A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the ascension of a little-known election denier, and what it means for a House in chaos.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Mike Johnson Is The Least Vetted Speaker In Modern History
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Roll The Tape
It’s been a veritable field day for oppo researchers and investigative journos: An inexperienced backbencher who’s never faced a serious election challenge is suddenly second in line to the presidency. Let the belated vetting finally begin.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) hasn’t been hiding in the shadows. He’s been out there, generating video and audio clips for years, hosting a podcast, and generally creating a public digital trail that’s easy to follow, such as this from a few years ago:
Most of the coverage emphasis is on how far to the right Johnson is, and that’s a fair place to focus. But I’m more interested in my nerdy way in how Johnson can possibly lead his fractured caucus without any of the usual assets that a speaker brings to the table. The things that got Johnson elected – he didn’t have a lot of baggage compared to other candidates and he hadn’t irredeemably pissed off multiple factions within the House GOP conference – don’t equate to strengths as a speaker.
Johnson hasn’t secured the loyalty of members by helping get them elected. He hasn’t earned chits from prodigious fundraising. He doesn’t have a power base within the conference from having chaired a committee. In short, Johnson doesn’t have a reserve of the currency that speakers use to deal, to keep members in line, to soften differences, and to reach accommodations.
It’s going to be a helluva thing to watch him try to keep a conference full of show ponies and burn-it-all-down types in line and on task.
Meanwhile, here’s what we’re learning about the accidental Speaker Johnson:
Mike Johnson, Christian Nationalist
- Politico: The Christian Nationalist Ideas That Drive Mike Johnson
- Mother Jones: Mike Johnson’s Long Flirtation With Christian Nationalism
- Sarah Posner: Mike Johnson’s Christian nationalist track record isn’t a mystery — it’s a tragedy
- David Corn: Mike Johnson Hates America, But He Believes He Can Save It
Mike Johnson, Inexperienced
- Axios: Mike Johnson is the least experienced House speaker in 140 years
- Former House GOP aide Brendan Buck: The Terrifying Learning Curve Facing Mike Johnson
- Susan Glasser: Speaker Who?: The Rise of a G.O.P. Nobody in Trump’s House
Mike Johnson, Lackluster Fundraiser
- Punchbowl: “He’s raised just $553,000 this year. Compare that to the $16 million former Speaker Kevin McCarthy raised in the third quarter alone.”
- Politico: “Since he was elected in 2016, he has never raised more than $1.4 million for his campaign over any two-year election cycle. In 2022, he ranked 276th among all House incumbents who sought reelection in terms of total fundraising, according to FEC data, and in the bottom half among Republican members as well.”
- Punchbowl: “The NRCC has raised $70 million this cycle. Out of that, a whopping $18.5 million has come from transfers from McCarthy’s political committees.”
WATCH: Mike Johnson With Sean Hannity
Aaron Rupar, the master of the unspooling these interviews into relevant clips, has the essential thread here:
The Aftermath Of Jan. 6
A nicely juxtaposed piece from my former colleague Ryan Reilly: On Wednesday, a Capitol Police officer testified about the injuries she sustained on Jan. 6 while across the street election denier Mike Johnson was elevated to speaker of the House.
Fani Willis Is Wheelin’ and Plea Dealin’
Atlanta DA Fani Willis has offered plea deals to at least six other defendants in her sprawling RICO case against former President Trump, CNN reports. It breaks down like this:
- Former Trump campaign official Mike Roman and former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton has been in contact with Willis about a plea deal.
- Pro-Trump lawyer Robert Cheeley turned down a plea offer some time ago, said his lawyer, who indicated that plea talks were not ongoing.
- Three other co-defendants whom CNN did not name have also discussed plea deals with Willis.
Donald Trump’s Weak Hand
I want to be very careful about how I say this, but taken together Donald Trump’s defenses in his various criminal cases have, on balance, been weaker, less developed, more forced, and less compelling that I expected.
Recent filings in his Jan. 6 case – including one that seeks to turn it into a fight over classified information and another that reiterates his claims of absolute presidential immunity – were the latest examples of arguments that I expected to pack a punch but fell short.
It’s important to remember a criminal defendant may throw a lot of things against the wall. Only one may need to stick. So I’m not predicting Trump loses every case on the facts, or that he won’t win any pre-trial legal disputes. But I keep waiting for a muscular, logical, historically grounded, bulletproof argument from him that will seriously threaten either of Jack Smith’s two cases against him or Fani Willis’ case in Georgia. And I haven’t seen it yet.
Instead, the arguments we are seeing are very Trumpian: bombastic, over the top, not targeted at the judges but at a public audience – and in some instances the only audience seems to be Trump himself. With these arguments, Trump’s lawyers are drawing down any credibility or benefit of the doubt they may have with the judges in these cases.
Again, I don’t want to overstate this. But I keep waiting for his legal team to bring the real heat, and it’s been remarkably tepid so far.
Jared Golden Now Favors Assault Weapons Ban
In the aftermath of the deadly shooting rampage in Maine, with the suspect still at large, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) reverses himself and comes out in favor of an assault weapons ban:
George Santos Faces Looming Expulsion Vote
New York Republican members have introduced an expulsion resolution aimed at Rep. George Santos (R-NY) that could come to a vote as soon as next week. Meanwhile, Santos is expected to plead not guilty today to new charges contained in a superseding indictment
Another Potential Dem Pickup Opportunity
Federal judge strikes down Georgia’s redistricting map for illegally discriminating against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence and not part of a larger, persistent historical pattern that since the 2020 census Republicans in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida have been found by federal judges to have used their redistricting powers to discriminate against Black voters.
2024 Ephemera
- WSJ: Biden Administration Tries to Soften Blowback From Muslim Leaders in U.S.
- Politico: Blake Masters announces House bid in Arizona, forgoing another run for Senate
- NYT: Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) will attempt a challenge of President Biden in the 2024 Democratic primary.
- WaPo: Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) announces he will retire from the House at the end of his term.
Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear
A well-executed piece on seven scientists whose work puts them on the frontlines of climate change.
*Chef’s Kiss*
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What’s Up With Speaker Mike Johnson’s Black Son?
On Speaker Mike Johnson’s first full day in office, half the journalism world was looking into the surprise Speaker’s past. In his meteoric one day rise from four term representative to Speaker there was no time for anyone to vet him. But one part of that past came out of left field. Video surfaced of an interview Johnson did with Walter Isaacson just after the death of George Floyd in June 2020 in which he revealed that he had an adopted black son, Michael. Johnson went on to explain that there was no question that his black 14-year-old son Michael faced challenges that his white fourteen year old Will never would. Many on the leftward side of the political spectrum were struck by Johnson’s empathy and frank recognition of discrimination in contemporary America while right wingers denounced him for his wokeness.
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.
Continue reading “What’s Up With Speaker Mike Johnson’s Black Son?”Federal Judge Orders New Majority-Black District In Georgia, Warns Legislature Not To Jerk Him Around
A federal judge in Georgia ordered a redraw of both the state’s congressional and legislative maps Thursday, mandating that one new majority-Black congressional district and seven majority-Black legislative districts be added.
Continue reading “Federal Judge Orders New Majority-Black District In Georgia, Warns Legislature Not To Jerk Him Around”Trump DQ Cases Hinge On One Question: Does Congress Need To Act?
Groups seeking to keep President Trump off the ballot next year notched a key legal victory this week, after a Colorado state judge sided with their view of an arcane but critical question: Does Congress need to do anything for Trump to be disqualified under the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause?
Continue reading “Trump DQ Cases Hinge On One Question: Does Congress Need To Act?”Mouthy Trump Smacked With A Fine And The Prospect Of A Renewed Gag Order
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Mob Boss Pure And Simple
An extraordinary series of events yesterday involving a former president, the legal system, and the threat he poses to democracy.
I’m not a big fan of the “imagine if Obama had done this thing Trump did” genre or of the adjacent “imagine how Republicans would have reacted to this Trump thing if a Democrat had done it.” But I do think recalling how we would have reacted a decade or more ago to the indignities of the current moment is a handy thought experiment that helps arrest the slide into numbness and normalization.
Consider for a moment any one of these things happening before 2015 (in fairness, the first two items already happened within the past two weeks, but I don’t think that undermines my point nearly as much as it reinforces it):
- A former president (on civil trial for engaging in fraudulent business practices, which itself would have been unthinkable 10 years ago) publicly targets a court clerk in his case.
- The former president, in so doing, violates a pre-existing gag order on targeting the court staff imposed because of his prior targeting of the court clerk – a gag order the former president has already violated once and for which he was sanctioned $5,000.
- The former president is called to the witness box by the judge to answer for his latest public targeting of the court clerk.
- The former president’s denial that he had just targeted the court clerk in public comments immediately outside of the courtroom is deemed “not credible” by the judge.
- The former president is sanctioned an additional $10,000 for his latest violation.
I realize that the combined fines of $15,000 is less than the annual membership fee at one of Trump’s golf courses. But as a measured intermediate step on the road toward more serious sanctions or a contempt of court finding, it’s prudent. Regardless though, the mere fact that this is happening and it involves a former president – and the current presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party! – is not just unprecedented, it’s astounding.
Jack Smith Seizes The Moment
In a coincidence of timing too cheesy to include in a novel or screenplay, Trump’s violation of the gag order in the New York civil fraud trial came on the exact same day that Special Counsel Jack Smith faced a deadline to respond to Trump’s motion to stay the separate gag order in his Jan. 6 case in DC.
Trump gave Smith so much to work with, and Smith didn’t hesitate to use it.
Smith’s filing seized on the gag order violation in New York to argue that the gag order in DC, briefly paused by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan while she considers arguments, should not be stayed while Trump appeals it.
“The defendant’s continued targeting of witnesses and repeated violations of a similar order in New York … not only illustrate the risks of suspending the Court’s appropriate order; they demonstrate why the Court should lift the administrative stay and modify the defendant’s conditions of release to protect witnesses from his attacks,” Smith argued in his filing.
I don’t want to be pedantic here, but step back for a moment: A federal prosector imploring a federal judge to protect witnesses in a criminal case from ongoing attacks by a former president. In what world, y’all?
As Morning Memo anticipated, Smith also pointed to Trump’s comments on Truth Social and in public about Mark Meadows’ immunity-for-testimony arrangement as further witness intimidation and targeting:
Yesterday, within hours of a news report about the purported testimony in this case of the defendant’s former Chief of Staff, the defendant issued multiple prejudicial and threatening Truth Social posts to influence and intimidate the Chief of Staff and comment publicly on the subject of his testimony. The defendant’s targeting included insinuating that if the reporting were true, the Chief of Staff had lied and had been coerced, and the defendant sent a clear public message to the Chief of Staff, intended to intimidate him …
Again, stepping back, the former president coercing and intimidating his former White House chief of staff from testifying against him in a criminal case for an attempted subversion of the Constitution. What planet are we on?
Smith Knows Exactly What Trump Is Up To
Unlike many of us, including much of the political press, Jack Smith’s team has figured out what Trump is all about, and they’re not afraid to call it out. It’s not generalized hand-waving and pearl-clutching. It’s not broad-brush objections to Trump’s conduct. It’s a precise, sharp understanding of what Trump is doing and why – and a keen ability to describe it in writing in terms a judge can understand.
“The defendant knows the effect of his targeting and seeks to use it to his strategic advantage while simultaneously disclaiming any responsibility for the very acts he
causes,” Smith told Chutkan, in returning to a theme he’s raised before.
In the same way that we might imagine how we would have reacted to Trump’s misdeeds before 2015, Smith capably takes the specifics of Trump’s misconduct and puts it in a larger context to show how strikingly out of bounds it is:
There has never been a criminal case in which a court has granted a defendant an unfettered right to try his case in the media, malign the presiding judge as a “fraud” and a “hack,” attack the prosecutor as “deranged” and a “thug,” and, after promising witnesses and others, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU,” target specific witnesses with attacks on their character and credibility, even suggesting that one witness’s actions warrant the “punishment” of “DEATH!”
No, there has never been such a criminal case.
Clarence!
Senate Democrats looking into Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethics issues issued new findings about that private loan from a friend to purchase a luxury RV back in 1999, based in part on documents turned over by the lender:
- There was no down payment for the $267,230 loan at 7.5 percent annual interest.
- Thomas was to make interest-only payments annually for what was originally a four-year term of the loan. Thomas agreed to the terms in a handwritten note on Supreme Court stationery.
- After the loan term was later modified to 10 years, the balance of the loan was forgiven after nine years. It’s not clear if Thomas had ever paid down any of the principal.
Based on the limited documents Senate Democrats had, it sure looks like a gift to Thomas in the form of loan forgiveness, though they focused more on the loan forgiveness being taxable income that Thomas apparently never reported.
One big caveat here: Senate Democrats explicitly said that they did not have all the loan documents or a full record of repayment. So more or new information could alter some of their conclusions.
For his part, Thomas issued a full-throated denial through an attorney: “The loan was never forgiven. Any suggestion to the contrary is false. The Thomases made all payments to Mr. Welters on a regular basis until the terms of the agreement were satisfied in full,” Berke said.
Bowman To Be Arraigned For Pulling Fire Alarm
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was charged criminally in DC for pulling a fire alarm in a House office building before a hurried vote last month.
Under an arrangement already worked out, Bowman will pay a $1,000 fine and apologize to Capitol Police and the charge will be dropped after three months.
The Tough Road Ahead For Mike Johnson
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is the least experienced, most lightly vetted, and rushed speaker in living memory. Expect not just a steep-learning curve, but a level of focus and scrutiny on him, his past politics, and personal and business dealings unlike anything he has ever endured before. But unlike most candidates for higher office or leadership positions, this is going to be real-time, live vetting after the fact of ascending to office.
Here’s an early sampling:
- Politico: How Mike Johnson led a campaign of election denial
- NYT: In Johnson, House Republicans Elevate One of Their Staunchest Conservatives
- NYT: New House Speaker Champions Fossil Fuels and Dismisses Climate Concerns
- WSJ: New Speaker Mike Johnson Made His Name as Cultural Conservative
- WaPo: New speaker Mike Johnson’s 2020 election denial could have 2024 implications
- CNN: New speaker of the House Mike Johnson once wrote in support of the criminalization of gay sex
- TPM: Best Way To Make Someone’s Quiet Extremism Widely Known? Elect Them Speaker
How Deep Was Mike Johnson’s Election Denialism?
As deep as “rigged” Dominion voting machines:
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Lewiston, Maine Mass Shooting
We appear to have a very high casualty mass shooting unfolding in Lewiston, Maine. CNN reports that there are at least 16 fatalities and as many as 60 additional wounded. There appears to be a single gunman who opened fire at at least two three separate locations. The gunman is apparently still at large. And the entire city of Lewiston remains under a shelter in place order. There are lots of scattered reports, some of which seem contradictory or poorly sourced. But those seem to be the essential details as of this moment.
Late Update: NBC and Fox are now reporting at least 22 fatalities … the upshot of all the reports is that police in Lewiston were overwhelmed by the situation. They’ve had to call in state and federal manpower to assist with the manhunt. Police from other jurisdictions and states are moving in to assist. If you’re not from the northeast this is very far from anything that can be called a large city. So the time to get there is significant.
When Should the Israel-Hamas War Stop?
From TPM Reader ES …
Continue reading “When Should the Israel-Hamas War Stop?”I had a hard time articulating this for myself — but now it’s clearer: the political and strategic confusion for everyone stems from the fact that what Hamas did to Israelis is not “resistance” but something else. It’s not even so-called asymmetric warfare or terror bombings. It’s not something that past resistance or anticolonial or liberation movements used to do. It’s something completely outside of it. In fact it’s more the kind of atrocities that victorious States or armies perpetrate.
Best Way To Make Someone’s Quiet Extremism Widely Known? Elect Them Speaker
The newly elected Speaker of the House once worked as an attorney for a far-right Christian legal group whose work you are almost certainly familiar with. The Alliance Defending Freedom — where Johnson was once an attorney and a spokesperson — is the group behind many of the most recent legal attacks on reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community.
Continue reading “Best Way To Make Someone’s Quiet Extremism Widely Known? Elect Them Speaker”Republicans Elect Lesser-Known Election Denier As New Speaker
After a 22-day speakership vacancy, House Republicans finally managed to coalesce around one nominee, electing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker of the House Wednesday afternoon.
As Republicans spend the rest of the day (or week) patting themselves on the back for taking almost a month to accomplish the most basic duty of governing as the majority, the same funding crises from before McCarthy’s ousting and new global crises loom large. Johnson’s ability to lead an unruly, fractured caucus on issues like appropriations bills and crucial aid to Ukraine and Israel will be quickly put to the test.
Kate Riga and Emine Yücel are reporting from Capitol Hill. Follow our live coverage below: