Lazy Caturday Reads: Speak Johnson and Other News

Happy Caturday!!

Witch with her cat familiar, woodcut by Meister Drucke (English School)

Lots of us normal people are still trying to figure out the new GOP Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. He thinks the Bible is a history book, and claims to live by biblical teachings; but he doesn’t seem to believe in many of the ethical values the book recommends, since he supports a twice divorced, twice impeached, four times indicted sexual assaulter for president. He has also announced his support for walking crime wave George Santos. Dakinikat and I have both posted quite a bit of information about Johnson, but there is still much more to learn.

Have you heard about Johnson’s black “adopted” son? Josh Marshall looked for more information about what exactly happened there. From Talking Points Memo: What’s Up With Speaker Mike Johnson’s Black Son?

I had only heard this story in passing until this evening when TPM Reader RS flagged something odd about the story. No African-American son shows up in any of the family photographs on Johnson’s House website or on his personal Facebook page. Nor does Michael figure anywhere in any of Johnson’s campaign biographies.

As I went further down this rabbit hole tonight I was a bit dumbfounded. Is Michael made up? Is he excluded from family pictures? I was so baffled that I went pretty far down that rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.

A bit more poking around revealed that Michael also came up a year earlier in a House hearing on reparations in June 2019. Johnson opposed reparations and noted that his black son Michael did too.

In response to jeering from spectators at the hearing Johnson departed from his prepared remarks to invoke Michael. “Let me finish … Listen, wait a minute … Many of my colleagues in this committee may not be aware, in addition to our four children at home, my wife and I have a much older son who happens to be African American. We took custody of Michael and made him part of our family 22 years ago when we were just newlyweds and Michael just 14 and out on the streets and on a dangerous path.”

A bit later in his remarks Johnson said, “I asked Michael this weekend what he thinks about the idea of reparations. In a very thoughtful way, he explained his opposition.”

Marshall notes that the black son doesn’t appear in any of Johnsons family photos, so he looked into the timeline to figure out why.

I was able to piece the story together from the introduction to the full video of the 2020 interview and a write up in The Advocate centered on the 2019 reparations hearing. In Johnson’s interview with Walter Isaacson it sounds like he’s talking about two 14 year olds, boys of the same age. But if you listen closely he refers to Michael at that age in the past tense. Michael was 36 in June 2019 and presumably 40 today. Johnson is 51.

This isn’t clear in the clip that’s been circulating. Or at least it wasn’t to me. But Johnson wasn’t being misleading. Because the chronology is explained earlier in the interview.

Johnson said at the hearing that he and his wife “took custody of Michael” around 1997. So the exact relationship with Michael is uncertain and it’s unclear whether the Johnsons ever adopted Michael. It sounds like the relationship may have been more of a fostering relationship and that the Johnsons consider him a son in an informal sense. But again it’s simply not clear.

Something familiar, by Peter de Seve

That can’t be right. That would mean Johnson “adopted” Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 11 years old? Another report I saw said that Johnson adopted Michael when he (Rep. Johnson) was 25 and Michael was 14.

Here’s a report from Insider: Speaker Mike Johnson explained why his ‘adopted’ Black son is not involved in his public life.

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed the public absence of his “adopted” Black son.

Johnson and his wife took custody of a Black teenager, Michael, 24 years ago and raised him as a son.

However, questions were raised when Michael was conspicuously absent from Johnson’s public life, including not appearing in his family portrait on his website.

Johnson’s communications director, Corinne Day, explained Michael’s absence in a statement to Newsweek: “When Speaker Johnson first ran for Congress in 2016, he and his wife, Kelly, spoke to their son Michael — who they took in as newlyweds when Michael was 14 years old.”

“At the time of the Speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own. He asked not to be involved in their new public life. The Speaker has respected that sentiment throughout his career and maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”

Johnson has previously compared their experience to “The Blind Side,” a 2009 movie starring Sandra Bullock, in which a white couple takes in a Black teenager who goes on to become a football star, The New York Times said.

Although raising him as his own, Johnson said he never formally adopted Michael because of the “lengthy adoption process,” per The Times.

OK, so he isn’t actually an adopted son. Read more at the Insider link.

The Love Potion, by Evelyn De Morgan

We haven’t heard much about Speaker Johnson’s wife Kelly, and she has reportedly been erasing information about her from social media. The couple have also deleted their past podcasts, but some alert folks have saved copies.

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery did some research on Kelly: Mike Johnson’s Wife Runs Counseling Service That Compares Being Gay To Bestiality, Incest.

The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.

Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.

“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.

More on Kelly’s activities:

Kelly Johnson features the couple’s podcast on the website of her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website also includes a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the corporate bylaws for the company ― and embraces a number of socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and women’s reproductive rights.

The agreement states that Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other. It puts being gay, bisexual or transgender in the same category as someone who has sex with animals or family members, calling all of these examples of “sexual immorality.”

“We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,” says the eight-page business document.

This agreement also refers to “pre-born babies” and says the company is committed to defending and protecting all human life, “from conception through natural death.”

I wonder if that includes opposing capital punishment?

Witch and familiar by Michael Thomas

According to Daniella Diaz at Politico, Mike Johnson is “Not an accidental speaker: How Mike Johnson positioned himself for the gavel.”

Much of the media has regarded Mike Johnson’s two-day-old speakership as something of an accident of history.

But the record shows Johnson’s ascent was no accident. It was the culmination of a deliberate series of moves aimed at positioning himself for greater power.

Since Johnson’s first run for Congress, the now four-term Louisianan has always ensured he is in line ideologically with the most conservative faction of the House GOP — without going to their tactical extremes.

That ultimately made him a palatable choice to fellow Republicans, who unanimously elected him speaker Wednesday after 22 fractious days on Capitol Hill.

Johnson was still a first-term state lawmaker when a vacancy opened in the northwest Louisiana House district then held by GOP Rep. John Fleming, a charter member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Fleming was among several Republicans who jumped into the race to succeed retiring Sen. David Vitter, and Johnson moved decisively to pick up Fleming’s baton.

Johnson ran with the Freedom Caucus imprimatur and a six-figure donation from its PAC, as well as backing from Citizens United and the Club for Growth — giving him a crucial leg up over the four other Republicans in the race.

But once sworn in, Johnson made an unexpected pivot: He frequently attended Freedom Caucus meetings but never actually joined the group. This was at a moment when it was solidifying its reputation as a thorn in leadership’s side, helping to complicate the ultimately failed effort to push health care legislation and other parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House.

Johnson instead set his sights on a different perch: leading the Republican Study Committee, the sprawling conservative policy group that counted the majority of the GOP conference among its members.

Ahead of his second term, Johnson took on Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a veteran pol who had served a decade in Congress and spent 25 years in California state politics before that. Johnson leapt into the race early, and where McClintock was openly critical of Freedom Caucus tactics, Johnson was more accommodating, suggesting that the two groups could work in tandem.

After Johnson won, McClintock told Roll Call, “The fact of the matter is he completely out campaigned me during the recess.”

Johnson comes across as wimpy, but he’s obviously very ambitious. There’s more at the link.

One more on Johnson from Politico: White House hits Johnson over claiming gun violence was a matter of the ‘heart.’

The Biden administration hit back Friday on Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent comments that placed blame for mass shootings in the United States on Americans’ “hearts,” calling the remarks “offensive.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the administration “absolutely” rejected “the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans’ ‘hearts.’”

Old Witch and Familiar

“Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry’s lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans,” Bates added.

The comments from Bates marks the first tiff between the newly elected Republican speaker and the Biden administration. It also serves as a reminder of the vast distance between the two most senior elected leaders of their respective parties, after a few short hours in which they showed a bit of good will toward each other.

On Thursday, Johnson appeared on Fox News, where he was asked about the murder of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine. The Louisiana Republican said it was not the right time to consider legislation and defended the Second Amendment.

“At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” Johnson said. “We have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves. That’s the Second Amendment and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”

The Biden White House, for its part, has renewed a call for gun legislation after the shooting in Lewiston. And it wasted little time hitting Johnson for standing in the way.

Whatever. If only he would STFU.

That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?