by tyler | Nov 1, 2023 | CNN, politics
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.
Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
In print, radio and on television, Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, frequently disparaged homosexuality, according to KFile’s review. He advocated for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire.
“Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a CNN request for comment asking about his work with Exodus.
Exodus International joined ADF’s Day of Truth event in 2006 and the groups worked together on promotional material for the event, including a standalone website which pointed users to Exodus’ conversion ministries. Documents on that website cited the since-repudiated academic work in support of conversion therapy. Exodus Youth, the group’s youth wing, promoted the event within its blogs.
Videos put out by Exodus and ADF on their standalone Day of Truth website featured two Exodus staffers speaking about how teens didn’t need to “accept” or “embrace” their homosexuality. The videos featured testimonials of a “former-homosexual” and “former lesbian.”
Documents on the website were not archived online but were saved by anti-conversion therapy groups such as Truth Wins Out in 2007 and 2008. The website featured a FAQ on homosexuality provided by Exodus and sold t-shirts saying, “the Truth cannot be silenced.”
One video featured Johnson, who was later quoted in a press release on Exodus International’s website ahead of the event, saying, “An open, honest discussion allows truth to rise to the surface.”
Johnson promoted the event heavily in the media – through radio interviews, comments in newspapers, and an editorial. In interviews, he repeatedly cited the case of a teen who went to school after the Day of Silence wearing a shirt that read, “Be ashamed. Our school has embraced what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful.” The teen was suspended and ADF represented him in legal action over the incident. The case was dismissed because the teen graduated, and the court found he no longer had standing to challenge the dress code.
“Day of Truth was really established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
Those who worked to counter ADF and Exodus at the time, said the event was dangerous to confused youth.
“This directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. “This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate.”
Randy Scobey, a former executive vice president at Exodus, who worked on the Day of Truth in the organization’s collaboration with ADF, called the event one of his biggest regrets.
“It was bullying those who were trying to not be bullied,” said Scobey, who now lives openly as a gay man. “That was one of the public ways that the Alliance Defense Fund worked with us.”
Ties between Exodus and ADF extended beyond the event.
ADF, which has since changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted Exodus International in promotional brochures in 2004, crediting it as an organization that “played an instrumental role in helping thousands of individuals come out of homosexual behavior.”
Scobey recalled Johnson as quiet, but firm in his beliefs that homosexuality was wrong. He said Johnson and ADF provided crucial legal advice to Exodus and its “member ministries.”
“We worked with them behind the scenes a lot,” Scobey told CNN, saying the group offered them legal guidance over their ex-gay counseling. “They were very important to us as far as helping us to feel more secure legally and politically.”
Exodus International stopped sponsoring the Day of Truth event in 2010, saying it became adversarial and counterproductive.
by tyler | Oct 26, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Republican-led House elected Rep. Mike Johnson as the new House speaker on Wednesday – a major leadership change that comes three weeks after the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Johnson, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will now take the reins of the bitterly divided House Republican majority and faces the looming threat of a government shutdown next month.
Johnson’s elevation puts an end to the paralysis the House had been stuck in after McCarthy was pushed out by hardline conservatives – an unprecedented move that plunged the chamber into uncharted territory. Republicans tried and failed three separate times to coalesce behind a new speaker nominee before ultimately uniting around Johnson, a conservative lawmaker who has so far had a relatively low profile on the national stage. In a remarkable show of unity following weeks of fierce GOP infighting, the Louisiana Republican was elected with 220 votes and no Republican defections.
The new speaker will now face a litany of pressing issues. Government funding is set to expire on November 17, and the GOP-controlled House will need to work with the Democratic-led Senate to avert a shutdown, setting up an early leadership test for Johnson. Lawmakers must also decide whether to send further aid to Ukraine as it fights a war against Russian aggression as well as aid to Israel in its war against Hamas. There is widespread bipartisan support for aid to Israel, but many House Republicans are opposed to sending additional aid to Ukraine.
Hours after the speaker election, the House passed a resolution in support of Israel in its war against Hamas. The measure passed with overwhelming bipartisan support by a vote of 412 to 10.
Johnson, fresh off his victory on the House floor, said he will pursue an “aggressive schedule” in the weeks ahead and alluded to the chaos that had paralyzed the House and distracted from the GOP agenda.
“You’re going to see an aggressive schedule in the days and weeks ahead. You’re gonna see Congress working as hard as it’s ever worked and we are going to deliver for the American people,” he said.
“We’ve gone through a little bit of suffering. We’ve gone through a little bit of character building, and you know what has produced more strength, more perseverance and a lot of hope, and that’s what we’re about to deliver to the American people,” he said.
Johnson was first elected to the House in 2016 and has previously served as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference. A Trump ally, he supported objections to Electoral College results when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s presidential win on January 6, 2021 – the day a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol seeking to overturn the results of the election. He also lobbied fellow House Republicans to support a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the election. A reporter was loudly booed by House GOP members for asking Johnson after he became the speaker-designate if he stands by his decision to support overturning the election.
The fight for the speaker’s gavel has opened new rifts among House Republicans and deepened old ones. Republicans rallied around Johnson in a display of unity, but it remains to be seen how long that will hold.
Johnson secured the nomination for the speakership late Tuesday evening in a vote that capped off a chaotic day that started with Republicans picking Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer to be their latest nominee only for him to drop out hours later after facing stiff resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from Trump. After winning the party nomination, Emmer faced swift opposition from the right flank of his conference as well as a rebuke from Trump. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Emmer a “Globalist RINO,” and said that voting for him “would be a tragic mistake.”
Emmer was the third Republican to win the GOP nomination only to then exit the race after failing to lock up the necessary votes to win the gavel, following Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise also of Louisiana.
Jordan, who is known as Trump ally and a fierce conservative agitator, took his fight for the speakership to the House floor in a bid to put members on the record – but failed to secure the gavel in three separate rounds of voting that saw him lose more support with each ballot.
Some Republicans who opposed Jordan decried what they described as a pressure campaign against them by allies of the Ohio Republican. And several Republicans who opposed Jordan’s speakership bid said they experienced angry calls, menacing messages and even death threats since casting their votes. Jordan condemned the threats.
Even as he faced stiff resistance, Jordan vowed repeatedly to continue his fight. But after his third failed floor vote, the House GOP conference voted internally to push him out of the race in a dramatic turn of events. Jordan’s failure to win the gavel highlighted the limits of Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after the former president endorsed Jordan.
As Republicans failed to coalesce around successive candidates, frustration and tensions within the conference intensified and frequently spilled out into public view as members lamented the impasse and questioned whether anyone could secure enough support to win the gavel given the GOP’s narrow majority.
Johnson has a background as a staunch conservative Republican and an ardent Trump supporter.
After the election was called in favor of Joe Biden on November 7, 2020, Johnson posted on X, then known as Twitter, “I have just called President Trump to say this: ‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’”
Johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is also a former chair of the Republican Study Committee.
As CNN’s KFILE has reported, Johnson has a history of harsh anti-gay language from his time as an attorney for a socially conservative legal group in the mid-2000s.
In editorials that ran in his local Shreveport, Louisiana, paper, The Times, Johnson called homosexuality an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy “the entire democratic system.”
In another editorial, he wrote, “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.”
At the time, Johnson was an attorney and spokesman for Alliance Defense Fund, known today as Alliance Defending Freedom, where he also authored his opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas – which overturned state laws that criminalized homosexual activity between consenting adults.
In 2022, Johnson also introduced a bill that some have described as a national version of what critics have called Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 26, 2023 | CNN, politics
Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building on Saturday morning, shortly before the House was scheduled to vote on a government funding bill, an incident the New York Democrat said was an accident.
The incident was first revealed by House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, who said in a statement that an investigation is underway.
Steil told CNN on Saturday evening that Bowman needed to be “far more forthcoming” about what happened when he decided to pull the fire alarm.
“We know Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm. Why he did that, it is pretty unclear. His initial explanation, that it was an accident, doesn’t seem to really pass muster,” Steil told CNN’s Jim Acosta. Steil also warned that if Bowman pulled the alarm to interfere with the House voting procedure – an accusation Bowman earlier told reporters was “complete BS” – it would be “a serious violation of the law.”
Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door, and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”
“I was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed,” Bowman added.
Leadership in both parties was informed of the situation once Bowman was identified in security footage, a source familiar said.
Bowman said he met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about the incident shortly after the funding stopgap measure passed the House on Saturday, adding that Jeffries’ tone was “supportive” and “he understood that was a mistake.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the House Ethics Committee should look into the incident.
“I think ethics should look at this, but this is serious,” McCarthy said in response to a reporter’s question following the House vote.
He added that he will have a discussion with Jeffries regarding the incident.
“This should not go without punishment,” McCarthy said. “This is an embarrassment. You are elected to be a member of Congress. You pulled a fire alarm, in a (matter) of hours before the government being shut down, trying to dictate that the government would shut down?”
Following McCarthy’s remarks, Rep. Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican and member of the GOP leadership team, told CNN she was circulating a resolution to censure Bowman over the incident. She said she already has co-sponsors.
Bowman, however, laughed off the GOP response to the incident on Saturday, telling reporters, “They’re gonna do what they do. This is what they do.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
by tyler | Oct 26, 2023 | CNN, politics
Around the country, politicians are waging high-stakes battles over new congressional lines that could influence which party controls the US House of Representatives after the 2024 election.
In North Carolina, the Republicans who control the state legislature have crafted a map that could help them flip at least three seats. Democrats, meanwhile, could pick up seats in legal skirmishes now playing out in New York, Louisiana, Georgia and other states.
In all, the fate of anywhere from 14 to 18 House seats across nearly a dozen states could turn on the results of these fights. Republicans currently hold just a five-seat edge in the US House. That razor-edge majority has been underscored in recent weeks by the GOP’s chaotic struggle to elect a new speaker.
“Given that the majority is so narrow, every outcome matters to the fight for House control in 2024,” said David Wasserman, who follows redistricting closely as senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.
And with fewer competitive districts that swing between the political parties, Wasserman added, “every line change is almost existential.”
Experts say several other factors have helped lead to the slew of consequential – and unresolved – redistricting disputes, just months before the first primaries of the 2024 cycle.
They include pandemic-related delays in completing the 2020 census – the once-a-decade population count that kicks off congressional and state legislative redistricting – as well as a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that threw decisions about partisan gerrymandering back to state courts.
In addition, some litigation had been frozen in place until the US Supreme Court’s surprise ruling in June, which found that a Republican-crafted redistricting plan in Alabama disadvantaged Black voters in the state and was in violation of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
That decision “is functionally reanimating all of these dormant cases,” said Adam Kincaid, the president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which supports the GOP’s redistricting efforts.
Kincaid said it’s too soon to tell whether Republicans or Democrats will emerge with the advantage by Election Day 2024. In his view, either party could gain or lose only about two seats over redistricting.
In many of the closely watched states where action is pending, just a single seat hangs in the balance, with two notable exceptions: North Carolina and New York, where multiple seats are at stake. Republicans control the map-drawing in the Tar Heel State, while the job could fall to Democrats in New York, potentially canceling out each party’s gains.
“Democrats kind of need to run the table in the rest of these states” to gain any edge, said Nick Seabrook, a political scientist at the University of North Florida and the author of the 2022 book “One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America.”
Here’s a state-by-state look at recent and upcoming redistricting disputes that could shape the 2024 race for control of the US House:
In one of the cycle’s highest-profile redistricting cases, a three-judge panel in Alabama approved a map that creates a second congressional district with a substantial Black population. Before the court action, Alabama – which is 27% Black – had only one Black-majority congressional district out of seven seats.
The fight over the map went all the way to the Supreme Court – which issued a surprise ruling, affirming a lower-court opinion that ordered Alabama to include a second Black-majority district or “something quite close to it.” Under the map that will be in place for the 2024 election, the state’s 2nd District now loops into Mobile to create a seat where nearly half the population is Black.
The high court’s 5-4 decision in June saw two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, side with the three liberals to uphold the lower-court ruling. Their action kept intact a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act: that it’s illegal to draw maps that effectively keep Black voters from electing a candidate of their choice.
The ruling has reverberated around the country and could affect the outcome of similar court cases underway in Louisiana and Georgia that center on whether Republican-drawn maps improperly diluted Black political power in those states.
Given that Black voters in Alabama have traditionally backed Democrats, the party now stands a better chance of winning the newly reconfigured district and sending to of its members to Congress after next year’s elections.
The new map – approved in recent days by the lower-court judges – also could result in two Black US House members from Alabama serving together for the first time in state history.
A state judge in September struck down congressional lines for northern Florida that had been championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruling that the Republican governor’s map had improperly diluted Black voting power.
This case, unlike the Alabama fight decided by the US Supreme Court, centers on provisions in the state constitution.
The judge concluded that the congressional boundaries – which essentially dismantled a seat once held by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, that connected Black communities across a northern reach of the Florida – violated the state’s Fair Districts amendments, enacted by voters. One amendment specifically bars the state from drawing a district that diminishes the ability of racial minorities “to elect representatives of their choice.”
Arguments before an appeals court are slated for later this month, with litigants seeking a decision by late November. The case is expected to land before the all-Republican state Supreme Court, where DeSantis appointees hold most seats.
A separate federal case – which argues that the map violates the US Constitution – is pending.
But observers say the outcome of the state litigation is more likely than the federal case to determine whether Florida lawmakers must restore the North Florida district, given the state constitution’s especially strong protections for the voting rights of racial minorities and the lower burden of proof required to establish that those rights were abridged.
A redistricting case now before a federal judge could create a more competitive seat for Democrats in the Atlanta suburbs.
The plaintiffs challenging the congressional map drawn by Georgia Republicans argue that the increasingly diverse population in the Peach State should result in an additional Black-majority district, this one in the western Atlanta metro area. A trial in the case recently concluded and awaits a final ruling by US District Judge Steve Jones.
In 2022, Jones preliminarily ruled that some parts of the Republicans’ redistricting plan likely violated federal law but allowed the map to be used in that year’s midterm elections.
A separate federal case in Georgia challenges the congressional map on constitutional grounds and is slated to go to trial next month.
Currently, Republicans hold nine of the 14 seats in Georgia’s congressional delegation. Black people make up a majority, or close to it, in four districts, including three in the Atlanta area.
The Kentucky Supreme Court could soon decide whether a map drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature amounts to what Democrats assert is an “extreme partisan” gerrymander in violation of the state’s constitution.
Much of the case focuses on disputes over state legislative maps, but the congressional lines also are at stake, with critics saying lawmakers moved Kentucky’s capital city – Democratic-leaning Frankfort – out of the 6th Congressional District and into an oddly shaped – and solidly Republican – 1st District to help shore up Republican odds of holding the 6th District.
The 6th District, represented by GOP Rep. Andy Barr, was one of the more competitive seats in Kentucky under its previous lines. (Democrat Amy McGrath came within 3 points of beating Barr in 2018; last year, Barr won a sixth term under the new lines by 29 points.)
A lower-court judge already has ruled that the Republican-drawn map does not violate the state’s constitution.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Alabama could pave the way for a new congressional map in Louisiana ahead of the 2024 election, but the case has quickly become mired in appeals.
Although Black people make up roughly a third of the state’s population, Louisiana has just one Black lawmaker in its six-member congressional delegation.
A federal judge threw out the state’s Republican-drawn map in 2022, saying it likely violated the Voting Rights Act. Republican officials in the state appealed to the US Supreme Court, which put the lower-court ruling on hold until it decided the Alabama case, which it did in June this year.
Once the high court weighed in on the Alabama case, the legal skirmishes again lurched to life in Louisiana.
Louisiana Republicans have filed an appeal with the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals and successfully halted a district court hearing to discuss imposing a new, court-ordered map.
On Thursday, the US Supreme Court declined to allow the federal district judge to move forward with discussions about drawing a new map while the appeal advances through the courts.
GOP state officials say, among other things, that they are seeking time to redraw the map themselves. Critics of the state’s original map argue that Republicans are using legal maneuvers to delay a new redistricting plan, which could result in a second Democratic-leaning seat.
Legal battles that drag on risk judges invoking the so-called Purcell Principle, a doctrine that limits changing voting procedures and boundaries too close to Election Day to guard against voter confusion.
“Some of the reason it becomes too late is because, in many of these cases, the state is prolonging the litigation … and buying more time with an illegal map,” said Kareem Crayton, senior director for voting and representation at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
Republicans in New Mexico say the congressional lines drawn by the Democrats who control state government amount to an illegal gerrymander under the state’s constitution.
At stake: a swing district along the US border with Mexico. If Republicans prevail, the seat – now held by a Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez – could become more favorable to Republicans.
A state judge recently upheld the map drawn by Democrats, but the New Mexico Supreme Court is expected to review that order on appeal.
Republicans flipped four US House seats in New York in the 2022 midterm elections, victories that helped secure their party’s majority in the chamber.
Current legal fights in the Empire State over redistricting, however, could erase those gains.
A state court judge oversaw last year’s process of drawing the current map following a long legal battle and the inability of New York’s bipartisan redistricting commission to agree on new lines. But Democrats scored a court victory earlier this year when a state appellate court ruled that the redistricting commission should draw new lines.
Republicans have appealed that decision, and oral arguments are set for mid-November before New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. The commission’s map-making also is on hold.
If Democrats prevail, it could make it easier for their party to pick up as many as six seats now held by Republicans.
North Carolina’s legislature, where Republicans hold a supermajority, has drawn new congressional lines that observers say could prove a windfall for the GOP and boost the party’s chances of retaining its House majority next year.
The state’s current House delegation is split 7-7 between Democrats and Republicans.
A map that state lawmakers recently approved puts three House Democrats in what one expert called “almost impossible to win” districts.
The affected Democrats are Reps. Jeff Jackson, who currently represents a Charlotte-area district; Wiley Nickel, who holds a Raleigh-area seat; and Kathy Manning, who represents Greensboro and other parts of north-central North Carolina.
A fourth Democrat, Rep. Don Davis, saw his district retooled to become more friendly toward Republicans while remaining competitive for both parties.
State-level gains in the 2022 midterm elections have given the GOP new sway over redistricting in this swing state. Last year, Republicans flipped North Carolina’s Supreme Court, whose members are chosen in partisan elections. The new GOP majority on the court this year tossed out a 2022 ruling by the then-Democratic leaning court against partisan gerrymandering.
A map that had been created after the Democratic-led high court’s ruling resulted in the current even split in the state’s House delegation.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper does not have veto power over redistricting legislation.
A redistricting case pending before the US Supreme Court centers on the future of a Charleston-area seat held by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who made headlines recently for joining House GOP hard-liners in voting to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker.
Earlier this year, a three-judge panel concluded that lines for the coastal 1st Congressional District, as drawn by state GOP lawmakers, amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The Republican lawmakers appealed to the US Supreme Court. And, during oral arguments earlier this month, several justices in the court’s conservative majority expressed skepticism that South Carolina officials had engaged in an improper racial gerrymander and seemed inclined to reinstate the lawmakers’ map.
The state Supreme Court, in a case it heard in July, is considering whether it even has the authority to weigh in on map-drawing decisions by the GOP-controlled state legislature.
Republican state officials argue that the court’s power over redistricting decisions is limited.
Advocacy groups and a handful of voters are challenging a congressional map that further carved up Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County between four decidedly Republican districts.
Doing so, the plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit, “takes a slice of Salt Lake County and grafts it onto large swaths of the rest of Utah,” allowing Republican voters in rural areas and smaller cities far away from Salt Lake to “dictate the outcome of elections.”
Redistricting fights over congressional maps are ongoing in several other states – ranging from Texas to Tennessee – but those cases might not be resolved in time to affect next year’s elections.
by tyler | Oct 26, 2023 | CNN, politics
Rep. Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and was a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
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 also sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the longshot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from multiple states.
After the election was called in favor of Joe Biden on November 7, 2020, Johnson posted on X, then known as Twitter, “I have just called President Trump to say this: ‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’”
Although Trump said he wouldn’t endorse anyone in the speaker’s race Wednesday, he leant support to Johnson in a post on Truth Social.
“In 2024, we will have an even bigger, & more important, WIN! My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & GET IT DONE, FAST!” Trump posted.
Johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is also a former chair of the Republican Study Committee.
After receiving a degree in business administration from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Johnson took on roles as a college professor and conservative talk radio host. He began his political career in the Louisiana legislature, where he served from 2015 to 2017, before being elected to Congress in Louisiana’s Fourth District.
Rep. Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican who chairs the influential Republican Study Committee, dropped out of the race for speaker Tuesday evening and backed Johnson.
“I want everyone to know this race has gotten to the point where it’s gotten crazy. This is more about people right now than it should be,” he said. “This should be about America and America’s greatness. For that, I stepped aside and threw all my support behind Mike Johnson. I think he’d make a great speaker.”
Johnson’s win in the secret-ballot race for the House Republican Conference’s nominee for speaker followed Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer’s decision to drop out of the race hours after Republicans chose him to be the nominee following resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from Trump. Reps. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan have also dropped out after earlier seeking the speaker’s gavel.
Johnson joined the speakership race in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I have been humbled to have so many Members from across our Conference reach out to encourage me to seek the nomination for Speaker. Until yesterday, I had never contacted one person about this, and I have never before aspired to the office,” he said in a posted letter. “However, after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”
by tyler | Oct 26, 2023 | CNN, politics
A total of 21 US service members reported “minor injuries” as a result of drone and rocket attacks on coalition military bases in Iraq and Syria last week, according to the Pentagon.
“Between Oct. 17-18 (ET), 21 US personnel received minor injuries due to drone attacks at Al Assad Airbase, Iraq, and Al-Tanf Garrison, Syria,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Wednesday. “All members returned to duty.”
Defense officials told CNN earlier Wednesday that while all of the personnel have since returned to duty, several continue to be monitored for any additional side effects or injuries. The number of injured personnel has risen as more US troops have reported symptoms in the days following the attacks.
“It is important to note, in some cases, service members may report injuries such as (traumatic brain injury) several days after attacks occur, so numbers may change. We will continue to work closely with US Central Command to provide updates as appropriate,” Ryder said.
CNN previously reported that multiple troops sustained minor injuries from the attacks, though the exact number was unclear.
Ryder said Tuesday that US and coalition forces have been attacked at least 10 separate times in Iraq, and three separate times in Syria since October 17, via a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets. US officials have attributed the attacks to Iranian proxy groups operating in the region and have warned of a potential for significant escalation by these groups in the near term.
NBC News was first to report the number of minor injuries in Syria and Iraq.
Officials told CNN earlier this week that at this point, Iran appears to be encouraging the groups rather than explicitly directing them. One official said Iran is providing guidance to the militia groups that they will not be punished – by not getting resupplied with weaponry, for example – if they continue to attack US or Israeli targets.
The attacks have ramped up amid the US’ support for Israel in its war against Hamas and intensified following a hospital blast in Gaza that Palestinian militants and Israel have blamed on each other. US intelligence officials said on Tuesday that the explosion happened when a rocket launched by a Palestinian militant group broke apart in midair and the warhead fell on the hospital.
Iran supports a number of proxy militia groups in countries across the region through the IRGC-Quds Force, and Tehran does not always exert perfect command and control over these groups. How willing those groups are to act independently is a “persistent intelligence gap,” noted one source.
But a senior defense official said the US believes that the proxies are being funded, armed, equipped and trained by Iran, and the US therefore holds Tehran responsible for their actions.
Officials across the administration have reiterated in recent days that the US is preparing for a potential escalation, preparing both defense and offensive capabilities should it become necessary to respond.
The US has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and around 900 in Syria as part of the anti-ISIS coalition, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement last weekend that he was deploying additional air defense systems to the region in response to the attacks, including a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system and additional Patriot batteries.
Iran warned on Sunday that the situation could escalate. In a conference with his South African counterpart Naledi Pandor in Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that the Middle East is like a “powder keg,” according to quotes published by state-aligned Tasnim news.
“Any miscalculation in continuing genocide and forced displacement can have serious and bitter consequences, both in the region and for the warmongers,” Abdollahian said, referring to the US and Israel.
The Iranian foreign minister also warned the US and Israel that “if crimes against humanity do not stop immediately, there is the possibility at any moment that the region will go out of control.”
CORRECTION: This headline and story have been corrected to reflect an updated statement from the Pentagon on the number of US service members injured in recent drone attacks.
