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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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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Just days after the U.S. Department of Justice removed the federal prosecutor in charge of its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, the DOJ reportedly has “hit the brakes” and begun to withdraw several subpoenas issued in the case.
MS NOW‘s Carol Leonnig and Lisa Rubin report that the criminal probe into Brennan includes “a purported conspiracy by the Obama administration to embarrass President Donald Trump,” according to people familiar with the matter.
“The dramatic shift in plans revealed some confusion and disorder in the controversial Justice Department investigation, which career prosecutors have privately criticized as lacking evidence and being politically motivated to please Trump,” MS NOW noted. The subpoenas had been served over the weekend, after the removal of the prosecutor, to witnesses “purportedly with knowledge of the Obama administration’s decision to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
The subpoenas were seen by Trump allies “as a sign of progress the Justice Department was making in a top political priority for the president: to go after the architects of the Russia probe that eventually became special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s campaign and Trump himself.”
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Some subpoenas were to be served to former government officials and some current and former intelligence agency officials, MS NOW reports, in the case where the DOJ is “looking to charge Brennan with making false statements about his and the CIA’s role in launching the Russia probe.”
Rather than serve subpoenas, DOJ will seek voluntary testimony.
The probe into Brennan is part of a larger “grand conspiracy” investigation into why the Russia probe was opened. But the critical loss of prosecutors “appears to have contributed to the whiplash decision to subpoena witnesses this weekend in Washington in the Brennan investigation and then withdraw them days later, according to the people.”
The prosecutor who had been removed had told colleagues that she had informed her supervisors there was insufficient evidence to charge Brennan.
READ MORE: The Supreme Court Is at War — With Itself: Columnist
Image via Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court, “nine angry men and women in black robes,” according to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, has gone “off the rails,” and is now “at war with itself.”
“Almost every day, there are new signs — from shocking news leaks to surprisingly indecorous public jabs, and legal opinions that read like cries for help — that the U.S. Supreme Court is at war … with itself,” Bunch argues. “Looming large over this soft civil war inside one of America’s three branches of government is our most fundamental liberty, the right to vote.”
Pointing to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, amid its “shaky” ceasefire and “the daily unraveling” of the White House, “the biggest bombshell wasn’t dropped in the Persian Gulf but in the pages of the New York Times.”
Bunch is referring to the widely-cited scoop from the Times‘ Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, that reveals the extreme steps Chief Justice John Roberts took to block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan — and expand the powers of the Court via the “shadow docket.”
“For more than a decade now, these emergency rulings have largely constrained Democratic presidents and boosted the power of Donald Trump on major issues,” Bunch writes.
He notes that the Times published a batch of five justices’ secret memos, including those from Roberts, that “exposed the hypocrisy” of the Chief Justice, “who has argued during his two decades overseeing the court that its justices are not political actors but impartial umpires ‘calling balls and strikes,’ based on sound interpretation of the law.”
Bunch states these memos “reveal Roberts as less an umpire and more the manager of a team desperate to win the World Series for corporate America.”
The leaking of the memos, which, to many, cast Roberts in a negative light, “is just the latest in a series of news leaks and public statements coming from the Supreme Court that lack any precedent, legal or otherwise.”
Bunch says the court had already been facing a “crisis of credibility,” given the “revelations of alleged corruption” swirling about Justice Clarence Thomas, and the “billion-dollar efforts by wealthy conservatives to shape and then lobby the court.”
The Times’ report was far from the first leak.
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In 2022 came the “Mother of All Leaks” — the draft opinion that would ultimately overturn 1970s’ landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade.
The leaker was never discovered, but “there’s been much speculation that it came from the conservative wing hoping the news coverage would prevent last-minute defections.”
Meanwhile, since the Court’s 2024 decision granting President Donald Trump and all presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” Bunch writes, “there has been even less decorum and more overt verbal warfare.”
Sometimes, justices publish their snipings inside their opinions, “as when Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in response to that ruling on presidential power that POTUS is now ‘a king above the law,’ signing off ‘with fear for our democracy.'”
Bunch says an even more “shocking” event occurred when Sotomayor “lashed out” at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when she commented that one of his opinions had come from “a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
She quickly apologized.
Like the 2022 leak, no one has publicly stated who leaked the secret memos to The New York Times.
But, Bunch surmises, someone “very high in the judicial pyramid is trying to send a ‘bat signal’ to the American public — that things at the nation’s highest court have gone off the rails.”
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Image via Reuters
A prominent House Republican is breaking with President Donald Trump on the state of the U.S. economy — which the president in recent months has called the “hottest” in the world and suggested that the inflation and affordability crises have been resolved. But she’s also placing the blame on former President Joe Biden, well over a year after he left office.
House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain “offered a rare acknowledgment from a GOP leader Tuesday that the U.S. economy might not be in tip-top condition,” Politico reported.
“Now, I know that even with bigger refunds, many families are struggling right now. And I get it,” McClain told reporters.
“But we also owe it to the American people to be honest about how we got here, to make sure we don’t ever go back again. So let me be candid, and let me refresh everybody’s memories,” she said, declaring that the Biden administration “killed” the Keystone Pipeline on “day one.”
The pipeline was never completed — Biden revoked a permit for it.
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“Then,” she continued, “the Biden administration made it harder to ‘drill baby drill.'”
By the time President Biden left office, the U.S. was the world’s largest producer of oil and a net exporter of petroleum products and natural gas.
After praising the Trump administration for opening up more drilling permits, McClain scolded the press: “We need to tell the truth on truly what’s going on.”
“I’m not passing the buck, I’m giving you the facts,” she said.
“It’s crazy that Democrats closed the Keystone pipeline,” she reiterated. “It’s crazy to rely on our enemies for our oil and our natural gas. And it is crazy to sacrifice our national economic security for woke Green New Deal talking points.”
“So, no. Energy prices aren’t where any of us want them to be,” she acknowledged before praising Trump’s energy policies.
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‘Dropping Like Flies’: Which of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries Will Be Next?
Breaking From Trump Republican Says Families Are ‘Struggling’ — But Points Finger at Biden
The Supreme Court Is at War — With Itself: Columnist
Amid ‘Confusion and Disorder’ Prosecutors ‘Hit the Brakes’ on Brennan Probe: Report
Amid ‘Confusion and Disorder’ Prosecutors ‘Hit the Brakes’ on Brennan Probe: Report
The Supreme Court Is at War — With Itself: Columnist
Breaking From Trump Republican Says Families Are ‘Struggling’ — But Points Finger at Biden
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