Who the F*** did we just elect speaker?
Mike Johnson, the Republican representative of Louisiana’s 4th congressional district was elected the new speaker of the house on October 25th, and everyone from seasoned politicians and political operatives to the average voter are asking the same question. Who the heck is Mike Johnson? Johnson was born Jan. 30, 1972, in Shreveport Louisiana, the oldest of four children. He’s a graduate of Louisiana State University where he got his undergraduate degree in business before graduating from LSU Law School in 1998. Johnson was elected in 2015 unopposed in a special election to the Louisiana House of Representatives before being elected to Louisiana’s 4th congressional district in 2016 making him the least experienced Speaker of The House we’ve had since John G. Carlisle who was speaker in 1883, 140 years ago.
House Republicans elected him chair of the Republican Study Committee in 2018, a position that has often been used as a stepping stone to higher power for congressional Republicans. Former chairs of the Republican study committee include three former Vice Presidents Mike Pence, Dan Quayle, and Dick Cheney as well as Jim Jordan of Ohio and current chair Kevin Hern of Oklahoma who both ran for speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy. Before he ran for office, Johnson was a litigator for a number of conservative causes for over two decades.
Johnson is very religious, even having served as a trustee of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for 8 years, and this affects both his personal life and politics. He was quoted saying “My wife and I both come from traditional Christian households… My own parents are divorced. As anyone who goes through that knows, that was a traumatic thing for our whole family. I’m a big proponent of marriage and fidelity and all the things that go with it …” He is an ardent opponent of same-sex marriage. In the Louisiana House, he proposed the Marriage and Conscience Act, preventing discrimination against anyone based on their views on marriage. Johnson also wrote editorials for his local paper that called homosexuality “inherently unnatural.” He was further quoted saying “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do… This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.” He had defended Louisiana’s same-sex marriage ban before the Supreme Court twice. Throughout his career, he has also authored many bills aiming to restrict abortion access. While in the Louisiana State Legislature, Johnson voted to ban the state’s law enforcement and government agencies from working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization. Later on, as a member of Congress, Johnson supported Trump’s “Muslim Ban” that restricted travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Johnson was a key part of Trump’s inner circle while he was president and in the aftermath of the 2020 elections he was a lead organizer of the amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court lawsuit contesting the election results, as well as the effort on January 6th to vote against the certification of the election. Trump said Wednesday at the courthouse in New York where he’s on trial accused of defrauding banks and insurers while building his real estate empire “I think he’s gonna be a fantastic speaker”.
