Who is Mike Johnson? New U.S. House speaker belongs to GOP’s religious conservative wing

 BY: JACOB FISCHLER 

Before a relatively short time in elected office, new U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana was a constitutional lawyer deeply involved in religious causes.

Prior to a short stint in the Louisiana Legislature, Johnson spent two decades as a public interest lawyer mainly representing clients in so-called religious liberty litigation, he said in an interview with C-SPAN shortly after joining Congress in 2017. He worked in private practice for the Kitchens Law Firm in North Louisiana, and also did work for the conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, according to a 2015 article in the New Orleans Time-Picayune.

He also “litigated high profile constitutional law cases” defending Second Amendment rights, free speech and free market principles, according to his campaign website.

House Republicans’ choice of Johnson addressed two faults some members of the conference found with a previous speaker-designee who dropped out on Tuesday, Minnesota’s Tom Emmer.

Emmer voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, putting him at odds with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, and for a bill codifying same-sex and interracial marriage. Johnson was on the other side of both votes.

The Louisianan was a strong backer of Trump’s claims that his reelection loss in 2020 was illegitimate. He led 126 House Republicans in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case seeking to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in that election. And Johnson voted to object to the 2020 election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, even after a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.

In Congress, Johnson has maintained a reputation as an opponent of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. He has an ‘A+’ rating from the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List in the last two sessions of Congress and a 100% rating for the current year from FRC Action, the legislative arm of the influential evangelical group Family Research Council.

New House Speaker Mike Johnson was picked over previous speaker-designee Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, putting him at odds with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, and for a bill codifying same-sex and interracial marriage. Johnson was on the other side of both votes. 

The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, has given him a 2% lifetime rating, lower than all but 24 current House members, all Republicans.

He’s received $338,000 in campaign contributions to his personal campaign and leadership committee since 2015 from oil and gas interests influential in Louisiana — the most of any industry, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit campaign finance tracking organization. He’s also maintained ties to religious conservatives after coming to Washington.

He taught online college courses at Liberty University, a conservative Christian school in Virginia, earning him just less than $30,000 in 2022, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure, required for members of Congress.

His wife earned income in 2022 from Onward Christian Education Services Inc. and Louisiana Right to Life Educational Committee Inc., according to his financial disclosure.

Johnson’s voting record is strongly conservative, and he has little record of working across the aisle. He voted against high-profile bipartisan laws, including the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, a gun safety law and a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Fundraising gap

Johnson’s campaign fundraising operation has increased by small margins in each cycle since his first House run in 2016. He raised $1.1 million for his first run and over $1.3 million for his most recent reelection, according to Open Secrets. The numbers include money raised for Johnson’s leadership political action committees.

Part of a speaker’s role in modern times has been as a fundraising force for rank-and-file members. Johnson will have to expand his fundraising to replace the prolific Kevin McCarthy, whom eight GOP members ousted three weeks ago.

McCarthy, of California, has raised more than $15 million so far this cycle for his own campaign and his leadership committee. Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, has raised $3.7 million. Johnson has raised just less than $600,000.

The largest single contributor to Johnson and his leadership PACs over his five campaigns has been Willis-Knighton Health System, a hospital system based in Shreveport whose employees have given $91,000 to Johnson’s campaigns.

House Freedom Fund, the political action committee associated with the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is his second-largest contributor. It has sent $58,000 to Johnson since the 2016 cycle.

A spokesperson for his House office did not respond to an inquiry about whom Johnson represented as an attorney.

Johnson’s legal work does not appear to have been overly profitable. He claimed no assets in his most recent financial disclosure, which is unusual.

House members are required to report any assets worth more than $1,000. Those assets can include real estate, retirement accounts, investment portfolios or simple savings accounts. Many members report millions of dollars in such assets.

Johnson listed between $280,000 and $600,000 in liabilities, most of which was from a home mortgage of between $250,000 and $500,000. The rest of his debt was split between a personal loan taken out in July 2016 and a home equity line of credit taken out in February 2019.

–Ariana Figueroa and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared in The Louisiana Illuminator on October 26th, 2023.  

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University students across the US walk out of classes for Gaza

Students at dozens of campuses across North America staged walkouts demanding an end to Israel’s siege against Gaza

by Natalia Marques

On Wednesday, October 25, students across dozens of campuses in North America staged walkouts in protest of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza. The walkout, taking place at university campuses in the United States and Canada, was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Dissenters, and Students for Justice in Palestine. The students demand an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza, an end to US funding of Israel, and that their universities divest from weapons corporations which supply the Israeli occupation. 

Campuses participating in the walkout included Brown University, several City College of New York campuses, Florida State University, Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGill University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.

Students at the historically Black Howard University, located in Washington, DC, staged a walkout. As one student stated at the demonstration, “Our message to Joe Biden is that Howard University students, HBCU students, do not support the drastic and violent escalations that are happening now in Gaza. We want Biden to implement an immediate ceasefire, and we want Biden to stop giving unconditional military aid to apartheid Israel every year.”

At the Columbia campus in upper Manhattan, at least 500 students walked out of classes at 1 pm in a walkout organized by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, despite the intimidation tactics of zionists. Earlier in the day, a TV truck paid for by the far-right wing group Accuracy in Media circled the campus, broadcasting the names of students who have stood up against Israel’s siege on Gaza in some capacity with the label “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites”. Accuracy in Media is the same group that circulated a similar truck around Harvard’s campus, also doxxing pro-Palestine students.

Speaking from where students had gathered at the heart of the campus, a Palestinian student organizer with Columbia SJP said, “We’ve been getting death threats. There has been a truck going around with students’ faces and names, and people have been facing doxxing simply for speaking out in support of Palestinian rights. So that’s why I’m fully covered from head to toe.”

Earlier in the month, a self-identified Columbia University officer of administration had said about students protesting in solidarity with Palestine, “I hope every one of these people die.” 

“We have yet to hear any concrete action about this, any statements [from Columbia],” said the Palestinian student, who wished to remain anonymous. “No concrete action has been taken to protect students. So until that happens, we have to keep covering ourselves.”

“I was too scared to come to class last week. People have been taking pictures of me,” said the student.

Assistant Columbia Professor Shai Davidai went viral for claims that pro-Palestinian student groups were threatening the safety of Jewish people on campus. After giving a tearful speech at a pro-Israel vigil on campus, Davidai took to X, claiming that, “I pleaded with my employer to help me protect the lives of thousands of Jewish students from pro-terror student organizations who openly laud Hamas—an internationally recognized terrorist organization.”

“There are student organizations on my own campus who see my beautiful children as legitimate targets,” he continued.

Brooklyn College students also staged a walkout. “[Israel claims that] bombing hospitals and destroying mosques on the holiest days in Islam, killing little kids and maintaining an open air concentration camp is somehow keeping Jewish people safe,” said a student speaker and self-identifying anti-Zionist Jew at the demonstration, in front of dozens of students.

“British colonialists created the apartheid state to keep Jews as far away from them as possible,” he continued. “American imperialists send billions of bombs per year for the same reason. Do we really think these countries give a sh-t about Jewish people? The United States has never cared about the Jewish people. They sent ships full of Jewish refugees back to Germany during the Holocaust. Netanyahu shakes hands with neo-Nazis like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.”

This article originally appeared at PeoplesDispatch.org on October 26th, 2023.  

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Feds to probe Trenton police for ‘problematic’ use of force and illegal stops

BY: Dana Difilippo 

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Trenton and its police department, citing concerns that officers use excessive force and routinely, illegally stop and search pedestrians and motorists without reason or warrants.

Investigators will probe “problematic” uses of force against people stopped for minor traffic offenses and those who were cooperating or already restrained, said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division.

They’ll also investigate allegations that officers have used force to punish people observing or questioning their actions and that officers have escalated tensions with residents, injuring people in mental health crises, Clarke said in announcing the probe Tuesday.

“These allegations are serious and credible, and our investigation will seek to establish whether these allegations are true,” Clarke said. “Effective policing requires public trust. When law enforcement officers violate the Constitution and federal law, it erodes trust and undermines public safety efforts.”

U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said investigators will try to determine if the department has an unconstitutional, systemic “pattern or practice” of police misbehavior. The investigation is expected to take up to a year. A similar probe against Newark police a decade ago resulted in a 2014 consent decree that required the department to adopt reforms.

Investigators haven’t gotten specific reports of racial profiling, but 49% of the 7-square-mile capital city’s 90,000 residents are Black, while 37% are Hispanic or Latino, census figures show.

“We do not allege racial discrimination here. We are going to follow the facts and the law. We are aware, of course, that there is a sizable population of people of color within Trenton,” Clarke said.

Investigators will review use-of-force reports, court records, news media reports of police brutality and misconduct, officers’ body camera footage, officer training materials, and policies on how the department investigates citizen complaints and disciplines officers, Clarke said. They’ll also meet with police staff, observe officers on duty, and meet with the public, she added.

“As we begin this investigation, we recognize the challenges that Trenton and the Trenton Police Department face in addressing violent crime,” Clarke said. “But meeting these challenges requires confidence by the public that the police are committed to protecting them. It requires the assurance that police do not hold themselves above the law.”

Sellinger said he attended a town hall five weeks ago in Trenton where residents “raised concerns about excessive force, concerns about stops and searches done for no good reason.” Still, he and Clarke said no single incident prompted the probe.

But Trenton police have a long history of brutality and alarming encounters that have resulted in lawsuits and indictments:

• An officer was criminally indicted last year for pepper-spraying an elderly man, Joseph Ahr, on his porch after officers went to the home to talk to his son in 2020. Ahr died three weeks later.
• Two officers were charged in 2019 for beating a man after a routine traffic stop.
• An officer’s 2022 shooting of an unarmed motorist, which left him paralyzed, drove the city council president to demand more transparency and ask for the police director’s resignation. The director, Steve Wilson, remains in charge, and a Mercer County grand jury deemed the shooting justified.
• Officers made headlines in 2020 after they restrained a man in mental crisis by kneeling on him as he lay face-down in the dirt until he fell limp. He was declared dead minutes later.

In the state’s most recent report on major discipline meted out to law enforcement officers statewide, just one Trenton officer faced major discipline — for using a police department wash ticket to wash his personal vehicle. The police department has about 250 officers, and Trenton is the state’s fifth largest city.

Wilson’s office referred questions to Mayor Reed Gusciora, a Democrat who was a longtime state Assemblyman until he became Trenton mayor in 2018.

In a statement, Gusciora said he learned of the investigation Tuesday morning and has instructed all levels of city government to fully cooperate.

“My administration knows all too well the difficulty and danger police officers face on a daily basis. We thank and support the overwhelming majority of officers at the city, county, and state level who do the right things every day to keep Trentonians safe,” Gusciora said.

He credited Trenton officers for seizing drugs, more than 200 guns, and $133,722 from gun and drug traffickers in recent months.

“But we also recognize that the community’s trust in our police force is critical,” Gusciora said. “If any members of law enforcement violate the public trust or act in contravention of our state and federal laws, they should and must be held accountable.”

Patrick Colligan and Michael Cipriano, who head the state and city Policemen’s Benevolent Association, respectively, put out a joint statement that they “understand and respect the purpose” of the investigation and “remain committed to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.”

“However, we hope that this inquiry will also shed light on the pressing need for additional resources and support for our officers,” the statement read.

Trenton police respond to more than 100,000 calls for service a year, including 41 shootings in just the past month alone, Colligan and Cipriano said.

“Our police headquarters is in dire need of repair, and resources have been limited. The loss of 105 officers in 2012 has had a lasting impact, and we have yet to recover to a safe staffing level,” they said. “Retention of officers remains a significant concern, with the Covid-19 pandemic adding unprecedented burdens to our staffing levels.”

Sellinger said investigators’ goal is to improve policing.

“The object of a pattern and practice investigation is not to assign blame,” Sellinger said. “It’s to help fix problems that may exist. Whatever our findings may be, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the people of Trenton are served by a police force that effectively fights crime while respecting the constitutional rights of every person.”

Photo credits: New Jersey Monitor, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora (Edwin J. Torres Governor’s Office)

Originally published on October 24th, 2023, in the New Jersey Monitor.

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Group of FL Republicans want D.C. mayor to remove Black Lives Matter mural

BY: MiTCH PERRY 

Claiming that the Black Lives Matter movement has demonstrated support for Hamas following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel, six Florida Republicans, including U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are calling on Washington, D.C., Mayor Miriam Bowser to rename Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation’s capital and remove the street mural that bears the organization’s name.

As protests broke out against police brutality and racial inequality in the immediate aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in June 2020, a mural featuring the words “Black Lives Matter” in 50-foot-tall capital yellow letters was painted alongside two blocks of 16th Street NW, just outside of the White House. The area was renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza NW” by Bowser, according to Washington.org, the city’s official tourism website.

Now 25 GOP members of Congress have written a letter to Bowser, urging her to “immediately” rename Black Lives Matter Plaza and erase the mural “due to that movement’s celebration of violent antisemitic terrorism.”

Along with Rubio and Scott, four Florida House Republicans — Scott Franklin from Polk County, John Rutherford from Jacksonville, Gus Bilirakis from Pasco County, and North Central Florida’s Michael Waltz — all signed the letter.

As proof of that sentiment, the Republicans cite a now deleted tweet sent out by the Chicago BLM chapter which showed an image of a Palestinian terrorist paragliding into Israel to kill Jews with the caption, “I stand with Palestine.”

They also say the D.C. chapter of BLM posted that Israel was guilty of apartheid, “while sharing posts that cast doubt on the atrocities that took place on Oct. 7, including the beheading of babies.” And they wrote that BLM Grassroots, which they claim is “the ideological leader of BLM right now, also threw its support behind these murderous attacks.”

“These posts are meant to delegitimize Israel and rationalize brutal attacks on the Jewish people,” the Republicans write in their letter.

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that these statements are motivated by an ugly animus against the Jewish people. BLM Grassroots said the Hamas attack ‘must not be condemned but understood’ as resistance to ’75 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.’ Those 75 years account for the entire existence of the Jewish state,” they wrote.

“You stated after the attacks that you ‘reject terrorism in all its forms’ and that ‘antisemitism has no place in our institutions, our country, our world, or our hearts,’” the letter to Bowser continues. “We wholeheartedly agree with this statement. We further believe that movements that celebrate violent antisemitism should not be honored by the government with a plaza, especially one located directly outside of our nation’s White House.”

The idea of removing the BLM mural rankles some in the Black community, however.“The mural was put up there at a moment when African-Americans and the nation were going through a lot of stress at the time,” says Yvette Lewis, the Hillsborough County chair of the NAACP. “It sounds like politicians are using this as an excuse to get rid of it and justify their means.”

Lewis says when she hears the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” she’s thinking about the sentiment behind it, not any organization.

“When I say Black Lives Matter, I’m referring to my life, not an organization. So when I say that, don’t equate me with antisemitism. My thing is that mural was put there for a reason, not for an organization, but for the lives that have been killed at the hands of police and law enforcement.”

Apology

The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter apologized on Oct. 11 on X for the post mentioned in the letter sent to Bowser.

“Yesterday we sent out msgs that we aren’t proud of,” the group wrote. “We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely.”

BLM Grassroots sent out a message on their Instagram page on Oct. 10 regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. “When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” the group wrote.

The Phoenix reached out to both Mayor Bowser and BLM Grassroots for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Israel has been at war with Hamas since the surprise attacks that killed 1,400 people, including at least 32 U.S. citizens. Hamas continues to hold around 200 hostages, including Americans.

Palestinian officials said Tuesday that 704 people were killed overnight and more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon. The paper adds that those numbers couldn’t be independently verified.

Originally published on October 24th, 2023, in the Florida Phoenix.

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The private prison industry in FL is now changing; the state is taking more control

By: Mitch Perry 

When private prisons began operating nearly 30 years ago in Florida, they were one of the few systems in the nation to place oversight outside of the usual state corrections administration.

Now, after a damning audit released a year ago showing failures in oversight, the Department of Corrections has taken over the oversight of seven private prisons. The move began this month following legislation passed in the spring and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The transition means that the state’s Department of Management Services (DMS) will no longer be overseeing those seven private prisons.

Of the 85,145 inmates now in prisons in Florida, slightly more than 10,000 are housed in those seven private facilities, according to Department of Corrections Deputy Secretary Richard Comerford, who spoke before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday.

The impetus for transferring the oversight to the FDC stems from a June 2022 Florida Auditor General audit of the DMS which found seven areas of deficiencies, including bureau monitoring of private correctional facility staffing. That means the facilities needed enhancements to ensure that appropriate and qualified staff were assigned to provide for and maintain the security, control, custody, and supervision of inmates.

There are three private prison providers that run the state’s seven private prisons: CoreCivic of Tennessee, LLC, GEO Group, Inc., and Management and Training Corporation (MTC).

The audit found that the GEO Group did not adequately maintain adequate levels of security personnel at the Graceville Correctional Facility for two three-month periods in 2019, and did not properly maintain the fire safety system for three months in 2018.

It also found that MTC did not follow up on maintenance issues noted at the Gadsden Correctional Facility for 17 months (from 2018 to 2020) and that MTC could not demonstrate that key security personnel had received appropriate training in accordance with Department of Corrections requirements for five months between 2019 and 2020.

Florida is one of 27 states use private corporations to run some of their correctional facilities, according to a 2023 report by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that promotes reforms in sentencing policies. The first private facility in the state, Gadsen Correctional Facility, opened in 1995. The most recent private prison is Blackwater in Santa Rosa County, which opened in 2010.

State law requires private prisons to cost 7 percent less than comparable state facilities.

Orange County Democratic Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis asked Comerford to list the differences in policies and procedures between the state’s corrections department and the state’s private prisons – specifically that private prisons don’t transfer out inmates who commit violent infractions as quickly as FDC’s policies require.

Comerford did acknowledge that the state system had fallen behind the private facilities when it came to funding programming and education programs for inmates, but he said with recent funding from the Legislature, “I think we’re even going to be on a level playing field when it comes to programming and education.”

Originally published on October 18th, 2023, in the Florida Phoenix.

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