Jacob Francy, '26
The U.S. House of Representatives has finally elected a new Speaker of the House three weeks after Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the position. Mike Johnson, from Louisiana’s 4th District, is the new guy with the gavel after he was unanimously elected by Republicans. So… who is he???
Mike Johnson (R-LA), 51, who is serving his fourth term as a Congressman, has had an easy route to Washington D.C. In 1995, he graduated from LSU with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Three years later, he graduated from LSU’s Law School with a J.D. degree. As a senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson served as a defense attorney for big “religious freedom” cases, like funding the Noah in the Ark theme park in Kentucky in 2016. Johnson briefly served in Louisiana’s House of Representatives in 2015 and 2016. While he was there, he caused quite a raucous again due to his extreme Christian views. Johnson, in April of 2015, proposed the Marriage and Conscience Act which outlined that “marriage should be and is between one man and one woman.” The bill was highly criticized. Baton Rouge Metro Councilman John Delgado called Johnson a “despicable bigot of the highest order.” His bill didn’t even make it through committee as it was tabled 10-2 with many Republicans and Democrats scrutinizing it. That, however, didn’t stop then-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal from signing an executive order that was similar to Johnson’s legislation.
In 2017, Johnson was sworn into the United States Congress. During his time in D.C., he has served as vice chairman of the Republican Conference, a deputy whip for House Republicans, a member of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and a chairman of the Republican Study Committee. In his first term, Johnson voted in favor of the American Health Care Act which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. Even though the legislation never passed, it was a concern to many that he didn’t believe everyone should be able to have access to healthcare. Later that same year, he voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which was a disguised title for just saying “Cutting Corporate Taxes Act”.
One of the scariest actions of Johnson was his engagement in the 2020 Election Conspiracy. He, among 147 Republicans, voted to overturn the election, claiming Donald Trump had won re-election when, in fact, he did not.
On November 17, 2020, Johnson said, "You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there's a lot of merit to that. And when the president says the election was rigged, that's what he's talking about. The fix was in. [Dominion is] a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chávez's Venezuela". Two years later in October 2022, Johnson said that he never supported the claims that there was massive fraud in the 2020 election.
During the January 2021 United States Electoral College vote count, Johnson was one of 120 Republicans who objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election results from both Arizona and Pennsylvania. The New York Times called Johnson "the most important architect of the Electoral College objections" because he had argued to reject the results based on the argument of "constitutional infirmity" and persuaded "about three-quarters" of the objectors to use that rationale. Johnson argued that certain state officials had violated the Constitution by relaxing restrictions on mail-in voting or early voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic without consulting state legislatures. There was no such evidence of massive numbers of said fraud.
Johnson supports a national abortion ban and even opposed Roe v. Wade. In Congress, Johnson has supported legislation banning abortion both at fertilization and at 15 weeks. In 2015 and 2016, he led an anti-abortion "Life March" in Shreveport-Bossier City. In a 2017 meeting, Johnson argued that Roe v. Wade made it necessary to cut social programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare because abortion reduced the labor force and thus damaged the economy. Johnson has co-sponsored bills attempting to ban abortion nationwide, such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children From Late-Term Abortions Act, and the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2021. All three bills would impose criminal penalties, including potential prison terms of up to five years, upon doctors who perform abortions.
During a town hall in 2017, Johnson said that he believed that Earth's climate was changing, but questioned the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by humans. Johnson has a lifetime score of 2% on the League of Conservation Voters' National Environmental Scorecard, making him one of the 47 lowest-ranked Republicans in LCV's rating system. During his seven-year congressional career, he has received almost $350,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry.
Johnson holds “young-Earth creationist beliefs.” In 2016, Johnson delivered a sermon that called the teaching of evolution one of the causes of mass shootings, "People say, 'How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?' Because we've taught a whole generation—a couple of generations now—of Americans, that there's no right or wrong, that it's about survival of the fittest, and you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there's nobody sacred to whom it's owed.”
Johnson supported Trump's 2017 executive order to prohibit immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, saying: "This is not an effort to ban any religion, but rather an effort to adequately protect our homeland. We live in a dangerous world, and this important measure will help us balance freedom and security." In 2023, Johnson voted for an amendment that would eliminate funding for immigration and refugee assistance.
Johnson is a longtime, outspoken opponent of LGBT rights and a supporter of criminalizing homosexuality. In op-eds, he has called homosexuals "sinful", "destructive", and a "deviant group", and has even argued that abolishing "discrimination" between "heterosexual and homosexual conduct" would translate into support for pedophilia. In 2003 and 2004, Johnson wrote multiple opinion articles for Shreveport newspaper The Times on homosexuality. In one article, he wrote, “Proscriptions against sodomy have deep roots in religion, politics, and law. States have always maintained the right to discourage the evils of sexual conduct outside marriage, and the state is right to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual conduct since the latter cannot occur within the confines of marriage. Homosexuals do not meet the criteria for a suspect class under the equal protection clause because they are neither disadvantaged nor identified on the basis of immutable characteristics, as all are capable of changing their abnormal lifestyles.”
In 2019, when Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee, the committee published a statement criticizing the removal of clinical psychologist and conversion therapy advocate Joseph Nicolosi's works from being able to be purchased on Amazon. The committee asserted that Amazon was engaging in censorship by declining to make Nicolosi's works available for sale. In 2022, Johnson introduced the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which would prohibit federally funded institutions, including public schools and libraries, from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill has been compared to the Don't Say Gay law in Florida. On October 25, 2023, the day Johnson was elected Speaker of the House, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson called him "the most anti-equality Speaker in U.S. history". Several conservative Republicans also expressed concerns over Johnson's hardline stance against LGBT rights. For example, Meghan McCain, daughter of late Senator and American hero John McCain, voiced her disappointment over Johnson's election as Speaker, calling him a "raging homophobe.”
In 2019, Johnson opposed the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, as "job-crushing legislation". In 2021, Johnson again opposed the bill.
Johnson has referred to the "so-called separation of church and state". He has asserted that "the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
This is our new Speaker of the House. He is second in line to the Presidency. He controls the House of Representatives. He has the gavel. How did we end with a Speaker whose views are older than Thomas Jefferson’s?