Opinion: Speaker Mike Johnson sings 'Kumbaya' with the Democrats Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Letters to the Editor: Speaker Mike Johnson is finally putting country before Trump
• d Republican joins motion to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker
• Negotiations at Columbia University unstable, organizers say
• House speaker condemned for remarks on pro-Palestine student protests
• Republicans Nominate Louisiana’s Mike Johnson for House Speaker
• Committee assignments

But it had never been deployed successfully until last October when a rebel band of Republicans joined with Democrats to oustKevin McCarthy as speaker. The list of the 10 speakers who served in the job longest includes just one Republican (and in the ninth slot at that). That speaker was Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, notorious as the autocratic "Czar Cannon" during three two-year tours as speaker that ended with his party's historic defeat in 1910.

Letters to the Editor: Speaker Mike Johnson is finally putting country before Trump

But the unity was in part a product of burnout among House Republicans, who in spite of their differences grew eager to put an end to the weekslong spectacle of mass dysfunction and paralysis that many said had left their constituents distraught. Critics have dubbed it a federal "don't say gay" measure and argued that it's aimed at barring references to LGBTQ people. A New York Times article last year called Johnson “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” on Jan. 6, 2021.

d Republican joins motion to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker

The eldest of four children of James and Jeanne Johnson (who later divorced), Mike Johnson grew up in a rural area outside Shreveport, Louisiana. After being burned and disabled while serving as firefighter, Johnson’s father cofounded and acted as the director of the nonprofit Percy R. Johnson Burn Foundation. Later he founded PM Hazmat, Inc., which developed safety and emergency response training programs. Homosexuals do not meet the criteria for a suspect class under the equal protection clause because they are neither disadvantaged nor identified on the basis of immutable characteristics, as all are capable of changing their abnormal lifestyles.

Negotiations at Columbia University unstable, organizers say

“My message to the students inside the encampment is go back to class and stop the nonsense,” said Johnson. Hundreds of students have occupied the campus in tents for days demanding the school divest from companies with ties to Israel. And finally, when his plan to work with Democrats to clear the way for aiding Ukraine met with an outpouring of venom from ultraconservatives already threatening to depose him, Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian, knelt and prayed for guidance. Johnson, who also met with Jewish students before his remarks, said he planned to call President Biden later Wednesday to urge him to take action, adding that the National Guard may need to be deployed. "Our feeling is that they have not acted to restore order on the campus," he said.

But he voluntarily resigned after the GOP lost badly in the 2006 midterms, a defeat Bush called "a thumpin' " at the time. Johnson has so far refused to put a $95 billion Senate-passed national security package with Ukraine funding to a House vote, but he promised that funding Ukraine is the next priority now that government funding is resolved. The removal threat against him now puts any votes to help Ukraine in potential jeopardy and could also empower Democrats to make demands since their votes might be needed to save his job.

House speaker condemned for remarks on pro-Palestine student protests

Mike is a dedicated husband and father and an attorney who has devoted his life and career to fighting for the fundamental freedoms and traditional values that have made America the greatest nation in the history of the world. Mike was first elected to Congress on December 10, 2016, by the largest margin of victory in his region in more than 50 years and is currently serving in his fourth term in Congress. As the end of October approached, Johnson emerged from the chaos as a consensus candidate whose relatively short tenure in the House and rather low profile meant that he had yet to generate many enemies. His staunchly conservative ideological orientation and election denial satisfied the far right, and his gentle personal style was widely appealing. It was even posited that he might be able to work well with the Democrats, though Johnson had ranked 429th out of 435 representatives on a 2021 bipartisan index released by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Just the same, on October 25 Johnson was elected the 56th speaker of the House and stood second in the line of succession to the presidency.

This marks a clear departure from how those same members viewed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision earlier this month to put a short-term spending bill on the floor, which ultimately led to his ouster. By Tuesday evening, five more Republicans, none with a national profile, were vying for the nomination. Mr. Johnson won after multiple rounds of ballots, beating out Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a member of the Freedom Caucus. A majority of those opposed to Mr. Emmer were members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and loyal to Mr. Trump.

On the other hand, the House unanimously approved legislation introduced by Johnson that prohibited “dismemberment abortion,” the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure often used to terminate second-trimester pregnancies. Also passed by the Senate and signed by the governor, the law went into effect in August 2016. Johnson's political career began when he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015; he served in that body until 2017. 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.

USC cancels main graduation ceremony over protests

Opinion Sanity Prevails, and So Does Mike Johnson - The Wall Street Journal

Opinion Sanity Prevails, and So Does Mike Johnson.

Posted: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 21:23:00 GMT [source]

The speaker’s visit marks the first time the top representative in the U.S. House has visited a college campus amid ongoing protests that have led to tense exchanges between pro-Palestinian and Jewish students. More than 100 people on Columbia’s campus were recently arrested and charged with trespassing, with several students who took part in the protest facing suspension just weeks before year’s end. Shafik called on the New York Police Department, whose officers arrived in riot gear, to arrest protesters just one day after she and other Columbia leaders told Congress she would make changes aimed at ending the harassment of Jewish students.

The 30-year saga began with Gingrich of Georgia, who was the first member of his party to gain "the big gavel" since the early 1950s and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gingrich had been a backbench rabble-rouser since coming to the House in 1978 and built up a cadre of supporters until he won the party's No. 2 power position as minority whip in 1989. He soon eclipsed the party's leader, Robert Michel, who was nearing retirement.

He and his wife Kelly, a former school teacher and now a Licensed Pastoral Counselor, have been married since 1999, and have four children, Hannah, Abigail, Jack and Will, and an older son Michael, who became a part of their family in 1999. Today, they reside in Bossier Parish.You can find Congressman's official photo here. In February 2015 Johnson ran unopposed as a Republican in the special election to fill the vacant seat in the lower chamber of the Louisiana legislature representing District 8, made up of a section of the northwestern part of the state, including a portion of Shreveport. As a legislator, he was driven by his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and his support for religious freedoms. In the Louisiana House of Representatives, Johnson authored the Marriage and Conscience Act, a bill aimed at averting harmful treatment by the state of individuals in response to their views on marriage. Critics of the legislation—which failed to advance beyond committee consideration—argued that it offered legal cover to discriminate against same-sex couples.

In 2016 Johnson defeated a pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat by more than 30 percent of the vote to gain the seat representing Louisiana’s deep-red 4th district in the U.S. (He was reelected in 2018, 2020, and 2022.) He entered Congress in the same election that elevated Republican Donald Trump to the White House. Johnson soon became a member of the president’s inner circle, regularly joining the entourage that flew with the president on Air Force One.

Basil Rodriguez, 23, argued Wednesday that Johnson and any lawmaker who backed sending aid to Israel is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Palestinians. The hearing launched further investigations by the committee and continual hearings to combat antisemitism on college campus, ending in Shafik’s Capitol Hill testimony last Wednesday. “If you are a protester on this campus, and you are proud that you’ve been endorsed by Hamas, you are part of the problem,” fellow N.Y. That Democrats would save a Republican speaker is almost inconceivable, and it’s the ultimate evidence that we’ve got a coalition government in the House.