WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson is imploring his fellow Republicans to stop venting their frustrations in public and bring their complaints to him directly.

“They’re going to get upset about things. That’s part of the process,” Johnson told reporters Thursday. “It doesn’t bother me. But when there is a conflict or concern, I always ask all members to come to me, don’t go to social media.”

Increasingly, they’re ignoring him.

Cracks inside the GOP conference were stark this week as a member of Johnson’s own leadership team openly accused him of lying, rank-and-file Republicans acted unilaterally to force votes and a leadership-backed bill faltered. It’s all underscored by growing worries that the party is on a path towards losing the majority next year.

“I certainly think that the current leadership and specifically the speaker needs to change the way that he approaches the job,” GOP Rep. Kevin Kiley of California said Thursday.

Kiley, who has grown vocally critical of Johnson after the GOP’s nationwide redistricting campaign backfired in California, said the speaker has been critical of rank-and-file Republicans, so “he needs to be prepared to accept any criticism that comes with the job.”

“And I think, unfortunately, there’s been ample reason for criticism,” he added.

For the first part of 2025, Johnson held together his slim Republican majority in the House to pass a number of President Donald Trump’s priorities, including his massive spending and tax cut plan.

But after Johnson kept members out of session for nearly two months during the government shutdown, they returned anxious to work on priorities that had been backlogged for months — and with the reality that their time in the majority may be running out.

First was a high-profile discharge petition to force the vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, which succeeded after it reached the 218-signature threshold. Other lawmakers are launching more petitions, a step that used to be considered a major affront to party leadership.

“The discharge petition, I think, always shows a bit of frustration,” said GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota.

Another discharge petition on a bill that would repeal Trump’s executive order to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions reached the signature threshold last month, with support from seven Republicans.

And this week, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida brought a long-anticipated discharge petition for a bill to bar members of Congress from trading stock. A number of Republicans have already signed on, in addition to Democrats.

“Anxious is what happens when you get nervous. I’m not nervous. I’m pissed,” Luna wrote on social media late Thursday, responding to leadership comments that she was overly anxious.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina signed both Luna’s petition and the one to release the Epstein files. She told reporters Thursday that she expressed her frustrations directly to Johnson in a phone call, and in what she described as “a deeply personal, deeply passionate letter, that we are legislating by discharge petition.”

“We have a very slim majority, but I want President Trump’s executive orders codified,” Mace said. “I want to see his agenda implemented. Why do we have to legislate by discharge petitions?”

At the center of Johnson’s pleas for members to bring concerns to him privately instead of on social media is the chairwoman of House Republican leadership, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Angered that a provision she championed wasn’t included in a defense authorization bill, Stefanik blasted Johnson’s claims that he wasn’t aware of the provision as “more lies from the Speaker.” She conducted a series of media interviews criticizing Johnson, including one with The Wall Street Journal in which she said he was a “political novice” who wouldn’t be reelected speaker if the vote were held today.

Johnson told reporters Thursday that he had a “great talk” with Stefanik the night before.

“I called her and I said, ‘Why wouldn’t you just come to me, you know?'” Johnson said. “So we had some intense fellowship about that.”

Asked if she had apologized for calling him a liar, Johnson said, “Um, you ask Elise about that.”

Illinois Rep. Mary Miller released a statement Thursday providing support for Johnson, saying that while there are differences among members “our mission is bigger than any one individual or headline.”

Democrats, who have had leadership criticisms of their own, have reveled in the GOP’s disarray. House Republican leaders attempted to muscle through an NCAA-backed bill to regulate college sports after the White House endorsed it, before support within Republican ranks crumbled. Some GOP lawmakers pointedly said they had bigger priorities before the end of the year.