1. James Michael Johnson was born on January 30,1972 and is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 56th speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2023.
86 Facts About Mike Johnson
1. 2.
Mike Johnson sat on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention between 2004 and 2012.
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Mike Johnson was first elected to represent Louisiana's 4th congressional district in 2016.
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Mike Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, from 2019 to 2021.
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Mike Johnson was vice chair of the House Republican Conference from 2021 to 2023.
6.
On October 25,2023, after Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the position, Mike Johnson was elected to replace him.
7.
Mike Johnson was narrowly reelected to a full term as speaker in 2025.
8.
Mike Johnson has said that he is the product of an unplanned pregnancy and that his parents were teenagers when he was born.
9.
In 1984, while serving with the Shreveport Fire Department, Pat Mike Johnson was severely injured and disabled in a fire at a cold storage facility.
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Pat Mike Johnson never returned to work as a firefighter, choosing instead to become a HazMat consultant.
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Mike Johnson co-founded the Percy R Johnson Burn Foundation, which aided burn victims and their families.
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The younger Mike Johnson wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, but his parents encouraged him to take another course.
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Mike Johnson is a graduate of Captain Shreve High School in Shreveport.
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In 1998, Johnson graduated from Louisiana State's Paul M Hebert Law Center with a Juris Doctor degree.
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Mike Johnson was senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, a socially conservative legal advocacy group that subscribes to the legal theory of constitutionalism.
16.
The law school never opened, and Mike Johnson resigned in August 2012.
17.
Mike Johnson served from 2004 to 2012 on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
18.
In 2015, Mike Johnson founded Freedom Guard, a nonprofit law firm that engaged in religious liberty litigation.
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Also, when Kentucky officials withdrew millions of dollars of tax breaks from the Ark Encounter theme park in Williamstown, Kentucky, Mike Johnson represented Ark Encounter and its owner, Answers in Genesis, in a 2015 federal lawsuit.
20.
In September 2016, Mike Johnson summarized his legal career as "defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when they've been under assault".
21.
Mike Johnson is a professor at Liberty University and teaches classes at its Helms School of Government.
22.
Mike Johnson replied that he "wished Delgado had taken the time to review his record and career before making 'such hateful, wildly inaccurate statements'".
23.
In 2016, Mike Johnson was a strong proponent of a movement, outlined in Article V of the Constitution, to amend the United States Constitution at a national convention called for that purpose.
24.
Mike Johnson helped lead the Louisiana House in formally petitioning Congress to call a "Convention of States" to overhaul the Constitution.
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Mike Johnson later held hearings on this proposal in Congress.
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On February 10,2016, Mike Johnson announced his candidacy for the 4th congressional district seat, which had been held for eight years by John Fleming.
27.
In 2018, Mike Johnson won a second House term, defeating Democratic nominee Ryan Trundle, 139,307 votes to 72,923 votes.
28.
In 2020, Mike Johnson won a third House term with 185,265 votes to Democratic nominee Kenny Houston's 78,157 votes.
29.
In 2024, Mike Johnson won reelection with 262,821 votes to fellow Republican Joshua Morott's 43,427 votes.
30.
Mike Johnson was sworn into office as a member of Congress on January 3,2017.
31.
Mike Johnson has served as a deputy whip for House Republicans, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the Armed Services Committee.
32.
From 2019 to 2021, Mike Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee.
33.
Mike Johnson served as vice chair of the House Republican Conference from 2021 to 2023.
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Mike Johnson was supported by the House Freedom Caucus PAC and frequently attended House Freedom Caucus meetings without formally joining the Caucus.
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Mike Johnson was among 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
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Mike Johnson has worked closely with the Christian groups Answers in Genesis, Louisiana Family Forum, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Focus on the Family.
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In 2023, Mike Johnson became chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.
38.
Mike Johnson's bid was endorsed by former US president Donald Trump.
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Mike Johnson is the first speaker in US history from Louisiana.
40.
McCarthy's removal had not put an end to the divided House, and Mike Johnson sparked some anger over his handling of spending negotiations.
41.
On October 26,2023, Mike Johnson met with President Joe Biden for the first time as speaker before attending a bipartisan briefing held at the White House on the administration's proposed funding requests for aid to Ukraine and Israel.
42.
The House voted to table the motion by a vote of 359 to 43, allowing Mike Johnson to remain speaker.
43.
The Democrats who supported Mike Johnson claimed they did so because of the vital role he had played in providing funding for the federal government and for Ukraine.
44.
On January 3,2025, the opening day of the 119th Congress, Mike Johnson was reelected speaker on the first ballot.
45.
When Mike Johnson became House speaker, he was the least experienced representative to fill the office in 140 years.
46.
In May 2024, conservative columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in The Washington Post that "Mike Johnson has gone from accidental House speaker to one of the most consequential House speakers in a generation" and that despite presiding over the smallest House majority in US history, Mike Johnson had become "one of the most effective speakers ever".
47.
Mike Johnson is pushing his party in the direction of Ronald Reagan, which is correct for the world moment and politically popular.
48.
In early November 2020, after many pollsters and media outlets called the 2020 United States presidential election in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump, Mike Johnson said that he spoke to Trump twice, recounting that he urged Trump to "exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans' trust in the fairness of our election system" and that he was heartened by Trump's intention to ensure "that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted".
49.
In December 2020, Johnson led an effort in which 126 Republican US representatives signed an amicus brief in support of Texas v Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election.
50.
Mike Johnson's argument was that certain state officials had violated the Constitution by relaxing restrictions on mail-in voting or early voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic without consulting state legislatures.
51.
Mike Johnson has co-sponsored bills attempting to ban abortion nationwide, such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children From Late-Term Abortions Act, and the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2021.
52.
In January 2023, the House passed a resolution Mike Johnson introduced that condemned "vandalism, violence, and destruction against pro-life facilities, groups, and churches", and added that the House "recognizes the sanctity of life and the important role pro-life facilities, groups, and churches play in supporting pregnant women, infants, and families".
53.
Mike Johnson came to some prominence in the late 1990s when he and his wife appeared on television to promote new laws in Louisiana allowing covenant marriages, under which divorce is much more difficult to obtain than in no-fault divorce.
54.
In 2005, Mike Johnson appeared on ABC's Good Morning America to promote covenant marriages, saying, "I'm a big proponent of marriage and fidelity and all the things that go with it".
55.
Mike Johnson is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.
56.
In 2019, during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Mike Johnson defended Trump, saying that Trump had "cooperated fully" with the investigation and "done nothing wrong".
57.
In 2019, during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, Mike Johnson defended Trump and told White House officials to ignore Congressional subpoenas as "legitimate executive privilege in legal immunity".
58.
Mike Johnson served as a member of Trump's legal defense team during both the 2019 and 2021 Senate impeachment trials, each of which resulted in acquittal.
59.
Mike Johnson endorsed Trump's 2024 campaign for president, and Trump has endorsed Mike Johnson.
60.
In December 2017, Mike Johnson voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
61.
In 2019, Mike Johnson opposed the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, calling it "job-crushing legislation".
62.
Mike Johnson helped the Creation Museum secure millions of dollars in tax subsidies to build a life-sized Ark Encounter, which teaches the discredited claim that dinosaurs accompanied Noah on his Ark and that the earth is 6,000 years old.
63.
In March 2025, after several federal judges issued injunctions against the Trump administration's policies, Mike Johnson called this a "dangerous trend", saying it "violates separation of powers when a judge thinks that they can enjoin something that a president is doing".
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In 2020, Mike Johnson co-wrote a national security report with a section on China trade issues as the leader of the Republican Study Committee.
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In December 2024, Mike Johnson spoke with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te during a stopover in Hawaii.
66.
In 2024, Mike Johnson opposed a new warrant requirement for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
67.
Mike Johnson had previously been a critic of the program, but said that learning more about it and attending classified briefings had convinced him that FISA reauthorization was vital to national security.
68.
In February 2022, Mike Johnson condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for "sanctions on Russia's economic interests" and Russia's exclusion from "global commerce and international institutions".
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Mike Johnson said the classified briefings he had received about events unfolding in Ukraine played a significant role in his decision.
70.
Mike Johnson visited Israel in February 2020 with 12Tribe Films Foundation.
71.
On November 2,2023, the House passed a Mike Johnson-supported bill to give Israel $14.3 billion in aid.
72.
Mike Johnson voted for the American Health Care Act of 2017, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act.
73.
In 2019, in his capacity as chair of the Republican Study Committee, Mike Johnson spearheaded an effort to replace the ACA.
74.
In January 2024, Mike Johnson opposed a bipartisan, Senate Republican-backed border security and immigration bill that would provide funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
75.
In 2023, Mike Johnson co-sponsored legislation declaring that human life and personhood begin at conception with no exception for in-vitro fertilization treatments involving embryos or embryonic stem-cell research.
76.
In 2024, after public backlash to an Alabama Supreme Court decision ruling that embryos are children under Alabama state law, meaning fertility clinics were liable for the loss of embryos as if they were children, Mike Johnson announced that he supports access to in-vitro fertilization.
77.
Mike Johnson has said IVF "is a remarkable thing and something we ought to preserve and protect".
78.
In 2023, Andrew Kaczynski of CNN wrote that Mike Johnson "has a history of harsh anti-gay language from his time as an attorney for a socially conservative legal group in the mid-2000s".
79.
Kaczynski pointed to editorials Mike Johnson wrote in the early 2000s in his local paper, The Shreveport Times, calling homosexuality "inherently unnatural" and a "dangerous lifestyle".
80.
At a July 2023 hearing on transgender youth, Mike Johnson spoke against allowing children to receive gender-affirming care, saying: "Our American legal system recognizes the important public interest in protecting children from abuse and physical harm".
81.
Mike Johnson has co-sponsored legislation that would make it a felony to provide opposite-sex hormones or gender-affirming surgeries to minors.
82.
Mike Johnson has an "F" rating from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for his voting history regarding cannabis-related causes.
83.
Mike Johnson is a member of the Christian right faction of the Republican Party.
84.
Mike Johnson has referred to the "so-called separation of church and state".
85.
Mike Johnson has cited David Barton, an evangelical author and political activist, as influential to him.
86.
On his podcast, Mike Johnson said that "the Word of God is, of course, the ultimate source of all truth", and attributed the success of the United States to its foundation upon a "religious statement of faith".