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The new House speaker, an evangelical Christian, has a staunchly conservative record on gay rights, abortion, gun protections and much more.
By Kayla Guo
Report from Capitol Hill
President Mike Johnson, the little-known congressman from Louisiana who received the gavel Wednesday, is deeply conservative on tax and social issues, reflecting the Republican Party’s sharp shift to the right.
Mr. Johnson, an attorney, also played a leading role in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, file a lawsuit to overturn the effects in 4 battleground states he lost, and then provide members of Congress with a legal recourse argument in which to justify their vote to invalidate the effects.
He has a professional score of 92 from the American Conservative Union and 90 from Heritage Action for America.
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Johnson is a fiscal conservative who believes Congress has a “moral and constitutional duty” to balance the budget, cut spending and “pursue growth-friendly tax reforms and permanent tax cuts,” according to his website.
He voted in favor of the deal in May to suspend the debt ceiling negotiated between former President Kevin McCarthy and the Biden administration. But along with 89 other Republicans, Johnson voted against the stopgap investment bill introduced through Johnson-McCarthy last month to avert a government shutdown just hours before it was set to begin. This bill eventually passed with more Democrats than Republicans and impeached Mr. McCarthy.
In a letter this week, before he was elected president, Johnson proposed a short-term investment bill to avoid a shutdown and a competitive timeline for approving spending spending for a year in the meantime. But he didn’t specify what degrees of spending he would make in the transitional bill, and many Republicans have balked at such measures without really extensive cuts that can’t be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate or signed into law by President Biden.
Johnson spoke out forcefully in favor of Ukraine when Russia first launched its war, saying at the time that Russia’s invasion “poses a risk to the national security of the entire West. “
He added that the U. S. imposes “debilitating sanctions that are opposed to Russia’s economic interests” and “excludes Russia from global industry and foreign institutions. “In April last year, Johnson voted in favor of a law that made it less difficult to supply weapons to Ukraine from the United States.
But Johnson has recently opposed additional aid to Ukraine. In May 2022 and last month, he voted against spending that would provide more funding.
“American taxpayers sent more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine last year,” Johnson said on social media in February. They deserve to know that the Ukrainian government is completely open and transparent about the use of this large sum of fiscal resources. “
Asked after his election as president if he would increase aid to Ukraine, he replied, “We all do,” though he later added that aid deserves to come with “strings attached. “
Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian, has been fiercely opposed to gay rights. In 2004, he called homosexuality an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous” way of life, writing that same-sex marriage is “the grim harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that can doom even the most powerful republic. “
He opposed the law requiring federal popularity of same-sex marriages.
Last year, Johnson introduced a bill that would ban the use of the federal budget to provide education to children under the age of 10 and include a discussion of LGBTQ issues. Critics have called the proposal a national edition of Florida’s legislation, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
He led a hearing in July on the “dangers and violations of due process similar to ‘gender-affirming care’ for children. “In his opening statement, he claimed that “teachers, professors, administrators, and left-wing media outlets” were running to force gender transitions on young people.
“Gender is not something you’re assigned at birth,” she said. “This is a prenatal progression that occurs when each and every fetus is in its mother’s womb. You can’t surgically lose yourself, or anyone else, of this truth. “of life.
Johnson voted for a national abortion ban and co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban; earned an A grade from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Before being elected to Congress in 2017, Johnson was an attorney and spokesperson for the Anti-Abortion and Anti-Gay Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Defending Freedom Alliance.
Johnson has meteorological science and consistently voted against replacing the climate and electric power laws. Oil and fuel corporations contributed more than any other industry last year. Its district includes Shreveport, a former oil town.
Johnson, who has a 92 percent score on the National Rifle Association, sought to protect and expand gun rights when he was in Congress. Last year, he opposed a bipartisan gun law aimed at making it harder for other harmful people to get guns. He co-sponsored a law that would allow others with concealed entry permits in one state to bring a firearm in another concealed state and co-sponsored a bill in 2019 that would have allowed the sale of firearms across state lines.
Kayla Guo is a journalist in Washington, D. C. , who covers Congress. She belongs to the 2023-24 class of the New York Times Scholarship. Learn more about Kayla Guo
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