Mike Johnson

RRepresentative Mike Johnson (LA-04) is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Republican leader of Congress. Johnson has said a second Trump term would be like the first, but “on turbo,” adding, “I think we are going to be right off to the races!” Elected to Congress in 2016, Johnson quickly became part of Trump’s inner circle, traveling regularly with him on Air Force One. “It’s surreal,” he once told a Shreveport reporter, “When I call him, he calls back within a couple of hours.” As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Johnson was one of Trump’s fiercest defenders during his impeachment hearings. Trump included him in his Senate trial defense team, a gesture Johnson described as “his ultimate gesture of trust.” Johnson’s loyalty to Trump was highlighted again by his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, when he backed litigation peddling false claims of voter fraud and argued against counting electoral votes from some battleground states. “Trump learned a lot of painful lessons in his first term,” Johnson claimed, including that some federal employees “might be working against him.”

In May and June of 2024 Johnson attended Donald Trump’s 2016 election interference trial and asserted that the New York court was “corrupt” and a “borderline criminal conspiracy,” claiming “this ridiculous prosecution that is not about justice. It’s all about politics.” Johnson also called on the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Johnson shared “I think that the Justices on the court – I know many of them personally – I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight … it’s going to take a while … this will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it, it’s just going to take some time to do it.”

Four days after Election Day in 2020, Johnson posted on social media: “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’s support for Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud went beyond mere rhetoric. He played a key role in organizing an amicus brief supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania, an effort by one state to overturn the election results in battleground states.

The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, alleged that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin had violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution by making it easier to vote during the deadly covid-19 pandemic, without the approval of their state legislatures. Johnson, who frequently touts his background as a lawyer, has argued the changes to voting procedures in some states during the pandemic, such as the expansion of mail-in voting and the use of drop boxes, had violated the Constitution.

The suit sought to delay the Electoral College vote and allow the Republican-controlled legislatures in those four states to appoint their own electors, handing the election to Trump. Johnson was instrumental in rallying support for the lawsuit among his Republican colleagues in the House. He circulated an email to every Republican member of Congress, urging them to sign on to an amicus brief backing the Texas lawsuit. In the email, which was sent on December 9, 2020, Johnson emphasized that Trump had personally asked him to “request that all join on to our brief” and that the president would be “anxiously awaiting the final list to review.”

The initial filing of the amicus brief included 106 Republican House members, representing over half of the GOP caucus. The next day, Johnson refiled the brief with an additional 20 signatures, including that of then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, bringing the total to 126 Republican representatives.

Though that lawsuit failed, Johnson continued to push the narrative that the election had been marred by widespread fraud and irregularities. He insisted he was not promoting a “grand conspiracy” but merely seeking to address the concerns of millions of Americans who doubted the integrity of the election that had “this giant question mark hanging over it.”

On January 6, 2021, the day Congress was set to certify the Electoral College vote, Johnson took to the House floor to object to the counting of electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. In a speech explaining his decision, Johnson reiterated his claim that these states had conducted their elections in an unconstitutional manner. He asserted: “The reason that I and so many of my colleagues voted to sustain objections that were submitted over the electors submitted by two of those states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, is very simple. And this is a key point. The slate of electors were produced by a clearly unconstitutional process, period.”

Despite the January 6 insurrection and the overwhelming evidence of more than 60 state and federal judicial rulings rejecting Trump’s election challenges, Johnson continued to oppose certifying the results. His vote, along with those of 138 other Republican House members and seven Republican senators, marked the largest congressional challenge to a presidential election in American history.

In a May 2022 episode Truth be Told, a podcast hosted by Johnson and his wife, he argued that “One of the most misunderstood and misused phrases in modern America is the separation of church and state,” adding that “many people have been led to believe that the so-called separation clause is actually part of the United States Constitution.” He went on to contend that “the wall was never intended to prohibit religion in the public square or to prohibit its influence on government issues and policy, etc. The wall, that metaphor, the wall was intended to do exactly the opposite of that. It was meant to prohibit the government from encroaching upon religion.”

Johnson recently voted against the Right to Contraception Act, which would have protected access to birth control, and participated in legislative efforts to keep the bill from reaching the floor, despite its eventual passage. He also introduced legislation in the U.S. House called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.” Described by critics as a “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” the legislation would have prohibited “the use of Federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.” The bill was modeled on a Florida law banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade classes and, if passed, might have affected “not just instruction in schools, but also events and literature at any federally-funded institution.” He has also supported a rule that allowed health care workers with a “religious or conscience” objection to providing birth control or sterilization to refuse to participate in those procedures.

Before entering politics, Johnson spent two decades as a litigator for right-wing Christian causes, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). As an attorney for ADF, Johnson wrote editorials for his local paper calling homosexuality “inherently unnatural.” He argued “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do. This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”

As an attorney for ADF, Johnson collaborated with Exodus International, a group that promoted so-called “conversion therapy” to change the sexual orientation of gay people. For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event known as the “Day of Truth,” designed as a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence” intended to raise awareness of bullying of LGBTQ+ youth. He was also a trustee of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. While Johnson was previously working for law firm Freedom Guard, creationist ministry Answers in Genesis hired Johnson to champion using $18M of tax incentives to fund Ark Encounter, a Noah’s Ark museum and theme park in Kentucky. Following then Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s determination that the theme park discriminated on the basis of religious beliefs, Johnson said “Just as every rational person understands the commonwealth was not somehow ‘endorsing’ the consumption of alcohol when it approved tax refunds for a beer distillery tour project in 2012, or ‘endorsing’ the speech of every stand-up comedian or adult-themed entertainer who may fill the stage at one of the entertainment venues previously approved, there can be no valid argument that the commonwealth will somehow endorse the private religious speech or viewpoints that may be expressed at the Ark Encounter Park.” Johnson has also defended Louisiana schools teaching creationism.

Johnson defended Louisiana’s same-sex marriage ban before the Supreme Court in 2004 and again in 2014, and he authored numerous bills aiming to restrict abortion, including the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act and the Protect the UNBORN Act. In the Louisiana state legislature, where he served from 2015 to 2017, Johnson was known as a “social issues warrior.”

Johnson tries to maintain a less confrontational persona on Capitol Hill. He founded the “Honor and Civility Caucus,” pledging that “our political rivals in Congress are not our enemies.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, described Johnson as “the most extreme theocrat we have in the House of Representatives,” but also noted that he “has absolutely the best manners of anybody in the Freedom Caucus—there is a real niceness, a sweetness about the guy.” At the start of his Speakership, Johnson made news for his promotion of the Covenant Eyes, an app that flags if you look at porn, at a church “War on Technology” event in October 2022. Johnson shared that Covenant Eyes “Sends a report to your accountability partner. So my accountability partner right now is Jack, my son,” whom Johnson said had “got a clean slate so far.”

Johnson is also a climate change denier who takes aim at scientific consensus, stating “I am not a big proponent of the climate change data because I have seen data on the other side.” He asserted that the “climate is changing, but the question is, is climate changing because of natural cycles in the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.” According to data from OpenSecrets, Johnson has received more donations from the oil and gas industry than from any other sector, totaling $630,634 from 2015 to 2024, with more than half of that coming in 2023-2024 alone

While a lawmaker, Johnson also repeatedly sought to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Per Mother Jones: “Johnson introduced the ‘WHOLE Act,’ a bill that he said would update the ‘antiquated’ ESA by ‘removing unnecessary burdens on the agriculture community, while continuing to protect wildlife and their habitats.’ In short, the bill would have made it easier for land developers to build on or near areas designated as ‘critical habitat’ under the ESA.”

This profile has been updated.