On Oct. 25, the US House of Representatives elected Rep. Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House.
Johnson secured the position with 220 votes, against 209 votes for his opponent, Dem. Hakeem Jeffries.
“You’re going to see an aggressive schedule in the days and weeks ahead,” Johnson told the House after his election. “You’re gonna see Congress working as hard as it’s ever worked and we are going to deliver for the American people.”
Johnson’s election concludes a three week period when the House had no Speaker, after previous House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted by the House on Oct. 3. This was the first time in its history that the House of Representatives elected to remove someone from the Speaker position. The vote to remove McCarthy was 216 to 210, with eight Republicans voting in favor of the removal.
According to Reuters, the motion to remove McCarthy was instigated by Republican House members, after McCarthy sided with Democratic House members to stop a partial government shutdown. McCarthy had also previously angered Democratic House members by proposing an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governing over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating. Our government is designed to find compromise,” McCarthy said at an Oct. 3 press conference.
Government funding will expire on Nov. 17, and the responsibility of preventing a future shutdown now falls to Johnson.
“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,” Johnson told the House.
Hours after Johnson was elected, the House passed a resolution in support of Israel in its conflict with Hamas. The resolution received bipartisan support, with 412 votes in favor of the motion and 10 against it. According to reporting from CNN, support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has been discussed by the House, but has received opposition from House Republicans.
Johnson is noted for being a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump. Following Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election, Johnson led an amicus brief supporting a Texas lawsuit which sought to invalidate the election results in four swing states. Those states were Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming, all of which voted for Biden. The amicus brief was signed by over 100 House Republicans.
“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 posted on X, then known as Twitter, after the 2020 election.
On Jan. 6, Johnson supported objections to Electoral College results during Congress’ ruling on Joe Biden’s presidential win. That same day, supporters of Trump stormed Washington, D.C., in an attempt to overturn the election results.
“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 said in an Oct. 25 post on Truth Social, prior to Johnson’s win.
Johnson has been a vocal opponent of the LGBTQ+ community, according to reporting from CNN’s KFILE. In 2022, Johnson proposed a bill which would prohibit federal funding for sexually-oriented programs, events, or literature for children under the age of 10. Though the bill was not passed, it became controversial for prohibiting topics of gender identity and dysphoria.
“A federal ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ bill… is their latest cruel attempt to stigmatize and marginalize the community, not in an attempt to solve actual problems but only to rile up their extremist base,” Human Rights Campaign Government Affairs Director David Stacy said in a statement.
Before beginning his political career in 2015, Johnson was an attorney and spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal advocacy group. While working for ADF in 2003, Johnson authored his opposition to the landmark Lawrence v. Texas, which deemed that sanctions on “certain intimate sexual conduct” is unconstitutional. “I was a litigator that was called upon to defend the state marriage amendments,” Johnson told Fox News on Oct. 26. “If you remember back in the early 2000s, there were over 35 states somewhere in that number that the people went to the ballot in their respective states and they amended their state constitutions to say marriage is one man, one woman. Well, I was a religious liberty defense lawyer and I was called to go in and defend those cases in the court.”
