitol complex grounds.

The next few days will be a busy time in the nation’s capital.

On Monday, the Electoral College votes will be counted, certifying President-elect Donald J. Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election. On Thursday, a state funeral for Mr. Carter will be held at the Washington National Cathedral. And Mr. Trump will be sworn in as President on Jan. 20.

Federal law enforcement officials, speaking to members of the news media on Friday, emphasized that there was no credible intelligence suggesting a mass demonstration similar to the one that occurred on Jan. 6 four years ago.

Capitol Police were caught by surprise in 2021 when a pro-Trump mob, aiming to stop the counting of Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election, disrupted the certification of President Biden’s victory. The Capitol was breached, endangering the lives of members of Congress. One member of the Capitol Police force died in the aftermath of the insurrection and more than 100 officers were injured.

Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Washington field office, said that the agency will bring in agents from across the country to supplement their staffing for this month’s events. Additional measures, such as the use of drones, will be implemented during this time, Mr. McCool said, urging the public not to be alarmed if they encounter one.

The National Guard will also be on standby to help with events in D.C.

An unconditional discharge would cement Mr. Trump’s status as a felon just weeks before his inauguration — he would be the first to carry that dubious designation into the presidency — even as it would water down the consequences for his crimes.

Unlike a conditional discharge, which allows defendants to walk free if they meet certain requirements, such as maintaining employment or paying restitution, an unconditional discharge would come without strings attached.

That sentence, Justice Merchan wrote in an 18-page decision, “appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow defendant to pursue his appellate options.”

Justice Juan M. Merchan's Ruling

The People of the State of New York v Donald J. Trump

Read Document 18 pages

Mr. Trump, who could ask an appeals court to intervene and postpone the sentencing, was facing up to four years in prison. A Manhattan jury convicted him in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records, concluding that he had sought to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 campaign for president.

Justice Merchan declined on Friday to overturn the jury’s verdict, rebuffing Mr. Trump’s claim that his election victory should nullify his conviction.

And last month, the same judge rejected another argument Mr. Trump had mounted in hopes of getting the case dismissed: that his conviction had violated a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for their official actions.

Together, Justice Merchan’s two rulings picked apart Mr. Trump’s legal maneuvers, upholding the first criminal conviction of an American president and denying him the opportunity to clear his record before returning to the White House.

“To dismiss the indictment and set aside the jury verdict would not serve the concerns set forth by the Supreme Court in its handful of cases addressing presidential immunity nor would it serve the rule of law,” Justice Merchan wrote in the Friday ruling.

“On the contrary, such decision would undermine the rule of law in immeasurable ways,” the judge wrote, adding that “the sanctity of a jury verdict” was “a bedrock principle in our nation’s jurisprudence.”

The judge’s ruling does not guarantee that Mr. Trump will face sentencing on Jan. 10. In the coming days, his lawyers could ask an appeals court to grant an emergency pause of the sentencing. The appeals court could then rule within a matter of hours.

Alternatively, the president-elect could decide not to fight the sentencing, now that he knows the judge is unlikely to send him to jail.

There is some benefit to Mr. Trump choosing that route. Once sentenced, he is free to appeal his conviction and mount a drawn-out legal battle across his second presidential term.

While New York appeals courts might resist his efforts, he may ultimately fare better at the Supreme Court, where the 6-to-3 conservative majority includes three justices whom Mr. Trump appointed in his first term.

In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not say whether the president-elect would seek to pause the proceedings, though he suggested that the sentencing could become a distraction.

“President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the witch hunts,” the spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in the statement. “There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump, declined to comment.

If the sentencing proceeds as planned, an unconditional discharge would mark a highly unusual conclusion to the landmark case.

A New York Times review of the 30 felony false-records convictions in Manhattan since 2014 revealed that no other defendant received an unconditional discharge. They instead received jail and prison sentences, probation, conditional discharges, community service or fines.

The lenient sentence for Mr. Trump would reflect the practical impossibility of jailing a president-elect or sitting president — or even holding the threat of jail over his head during his term.

It would also cap a stunning turnabout for Mr. Trump, who last year faced four criminal cases in four different jurisdictions, each carrying the threat of years in prison. Now, he is poised to avoid spending even a day behind bars, thanks to an election that returned him to the White House.

The federal special counsel who brought two of those cases, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Florida, recently shut them down, yielding to a Justice Department policy prohibiting federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

And in Georgia, where Mr. Trump is accused of trying to subvert the state’s 2020 election results, an appeals court disqualified the local prosecutor who brought the case, throwing it into disarray.

In New York, legal experts predicted that Mr. Trump would not have served more than a few weeks or months behind bars, even had he lost the election. Justice Merchan had already paused his sentencing to accommodate his presidential campaign and, later, his effort to overturn the verdict in the wake of his victory.

Within days of the November election, Mr. Trump’s lawyers also asked the Manhattan prosecutors to drop the case.

But the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a career prosecutor and elected Democrat, rejected that request, which his office described as “extreme.” His prosecutors argued that erasing the conviction would undermine both “public confidence in the criminal justice system” and “the jury’s fundamental role.”

In turn, Mr. Trump’s lawyers invoked a 1963 law that enshrined the importance of a smooth transition to the presidency. They also cited the longstanding Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face federal criminal prosecution, in part because “the criminal process would impose burdens upon a sitting president that would directly and substantially impede the executive branch.”

As such, the defense contended, Justice Merchan had to throw out the case to prevent “unconstitutional and unacceptable diversions and distractions from President Trump’s effort to lead the nation.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers also noted that the federal special counsel, Jack Smith, had honored that policy when dropping his cases against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Smith, in consultation with Justice Department officials, concluded that the policy applied even though Mr. Trump had been indicted before taking office for a second time.

But unlike Mr. Smith, whose federal cases were mired in delays, the Manhattan prosecutors had already secured a conviction. And even Mr. Smith dropped the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the charges might return after Mr. Trump leaves office.

It is also unclear whether the federal policy against prosecuting sitting presidents applies to local prosecutors in the district attorney’s office — or to a defendant like Mr. Trump who was not a sitting president when convicted.

In detailing the policy against prosecuting sitting presidents decades ago, the Justice Department described it as “a temporary immunity,” suggesting it did not apply before or after a president’s term in office.

“Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming president, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket presidential-elect immunity,” Justice Merchan wrote on Friday.

It was the second time that the judge upheld the verdict. On Dec. 16, Justice Merchan rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that the recent Supreme Court ruling granting former presidents immunity for “official acts” should invalidate the conviction.

Although the New York case centered on a personal and political scandal that predated Mr. Trump’s presidency, the high court decision prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence about a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that trial testimony from former White House employees had crossed the line into official acts and contaminated the verdict.

But Justice Merchan concluded that the testimony had centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct. And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he wrote, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

That decision in December to preserve the jury’s verdict left a key question unanswered: How can a president-elect be sentenced?

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors had previously raised the prospect of a four-year freeze so that Mr. Trump would not face sentencing until he was out of office. They said the freeze would be a “time-limited accommodation,” but Mr. Trump’s lawyers spurned the idea as unconstitutional.

The prosecutors also noted that the judge could instead sentence Mr. Trump to an unconditional discharge. Justice Merchan indicated that he preferred that approach, but noted that if Mr. Trump was not sentenced before his inauguration, an indefinite freezing of the sentencing “may become the only viable option.”

The case against Mr. Trump stemmed from a hush-money deal struck in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign with the porn star Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public with her account of a sexual liaison with Mr. Trump.

Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, reached a $130,000 deal with Ms. Daniels to suppress that story. And then, according to prosecutors, Mr. Trump covered up his reimbursement of Mr. Cohen through payments falsely classified as ordinary legal expenses.

In May, after a seven-week trial, a jury of 12 New Yorkers found Mr. Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying those business records.

Moments after the verdict was announced, Mr. Trump called the jury’s decision a “disgrace.”

He then referred to Election Day, and declared: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5, by the people.”

Gone were her signature four-inch stilettos, which Ms. Pelosi, 84, has worn religiously decades after most women have forsaken uncomfortable shoes for more forgiving, if less fashionable, footwear.

Instead, she was wearing cozy slip-on clogs.

The sight of Ms. Pelosi, otherwise perfectly coifed with a periwinkle sweater draped on her shoulders over a matching pantsuit, in a shoe that looked vaguely orthopedic was a jarring one. High heels have been such a fixture on the master tactician of the House that it seemed as if she might have permanently arched feet like Barbie.

“Nancy Pelosi is 84 and wearing stilettos and I have refused to go to a concert unless there are chairs since I was like 26,” the comedian Jill Twiss wrote on social media last summer.

Flats may be only a temporary fix: In a text message, her daughter Alexandra Pelosi said that Ms. Pelosi’s doctor actually told the family that it was better for her to stand on the ball of her foot and that there was no need for her to give up heels for good.

Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, has long been her personal shopper, and her sleek designer suits and heels have long been her signature look, projecting feminine power. “He’s got Armani on speed dial,” Alexandra Pelosi said in an earlier interview. “He’s the full-service husband.”

On Friday, as members gathered to vote for a speaker, Ms. Pelosi was greeted with applause and hugs from colleagues, and made small talk with admiring children and grandchildren of members on the House floor. When she cast her vote for Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader from New York, for speaker, she received a standing ovation.

For Ms. Pelosi, the heels have long been part of how she presents herself as superhuman. In 2018, when she was the House Democratic leader, she took the House floor to speak about young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and stood talking for eight hours and seven minutes in the House equivalent of a filibuster.

That she did it in four-inch heels only added to the drama.

“She likes to wear high heels — very high,” recalled Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, who was standing next to her when she took her recent fall on one of the last steps of the marble staircase, which did not have a railing. Even after the fall, Ms. Pelosi stood up and posed for a group photograph with the rest of the congressional delegation, still wearing her elegant black stilettos.

The clogs may be a short-term measure for Ms. Pelosi. But heels end for everyone some day, and Ms. Pelosi already has set something of a world record in her spikes.