Meet MAGA Mike

Speaker Johnson is a MAGA extremist and election denier who has no place being Speaker. 

From his pursuit of radical abortion restrictions to his votes denying food assistance to moms and kids to his years-long assault on Social Security, his extreme MAGA Speakership should be seen as a direct attack on working families and will have devastating consequences for our democracy.

This is par for the course for the extreme House majority – once again, they sold out the American people by choosing MAGA extremism and placing an election denier second in line to the presidency.

Speaker Johnson’s Extreme Record:

• Johnson voted to overturn the election results in 2020 and was a leader in attempts to overturn the election.
  • Johnson signed onto– and led– “an amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit to invalidate millions of votes and the election results from four key swing states that went for President-elect Joe Biden.” 
    • CNN: “Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a close ally of President Donald Trump, sent an email from a personal email account to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the longshot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” The email is here. 
    • New York Times: “As chairman of the Republican Study Committee, he pushed its members to sign the brief, and he also wrote an email to all Republican lawmakers warning in bold red letters that Mr. Trump would be tracking their response. ‘He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,’ he wrote.” 
    • New York Times: “The lawyer for the House Republican leadership told Mr. Johnson that his arguments were unconstitutional, according to three people involved in the conversations, and Ms. Cheney, also a lawyer, called the brief ‘embarrassing.’ Mr. McCarthy, the Republican leader, told members that he refused to sign, the three people said.” 
    • New York Times: “In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”
    • New York Times: “Yet when it came time to stake out an official justification for their votes, about three-quarters chiefly relied on Mr. Johnson’s argument, including 35 who signed a statement that he had written and read aloud at the previous day’s meeting.” 
    • New York Times: “Ms. Cheney, through a spokesman, declined to comment. But three colleagues said she had called Mr. Johnson’s role ‘extraordinarily destructive,’ noting that his image as an ultraconservative constitutional lawyer had convinced members who would never have followed outliers like Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado or Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.” 
  • Days after the November 2020 election, Johnson called Donald Trump and told him “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.” 
  • On November 17, 2020, Johnson made comments about the questioning election machines used in the 2020 election and supporting Trump’s claims of election machines being “rigged.” Johnson posted the clip of this conversation on his official Congressional Twitter account. 
    • AUDIO: Johnson: “A lot of us know intuitively that there was a lot amiss about this election day. The fact that all these states with Democrat leaders changed the rules in the fourth quarter of the game … and the allegations of these voting machines, some of them being rigged, with this software by Dominion, there is a lot of merit in that. And when the president says the election was rigged, that’s what he’s talking about. The fix was in … In Georgia, it really was rigged. It was set up for the Biden team to win … When you have a software system that is used across the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, when you have testimonials of people like this, but in large numbers, it begs to be litigated and investigated.”
  • On January 6th, prior to the violence in the Capitol, Johnson tweeted “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic!  It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” 
    • After the violent mob stormed the Capitol, Johnson said that he did not “think President Trump is any more responsible for what happened at the Capitol today than the congressmen of Portland are responsible for what happened there,” referring to some violence at anti-police brutality protests in Portland, OR. 
    • On the evening of January 6th, Johnson still “refused to say whether he thought Biden had won the November election.” 
    • On the evening of January 6th, Johnson said “We are an experiment in government. Nobody knows how long this can last.” 
  • Johnson voted against establishing the January 6th investigative committees and voted against impeaching Donald Trump. 
  • Johnson voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear before the January 6th Committee. 
• In September 2023, Johnson voted for the House Republicans’ continuing resolution that would raise the cost of housing, home heating, food, and health care. It would also cut access to Social Security, cut Head Start slots, cut loans for farmers, cut support for small businesses, and take food away from women, children, and seniors. 
• Johnson is a member and former chair of the Republican Study Committee, a group of Republicans proposing to cut Social Security and Medicare, which will put millions of senior and low-income Americans at risk. 
• Johnson repeatedly voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would allow the Department of Justice to overturn discriminatory state and local voter suppression laws. 
• Johnson voted for a national abortion ban and cosponsored a 20-week abortion ban in 2021.
  • NYT: “[Johnson] had made his name as a litigator for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative counterweight to the American Civil Liberties Union. When Louisiana was defending its ban on same-sex marriage, Mr. Johnson twice argued its case at the state Supreme Court.” 
  • The Alliance Defending Freedom has been described as “the group that overturned Roe.” 
  • Alliance Defending Freedom is a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group.
• Johnson says he has a “Batman and Robin” relationship with Jim Jordan.