[News Flash!]
After something like three weeks the Republicans finally elected a Speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson. Who?
You know, one of the ones who claims Trump won the election!
You do know what that means?
NBC went on to write,
It is going to be a long rocky road to the 2024.
After something like three weeks the Republicans finally elected a Speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson. Who?
You know, one of the ones who claims Trump won the election!
Yahoo News reported that…GOP speaker nominee Mike Johnson played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election
Johnson, the latest Republican nominee for House speaker, led an amicus brief in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 victory in four battleground states.
NBC News
By Summer Concepcion
October 25, 2023Well before he was elected as House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., played a key role in efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 election.
Johnson, who served as the GOP caucus vice chair and is an ally of Trump, led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called on the Supreme Court to delay the electoral vote in the four states in order for investigations on voting issues to continue amid Trump’s refusal to concede his loss. It alleged that the four states changed voting rules without their legislatures’ express approval before the 2020 election.
In the spring of 2022, Rep. Mike Johnson started a podcast with his wife, Kelly Johnson, who calls herself a “pastoral counselor.”
The title of the first episode was “Can America Be Saved?”
That question is familiar to many American evangelicals. It shows how Johnson, the new speaker of the House, is a product of conservative evangelicalism and Deep South Republican political culture.
[…]
Johnson worked for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). ADF was founded in 1994 by some of the leading figures of the Religious Right, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ.
ADF touts itself as working to defend the rights of conservative Christians to express their views on matters of sexuality and religion, which has gained it a reputation for advocating for discrimination against sexual minorities. It also has worked to limit or even ban abortion and access to contraception.
Anti-abortion
Anti-LGBTQ
Anti-Democratic
Pro-Trump
Pro-MAGA
Pro-Evangelical Christians
Anti-LGBTQ
Anti-Democratic
Pro-Trump
Pro-MAGA
Pro-Evangelical Christians
NBC went on to write,
As rioters were overtaking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson told Fox News in an interview that there was "nothing unusual" about Republican lawmakers' objections to the Electoral College certification and that "there’ve been many objections over the years.”
“I’m here as one of the advocates on the Republican side, stating our concerns about this election and the allegations of fraud and the irregularity and all that," he said.
Update: 4:00 PM
Bloomberg reported...
The new Republican party... the party of Trumpism.Who Chose the New House Speaker: Republicans or Trump?
The House GOP is only an embarrassment if you are under the mistaken impression that it’s there to serve the national interest. Emphatically, it is not.
By Francis WilkinsonThe chaos of October has brought the House GOP back to where it began: Some guy is once again Speaker of the House. His name is, for now, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, not that it matters. If Donald Trump tells him to change it, as when Trump ordered Republican Party chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel to drop the “Romney” from her moniker, Mike Johnson will become Speaker Sammy Skeever or Mike Maloney.
Unlike previous Speaker candidates in recent weeks, such as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, Johnson has gone to the trouble of acquiring some actual policies to inform his cultural reaction. Not that the policies matter, either. No one, least of all Republicans, thinks that the GOP is capable of legislating. If all goes well, the party that has organized itself around Trump’s voluble lies and seething rage will keep the government open and fund whatever the White House and Senate work out. If all doesn’t go well, the House GOP, having recommitted itself to lawlessness and deceit, will precipitate another existential crisis for American democracy.
More than anything, the great GOP Speaker fiasco of 2023 has been a lengthy tribute to the godlike supremacy of the MAGA king. “ MAGA is ascendant,” far right radical Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida told podcaster Steve Bannon. In that, it mirrors the degrading GOP presidential primary, in which candidates run, sort of, for an office that has already been assigned. Trump, after all, has already picked the party’s presidential nominee. He more or less picked the Speaker, too.
Every Republican action now is shaped by Trumpism and the political desperation and cultural panic that birther-ed it. The entire GOP presidential field flits in and out of Trump’s giant shadow. The new Speaker will have to pledge fealty to the full panoply of Trumpist depravity. As Trump’s legal peril comes increasingly into focus – crimes, already well documented, are now being admitted by various Trump thugs – the job of servicing the MAGA king will grow more complex and demanding.
Update: 5:00PM
In Jezebel they write:
Despite his almost zero name recognition, Johnson is pretty terrifying. It shouldn’t be lost on us that Emmer lost the Speakership largely because too many Freedom Caucus members deplored his vote for same-sex marriage. By contrast, Johnson is an anti-LGBTQ hardliner who introduced the federal version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill to prohibit references to queer identity in schools last year. In an unsubtle swipe at Johnson’s record, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who’s openly gay, said “Happy anniversary to my wife” as she cast her vote for Speaker for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Twitter called Johnson “an extremist.” Tellingly, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) celebrated Johnson’s nomination, claiming the switch from McCarthy to Johnson “shows the ascendance of this movement.”[...]In his remarks, not only does Johnson claim Roe “gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children,” but he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: “Think about the implications of that on the economy. We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest,” Johnson says. “If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this... Roe was a terrible corruption.” Mind you, social security and health care have been gutted in the last several years by Republican lawmakers, not people who choose to end a pregnancy.
This does not bode well for us.
“If we had all those able-bodied workers..." The only thing is that once they are born the Republicans throw them out on to the street to fend for themselves. They have cut WIC, SNAP, and the other safety net programs.
Update: 5:30 PM
The Advocate:
Johnson — a close friend of Jordan, who was also backed by Trump — was among the most right-wing candidates to seek the speakership. He voted against certifying the 2020 election, against legalizing same-sex marriage, and against more aid to the Ukrainian war effort. He also opposed the continuing resolution that wound up costing McCarthy his job, though he voted to retain McCarthy as speaker. Johnson was also a member of the legal team defending Trump in House impeachment hearings, and he played a key role in helping organize legal challenges to the 2020 election results.
Update 8:30 PM
“I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She’s not here, we couldn’t get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly,” Johnson said.“She’s spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord. And, um, she’s a little worn out,” Johnson smirked.“We all are,” he added.
Kelly Lary - Kelly graduated from Louisiana Tech University in 1995. After her teaching career, she transitioned to lecturing on family-related issues and is also a licensed PastoralCounselorKelly founded Onward Christian Counseling Services, an organization which aims to "provide confidential, biblically-based individual, marriage and family counseling to the people ofNorthwest Louisiana."Her biography on the organization's website states, "Kelly is also known by many for her personal testimony of deliverance through extraordinary trials, including her recovery from abroken neck in a 2007 car accident and other serious health challenges."The biography also notes that Kelly is a "leader in the pro-family movement.
Some thoughts:
A friend posted something on Facebook that got me thinking:
- The new Speaker was anointed by Trump.
- The House is in lock step and are taking orders from Trump who doesn't hold public office.
- The new Speaker is an election denier.
What she posted was a question, is this setting up for a coup in 2024 if the election doesn't go Trump way?
AP News wrote:
By Nicholas RiccardiOctober 26, 2023The new leader of one of the chambers of Congress that will certify the winner of next year’s presidential election helped spearhead the attempt to overturn the last one, raising alarms that Republicans could try to subvert the will of the voters if they remain in power despite safeguards enacted after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.[...]“This has been about one thing,” Rep. Pete Aguilar said. “This has been about who can appease Donald Trump. House Republicans have put their names behind someone who has been called the most important architect of the electoral college objections.”[...]Noting the speaker’s role in “the peaceful transfer of power” between presidential administrations, Lydgate warned, “When those in power don’t take our democracy and the will of the people seriously, it can have dire consequences.”
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