--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: Tomorrow, Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson will travel to Mar-a-Lago to give a joint speech with candidate-slash-defendant Donald J. Trump on election integrity.
--:-- Noel King: Trump likes Johnson a lot, but on Capitol Hill, Johnson is stuck. He wants to pass legislation to fund the war in Ukraine, but hardline members of his caucus are blocking him.
--:-- Noel King: Mike Johnson has completely betrayed our conference, and his leadership cannot be allowed to continue going forward.
--:-- Noel King: His main antagonist, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, sent a letter to House Republicans on Tuesday tearing into Johnson for surrendering to Democrats, by which she meant working with them to prevent a government shutdown.
--:-- Noel King: Greene is threatening to call a vote to oust Johnson. And if she does, well, look at what happened to Kevin McCarthy.
--:-- Noel King: The office of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, Speaker Mike Johnson.
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--:-- Noel King: Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at TheGuardian.com.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with New Yorker staff writer David Kirkpatrick, who's been writing about Speaker Mike Johnson for years.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So you might remember that when Johnson became Speaker, a lot of people were very surprised. They were like, who is this guy?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I was not surprised because I'd interviewed Johnson.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Well, I'll tell you, to be honest, I left those conversations and I thought, wow, this guy is going someplace.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: At that time, he was nobody I'd ever heard of before, but it was clear that he was an extremely capable politician and a charismatic figure.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He was a mover inside the conference, if you will.
--:-- Noel King: So Mike Johnson grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father was a firefighter, a firefighter whose specialty was hazardous materials.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And when Mike Johnson was about 12, I believe in 1984, his father was called to a fire at a cold storage facility.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And there was a huge explosion. His partner was killed.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Mike Johnson's father was very, very badly burned across pretty much all of his body.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He narrowly escaped from that fire by crawling through a tiny hole, reportedly just 12 inches wide, and he was a big guy.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So around Shreveport, if you spend any time there, everybody knows the story.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Pretty much everybody believes that only a miracle could have saved Mike Johnson's father.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: After that accident, as his father was slowly and painfully recuperating, he changed.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, he was advised to seek a place to live where the air might be a little bit drier, a little bit less humid for his recuperation, and that set him off somehow on a kind of voyage of discovery.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And so while young Mike Johnson and his mother and his siblings became more and more committed to their evangelical church in Louisiana, his father drifted into kind of new age circles and was married and divorced a few times and became something sort of very different and drifted away from the family.
--:-- Noel King: So Johnson, young Mike Johnson, went through the kind of shock and trauma of his father's accident, followed by his father's kind of abandonment.
--:-- Noel King: He becomes, for lack of a better word, a leader in his school community.
--:-- Noel King: The kind of boy who the teacher says, please, you watch the class while I have to go run an errand.
--:-- Noel King: You know, somebody who, for better or worse, other children look up to.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he takes on that role.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Within his own family, his mother begins to treat him like a kind of surrogate father to his three younger siblings.
--:-- Noel King: Tell me about his time as a theater kid.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: His friends from Shreveport say that back in the day when he was in high school, he was almost as interested in theater as he was in politics.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I mean, as you might guess from the current Mike Johnson, he ran for every student office he could and was involved in the statewide student government and all that stuff.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But he was also a very avid actor.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And when he was actually selected by the Republican members of the House to be the new speaker, his mother told an old friend of his like, oh, my goodness, I thought it was just another play that Mike was in.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I could hardly believe that it was true.
--:-- Noel King: So he likes theater. He likes politics, childhood politics, teenage politics.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And then after graduating from high school, where does Mike Johnson go next?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So Mike Johnson goes to Louisiana State University.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I believe he's the first in his family to attend college and then on to Louisiana State Law School and begins practicing law.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, he's grown up in Louisiana as a Southern Baptist and he is grown up committed to his family's church.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Very much in tune with the values of that church and of his state.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he's drawn right away to conservative Christian causes.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He becomes a protege of Tony Perkins.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Americans understand the definition of a marriage is what it's been for 5,000 years.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's the union of a man and a woman.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He now the head of the Family Research Council and was then a Louisiana state legislator
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And right out of law school he involved in a very high case against a Baton Rouge abortion clinic
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Abortion care the stated topic today is of course an oxymoron
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It was sort of an expose where people who had worked at the abortion clinic were trying to expose what they considered poor practices there.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And that became the grist for some legal battles and for some legislation to try to place restrictions on abortion clinics in the interest of safety and also, of course, in the interest of reducing the availability of abortion.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: There is no right to abortion in the Constitution, period.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It never was.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's not in its text.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's not in its structure.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's not in its meaning.
--:-- Noel King: Around the time he was finishing up law school, he was volunteering with an evangelical Christian youth group.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And as a volunteer, he would drive his SUV into downtown Baton Rouge and pick up a bunch of kids from what he called inner-city neighborhoods when he talked to me.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he got to know one young boy whose name was uh michael james one day he goes to pick him up and he learns from uh the boy's siblings that he's moved out he's living in a trailer i think crowded with several siblings and a single mother and they say he's gone and mike johnson says as he told me like what's going on where is this kid and they say oh he's out behind the walmart so johnson drives over there and sure enough uh this young man at the age of about 14 had set himself up in a cardboard box and was planning just to take up residence behind the Walmart.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So Johnson says, you know, get out of there, get in the car, takes him home.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And the young man effectively moves in with Mike Johnson and his young wife.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: We took custody of Michael and made him part of our family 22 years ago when we were just newlyweds and Michael was just 14 and out on the streets and nowhere to go and on a very dangerous path.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He didn't live with them continuously.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think from time to time he would make an effort to move back in with his birth mother always unsuccessfully.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But he went back to the Johnsons and he lived with them off and on for, I think, three years before Mike Johnson moved back to Shreveport, his hometown.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And his son, as Johnson refers to him, James, moved out on his own to Florida at the age of 18.
--:-- Noel King: This story that you told in 2024 is a bit of a Rorschach test.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: How does the now adult Michael James, how does he tell this story when he speaks publicly?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He doesn't often speak publicly.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But the Daily Mail, the intrepid British tabloid, did reach him by phone at his home in Los Angeles, where he's now a father himself with a few kids.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he was very grateful.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He feels like the Johnsons, Mike Johnson and his wife, really saved his life, that he would have ended up in prison or worse had it not been for the Johnsons' intervention.
--:-- Noel King: So I know a lot of people on the left are prone to all kinds of conspiracy theories about Mike Johnson and his adopted black son.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So how did you end up speaker? No one knows.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And this is my adult black son.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Also named Michael.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Hey, guys, I'm this adult black son.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I'm only 11 years younger than him, and I'm kind of a secret.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But the adopted black son gives Mike Johnson a lot of credit.
--:-- Noel King: All right, so Mike Johnson is now a young lawyer.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He goes on to have four children of his own, so add father to it.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: When does he add politician to the resume?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Well, I think if we're being frank, it was always clear that he was going to end up in politics.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He went into practicing law as an advocate for conservative Christian causes at what is now the Alliance Defending Freedom.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: His colleagues there said even then they used to refer to him as the senator from Louisiana.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: His political interests and his political skills were evident from the get-go.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he was always sort of poking around in that direction.
--:-- Noel King: You know, it was not a surprise to see him later run for office initially as a member of the Louisiana state legislature.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Louisiana is the latest state to introduce a controversial religious freedom bill.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Religious freedom and the protection of religious freedom against government intrusion is a state interest of the highest order.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So he ran for office around 2014.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So that's a period when gay rights are a big issue around the country.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The United States is moving towards legalization of gay marriage and acceptance of gay marriage.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He was coming from a background as a conservative Christian legislator.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And so some of his signature issues were opposing gay rights, you know, and trying to put forward legislation that would protect, as he put it, conservative Christians from having to accept gay marriage.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: None of us here in this warm, welcoming state are in favor of discrimination.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But we are in favor of protecting our freedom.
--:-- Noel King: That didn't become law in Louisiana, but that's what he was most known for.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's a winner for him.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, he's from northwest Louisiana, which is the part of Louisiana that's culturally very much like Texas, a conservative, Protestant, Southern Baptist area.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And he is very much in tune with the majority of his constituents in that district.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And so he was, I think, quite popular and successful and well positioned to move on to national office.
--:-- Noel King: The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick.
--:-- Noel King: He'll be back with us.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up, Mr. Johnson goes to Washington.
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--:-- Noel King: No, I'm not an A.
--:-- Noel King: I'm new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
--:-- Noel King: I see. All right, who?
--:-- Mike Johnson: Mike Johnson.
--:-- Noel King: No one's going to forget that.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained.
--:-- Noel King: We're back, as is David Kirkpatrick of The New Yorker, as is Speaker Mike Johnson.
--:-- Noel King: We're going to pick up his story in 2017.
--:-- Noel King: That is the year he gets into national office, and that is also the year that President Donald Trump gets into national office.
--:-- Noel King: What is that relationship like initially?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, it's interesting that you should ask.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: When Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator and first appeared on the national stage, Johnson was very skeptical.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, he wrote on Facebook, you know, this guy is problematic.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He's a hothead by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a commander-in-chief.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But, you know, as the primaries went on and as Mike Johnson himself entered the primary for a Republican congressional seat from Shreveport, he came around and he became an early and steadfast Trump supporter.
--:-- Noel King: So Johnson arrives in Washington with a lot of connections.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Because he's come up through the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is an increasingly important part of the Christian conservative movement.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He was actually on a kind of leadership panel of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant domination in the U.S., advising the convention on politics.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He was sort of one of the heads of its political arm.
--:-- Noel King: So he shows up really well connected on the right, especially the Christian right.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And that's kind of his foundation.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So early on, actually in his second term, he's elected the chairman of the Republican Study Committee.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's kind of a quasi-establishment conservative movement and in fact includes a majority of Republican House members.
--:-- Noel King: So already in his second term, Mike Johnson is the chairman of a body that represents most of the conference.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: It's become a frequent springboard to leadership and he's already clearly in the running.
--:-- Noel King: When you look on paper and you lay out his career as we just have, he looks like he's on a rocket ship to the top and he's terrifically ambitious, which is true.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But he comes out of his Southern and conservative Christian upbringing with a terrific set of manners.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: As some Democrats said to me, he is by far the most polite member of the far right that you will meet in the U.S. Congress.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Hakeem Jeffries and I are colleagues and friends and have good relationship with him.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He has a very humble, deferential manner that he brings to his rise through Republican politics.
--:-- Noel King: And that sets the stage for 2020.
--:-- Noel King: After the 2020 election, when Trump becomes embroiled in challenging his loss, his defeat to Joe Biden, he reaches out right away to Mike Johnson, initially just to vent.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But as the weeks go on, it becomes clear that Trump is calling on the Republican members of Congress to try to reject the outcome of the vote.
--:-- Noel King: This puts the Republican lawmakers in quite a bind because Trump's arguments were mostly bogus, right?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: There's no evidence to show that the vote was rigged.
--:-- Noel King: So what is a thinking lawmaker to do?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And in this moment when Republicans in the House are feeling quite a bit of squeeze, right, Trump is demanding one thing and their constituents are all with him.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And on the other hand, any sense of rationality or integrity is demanding something different.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Mike Johnson presents a solution.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The argument that we presented to the court, which is our only avenue to do so, was that the Constitution was clearly violated in the 2020 election.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He says basically, and I'm kind of paraphrasing loosely here, hey, guys, we don't need to worry about the question of evidence because there's a purely legal, purely constitutional argument we can use to try to find fault with this electoral outcome.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And that is that many states because of the pandemic took emergency measures to make it easier to vote.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: In fact in many places state officials election officials or secretaries of state or even judges ordered or imposed these rule changes
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But look, we find in the Constitution, in one of the early articles, it says that election rules are supposed to be set by the state legislature.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The Constitution was violated in the run-up to the 2020 election.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of COVID, Many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: That's just a fact.
--:-- Noel King: On the eve of January 6th, when it's usually the job of the House to kind of ceremonially certify the results of the Electoral College, he stands up in a meeting of the Republican caucus and he says, I think that on the basis of these constitutional infirmities, we have an obligation to reject the results from several states.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Now, that's an argument that is novel, you know, has never really been exactly tested by the Supreme Court at that time.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And politically, it's very convenient for the lawmakers.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And quite a few, a majority of the Republican conference, follows him and votes to reject the electors from several states, all states that Biden had won with Republican legislatures.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: We have a responsibility today.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The slates of electors produced under those modified laws are thus unconstitutional.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Given these inescapable facts, we believe we have no choice today but to vote to sustain objections to those slates of electors.
--:-- Noel King: And so it comes as a surprise to the public, but maybe not so much of a surprise to the members of the Republican caucus when he emerges out of nowhere to become the speaker after the fall of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.
--:-- Mike Johnson: First, a few words of gratitude.
--:-- Mike Johnson: I want to thank Leader Jeffries.
--:-- Mike Johnson: I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people.
--:-- Mike Johnson: I know we see things from very different points of view, but I know that in your heart, you love and care about this country and you want to do what's right.
--:-- Mike Johnson: And so we're going to find common ground there.
--:-- Noel King: How would you characterize his tenure since he's been speaker?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Well, he's definitely different than McCarthy.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And I guess it's too soon to say better or worse.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, Johnson's critics would say lawmakers want to be led.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: They want a strong hand.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: They want decisions.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: They want risk taking.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: If you tell them what to do, they want to follow.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Johnson and his supporters would say, well, maybe in ordinary times, but we're talking about a one or two vote majority with a lot of differences within the conference.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And that's just not going to fly.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The only way to lead the Republican conference is through consensus.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think that the conference is really not that far apart.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Look, we all want the same things, whether you're Freedom Caucus or you're from a district that President Biden won.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: All Republicans want the same things.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: We want lower spending.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: The big difference with McCarthy is Johnson is able to say, look, I am a hardline conservative.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: You know, these conservatives are criticizing me and saying, oh, you're compromising too much.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But look at my record.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Look at who I've been and where I've come from.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Look at the attacks I'm receiving from the left.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I am one of you.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And so his shtick, if you will, as speaker is a kind of a Nixon in China act.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: We have at times in the past been enemies.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: We have great differences today.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: What brings us together is that we have common interests which transcend those differences.
--:-- Noel King: I wonder if you can take an informed guess at where Speaker Johnson might be heading.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think that's right.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He's a young man.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He's in his early 50s.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: He's become the Speaker of the House after very few terms.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think only one previous speaker has risen to that role as quickly.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: So he's got something.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think that he is going to try to move some bill to try to provide funding to Ukraine.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I think that he and his friends would say that's because he is still a Reaganite believer in peace through strength and he's not going to let Putin walk through Ukraine.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Cynics would say it's also political suicide to let Republicans be blamed for losing Ukraine.
--:-- Noel King: Will he be removed?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I don't know.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: And nobody knows.
--:-- Noel King: What happens next?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Cynically, I noticed that one of the measures that he's brought up to try to attach to the Ukraine funding would remove restrictions on natural gas, which would be a big perk to his home state.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: Is there a part of him that's thinking, look, if I get booted as speaker, I could be governor, I could be senator?
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: I don't know.
--:-- David Kirkpatrick: But I do think it's safe to say that we have not seen the last of Mike Johnson.
--:-- Noel King: We have seen the last of The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick for now.
--:-- Noel King: Today's episode was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and edited by Amina El-Sadi.
--:-- Noel King: David Herman is our engineer, and Laura Bullard is keeping them on their toes.
--:-- Noel King: The rest of our team includes Hadi Mawagdi, Victoria Chamberlain, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, Halima Shah and Avishai Artsy, Rob Byers, Patrick Boyd, supervising editor Matthew Collette, who is called out this week, Miranda Kennedy, EP Sean Ramos from Co-Host.
--:-- Noel King: We Use Music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Noel King: Today Explained is distributed by WNYC, and the show is a part of Vox, which is totally free thanks in part to contributions from our listeners.
--:-- Noel King: Join us at vox.com slash give.
