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It took greater than three weeks and lots of makes an attempt, however the Republican Social gathering lastly elected a brand new Speaker of the Home, Louisiana consultant Mike Johnson. The three-term former lawyer for far-right causes has the least political and govt expertise of any Speaker in a century. However he checked all of the far-right packing containers for the more and more extra extremist GOP whereas additionally being a “good” man, so elected he was.
Rogue Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz, whose private beef with Kevin McCarthy obtained McCarthy ousted as Speaker after solely 10 months, mentioned of Johnson, “For those who don’t assume that transferring from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson exhibits the ascendance of this motion and the place the ability within the Republican Social gathering really lies, then you definitely’re not paying consideration.”
Paying consideration is important on this looming election 12 months. Not like Jim Jordan, who didn’t get the votes previous to Johnson, the brand new speaker is well liked by each Republicans and Democrats. However Johnson’s niceness is misleading. The congressman even Republicans had by no means heard of out of doors the Home or the solidly Republican a part of north and western Louisiana he’s represented since 2017 has moved steadily by means of the GOP ranks. Johnson chaired the conservative Republican Research Committee and was Home Republican Convention vice chair. He sits on the Judiciary Committee (and chairs a subcommittee on the Structure), the Armed Companies Committee and the newly created choose committee on “Weaponization of the Federal Authorities,” which is what the present GOP is doing in its impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Listed here are the fundamentals. Mike Johnson is an election denier. He can not state for the document that Joe Biden received the 2020 election. Whereas that must be disqualifying, it’s not. Worse nonetheless is that Johnson led the authorized effort to toss out tens of millions of votes for Biden, beginning with Pennsylvania’s. The New York Occasions referred to as Johnson “a very powerful architect of the Electoral Faculty objections,” which can be why Donald Trump says Johnson will probably be a “unbelievable” speaker.
Johnson additionally voted towards establishing the bipartisan January 6 Fee, represented Trump within the impeachment hearings on his protection crew and led efforts to have Trump’s impeachments expunged.
In accordance with Johnson, mass shootings are a results of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. He blames the rise of mass shootings on “no-fault” divorces turning into authorized, legalized abortion and faculties embracing the educating of evolution.
And whereas the nation was nonetheless centered on the mass capturing in Lewiston, Maine, the NRA put out a brand new advert that includes Johnson. Within the advert, Johnson says he opposes background checks and ready intervals to buy firearms, safeguards almost 80% of Individuals help.
Like most Republicans, Johnson is a staunch anti-abortion rights extremist who’s supported nationwide bans. Johnson has an “A+” ranking from Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America. Johnson labored as a senior authorized counsel for the Alliance Protection Fund (now often called the Alliance Defending Freedom), for which he fought to close down an abortion clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Alliance Protection fund additionally helps anti-LGBTQ+ lawsuits. The Southern Poverty Legislation Heart has designated the Alliance Protection Fund as a hate group.
After Roe was overturned, Johnson tweeted this message for abortion suppliers in Louisiana: “Carry out an abortion and get imprisoned at exhausting labor for 1-10 yrs & fined $10K-$100K.” Johnson additionally labored for a “disaster being pregnant” middle, Think about Life Ministries, that used a cellular van to focus on “abortion-vulnerable girls” and persuade them to not terminate their pregnancies, in line with tax returns filed with the Inside Income Service. Johnson was the bookkeeper for that disaster being pregnant middle from 2016 by means of 2021, IRS kinds present.
Corinne Day, communications director for Johnson, advised Enterprise Insider Johnson has not been concerned since 2016 and he solely labored with the group in 2016, earlier than saying his candidacy. Think about Life didn’t reply to PGN’s request for remark.
As Enterprise Insider reported, “Disaster being pregnant facilities typically seem to supply abortions to attract pregnant folks in, however then use high-pressure ways to disgrace sufferers into forgoing an abortion or unfold medical misinformation in regards to the process.”
Johnson’s historical past on LGBTQ points is equally dangerous and dates again a long time. As Enterprise Insider famous, “New Home speaker Mike Johnson knocks Biden’s ‘cognitive decline’ however can’t bear in mind all of the instances he attacked LGBTQ relationships.”
Johnson voted towards bipartisan laws to codify same-sex marriage within the Respect for Marriage Act, which Biden signed into legislation final 12 months.
Johnson has additionally co-sponsored laws by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-GA), referred to as the Shield Youngsters’s Innocence Act, which might make it against the law to offer gender-affirming care to folks beneath 18 years of age.
Johnson launched a nationwide “Don’t Say Homosexual” invoice final October, predicated on Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’s infamous “Don’t Say Homosexual” legislation.
Calling the invoice “commonsense,” Johnson mentioned in a press release, “The Democrat Social gathering and their cultural allies are on a misguided campaign to immerse younger kids in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology.”
The invoice, referred to as the “Cease the Sexualization of Youngsters Act,” is supposed to “prohibit the usage of Federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, occasion, or literature for kids beneath the age of 10, and for different functions.”
As is usually true of those payments, the language in the proposed legislation conflates sexual orientation and gender identification with sexual content material corresponding to pornography and stripping.
The invoice would prohibit federal funds from getting used to help any “sexually-oriented” applications, occasions, and literature for kids beneath 10; ban federal services from internet hosting or selling such occasions or literature together with drag queen story hours; and permit mother and father and guardians to sue authorities officers, businesses and personal entities if a baby beneath 10 is “uncovered” to such supplies. It’s broad as it’s imprecise, and nobody is educating youngsters about pornography and stripping.
In August, Johnson spoke in the course of the GOP-led Home listening to on “The Risks and Due Course of Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Youngsters.” Calling gender-affirming care “barbarism,” Johnson asserted, “That is the mutilation of youngsters and it must be prohibited by our legislation.” Johnson typically conflated sexual orientation and gender identification saying, “The attain of radical sexual identification politics isn’t restricted to younger kids alone.”
He continued, “We see this prolonged to younger adults, particularly on the college stage now. The trendy left applauds males competing in girls’s faculty athletics. We see universities captured by teachers advancing this ideology on college students throughout our nation.”
Johnson alleged a veritable conspiracy in academia to transify and gay-up college students, asserting, “Whether or not it’s by scalpel or by social coercion from lecturers, professors, directors and left-wing media, it’s an aggressive try and transition the younger folks of our nation. They’re doing this psychologically, and now they’re doing it even bodily. One thing has gone terribly unsuitable.”
Johnson’s far-right activist previous started along with his help for conversion remedy within the 2000s. Johnson gave authorized illustration to the infamous ex-gay motion group Exodus Worldwide and partnered with the group to placed on an annual antigay occasion aimed toward teenagers, in line with a CNN KFile evaluation, of greater than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Whereas working as an lawyer with the Alliance Protection Fund, Johnson collaborated with Exodus Worldwide from 2006 to 2010. Exodus Worldwide shut down in 2013. However Johnson hasn’t left the conversion remedy enterprise: his spouse Kelly at present runs a counseling enterprise that advocates the assumption that homosexuality is similar to bestiality and incest, in line with its working settlement, Onward Christian Counseling Companies is a Bible-based pastoral counseling company. The web site — since scrubbed — cites socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ folks and reproductive rights and referred to homosexuality as being “sinful and offensive to God.”
“We imagine and the Bible teaches that any type of sexual immorality, corresponding to adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any try to alter one’s intercourse, or disagreement with one’s organic intercourse, is sinful and offensive to God,” reads a bit of the doc.
Complicating this a part of Johnson’s historical past is the revelation that whereas a single man, Johnson took in a Black teen solely a decade youthful than he and who he later raised with spouse, Kelly. Johnson advised the New York Occasions he by no means formally adopted Michael due to the “prolonged adoption course of.”
Questions proceed to encompass this “adoption” and “Saturday Night Live” featured “Mike Johnson’s Grownup Black Son” within the chilly open of its Oct. 28 episode.
Johnson can be a local weather science denialist, regardless of residing in a state that has been ravaged by local weather disaster occasions. Among the many least controversial of Johnson’s actions is that he has led a gaggle of far-right Home Republicans calling for chopping Social Safety, Medicare, and Medicaid. And he voted towards the PACT Act, laws that gives remedy for tens of millions of veterans — like Biden’s late son Beau, who died of mind most cancers — who have been uncovered to poisonous burn pits. Johnson additionally voted for a 22% reduce to the Veterans Administration.
In Biden’s first two years, Johnson voted towards a slew of bipartisan payments — together with one to determine a Jan. 6 impartial fee, the infrastructure legislation, reauthorization of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act, a modest new gun legislation and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Final month, Johnson was amongst 93 Republicans who voted for an modification by Gaetz to chop off U.S. navy help for Ukraine. He additionally voted towards the latest stop-gap invoice to keep away from a authorities shutdown that was brokered by McCarthy and led to McCarthy’s ouster.
Story courtesy of Philadelphia Homosexual Information by way of the Nationwide LGBTQ Media Affiliation.
The Nationwide LGBTQ Media Affiliation represents 13 legacy publications in main markets throughout the nation with a collective readership of greater than 400K in print and greater than 1 million + on-line. Be taught extra right here: https://nationallgbtmediaassociation.com/
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