WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson won the House Republican nomination Wednesday to stay on the job, on track to keep the gavel after a morning endorsement from President-elect Donald Trump ahead of a full House vote in the new year.

While Johnson expects to lead the House in a unified government, with Trump in the White House and Republicans having seized the Senate majority, the House is expected to remain narrowly split — even as control of the House remains undecided with final races, mainly in California, still too early to call.

Johnson has no serious challenger, but he faces dissent within his ranks, particularly from hard-right conservatives and the Freedom Caucus withholding their votes as leverage to extract promises ahead.

Trump told House Republicans, during the president-elect’s first trip back to Washington since the party swept the 2024 election, that he’s with the speaker all the way, according to a person familiar with the remarks but unauthorized to discuss the private meeting near the Capitol.

Johnson heaped praise on Trump, calling him the “comeback king.”

Wednesday’s internal GOP vote was by voice rather than roll call or ballots, with no objections to Johnson, according to the same person in the room. The rest of the top GOP leaders were also reelected.

But the outcome belies a more difficult road ahead for the speaker.

The problems that come with a slim House majority and that plagued Johnson’s first year as speaker when his own ranks routinely revolted over his plans are likely to spill into the new year, with a potential fresh round of chaotic governing.

Johnson needed just a simple majority in Wednesday’s closed-door voting to win the GOP nomination to become speaker.

But he will need majority support of the full House, 218 votes, to actually take hold of the gavel on Jan. 3, when the new Congress convenes and conducts the election for its speaker. It took McCarthy some 15 rounds of voting in a weeklong election to win the gavel in 2023.

Trump has made Johnson’s problems more complicated by tapping House Republicans for his administration, reducing the numbers further. Just before voting, Trump chose Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., as his nominee for attorney general, sending shockwaves through the room over the far-right pick.

“Everybody was saying, ‘Oh my God,’ ” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.

Still, with Trump in the White House, the speaker may enjoy a period of goodwill from his own ranks as Republicans are eager to institutionalize Trump’s second-term agenda.

“His challenge is what it’s always been,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the Freedom Caucus, said of Johnson.

But he said, “With Trump in charge, it’ll be easier for him to deliver.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who launched a failed effort last year to oust Johnson from the speaker’s office said: “You know who he’s going to have to answer to? Donald Trump.”

And Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who wore his “Make America Great Again” tie with matching Trump gold sneakers, told reporters the party must put aside the chaos of the last few years and unify behind the president-elect.

“If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump 3 feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump 3 feet high and scratch our head,” Nehls said.

As Johnson begins the budget process for next year, including using a so-called budget reconciliation process that makes it easier in unified government to push Trump’s agenda through Congress on simple majority votes, conservatives want him to load up those packages with their own policy priorities.

Democrats, who lent Johnson a hand at governing multiple times in Congress — supplying the votes needed to keep the federal government funded and turn back an effort by Greene to bounce him from office — are unlikely to help him in the new year.