Proof that Republicans can still do what's rational and right Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Republicans Nominate Louisiana’s Mike Johnson for House Speaker
• Covenant marriage
• News Analysis: The House Republican civil war shows Trump’s power — and its limits
• Letters to the Editor: Jews are indigenous to Israel. They’re defending their homeland, not ‘colonizing’ it
• d Republican joins motion to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker
• He tried to overturn the 2020 election results

On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, Mr. Johnson had honed his arguments undermining the election to be more palatable. He presented colleagues with arguments they could use to oppose the will of the voters without embracing conspiracy theories and the lies of widespread fraud pushed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Johnson instead faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional. A social conservative, Mr. Johnson played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results.

Republicans Nominate Louisiana’s Mike Johnson for House Speaker

Graffiti described as “hateful” has been painted on campus, the officials said. The university closed its campus Wednesday evening as LAPD began arresting demonstrators. However, I would have liked to see language in the bill requiring President Biden and his military leaders to provide a strategy to help Ukraine defeat Russia rather than simply maintain the status quo.

Covenant marriage

McCarthy’s ouster caused embarrassing infighting within the GOP conference to spill into the public eye. Before Johnson, three other men who raised their hands for the role — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana; Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee; and Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota — tried and failed to secure enough votes. Before the floor vote to elect him, Johnson sketched out a one-year road map for the GOP conference, saying he would pass key appropriations bills by the end of this week.

Opinion House speaker Mike Johnson’s Ukraine vote leadership showed courage - The Washington Post

Opinion House speaker Mike Johnson’s Ukraine vote leadership showed courage.

Posted: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 17:12:00 GMT [source]

News Analysis: The House Republican civil war shows Trump’s power — and its limits

"This is dangerous. This is not free expression. This is not First Amendment. They are threatening, intimidating." Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from retaliation against Iran even though its attack appeared to defy the president’s own warning after Oct. 7. One faction, comprising an overwhelming majority of the House GOP caucus, is interested in accomplishing the possible. The other is more interested in aiming for the impossible and then complaining about falling short. The hearing led to a bipartisan call on Capitol Hill to denounce or demand the resignation of leaders at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their responses, which were deemed out of touch. House Democrats descended Monday onto Columbia’s campus to express outrage over antisemitic harassment of Jewish students on and around campus.

Columbia protests: Gov. Kathy Hochul tells Mike Johnson to go home - POLITICO

Columbia protests: Gov. Kathy Hochul tells Mike Johnson to go home.

Posted: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 18:50:52 GMT [source]

Almost immediately after Mr. Johnson was elected, lawmakers began debating a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel and condemning Hamas, which passed overwhelmingly. With less than seven years under his belt, Johnson has a shorter length of service in the House than past speakers in modern history. 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. Johnson has a spotless history of voting against legal abortion, earning an "A+" rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Abortion rights proponents have noted his work from 2010 as a senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, citing a letter in which he fought to shut down an abortion clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. With two decades of previous experience in Constitutional law, Mike previously served on the House Judiciary Committee, and as chairman of its Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

d Republican joins motion to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker

It had been thought that there was little chance that his father would survive, but, when he did, Johnson, then age 12, saw it as a miracle and became a person of deep faith. At some point during his teenage years, he gave up his ambition of becoming a firefighter to instead pursue a legal career and conservative politics. Johnson is a graduate of the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University. Before entering politics, he worked as an attorney in private practice and for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF); at ADF, he advocated for sodomy laws and criminalizing homosexuality, writing an amicus brief that opposed the eventual U.S. A young-earth creationist, Johnson sat on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention between 2004 and 2012.

Role in 2020 presidential election denial

Supreme Court amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit arguing that Biden’s victories in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin were invalid because election officials changed voting procedures without first seeking legislative approval. He will now play a key role as Congress tries to avoid a government shutdown on November 18 by agreeing on a new funding bill. With these important negotiations looming, here’s what you need to know about Johnson as he assumes his high-profile title. The Louisiana congressman’s ascent to the speakership is one of the fastest in history and comes at a pivotal time for the legislature.

He tried to overturn the 2020 election results

Republicans had cast aside two previous winners of their closed-door nominating process — Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio — before settling on Mr. Emmer. Pressed by reporters on Tuesday night about his efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Johnson smiled and shook his head, saying, “next question,” as Republicans beside him booed. House Republicans chose and then quickly repudiated yet another of their nominees for speaker on Tuesday and rushed to name a fourth, pressing to put an end to a remarkable three-week-long deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed.

How Mike Johnson Got to ‘Yes’ on Aid to Ukraine

But some House Democrats have signaled that they plan to vote to save Johnson. Congress was able to veer from the dangerous, dead-end course that the Republican-run House had it on for the past 16 months only once Johnson very belatedly took the keys from his MAGA allies and started driving events himself. Recognizing that he had no choice but to deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden, Johnson helped pass overdue government funding last month and, in recent days, green-lighted votes reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and — finally! — approving aid to Ukraine to help it defend itself and the rest of Europe from a rapacious Russia. 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.

Technically, he died as speaker, but his party lost its majority before the next Congress convened and elected a Democrat to the job. Prior to the GOP's 40-year sentence as the minority party, several of its speakers had risen to the top rung largely on their personal popularity among their colleagues. One was Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who led the party in the House during two brief interludes of majority status after World War II. Both lasted only the minimum two years, the first ending with Democratic Harry S. Truman's surprise White House win in 1948.

Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. Jordan, like Johnson, was deeply involved in election denialism, but Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck, who voted for Johnson on Wednesday and against Jordan previously, said there was a key difference between their records. A forthcoming HBO documentary on a major sex abuse scandal at Ohio State University could have haunted the GOP if Jordan, a former assistant wrestling coach there, had been elevated to the speakership. And Scalise has faced flak for reportedly attending an event in the early 2000s hosted by a group founded by David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. “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,” the president said.

“This affirms the path that we took,” Representative Bob Good of Virginia, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, tells reporters. “We went through a lot to get here, but we are ready to govern and that will begin right away,” Johnson says in his first news conference as speaker. Mr. Johnson immediately faces a host of challenges that dogged his predecessor, Mr. McCarthy. He is confronting a mid-November deadline to pass a measure to fund the government to avert a shutdown. And he will need to lead a conference deeply divided over foreign policy as Congress considers the Biden administration’s $105 billion funding request for Israel, Ukraine and the southern border. On October 25, 2023, Congressman Mike Johnson (LA-04) was elected as the Speaker of the House.

The list, which is oddly written by the sitting speaker at any given time, remains with the House Clerk and would be made public if the speakership were vacant. Additionally, many Republicans in Congress were embarrassed by McCarthy’s removal as speaker, which exposed deep party divisions and infighting, which left their new majority unable to function for three weeks. Once the motion is introduced, the lawmaker can walk onto the House floor and request a vote. Such a request would force House leaders to schedule a vote on the resolution within two legislative days. Prior to that, the last Republican speaker had been Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, who died in 1931.