“The president’s lawyers asked a judge Friday to extend key deadlines on the multibillion lawsuit against his presidential administration, but hidden within the pages of the legal filing was a profound detail: that the president has been in talks with his own government staffers to ‘avoid protracted litigation,'” The New Republic reports.
News
Speaker Nominee Mike Johnson Is a ‘Virulent Christian Nationalist’ and Anti-LGBTQ ‘MAGA Extremist’: Critics
House Republicans on Tuesday voted to make U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, a little-known, low-profile, 51-year old far-right U.S. Congressman from Louisiana their latest nominee to become Speaker. Wednesday morning, he won Donald Trump’s support, making his ascension to become the third most-powerful elected official in the U.S. government extremely likely.
“The latest Republican Speaker nominee is MAGA extremist Mike Johnson,” warns U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL). She calls him an “architect of Trump’s plot to overturn the election,” who “Authored a bill criminalizing abortion nationwide,” and “Supports slashing Social Security and Medicare.”
“This is who they want to run the House?” asks Frankel, who serves as the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus.
But for Trump’s far-right MAGA crowd, the answer appears to be “yes.” Johnson checks all the boxes. An evangelical Christian, he indeed not only opposes same-sex marriage and abortion, he has actively worked in both his private and public life to end those civil rights. Early in his career, Johnson worked to make divorce more difficult. Last year he voted against legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages. And he opposes U.S. support for Ukraine to defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s illegal war, earning him an “F” from Republicans for Ukraine.
READ MORE: ‘I Failed to Do My Due Diligence’: Tearful Jenna Ellis Admits Guilt as ‘a Christian’
Last year on May 14, Johnson defended his vote against aid to Ukraine by saying, ‘We should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.”
Days later he voted against the Democrats’ bill to address the nationwide shortage of baby formula.
And just one month later, after voting against helping desperate families get access to baby formula, Johnson praised the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the right to abortion, calling it a “joyous day.”
“Many of us have been working for this day our entire adult lives,” he added.
Nearly a half century ago, an activist Supreme Court invented the “right to abortion.”
On this joyous day, a new majority of Justices faithful to the Constitution finally corrected that devastating error. Thanks be to God! pic.twitter.com/7cT7A5cn5x
— Rep. Mike Johnson (@RepMikeJohnson) June 24, 2022
Legal experts who work in the areas of constitutional and First Amendment law are voicing great concern.
“Mike Johnson is a virulent Christian Nationalist who pushed all kinds of hateful anti-LGBTQ bigotry while at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian Nationalist legal outfit that wants to drag this country back to the 5th century,” warns Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney who serves Vice President of Strategic Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He is the author of “The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American.”
Recently, Congressman Johnson “opposed the continuing resolution that wound up costing [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy his job, though he voted to retain McCarthy as speaker,” his home state newspaper, The Times-Picayune reports. The Louisiana paper describes Johnson as “among the most right-wing candidates for speaker who sought the nomination,” “an evangelical Christian conservative who is close to the Louisiana Family Forum, the influential religious conservative group in Baton Rouge,” and adds that prior “to politics, Johnson represented churches, pastors and congregants whose vision of religious freedom conflicted with government regulations.”
Johnson’s close ties to the far Christian right also has many legal experts and activists extremely concerned.
Before coming to Congress, as Seidel noted, Johnson served as Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF is designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The SPLC says, “the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society. ADF also works to develop ‘religious liberty’ legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion. Since the election of President Trump, ADF has become one of the most influential groups informing the administration’s attack on LGBTQ rights.”
READ MORE: Trump Goes All in on Xenophobic Christian Nationalism in New Hampshire
The ADF is not the only anti-LGBTQ hate group Johnson has ties to.
Earlier this year Johnson stood next to one of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ Christian right activists, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council – also an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group.
I was honored to receive @FRCdc‘s “True Blue” award today. I will always be an unwavering leader in the defense of faith, family and freedom. pic.twitter.com/sOF7M7ARjF
— Rep. Mike Johnson (@RepMikeJohnson) March 1, 2023
And last year Johnson received an award from Ralph Reed’s far Christian right Faith and Freedom Coalition.
I’m honored to have received the @FaithandFreedom Friend of the Family Award, which recognizes those who stand up for the critical ideals of life, family, and religious freedom. pic.twitter.com/i78LOsDI3k
— Rep. Mike Johnson (@RepMikeJohnson) January 18, 2022
But most importantly to Trump and his MAGA base, on January 6, 2021, Johnson voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. He also signed onto an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the election in four critical states.
“Johnson was deeply involved in efforts to keep Trump in power starting immediately after 2020 election,” writes Robert Costa, CBS News’ Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent. Costa is the co-author, with Bob Woodward, of “Peril,” which focuses on the period from the second Trump campaign to the early days of the Biden White House.
“I know because I spent months reporting on that period and he was part of letters and behind-scenes efforts with key outside groups.” Costa adds, “I’ve talked with key sources from that time about how Johnson — then all but unknown — worked with allied Trump groups and conservative leaders in a coordinated way to make sure that whole orbit was working together to help Trump.”
Not only did Rep. Johnson work behind the scenes and vote against certifying the election, he hand-delivered a reason – one legal experts tore down – that Republicans could use to oppose certification of the election on January 6.
“In the days leading up to January 6, 2021, many House Republicans were groping for a way to back Trump without supporting his bogus claims of election fraud,” Washington Monthly reported last year, adding that “a low-profile Louisiana Republican, Representative Mike Johnson, provided them with a solution: insist that the expansion of vote by mail in key states had not been approved by their legislatures and was therefore unconstitutional. Legal experts, including the House GOP leadership’s own lawyer, determined that Johnson’s argument was spurious. Yet about three-quarters of the 139 House Republicans who voted against certifying the election relied on his claim.”
READ MORE: Texas Judge Fighting for ‘Right’ to Not Marry Gay Couples Cites ‘The Scriptures’
Former U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) on Wednesday issued a warning on Johnson, pointing to this video from Tuesday night, and calling Johnson’s “support to overturn the 2020 election … both disqualifying and wrong.”
As an advisor to the Jan 6 Committee, I saw the data.
Mike Johnson’s support to overturn the 2020 election is both disqualifying and wrong.
As a former Republican member of Congress, watching this moment was disheartening. We deserve better. pic.twitter.com/GqVilJYqDC
— Denver Riggleman (@RepRiggleman) October 25, 2023
But even earlier than the 2020 attempts to overturn the election, Congressman Johnson was a strong Trump ally, not just in word but in deed. A constitutional attorney, Johnson served on both teams defending Trump against both his first and second impeachment, leading to his rise among House GOP leadership. Johnson now serves the Vice Chair of the Republican conference.
“So imagine that Mike Johnson becomes House Speaker,” Historian Michael Beschloss asks, “Trump loses the 2024 Presidential election and he claims he won, there’s an insurrection and then there are demands to certify Trump’s ‘victory’ anyway. What would Mike Johnson do?”
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President Donald Trump is now in “discussions” with his own government to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency he exercises limited influence over, after a contractor released 15 years of his tax returns in 2019, which were published by The New York Times two months before the 2020 election.
“Good cause exists to grant an extension in this matter while the Parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation,” Trump’s lawyers argued, TNR notes. “This limited pause will neither prejudice the Parties nor delay ultimate resolution. Rather, the extension will promote judicial economy and allow the Parties to explore avenues that could narrow or resolve the issues efficiently.”
TNR also repots that legal experts “have questioned whether a president can sue his own administration to pocket taxpayer money, and have expressed doubts about whether Trump’s Justice Department can appropriately defend the financial institutions.”
Critics allege a conflict of interest in the case.
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
“Right out in the open, Donald Trump is suing his own IRS to try to steal $10 BILLION taxpayer dollars,” charged U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who notes she has introduced legislation to prevent “this theft.”
Political scientist Brendan Nyhan described the situation as Trump “Negotiating with himself to loot the US Treasury.”
“Nothing beats reaching into the taxpayers’ pocket and helping oneself to $10 billion,” wrote Richard Field, the Director of the Institute for Financial Transparency.
“Trump is suing the federal government and cashing in. Who approves these settlements? HE DOES of course. There is no bottom to his shamelessness. Meanwhile American families suffer,” wrote U.S. Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL).
“Trump is just stealing $10 billion from taxpayers! That’s very MAGA,” charged Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
MAGA has made a deal with Donald Trump, and the deal is that “the humiliation is the point,” argues Republican former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger. In short, he says, “humiliating the MAGA faithful only binds them more tightly to Trump.”
Kinzinger, a never-Trump Republican who acknowledged last year that his politics are now probably closer to the Democrats, says that to “understand what Trump is doing, you have to stop thinking about each outrage as a separate event and start seeing them as a sequence.”
He walks through a timeline of humiliations.
Trump asked MAGA to believe the 2020 election was stolen, so they did, “including many who knew better.”
Trump asked MAGA to excuse the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a mere tourist visit, and they did.
“He asked them to accept that his 91 criminal indictments were a political witch hunt — and they did, turning his mugshot into a fundraising image,” he writes. “Each ask was larger than the last. Each capitulation required more of them — more willingness to contradict their own eyes, their own values, their own stated beliefs.”
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
Kinzinger reveals the psychology of what he believes is actually happening here.
“Every time MAGA accepts something they previously would have considered unacceptable, Trump’s hold on them gets stronger, not weaker. Because now they’ve paid a price. They’ve told their neighbors, their families, their coworkers, that they believe this. Walking it back would mean admitting they were wrong. And the movement doesn’t allow that.”
What does this mean for the future?
“Don’t expect a wholesale collapse in Trump’s support,” he predicts. “Some will leave, others have tied their conscience to his success. Those will double down, again and again.”
Kinzinger expects that MAGA is not breaking apart. “I don’t think there’s some dramatic rupture coming where the movement looks in the mirror and decides enough is enough. That’s not how this works,” he writes. Because Trump has trained his movement to accept humiliation as “proof of loyalty.”
“The more outrageous the thing he asks them to believe, the more committed they become,” he explains, “because disbelief now would mean admitting everything they’ve already accepted was wrong. It’s a trap that gets harder to escape the longer you’re in it.”
But, he says, “the humiliation ritual works until the day it doesn’t.”
“Until the day enough people decide that the price of belonging is higher than the price of leaving. We’re not there yet,” he explains. “But we’re closer than Trump wants you to think.”
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
The Trump regime has an “erratic” and “theologically incomprehensible” preferred religion, a “bellicose, nationalist Christianity,” that is organized along various “fiefdoms,” argues Sarah Posner at Talking Points Memo. Those spheres of control and influence are “aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.”
Posner writes that the “goal of the Christian nationalist project is to subvert democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
She posits that during Trump’s second term, the White House and federal agencies “have been bludgeoning federal employees, the press, and the public with religious pronouncements of moral superiority to perceived enemies.”
On Easter Sunday, several administration agencies posted social media messages “heralding Christ’s resurrection,” the Associated Press reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote: “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth.”
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
“He is risen,” was the message from both the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
The Department of Justice went even further.
“Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department —- is proud to protect and defend religious liberty,” the message read.
Posner argues how various administration officials use religion.
JD Vance “starts fights with the pope over his anti-war statements (even as Vance leaks to the press, with an eye to 2028, that he was against the war).”
Through his prayer meetings and press conferences, Secretary Hegseth “aims to compel Americans to embrace his Christian nationalist bloodlust and war crimes, and this week compared reporters to Pharisees for insufficiently cheerleading for the military.”
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer “has promoted her Catholicism in prayer meetings modeled on the ones Hegseth hosts at the Pentagon.”
“All these moves,” Posner writes, “are designed to crush dissent, marginalize other Christianities and religions, and empower government officials to violate the law. The fiefdoms, in different ways, prop up the would-be king’s corruption, and that of his allies.”
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
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