House Republicans pick a new Speaker at last: Ultra MAGA Congressman Mike Johnson

After weeks of feud­ing amongst them­selves, Repub­li­cans in the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed today to elect a new Speak­er who comes from the par­ty’s Trumpian wing: Ultra MAGA Con­gress­man Mike John­son of Louisiana, who has no expe­ri­ence serv­ing in the cham­ber pri­or to the Trump error.

The vote to elect John­son was unan­i­mous among Repub­li­cans, with all 220 Repub­li­cans who vot­ed back­ing his can­di­da­cy. Democ­rats, mean­while, vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly for their leader, Hakeem Jef­fries, who is expect­ed to become Speak­er in Jan­u­ary of 2025 if Democ­rats recap­ture the House major­i­ty next year.

Four rep­re­sen­ta­tives did not par­tic­i­pate in the vote:

• Bren­dan F. Boyle (D‑Pennsylvania)
• J. Luis Cor­rea (D‑California)
• Vicente Gon­za­lez (D‑Texas)
• Der­rick Van Orden (R‑Wisconsin)

John­son is the first Speak­er in U.S. his­to­ry to come from the state of Louisiana.

If you’ve nev­er heard of Mike John­son, that’s under­stand­able, because he has not been a key fig­ure in House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship until now. John­son has been described as bet­ter man­nered than oth­er ultra MAGA mem­bers of the cau­cus, like fire­brand Jim Jor­dan, but ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, John­son is way, way out there.

Here’s a few key para­graphs from his Wikipedia entry:

A mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian right fac­tion of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, John­son is known for his strong sup­port for a nation­wide abor­tion ban and an end to legal same-sex mar­riages. He has called for the Supreme Court deci­sion Oberge­fell v. Hodges to be over­turned and for med­ical mar­i­jua­na to be restrict­ed, refer­ring to the lat­ter as a “gate­way drug”. In Decem­ber 2020, John­son signed an ami­cus brief in sup­port of Texas v. Penn­syl­va­nia, a law­suit filed at the Supreme Court con­test­ing the results of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election.

In Jan­u­ary 2021, John­son vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion results in Penn­syl­va­nia. John­son has cul­ti­vat­ed close ties to Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ist groups Answers in Gen­e­sis, Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum, Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, and Focus on the Family.

Pri­or to his career as a politi­cian, he worked with them to “rep­re­sent church­es, pas­tors and con­gre­gants whose vision of reli­gious free­dom con­flict­ed with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions”. John­son sup­ports end­ing Amer­i­can mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

So, just to recap:

• John­son is mil­i­tant­ly opposed to repro­duc­tive rights and favors a nation­wide ban on abor­tion, includ­ing in blue states.
• John­son opposed LGBTQ+ rights and wants to get rid of the free­dom to mar­ry — a right now enshrined in fed­er­al law.
• John­son oppos­es end­ing the failed war on drugs and imple­ment­ing a new approach to reg­u­lat­ing the use of con­trolled substances.
• John­son oppos­es aid for Ukraine, a democ­ra­cy fight­ing for its sur­vival against a mur­der­ous neigh­bor­ing regime that wants to con­quer it.
• John­son is an insur­rec­tion­ist who tried to help Don­ald Trump remain in pow­er after he lost the 2020 elec­tion to Pres­i­dent Biden fair and square.

John­son is just as bad or worse than Jim Jor­dan on a whole range of issues and con­cerns, yet every sin­gle “rea­son­able” or “mod­er­ate” Repub­li­can vot­ed to put him in the Speak­er’s chair. Every sin­gle one. They may come to regret their deci­sion, espe­cial­ly the ones who rep­re­sent dis­tricts that vot­ed for Joe Biden.

Reporters and observers, take note: At a crit­i­cal junc­ture for the coun­try, Repub­li­cans like Don Bacon did what they have so often done before: They will­ing­ly vot­ed to give more pow­er to an extrem­ist who wants to impose their mil­i­tant strict father moral­i­ty on every sin­gle Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty and family.

John­son and his wife are pod­cast­ers, and reporters are now scru­ti­niz­ing their record­ings for insights into what John­son believes and how he might legislate.

“The pod­casts, span­ning 69 episodes, offer an extend­ed win­dow into Mr. John­son’s views and pol­i­tics, as he co-hosts the pro­gram with his wife, a licensed pas­toral coun­selor,” The New York Times’ Steve Eder explained in a live­blog update dis­cussing John­son’s elec­tion. “In it, the man who has just been elect­ed speak­er, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, talks at length about his vehe­ment oppo­si­tion to abor­tion rights, calls the Demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­da social­ist, and rails against the pros­e­cu­tion of Mr. Trump for his efforts to inter­fere in the 2020 election.”

“It is the hon­or of a life­time to have been elect­ed the 56th Speak­er of the House,” said John­son in a state­ment post­ed to speaker.gov.

“Thank you to my col­leagues, friends, staff, and fam­i­ly for the unmatched sup­port through­out this process. It has been an ardu­ous few weeks, and a reminder that the House is as com­pli­cat­ed and diverse as the peo­ple we rep­re­sent. The urgency of this moment demands bold, deci­sive action to restore trust, advance our leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties, and demon­strate good governance.”

“Our House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence is unit­ed, and eager to work,” John­son added, in a com­ment that lacks cred­i­bil­i­ty. “As Speak­er, I will ensure the House deliv­ers results and inspires change for the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We will restore trust in this body. We will advance a com­pre­hen­sive con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy agen­da, com­bat the harm­ful poli­cies of the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion, and sup­port our allies abroad. And we will restore san­i­ty to a gov­ern­ment des­per­ate­ly in need of it.”

Democ­rats offered a range of reac­tions to John­son’s election.

Pres­i­dent Biden and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, who’ll have to deal with John­son to avert a gov­ern­ment shut­down, offered their con­grat­u­la­tions, but point­ed out that time was run­ning out to agree on fis­cal policy.

“Jill and I con­grat­u­late Speak­er John­son on his elec­tion,” said Pres­i­dent Biden.

“As I said when this process began, who­ev­er the Speak­er is, I will seek to work with them in good faith on behalf of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That’s a prin­ci­ple I have always held to, and that I’ve act­ed on – deliv­er­ing major bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion on infra­struc­ture, out­com­pet­ing Chi­na, gun reform, and vet­er­ans care.”

“I restat­ed my will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue work­ing across the aisle after Repub­li­cans won the major­i­ty in the House last year. By the same token, the Amer­i­can peo­ple have made clear that they expect House Repub­li­cans to work with me and with Sen­ate Democ­rats to gov­ern across the aisle – to pro­tect our urgent nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests and grow our econ­o­my for the mid­dle class.”

“While House Repub­li­cans spent the last 22 days deter­min­ing who would lead their con­fer­ence, I have worked on those press­ing issues, propos­ing a his­toric sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing pack­age that advances our bipar­ti­san nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests in Israel and Ukraine, secures our bor­der, and invests in the Amer­i­can peo­ple. These pri­or­i­ties have been endorsed by lead­ers in both parties.”

“We need to move swift­ly to address our nation­al secu­ri­ty needs and to avoid a shut­down in 22 days. Even though we have real dis­agree­ments about impor­tant issues, there should be mutu­al effort to find com­mon ground wher­ev­er we can. This is a time for all of us to act respon­si­bly, and to put the good of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the every­day pri­or­i­ties of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies above any partisanship.”

Pres­i­dent Biden and Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris’ cam­paign offered a very dif­fer­ent take.

“MAGA Mike Johnson’s ascen­sion to the speak­er­ship cements the extreme MAGA takeover of the House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence,” said Ammar Mous­sa, spokesper­son for Biden-Har­ris 2024, in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to NPI.

“Now, Don­ald Trump has his loy­al foot sol­dier to ban abor­tion nation­wide, lead efforts to deny free and fair elec­tion results, gut Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, and advance the extreme MAGA agen­da at the expense of mid­dle-class families.”

“Twen­ty-two days before Con­gress must act to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down and while our allies over­seas at war depend on our help, extreme MAGA House Repub­li­cans ele­vat­ed a man to sec­ond-in-line to the pres­i­den­cy who still won’t admit Pres­i­dent Biden won the 2020 elec­tion,” Mous­sa added.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple have reject­ed the extreme MAGA ide­ol­o­gy at the bal­lot box because they under­stand what’s at stake. And so to every MAGA Repub­li­can who sup­port­ed this choice: We’ll see you in November.”

With today’s roll call for Speak­er hav­ing been exact­ly along par­ty lines, there’s no con­trary votes to ana­lyze. Every Repub­li­can from the Pacif­ic North­west — Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer, Cliff Bentz, Dan New­house, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, Russ Fulcher, Mike Simp­son, Matt Rosendale, Ryan Zinke — gave John­son their support.

John­son’s ascen­sion ends a peri­od of paral­y­sis in the House. It is a devel­op­ment that sur­prised some observers, who were not expect­ing the dead­lock to be bro­ken so swift­ly after Tom Emmer end­ed his bid for the speak­er­ship. Emmer was the third hope­ful for Speak­er who had to pull the plug on his can­di­da­cy after real­iz­ing he would­n’t be able to get 217 votes, after Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan.

John­son has not yet com­ment­ed on whether he’s going to aggres­sive­ly sup­port the base­less impeach­ment inquiry begun by Kevin McCarthy sev­er­al weeks ago, but Trump will prob­a­bly be expect­ing him to, and John­son is a loy­al sol­dier for Trump. Trump declared that he was pleased with the selec­tion of John­son, using all caps to declare that John­son would be “a great speak­er” in an online posting.