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Mike Johnson Collaborated for Years With Discredited ‘Ex-Gay’ Group to Target Teens

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Before entering politics in 2015, Mike Johnson, now the Republican Speaker of the House, worked closely with a now-discredited and defunct “ex-gay” group that claimed people can change from gay to straight through Christianity, according to a CNN investigation.

Exodus International, a Christian ministry which alleged for decades that “Change Is Possible” through so-called “conversion therapy,” shut down in 2013 after its president confessed, “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them have not experienced a change in their orientation.”

Major medical groups have called “conversion therapy” harmful and dangerous. Medical and legal experts, and some who have experienced it have likened or labeled it torture. Last year CNN reported, “So-called conversion therapy causes serious emotional harm to LGBTQ people and can even be deadly, but it also comes with a high financial cost to individuals and to society as a whole, according to a new study.”

“I do not believe that cure is a word that is applicable to really any struggle, homosexuality included,” Exodus president Alan Chambers, “who is married to a woman and has children, but speaks openly about his own sexual attraction to men,” said in 2012, according to an NBC News report at the time. “For someone to put out a shingle and say, ‘I can cure homosexuality’ — that to me is as bizarre as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle that anyone faces on Planet Earth.”

READ MORE: ‘Leave My Children Alone’: Trump Launches Tirade Attacking Judge and Attorney General

But as CNN’s KFile reports Wednesday, Mike Johnson “closely collaborated” with Exodus International “in the mid-to-late 2000s.”

“Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.”

During that time Johnson was an attorney and spokesperson for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), now renamed the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

“He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010,” CNN reports. “For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the ‘Day of Truth’ – a counterprotest to the ‘Day of Silence,’ a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.”

In 2008, Johnson said, “Day of Truth was really established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools.”

Calling being gay “dangerous,” Johnson “frequently disparaged homosexuality, according to KFile’s review. He advocated for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire.”

“’Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,’ Johnson told a radio host in 2008.”

READ MORE: Why Did Mike Johnson Scrub 69 Podcasts From His Website?

Johnson declared in 2008, “I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change.”

“Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are,” he also said.

Last year the White House announced, “Children who are exposed to so-called ‘conversion therapy’ face higher rates of attempted suicide and trauma,” and noted, “President Biden is using his executive authority to launch an initiative to protect children across America and crack down on this harmful practice, which every major medical association in the United States has condemned.”

CNN adds that “Videos put out by Exodus and ADF on their standalone Day of Truth website featured two Exodus staffers speaking about how teens didn’t need to ‘accept’ or ’embrace’ their homosexuality. The videos featured testimonials of a ‘former-homosexual’ and ‘former lesbian.'”

“Documents on the website were not archived online but were saved by anti-conversion therapy groups such as Truth Wins Out in 2007 and 2008,” CNN reports. “One video featured Johnson, who was later quoted in a press release on Exodus International’s website ahead of the event, saying, ‘An open, honest discussion allows truth to rise to the surface.'”

The ADF-Exodus event “directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director and founder of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit that “educates the world on the harm caused by destructive ‘ex-gay’ conversion programs, while fighting to eliminate anti-LGBTQ prejudice and discrimination.”

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Once Agreed to Speak at ‘Kill the Gays’ Pastor’s Conference – Until an NCRM Report

“This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate,” Besen also told CNN.

Besen told NCRM via email, “Mike Johnson is an extremist who is 100% all-in with ‘ex-gay’ conversion therapy. He personally promoted it and advocated it for vulnerable LGBTQ youth. He’s a dangerous demagogue and religious zealot of the worst kind.”

Besen also shared with NCRM his organization’s 2007 video that shows Mike Johnson talking about “truth” (at the 9 second mark).

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

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‘I Didn’t Say That You Said That’: Trump Backpedals as ‘Obnoxious’ Reporter Corners Him

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December 8, 2025

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President Donald Trump tried to backpedal on last week’s promise to release full video of a second boat strike some are calling unlawful, when cornered by a reporter he subsequently denounced as “obnoxious” and “terrible.”

Video shows that Trump did promise to release the full video, telling reporters last Wednesday, “whatever they have, we’d certainly release.”

On Monday, ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott said to Trump, “Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela.”

READ MORE: GOP Struggles to Message on Affordability as House Republicans Kill Affordability Bill

“I didn’t say that,” Trump replied. “You said that, I didn’t say that.”

“This is ABC fake news,” the president added.

“You said that you would have no problem releasing the full — okay, well, Secretary Hegseth —” Scott continued.

“Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me,” Trump said.

“He now says it’s under review,” she explained. “Are you ordering the secretary to release that full video?”

“Whatever he decides is okay with me,” Trump responded.

After the president claimed that every boat the U.S. military destroys saves 25,000 American lives, the reporter pressed him to confirm his position on releasing the video.

READ MORE: ‘Corrupt’: Kushner’s Role in Warner Brothers Discovery Takeover Bid Draws Fierce Blowback

“Didn’t I just tell you that?” he charged.

“You said that it was up to the secretary,” she responded.

“You are an obnoxious reporter in the whole place,” Trump said, attacking Scott. “Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible, actually a terrible reporter, and it’s always the same thing with you.”

READ MORE: White House: Trump to Spin ‘Positive’ News About Jobs as Layoffs Spike

 

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GOP Struggles to Message on Affordability as House Republicans Kill Affordability Bill

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December 8, 2025

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Republicans are taking heat on two fronts as they struggle to win the affordability messaging battle while killing affordability legislation.

“Republican lawmakers, aides and strategists tell NBC News they worry that high prices and their party’s poor messaging on affordability could cost them in the midterms,” the news network reported over the weekend.

Politico reported on Monday that “Republicans are divided over how to address growing cost-of-living concerns over health care, housing, student debt and more.”

READ MORE: ‘Corrupt’: Kushner’s Role in Warner Brothers Discovery Takeover Bid Draws Fierce Blowback

As President Donald Trump calls affordability a “hoax” and a “con job,” recent polls show his approval rating is underwater, and some say Republicans have not made the affordability crisis a central legislative focus.

Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune appeared to suggest affordability is an issue to tackle down the road.

“We haven’t probably messaged as effectively as we should,” Leader Thune said in an interview, Politico noted. “I think we’ll have lots of opportunities now that we’re getting into an election year to talk about the things we’ve done and how they are going to lead to things being more affordable for the American people, probably starting with tax relief next year.”

One of the things Senate Republicans did was join with Democrats to pass out of committee — unanimously, some Democrats noted — a bill to improve housing availability and affordability.

House Republicans killed the legislation, known as the ROAD to Housing Act.

READ MORE: White House: Trump to Spin ‘Positive’ News About Jobs as Layoffs Spike

“Just this weekend, congressional leaders released a compromise version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act without housing legislation sought by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), after House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and other key House Republicans objected.”

Senate Democrats expressed outrage.

“Leave it to House Republicans to fumble a comprehensive, bipartisan housing package that passed out of the Senate committee UNANIMOUSLY!” decried U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN).

“Unbelievable,” lamented U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). “House Republicans just killed our broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill, which would have been a great first step towards lowering skyrocketing rents & mortgages. Republicans are actively torpedoing progress towards lowering your rent.”

“Trump claims he wants to lower housing costs, but his allies in the House just axed a bipartisan bill that UNANIMOUSLY passed the Senate to do just that,” noted U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “If Republicans keep blocking legislation to cut housing costs, Democrats will pass it ourselves when we take back Congress.”

The communications director for U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), James Singer, summed it up: “It’s not the message, it’s the policies.”

Economist and economics professor Justin Wolfers told CNN, “When we talk about affordability, so much of what’s going on with prices is in fact a direct result of public policy. We’ve seen tariffs that have raised costs. We’ve seen a big rise in deportations, which are making it difficult for farmers to bring in their crops. We’ve seen health insurance premiums rise as Congress has fiddled with Obamacare subsidies.”

READ MORE: ‘Chance Some of This Backfires’: GOP Grows Anxious Over Trump’s Redistricting Gambit

 

Image via Reuters

 

 

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‘Corrupt’: Kushner’s Role in Warner Brothers Discovery Takeover Bid Draws Fierce Blowback

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14 hours ago

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December 8, 2025

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On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.

“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”

Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

READ MORE: White House: Trump to Spin ‘Positive’ News About Jobs as Layoffs Spike

Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”

But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”

“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”

“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.

READ MORE: ‘Chance Some of This Backfires’: GOP Grows Anxious Over Trump’s Redistricting Gambit

Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”

Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”

Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”

Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”

NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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