House Republicans are headed for several fights over their committee leadership ranks next year, with critical implications for policy priorities and the next president.

Some positions, like on the Judiciary Committee, could open up if the top Republicans choose to climb the leadership ladder in the next Congress. Others want to defy Republicans’ six-year term limits, hoping to continue cementing their legacy atop their preferred panels. Still others are retiring, paving the way for new leadership.

These roles will be critical in the 119th Congress regardless of who wins the presidency. If former President Donald Trump wins a second term, committee chairs will be tasked with turning his campaign rhetoric into legislative action. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, GOP chairs will serve as a major check on executive actions and are sure to conduct rigorous oversight of her administration.

The size of the GOP majority, should the party keep control in November, will play a critical role in how some jockeying will play out. If it’s a narrow margin again, as expected, Speaker Mike Johnson may have to use the positions as bargaining chips to keep conservatives behind him when he makes another bid for the speakership. On a few panels, including the Intelligence and Rules Committees, the speaker has unilateral authority to appoint the chair.

For most other panels, the influential Steering Committee recommends which lawmakers will lead. That panel’s composition could look quite different next Congress, as a handful of members face potentially competitive reelection bids and others plan to leave Congress.

Things are generally calmer for Democrats — who heed to seniority and don’t use term limits — if they instead regain the majority. None of their current committee leaders are retiring or departing Congress, though Agriculture Committee ranking member David Scott (D-Ga.) has dealt with questions about his ability to lead that panel.

Three prominent GOP committee chairs on the Rules, Energy and Commerce, and Financial Services Committees aren’t coming back to Congress, promising to create a series of fierce battles to succeed them. Term limits also affect multiple committees, including Foreign Affairs, Education and the Workforce, and Transportation.

Here’s a look at the jockeying going on behind the scenes:

Rules Committee

Republicans will have a vacancy atop the Rules Committee come January, with current Chair Michael Burgess (R-Texas) set to retire. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) is viewed as a contender for that spot, but he’s also chief deputy whip.

Unlike most committees, filling the panel’s top spot if Republicans win the majority is decided by one person: the speaker. Republicans are bracing for a potential leadership shakeup, though Johnson has a shot at holding onto the gavel if his party stays in control. Whoever ultimately emerges as the winner will want to stick their own ally in the top spot.

Some House Republicans also want to overhaul the makeup of the Rules Committee. It’s typically loaded up with leadership allies, since the panel sets the terms of debate for major bills on the floor. But it became a sizeable pothole for leadership’s agenda in this Congress after then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy cut a deal to give hardliners three seats on the panel.

There’s a push among some centrists and leadership allies to remove two of its members in particular — Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) — next Congress.

Ranking member Jim McGovern is expected to take over if Democrats win the House majority.

— Jordain Carney

Judiciary Committee

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is running for another term as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee — and has a lock on the job if that is the perch he wants next Congress.

But House Republicans widely believe that Jordan is angling for a position in leadership. Though he has repeatedly vowed he won’t challenge Johnson for the gavel, GOP lawmakers and leadership aides are anticipating a Jordan vs. Majority Leader Steve Scalise battle for the GOP’s top spot if the party loses the majority.

Jordan, in a recent interview, sidestepped a question about whether he would jump into a minority leader race, adding: “We’re going to be in the majority. I ain’t running for anything except chairman of the Judiciary Committee.”

If Jordan makes a successful jump, it would open up a coveted influential committee spot that is typically home to some of the House’s most partisan battles. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is next in line and could be poised to move up.

If Democrats flip the chamber, 77-year-old Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is expected to get the gavel, though the move could spark grumbling from some Democrats about his age.

— Jordain Carney

Foreign Affairs Committee

House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul is term-limited from the top GOP spot on the committee but is making a longshot bid for a waiver.

The Texas Republican is arguing his extensive relationships warrant the extension, given the tenuous time on the world scene, and he’s making the case that he could be a critical ally for Trump if he wins in November.

But McCaul will have an uphill fight to convince party leadership that he should get another two years. House Republicans rarely grant waivers for committee chairs to stay on past their six-year term limits, though they gave one to Rep. Virginia Foxx to continue leading the Education and Workforce panel this Congress.

Vice Chair Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), Middle East Subcommittee Chair Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), and Issa are all reportedly vying for the job.

Issa, a former business executive, is known for his aggressive approach leading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee against the Obama administration, while Wilson is known as a genial centrist with military experience. What’s unclear is whether Wilson’s role as co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus will prove a liability given Republican divisions over continued aid for Kyiv.

“We are in a global conflict we did not choose. I am running to unite Republicans to confront the profound challenges and opportunities we face today,” Wilson said in a statement.

If Democrats gain control of the House, ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) would become the chair. A Biden administration ally, Meeks has also emerged as a surrogate for the Harris campaign and is expected to aid her foreign policy agenda.

— Joe Gould and Connor O’Brien

Transportation Committee

House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is seeking a waiver from his party’s conference rules to serve another term. It’s a bid that would allow him to write the next bill reauthorizing programs for the nation’s highways, transit and bridges — and a chance to redirect spending away from choices made in President Joe Biden’s landmark 2021 infrastructure law.

Though he’s respected and has a deep well of knowledge on the topic, Graves’ gambit doesn’t appear likely to succeed, in part because the conference wants to make room for younger members to be able to ascend into the top panel spots. However, in a recent interview, Graves said leadership has been open to his pitch.

Still, there’s a serious potential successor who has been making the case for months that he should be the next chair: Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), who leads the Highways and Transit Subcommittee. Crawford announced his run in March and has been campaigning since.

“I’m doing everything that I think an aspiring chairman ought to try to do to achieve that position and I’ll just leave it right there,” Crawford said in a recent interview.

Washington Rep. Rick Larsen is the top Democrat on the panel.

— Chris Marquette

Education and the Workforce Committee

A veteran lawmaker and relative newcomer have found themselves in an unusually competitive race to succeed Foxx as the top Republican on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Rep. Tim Walberg, dean of the Michigan delegation, and Rep. Burgess Owens, a two-term Utah Republican, could reshape the panel’s priorities in different ways.

Walberg, a former steelworker, said he would focus on connecting education to jobs, including boosting apprenticeships and reauthorizing a law that governs workforce development programs. Owens, who chairs the panel’s higher education subcommittee, said he would prioritize education issues such as school choice and reevaluate how the Education Department uses its money.

Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the committee, is likely to hold onto his spot.

— Mackenzie Wilkes

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Rep. Mike Turner’s (R-Ohio) bid to lead the House Intelligence Committee for a second term could get rocky if Republicans keep the majority.

Many conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus are looking to eject Turner, smarting after multiple clashes on various policy fights including government surveillance and the Ohio Republican’s warnings about Russia launching a nuclear weapon into orbit.

Since the panel is a select committee, the speaker unilaterally picks who leads it. Still, conservatives could seek to force his hand in January by withholding their support as the Louisiana Republican similarly seeks the speaker’s gavel again. Turner, however, has developed a positive working relationship with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus and a new member on the committee — he endorsed Perry in his close House race. That relationship could potentially help defuse the situation for Turner.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) is the ranking member of the panel, and could easily ascend to chair if the majority flips.

— Olivia Beavers

Energy and Commerce Committee

Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Bob Latta (R-Ohio), who chair the Health and Technology subcommittees of the panel, respectively, have been fighting to replace Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who is not seeking reelection.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who leads the National Republican Congressional Committee, is also weighing a run to lead the panel with sprawling jurisdiction over topics as varied as energy, health care, technology, consumer protection and climate change.

A clear leader has not emerged from the race, though some insiders have said Guthrie might have an edge given his affability and popularity among Republicans. Latta has the seniority advantage, though. The jockeying for the seat began soon after Rodgers said she wasn’t running for reelection.

New Jersey’s Frank Pallone will likely become chair if Democrats gain a House majority.

— Ben Leonard

Financial Services Committee

The looming retirement of House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has triggered a four-way race for the top GOP slot on the committee that oversees Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and cryptocurrency.

Reps. Andy Barr of Kentucky, French Hill of Arkansas, Bill Huizenga of Michigan and Frank Lucas of Oklahoma are vying to replace the North Carolina Republican. Barr and Hill are seen as the front-runners, though all four have served on the committee for years. Lucas is the most senior.

The race is highlighting tensions between pro-business Republicans and the party’s populists. It’s a clash that McHenry — a relative moderate in today’s GOP — has kept at bay. All four are expected to try to sustain the committee as a bastion of free-market capitalism and lighter regulation, even as Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) signal a greater willingness to have the government intervene in certain aspects of finance.

“My three friends and I share faith in the market economy,” Lucas said in an interview. “And we don’t want to encumber the financial services industry in this country.”

Barr, who has framed his pitch around appealing to both wings of the GOP, said, “There’s no need to bash one part of it and bash the other. … They’re all right.”

— Eleanor Mueller

Agriculture Committee

The Agriculture Committee is the rare exception that’s seeing more drama on the Democratic side than the Republican one. If the GOP wins, Republicans expect current Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) to maintain his position as top Republican on the panel.

But across the aisle, House Agriculture ranking member David Scott (D-Ga.), has faced multiple attempts from within his own party to oust him from his role as lead Democrat on the panel over concerns about his diminishing leadership capacity. His critics are likely to launch a renewed push to sideline him post-election.

Rank-and-file Democrats on the committee were surprised the 79-year-old chose to run for reelection this year and privately pushed for Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) or another Democrat to take over in the committee’s farm bill talks this summer. Those Democratic lawmakers also support replacing Scott as the top member of their party on the panel.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made the rare move earlier this year of tapping Thompson to lead an agriculture task force and gather feedback on farm bill priorities — a role the committee’s top Democrat would typically fulfill.

Jeffries hasn’t ruled out asking Scott to step down from his committee job after the election. But he has avoided officially weighing in on the talks and isn’t likely to do so until after the election, when he and other Democratic leaders in the House are poised to assign key committee roles in 2025.

— Grace Yarrow and Meredith Lee Hill

Rohit Chopra doesn’t get a lot of praise from Republicans.

The consumer finance watchdog, confirmed three years ago on a party-line vote, has spent his time in office cracking down on banks and tech companies alike, moves often touted by the White House as they aim to show how they’re sticking up for average Americans. GOP lawmakers in turn say the hard-charging Chopra is hyper-partisan.

But this week, he finalized rules that would give consumers more control over how and when their financial data is used, earning plaudits from the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, who called it “a promising step forward to protect Americans’ financial data privacy.”

Something like this won’t get much attention just two weeks out from a presidential election that has sucked up all of the oxygen in Washington.

But the regulation could end up being the most consequential piece of Chopra’s legacy, in part because it’s less likely to be reversed if the White House — and therefore his agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — switches from blue to red.

It’s also a new chapter for the young bureau, which Republicans have lambasted since its creation, as it takes a path (well-trodden elsewhere in Washington) to more durable rulemaking: getting buy-in from at least some private sector actors.

The new data guardrails could lead to longer-term structural changes in the financial system by shifting some power away from big banks and toward upstart competitors that are looking to provide many of the same services, like lending and payments. Those tech-fueled competitors have attracted significant sympathy from lawmakers on the right.

The asterisk is that the rule still must survive a legal challenge from the banking industry.

“Certainly, very few large incumbents want to face more competition,” Chopra told me in an interview this week. “That’s true in banking. That’s true in every sector.”

“But that’s exactly what Congress wanted to see is more competition rather than less,” he said.

The legal basis for the data rule is as old as the CFPB itself, an agency best known as the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). But the push for formal rules ensuring consumers are the ultimate authority on what happens to their financial information has intensified in recent years, as banks and other firms have tussled behind the scenes about access to data.

If there’s one thing the reaction to this rule demonstrates, it’s that the politics around the financial industry have shifted with the rise of technology companies that Republicans like McHenry welcome as competitors to incumbent banks.

But another, more important takeaway is that there are many holes in the rules around data privacy that only Congress can fill, and they can’t put it off forever.

“This is progress for American innovation and consumers, but we can’t stop here,” McHenry said in reaction to the rule. “Congress must build on the bipartisan consensus regarding financial data privacy.”

Chopra and his agency appear to be benefiting from widely shared frustration with all that uncertainty — one of a few things that might bring Warren allies and McHenry sympathizers together. If you look at the current state of privacy rules, you can see why.

The existing system operates through a lot of ad hoc arrangements. When you use an app that needs access to your bank account information — whether because you’re applying for a mortgage, looking to improve your budgeting or hoping to pay your friend for that evening’s bar tab — they get that info through one of two ways.

In one version, you log in to your bank inside of the app, which then uses a middleman (a data aggregator) to “screen scrape” the data from your account, with the ability to see everything that you can see when you log into your bank. In another, you are redirected to your bank’s website, where you’re essentially telling the bank to send certain fields of data to the app, known as APIs.

Standardized APIs are an industry-wide goal, but right now they require extensive negotiations among the parties involved, and banks are motivated to provide as little information as possible, especially to competitors. Screen scraping, meanwhile, leaves consumers vulnerable to firms having way more access to their information, for much longer, than they really wanted.

The new regulation tries to improve up the status quo both by requiring banks to transfer financial data to other companies if the customer asks them to, and also by restricting firms facilitating that data transfer from using the information for other purposes (like, say, aggregating the informationand selling it).

Chopra markets the rule as making it much easier to “vote with your feet” and change banks if you want to, giving consumers more ability to compare pricing and rates.

And, he says, it could help people borrow money even without a credit history, if lenders get a sense of their cash flow.

He’s tapping into arguments that appeal broadly (giving disadvantaged people more access to the financial system), to progressives (protection of consumers through regulation), and to free-market conservatives (making it easier for other firms to compete with larger existing companies).

Under the rule, companies that access a person’s data can’t use it for targeted advertising, consumers must reauthorize access to their data every year, and they have the right to revoke access at any time.

Some of these provisions could serve as a blueprint for a broader update to data privacy standards, something that has been a topic of interest in Congress for years but has largely languished.

“It only governs consumer-permissioned data from a bank account or credit account,” Chi Chi Wu, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said of the CFPB rule. “The guardrails that have been established are very good guardrails and hopefully will serve as a model for other privacy issues.”

Banks don’t agree. They’re warning that this whole arrangement could cause more fraud and scams by giving them little recourse if a consumer tells them to send data to an unreliable third party. They also fear that they’ll be on the hook for making customers whole when that happens.

“By mandating banks must hand over sensitive customer account data to any third party that got someone to click ‘I accept’ on their app, this rule handcuffs banks’ ability to demand high security standards from third parties,” JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Trish Wexler said in a statement.

The Bank Policy Institute and Kentucky Bankers Association filed a lawsuit the same day the rule was released.

If it withstands that challenge — or if a push to enshrine elements of it into law succeeds — a major effect of the rule will be to shift the distribution of power within the industry. Now everyone, from banks to Apple Pay, has to deal with each other if a customer tells them to — one reason data aggregators have welcomed the CFPB’s move, even though it has brought additional scrutiny of their handling of information.

In our conversation, Chopra touted the rule as being aligned with industry trends.

“This really doesn’t create a new framework from scratch. It builds on what has already been successful in the marketplace,” he told me. “That’s part of the reason I think you’re seeing broad support.”

House Republicans are gearing up for an intra-party war early next year over the ability to defenestrate a speaker. While the majority of Republicans despise the tool, which has single-handedly caused repeated chaos this Congress, a number of conservatives are prepared to fight to keep it.

Speaker Mike Johnson and other leadership allies have openly signaled that they want to raise the number of members required to force a vote on deposing a speaker; currently, a single lawmaker can call for a referendum. But that fight is inextricably tied to Johnson’s ambitions to remain speaker — the members who want to see the rule to remain as it is are some of the same ones who haven’t committed to supporting his bid for the gavel, and they’re not afraid to leverage that power.

It’s not hard to see why most Republicans want to change the rule. The so-called motion to vacate allows a small faction of lawmakers to highly influence the agenda and strips power from leadership. Johnson himself has publicly said that the tool has “harmed this office and our House majority.”

Right now, there are enough conservatives who oppose changes to block any adjustments to the status quo. In interviews with POLITICO, five Republicans said they believe that group is big enough that it would also be highly difficult to change the rule next year. One GOP lawmaker said there are at least eight members who will automatically oppose any adjustments.

Of course, House Republicans have to keep control if they want to set the rules — but if they succeed in November, it all sets the stage for a huge fight in the coming months. The debate would not only influence whether Johnson could be speaker in the next Congress, but also leadership’s power to shape the conference’s agenda over the wishes of frequently rebellious hardliners. In short, if Johnson or other leaders can’t overcome the right flank’s red line, they’re set for another potentially chaotic Congress.

Members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, as well as some hardliners outside of the group, are having private discussions about what they want to see in the rules package next year. That includes keeping the current ouster rule at the same threshold.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to change,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said. “I think we’re just going to have to just move forward.”

Another Freedom Caucus member, granted anonymity to speak candidly, was more direct: “If they are going to go back to the way things were pre-McCarthy, then I don’t care who the speaker is, they will have that same fight.” That’s a reference to the 15 rounds of ballots it took former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to secure the gavel.

Meanwhile, a larger segment of the conference wants the rule overhauled. Republicans in and out of leadership are calling for a hard reset on the power dynamics that have plagued their conference since January 2023, when they believe McCarthy bent too far to his right flank. The vast majority of House Republicans see another extended speakership brawl, like the three-week episode triggered by McCarthy’s ouster, as a nightmare scenario.

Still, reality favors the hardliners here. Johnson has a basic math problem — he only has a three-vote margin, so he doesn’t currently have the votes within his own conference to raise the ouster threshold. His best chance is growing his majority significantly in November, which could be a tall order. Democrats will vote in unified opposition to a GOP rules package in January, meaning Johnson can only depend on Republican votes.

“It depends on how big the majority is,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who has his own ideas about how to change the motion to vacate rule, said about leadership’s chances of successfully batting down hardliners.

He added of rules and leadership battles generally: “If we have a majority of 15 … there’s not going to be any successful fights.”

Private discussions about rule changes go beyond the motion to vacate. While conservatives have their own conversations behind the scenes about how to further empower rank-and-file members, centrists and leaders are gaming out their own plans with an eye towards limiting potential chaos in the next Congress.

Conservatives, for their part, want to place new limits on what bills can pass under the higher two-thirds suspension threshold, a tool that GOP leadership has used several times this Congress to leapfrog holdouts and rely on Democratic help, particularly to pass spending bills.

Meanwhile, a group of centrists has been discussing their own rules ideas — including the formation of a formal working group that was first reported by POLITICO. Those proposals include setting repercussions for members who vote against bringing a GOP bill to the floor, a tactic conservatives used against both McCarthy and Johnson to repeatedly sink leadership priorities.

Republicans, including members of leadership, are separately discussing raising the threshold for a so-called discharge petition, a procedural mechanism that can force floor action on a bill if it reaches 218 signatures, regardless of leadership objections.

Still, it’s the rules regarding ousting a speaker that would likely grab the most attention in the GOP’s potential rules fight. And everyone is already seemingly dug in.

Republicans can set a higher ouster threshold as part of their own internal conference rules debate in November — like they did after the 2022 election. But that’s just the opening act; the House’s rules aren’t official unless they’re adopted by a full chamber vote in January. Last time, conservatives refused to vote for McCarthy until he made several of their demanded changes to the rules, including lowering the speaker-ousting threshold to one member, which were ultimately adopted.

“I agreed with what we did in conference,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio). “There has to be a better standard than just having a couple of renegades joining with the other side.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), another centrist, has floated that leadership should make a deal with Democrats, asking the other party to help raise the motion-to-vacate threshold in exchange for giving them more seats on committees.

“I would make the deal and put that thing behind me,” Bacon said. “But I got huge push back: ‘You can’t make a deal with Democrats.’”

Conservative Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said in a brief interview that he does not support raising the threshold, adding “there’s a group of us,” mainly within the Freedom Caucus, that are already looking at the ouster rule and others “pretty carefully.” Asked if he thinks the threshold will change come January, he replied: “I don’t think it will.”

Further complicating matters for Johnson and other leaders: A broader group of Republicans would like to see changes to the motion to vacate, but not to the fact that just one member can force the vote.

Griffith, for example, floated what he described as a “hybrid” model: Keeping the current ability for any one member to trigger an ouster vote, but limiting how often it can be used. He proposed that it couldn’t be used against a new speaker for his or her first six months on the job, and setting a period of time before it could be used again if one is brought up and fails.

Some supporters of the current rule have floated that they would be willing to discuss raising the threshold in exchange for other priorities. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said he would be open to raising the motion-to-vacate threshold in exchange for ethics and campaign finance reforms — though it’s far from clear such an offer would move the larger group of holdouts.

And Roy, while cautioning that “all things can be discussed,” said that a change “would “have to come with something, if it changes at all.”

“I think it is an uphill climb to change it,” he added.