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What everyone should know about the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson Judd Legum

Published

9 months ago

October 26, 2023

On Wednesday, after weeks of chaos, House Republicans unanimously selected Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) as the new Speaker. Compared to the previous Republican candidates for Speaker, Johnson has kept a relatively low profile in Congress. He was first elected to the House in 2016, and previously served as GOP deputy whip, a relatively junior leadership position. Johnson, 51, spent most of his career working as an attorney for far-right religious advocacy groups. Before joining Congress, he had a brief but eventful tenure as a member of the Louisiana legislature.

Here is some information you should know about Johnson, now that he has been abruptly elevated to one of the most powerful political positions in the nation.

Johnson advocated for the inclusion of controversial Bible course in public schools

In 2002, a course created by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools was offered in eight Louisiana parishes. The course, according to an April 2002 report in the Sunday Advocate, called “for students to read the Bible as a history book.” It was criticized for being “skewed toward Protestant evangelical Christianity,” for treating “the Bible as an accurate record of history,” and for being a “thinly veiled” attempt to push Christianity on public school students.

The Supreme Court allows for the Bible to be taught in public schools, but only “objectively as a part of a secular program of education.” Johnson defended the Bible course on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum. He argued that the “Supreme Court did not say you have to discuss everybody’s view on the Bible.” Requiring that public schools treat all religious traditions equally, Johnson said, was “the height of political correctness.”

Johnson became the unofficial spokesperson for “covenant marriage”

Johnson is also an advocate of a legal type of marriage that makes divorce difficult. Known as a covenant marriage, this form of matrimony reduces the grounds for divorce. It was championed by “conservative Christians in the late 1990s [who] thought divorces had become far too frequent under permissive procedures and sought to legally tighten the rules.” NOLA.com reports. Couples in this arrangement cannot divorce by mutual consent and can only dissolve their marriage under specific, limited circumstances. Even then, there are significant barriers to initiating the process.

In Louisiana, for example – the first state to formally recognize covenant marriages – couples seeking a divorce “must go through marriage counseling,” submit evidence, and “be separated for at least a year before a divorce can be granted.” These requirements apply even in cases involving physical and sexual abuse, and increase the chance that a woman continues to experience violence at their hands of their partner. Johnson and his wife entered into a covenant marriage in Louisiana in 1999. They’re now “proponents of the cause.” In an interview with ABC in 2005, Johnson said that opting for a covenant marriage was “kind of a no-brainer.”

While covenant marriages remain unpopular, they’ve paved the way for right-wing Republicans to rail against divorce more broadly. Earlier this year, the Louisiana GOP considered calling for “the elimination of no-fault divorce,” WWNO reports. Meanwhile, last year, the Texas Republican Party urged legislators to “rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws” and “support covenant marriage.”

Johnson said LGBTQ people were living an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle”

In a series of editorials from the mid-2000s, first discovered by CNN, Johnson said that “homosexual relationships were inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.” He warned that recognizing same-sex marriages would lead to “chaos and sexual anarchy.” Johnson said that allowing same-sex marriages would inevitably result in legal protections for pedophiles and people marrying their pets. He also supported criminalizing sexual activity between people of the same sex. “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson sponsored bill to permit anti-LGBTQ discrimination

In 2015, after being elected to the Louisiana legislature, Johnson sponsored the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act. The bill would have prohibited Louisiana from taking “any adverse action against a person, wholly or partially, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction about the institution of marriage.” The bill was slammed as “anti-gay” and an effort to greenlight discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Louisana House Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger (D) called Johnson’s proposal “bigotry enshrouded in religion,” noting there were existing state and federal laws protecting religious freedom. Leger noted people “cannot cite religious freedom to allow businesses to deny service to people based on their skin color, religion or gender.” Why, Leger asked, “would we allow discrimination based on sexual orientation?” He said that Johnson’s proposal would allow businesses to place “Heterosexuals Only” signs where “Whites Only” signs once hung.

Johnson attempted to defuse these criticisms by claiming that his bill would also protect people from “an overzealous, uber-conservative governor” who wanted to punish people for supporting same-sex marriage. Prior to the bill being considered in committee, however, Johnson amended the legislation to clarify that it was only “meant to protect those who oppose same-sex marriage.”

Baton Rouge Metro Councilman John Delgado (D) called Johnson a “despicable bigot of the highest order” for pushing the proposal. (“I’m not a ‘despicable bigot of the highest order,'” Johnson replied.) IBM, which was then building a technology service center slated to employ 800 people, wrote a letter opposing the measure, stating that “IBM will find it much harder to attract talent to Louisiana if this bill is passed and enacted into law.” Dow Chemical released a similar statement. Other business leaders “expressed concern that the legislation could tarnish Louisiana’s reputation as an accepting place to visit.” Todd Chambers, chairman of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the state would not be selected for large-scale events if the bill passed.

Despite strong backing from then-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R), the bill died in committee.

Johnson’s second attempt to stigmatize same-sex marriage

After the failure of the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act, Johnson introduced a similar but less ambitious bill called the Pastor Protection Act. The proposal “offered legal shelter to clergy who decline to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples.” (The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states in June 2015.) It is unclear what problem the bill was solving since Louisiana passed a bill in 2010 with “protections for people who decline to perform certain functions that are against their religious beliefs.” Further, no pastor had been forced to perform a same-sex ceremony against their will in Louisiana.

The Pastor Protection Act also died in committee after “two key Democrats on the committee accused Johnson of making changes to the legislation that would have allowed clergy to refuse to perform marriages for interracial couples.” Johnson acknowledged the changes but said it was a “red herring” because he was “not aware of any religious tradition in this state that is opposed to interracial marriage.”

Johnson’s history as an anti-abortion extremist

As an attorney, Johnson frequently sued abortion clinics, seeking to limit access to reproductive healthcare in the state. As a member of the Louisiana legislature, Johnson simultaneously was paid $200 per hour to represent the state in litigation defending “the constitutionality of a state law requiring physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic where services are provided.” The law made it extremely difficult for any abortion clinic to operate in the state.

The arrangement was legally dubious because “generally bans legislators and certain other officials from entering into a contract with state government.” Johnson claimed he was covered by an exemption since the contract was signed prior to him taking office. But the initial contract was only for $100,000 and was amended several times after Johnson became a member of the legislature, ultimately reaching $750,000.

As a member of Congress, Johnson blamed women who received abortions for the financial difficulties of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. According to Johnson, if women were producing more “able-bodied workers,” those programs — and the economy in general — would be much better. Today, he is an original co-sponsor of the “Life at Conception” bill, which would effectively ban all abortions. The bill would grant every “preborn human person” equal rights under the 14th Amendment from “the moment of fertilization.”

Johnson played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election

Johnson was one of the main players in the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Following the election, Johnson led a group of Republicans in filing an amicus brief supporting a Texas lawsuit urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results in key swing states. The brief, which was signed by an additional 125 House Republicans, argued that “authorities in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan had ‘usurped’ the constitutional authority of state legislatures when they loosened voting restrictions because of the pandemic.” The court declined to hear the case “citing a lack of standing.”

Former President Donald Trump personally asked Johnson to recruit Republicans to sign the amicus brief. Johnson “sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for” the brief, stating that Trump “specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief” and that Trump was “anxiously awaiting” to see who signed on. Johnson also posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that “President Trump called me this morning to let me know how much he appreciates the amicus brief we are filing on behalf of Members of Congress. Indeed, ‘this is the big one!’”

Hours before the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, Johnson posted on X, “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” Later that day, Johnson was among the 147 Republicans that voted to overturn the election. Johnson also reportedly coached his colleagues before the vote to certify the election. Many Republicans “relied on his arguments,” following his suggestion to “steer clear of the lies about mass fraud and instead hang the objection on the claim that certain states’ voting changes in the pandemic were unconstitutional.”

Johnson has since continued to push claims of election fraud. Over a year after January 6, 2021, Johnson “continued to argue that he and his colleagues had been right to object to the election results” on his religious podcast “Truth Be Told.” When asked in a press conference on Tuesday about his involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Johnson did not answer. The Republicans surrounding him “drown[ed] out [the reporter’s] question with laughter and booing,” while one Representative, Virginia Foxx (R-NC), told the reporter to “shut up.”

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

10 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

17 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

21 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641