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Gaetz called him "MAGA Mike Johnson" in an appearance Wednesday on right-wing host Steve Bannon's podcast. A spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group, labeled Johnson “Jim Jordan with a jacket and a smile,” referring to the right-wing firebrand from Ohio who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. Last month, Johnson was among 93 Republicans who voted for an amendment by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to cut off U.S. military assistance for Ukraine. U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Benton, shakes hands with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., before Republicans try to elect Johnson to be the new House speaker, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. Here are five things to know about Mike Johnson and his views on views on Ukraine, former president Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican and the first to be nominated for speaker following Mr. McCarthy’s ouster, was ultimately seen as insufficiently pro-Trump by too many of his colleagues.
There's been a history of hard landings
He continued to act as one of Trump’s chief defenders through the 2020 election, rallying colleagues to sign a letter of support for an unsuccessful case by several states to throw out some election results. Colleagues say the deeply religious Louisiana Republican who calls himself a “servant” will be a steady hand and give them a fresh start. Many hope they will finally be able to move past the seemingly intractable divisions within their conference that have felled every House GOP leader in the past decade. Johnson, 51, is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, who backed him for the post. The new speaker has his work cut out amid infighting in his Republican party. Mike Johnson, a relatively lesser-known Republican from Louisiana, has taken the gavel as the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, ending three weeks of political chaos.
Who is Mike Johnson?
McCarthy was in the House for 16 years before he was elected speaker, Pelosi had 20 years of experience, Paul Ryan served for 16 years, and John Boehner had 20 years before he ascended to the top job. Critics have dubbed it a federal "don't say gay" measure and argued that it's aimed at barring references to LGBTQ people. The little-known congressman was first elected in 2016, representing a solidly Republican part of north and western Louisiana.
Who is Patrick McHenry, the House speaker pro tempore? - CBS News
Who is Patrick McHenry, the House speaker pro tempore?.
Posted: Wed, 04 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
National Politics
In these MAGAtastic times, the humbled Ms. Greene could rebound faster than you can say “total presidential immunity.” But for now, her flapping and flailing are satisfying to behold. Could this show of spine by non-winger Republicans last more than a hot second? Maybe Mr. Johnson is recognizing that his responsibilities as the head of the people’s house go beyond serving his trolliest, most obstructionist members. And maybe, unlike Mr. McCarthy, who never exhibited signs of possessing a moral core, Mr. Johnson is serious about trying to do “the right thing” — by which he does not simply mean whatever Mr. Trump tells him to do. I may be off base here, Marjo, but trashing your colleagues as no better than the other side in a high-stakes election year is not the best way to win them over to your kamikaze mission.
In Biden’s first two years, Johnson voted against a slew of bipartisan bills — including one to establish a Jan. 6 independent commission, the infrastructure law, reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a modest new gun law and the CHIPS and Science Act. In the Trump presidency, Johnson argued that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's move to rip up a copy of his State of the Union speech was a crime. “A lot of people have been talking about this the last 48 hours, and I did a little legal memo to point out to my colleagues that she actually committed a felony,” Johnson said on Fox News at the time.
He's made more than $120,000 moonlighting as a professor at Liberty University, an evangelical college
After the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June last year, he celebrated. The views are sharply at odds with those of most Americans, according to opinion polls that have found the public is broadly supportive of gay rights. Mr. Johnson’s abrupt rise to the speaker post this week in the depressed and divided House Republican conference underscores the rightward lurch of the G.O.P., which dumped his more mainstream predecessor, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.
Who is Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker?
The order responds to the February 1, 2021, coup in Burma by targeting the military and its leaders, their business interests, and their close family members. The Louisiana Republican was first elected to the House in 2016 and serves as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, as well as GOP deputy whip, an assistant leadership role. An attorney with a focus on constitutional law, Johnson joined a group of House Republicans in voting to sustain the objection to electoral votes on January 6, 2021. During Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020, Johnson, along with a group of other GOP lawmakers, served a largely ceremonial role in Trump’s Senate impeachment team. Johnson's political career began when he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015; he served in that body until 2017.
Louisiana House of Representatives
Rep. Elise Stefanik, the GOP conference chair, pressed the administrators at the hearing on how they have handled antisemitic incidents on their campuses. The Georgia conservative filed a measure calling for a vote to oust Johnson, known as a motion to vacate the chair, roughly 40 days ago. Greene would have to declare her resolution as "privileged" on the House floor to force leaders to take it up within two legislative days, which she indicated she would do next week. But this time around several Democrats have indicated they would cross the aisle to support Johnson and frustrate Greene & Co. if it came to a vote.
Nicholas Longworth, speaker of the House, holds a gun once owned by famous outlaw Jesse James on Jan. 23, 1930. Even a glance at the history of Republican speakers since World War II would tell him that. Johnson joined the speakership race in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee.
Like Johnson an era later, Hastert was a relatively quiet member of the leadership who enjoyed goodwill generally in the rank and file. Hastert was speaker through the last two Clinton years and first six of the George W. Bush presidency. But he voluntarily resigned after the GOP lost badly in the 2006 midterms, a defeat Bush called "a thumpin' " at the time.
On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson was toiling to help Republicans turn the page from the chaos of the past few weeks. He said there would be none of the typical celebrations that accompany the election of a new speaker. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and someone Mr. Johnson has described as a mentor, was the next member to be elected speaker designate in a secret ballot. He had Mr. Trump and the far right in his corner, but ultimately failed to win over more centrist members of his party who steadfastly refused to support him. Mr. Johnson was only able to emerge as his party’s nominee for speaker this week after three other G.O.P. nominees before him were unable to rally enough support.
House of Representatives sparked a chaotic search for a replacement, Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson finally assumed the gavel on Wednesday. That would have been before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, spurring the sustained counter-offensive that the Morehouse alumni letter called an act of genocide against Palestinians. Brown’s email did not reference anything about the Middle East conflict.
The stakes were high for US lawmakers, who were unable to function in the wake of urgent issues such as the looming threat of the US government shut down as well as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the war in Ukraine. Johnson also once described homosexuality as "inherently unnatural" and a "dangerous lifestyle." "States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse," he wrote in a July 2003 op-ed. "I think that it would be a pretty big red flag if you asked your mate or your fiancé, 'Let's do a covenant marriage,' and they said they don't really want to do that," Kelly Johnson told the outlet.
He was first elected to represent Louisiana's 4th congressional district in 2016. During his time in Congress, he contested the results of the 2020 presidential election on the House floor and in court. Johnson was chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, from 2019 to 2021. Johnson, a relatively unknown 51-year-old congressman first elected in 2016, is a staunch social conservative and evangelical Christian who already served in party leadership as the vice chair of the House GOP conference. International Chapel.The speaker will be Reginald W. Sharpe Jr. '13, senior pastor of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois. Pastor Sharpe holds esteemed credentials as a charter member of the Academy of Preachers and an inductee into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr.
Johnson, who represents a district in western Louisiana, was first elected to the House in 2016. He is a close ally of former President Donald Trump whose arguments formed the basis of many lawmakers' objections to the Electoral College results after the 2020 election. The vote makes Johnson the first speaker ever elected on the fourth ballot of an election. When speaker elections have gone to multiple ballots, no speaker has ever been elected on ballots four to eight. Wednesday morning, hours before an expected vote, Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, said he wasn't technically endorsing Johnson but suggesting the House elect him.
He promised to quickly move forward on conservative priorities like support for Israel and border security. Most importantly, he was able to get all of their 220 votes to become speaker on the House floor. That’s something none of his more well-known colleagues were able to do, as Republicans struggled for more than three weeks to pick a replacement for ousted Kevin McCarthy.
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