The Nightmare That Is House Speaker Mike Johnson

The Nightmare That Is House Speaker Mike Johnson

Refuse Fascism Episode 177

Sun, Nov 05, 2023 3:43PM • 46:20

Sarah Posner 00:00

His views are very at odds with the majority of Americans, but right down the middle for the modern Republican Party. He was willing to go to the mat for Trump on his impeachment. He was willing to go to the mat for Trump on the stolen election lies. He thinks there’s no separation of church and state. He thinks that God ordained government. He thinks that government should be run from a biblical worldview. He thinks that abortion should be criminalized. He thinks that same sex sex should be criminalized. I would say that his track record on supporting Trump is very troubling, combined with the fact that he believes that as Speaker of the House he’s carrying out God’s will.

Sam Goldman 00:59

Welcome to Episode 177 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. Today, we’re sharing, as promised, a conversation I recently had with Sarah Posner about how speaker Mike Johnson. She’s brilliant, and you’re going to learn so much from this episode, so keep listening.

Thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews the show on Apple podcast, or wherever you listen. If you appreciate the show and you want to help us reach more people who want to refuse fascism, go be a gem of a human, and write a review, drop five stars where ever you listen to your pods, tell some strangers out there in podcast land, why you listen, and they should too. Subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, keep up all that great commenting, sharing on social media the YouTubes. And I want to give special thanks to our patrons and show sustainers, we seriously could not do this without you. Become a patron for less than a cheap coffee once a month over at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

And I want to say sorry, upfront for my voice sounding like this. I was out yesterday screaming with tens of thousands in Washington D.C., demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza. Add to that, that I also have bronchitis, and you get the tasty sound that is my voice right now. But seriously, there is no other place that I could have been yesterday than in the streets, and I am so happy that I was joined by Richie and Mark two of the co-producers for this pod in being out there and fighting for a whole other way that the world could be. And I love seeing from so many of you who are out in the streets, whether you were in D.C. or somewhere else. To get started in covering the nightmare that is House Speaker Mike Johnson, first we need to go directly to the source. Apologies in advance that your ears have to hear such garbage.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson 03:29

What’s happened over the last 60/70 years is that our generation has been convinced that there’s a separation of church and state, right. We hear that term all the time. And most people think that that’s part of the Constitution, but it’s not. Remember I’m a constitutional lawyer. I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this. I believe that Scripture, the Bible is very clear, that God is the one that raises up those in authority. Someone asked me today, in the media, they said it’s curious – people are curious – what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s, that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe. And so I make…

Sam Goldman 04:07

On Wednesday, October 25, the House Republicans voted in theocratic “MAGA” Mike Johnson, for Speaker of the House. As Robert P. Jones, author of the Hidden Roots of White Supremacy has called him, I think very correctly, “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit.” He checks all the Christian fascist boxes, including: Helped lead the fight to overturn the 2020 election. Yeah, Johnson, after serving on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment, was the “most important architect of the Electoral College objections” that led to the January 6th coup attempt at the US Capitol as reported by the New York Times.

He also led a friend of the court brief in a case brought by Texas that sought to have the Supreme Court reject electoral votes from Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They were unsuccessful. It was, you know, these illegitimate voters claim that was based on that the votes from people of color don’t count because those people aren’t really people; disgusting, check. Favors a nationwide abortion ban — the original co-sponsor of the “Life at Conception” Bill, check. Authored many bills aimed to restrict abortion access, including the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act, the Second Chance at Life Act and the Protect the Unborn Act.

This earned him such accolades from the Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America group that gave Johnson an A+ on his scorecard for those who oppose abortion rights, check. Against same sex marriage, whether he recalls it or not as legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom in 2004, he campaigned in front of the state supreme court to defend the Louisiana marriage amendment, and, “protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” In a 2004 opinion piece, he described lesbian and gay couples as “inherently unnatural”, and “harmful and costly for everyone.”

In that same piece, he was absolutely grotesque and compared gay and lesbian relationships to pedophilia. A decade later, he went back to the state’s highest court to defend Louisiana’s same sex marriage ban again, check. Supported criminalization of sexual activity between two people of the same sex, check. Proposed a bill in 2015 that would have prevented Louisiana from applying any sanctions, like the loss of a professional license, on folks who discriminate against LGBTQ plus people, check. Proposed a bill to extend nationwide the ban on discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools; you know, make the Don’t Say Gay bill nationwide, check.

Co-sponsored legislation proposed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to extend nationwide the ban on gender affirming care for minors — a version which listeners of the show know, many Republi-fascist controlled states have already approved, check. I’m getting tired of saying these things. I bet you’re getting tired of listening to them, but it continues: Called for getting rid of no fault divorce, check. Former Attorney/former partner in Kentucky’s Creation Museum and Arc amusement park; a larger than life creationist amusement park cloaked as a science museum, check. Used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a Christian nation — not was founded as a Christian nation as espoused, but is. In 2016, in an interview, Johnson explained his views on the U.S. government saying: “You know, we don’t live in a democracy,” but a “Biblical Republic.”

Again, not even we yearn to, but we do, it is, present tense, check. Advocate of the great replacement theory. He has repeatedly described immigration as “an invasion”, check. Spent almost a decade as the senior attorney and national spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom, a premier Christian, fascist legal group, dedicated to raining hell on LGBTQ+ rights, outlawing abortion and eviscerating the separation of church and state, dragging society back to at least the fifth century. What difference does having Johnson as Speaker make for Christian fascists in the U.S.? Just listen to Michael Farris, former president at the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Michael Farris 08:59

It has incredible power. The number one power is to set the agenda. No piece of legislation can come to the floor unless he wants it to come to the floor of the House. The the ability to override the Speaker’s decision in that regard, is extremely limited and is very difficult to do. I mean, there is an override petition that can can happen, but you know, in the in the circumstances of this Congress, the chances of that happening or a fad chances are slim chance, which are basically the same thing. And so that’s an incredible amount of power. Now, he has political realities he has to deal with that, if he uses that power arbitrary and capriciously, then he won’t stay in this position for very long. So he has to be reasonable with people, he has to be cordial to people, but the balance is all in his favor, and we will see the most conservative Congress in my lifetime out of Mike Johnson. I mean, the most conservative House.

And I would also say that, you know, for my fellow evangelical Christians, this is the highest ranking serious Bible-y. biblically trained, person with a clear Christian worldview, person of that category, the highest ranking government official we’ve ever had in my lifetime. [unknown: Wow] No President would fit that description. No Supreme Court Justice would fit that description. Well, Mike Pence, Pence fits that description. So that’s Vice President, but but other than Mike Pence — and, you know, Mike’s got his ups and downs but — in terms of a thoroughgoing worldview, Mike Johnson is a solid believer and I’m very, very excited about him.

Sam Goldman 10:51

Marcy A. Hamilton has a really worthwhile reading piece on Johnson and theocracy up on the Guardian. It’s linked in the show notes. Marcy is a Professor of Practice and the Fox Family Pavillion Non Resident Senior Fellow in the Program for Research on RelIgion at the University of Pennsylvania. In the piece, they wrote, “Those who thought Roe would never be overruled should understand that the reasoning in Dobbs v. Jackson is not tailored to abortion. Dobbs was explicitly written to be the legal fortress from which the right will launch their attacks against other fundamental rights their extremist Christian beliefs reject.

They are passionate about rolling back the right to contraception, the right to same sex marriage and the right to sexual privacy between consenting adults.” Going on to add, “In a little over a year since Dobbs, that theocrats have converted their belief in the divinity of the fetus and disdain for the life of the pregnant into law in one Republican dominated state after another, but that is just a preview. Johnson and his crusaders would like to insert their scriptural originalism into every nook and cranny of federal law and public policy to create a blanket of religious hegemony. Conservative Governors and legislators have shamelessly invoked their God as the legislative purpose behind such draconian limitations.”

With that, here is my conversation with Sarah Posner. As promised, today we’re talking about all that is new House Speaker Michael Johnson and the rising threat of theocracy. If you are on any blood pressure medicine, make sure you take it before listening to today’s interview. As soon as he was voted in, I looked at what Sarah Posner had written for more guidance, and thankfully, she had quickly cranked out indispensable analysis to help make sense of this. So, to help us break down Mike Johnson’s Christian fascist track record, I am so glad to welcome back to the Refuse Fascism podcast, Sarah Posner. Sarah is the author of “Unholy, How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

She also has a 2008 book “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters,” which explored the unholy alliance between the Republican Party and prosperity televangelists. She is an MSNBC contributor, and you’ve probably seen a lot of her investigative reporting and analysis on the religious right. In GOP politics on Rolling Stone, the New Republic, Vice, HuffPost, the Nation, New York Times, Washington Post, Talking Points Memo and so many other places I can’t even mention. Welcome, Sarah. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me again, Sam. I guess let’s just start with the basics. Who is Mike Johnson?

Sarah Posner 13:56

Mike Johnson is a Southern Baptist, Christian constitutional lawyer from Louisiana, who very suddenly and abruptly became speaker of the House last week, without very many people knowing much about him or even having heard of him. Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, famously said she would have to google him. I did not have to google him because I first met Mike Johnson in 2007 when I was working on a story about what was then called the Alliance Defense Fund, it’s now called the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). It is the Christian right legal organization that has been very successful in eroding the separation of church and state, undermining LGBTQ rights and eviscerating abortion rights. They were very involved in representing the winning party in the Dobbs case.

I met Johnson when he was is working for them both as a lawyer and like a spokesperson; someone who would talk to the media about their cases and about their case strategy. When, like I said, I was working on a story about their ambitions to eviscerate the separation of church and state. I was talking to him specifically about their involvement in cases that had to do with what they would call viewpoint discrimination. They were arguing that the separation of church and state in public schools had gone too far because you then ended up discriminating against Bible clubs for their viewpoint, right. That was basically their argument, and they argued also that it, it was violating the free speech and free exercise rights of Christians to not be able to talk about their anti LGBTQ views.

So I had met him then, and continued to report on the Alliance Defense Fund and Alliance Defending Freedom, and in 2017, was writing another story about them, and in particular — because this is 10 years later, they were involved in representing the baker in Masterpiece Cake Shop, the Supreme Court case, which held that it violated the religious freedom rights of a baker to be investigated for violating the civil rights of a same sex couple when he refused to bake a cake for their wedding. I was covering a Capitol Hill press conference where a bunch of GOP lawmakers had prepared an amicus brief supporting ADF’s position.

Mike Johnson was one of them, and Mike Johnson was at the press conference, and I thought to myself: Oh, that guy remember him. He just seemed to me at the time, in 2017, to be such a perfect example of not only the Christian lawyers that ADF is trying to train and put out there in the world, not just in courtrooms, but in state, local, federal government, but also so emblematic of the way the Christian right has worked hand in glove with the GOP to elevate those kinds of people, not just to you know, win elected office, but to elevate them to leadership positions. So in that 2017 article that I wrote about ADF, I said that he was a rising conservative star. So I thought it was really amazing that so many people had never heard of him when GOP caucus started talking about him being the next Speaker candidate.

So I was ready to write about him when he was elected Speaker. He really holds a lot of views that are extreme far right on issues of Church/State separation, religious freedom, LGBTQ rights, abortion, all of that. They are extremely mainstream in the Republican Party and the Christian right. So I think it’s really important for people to understand that his views are very at odds with the majority of Americans, but right down the middle for the modern Republican Party.

Sam Goldman 17:53

I was nodding my head, so much of the last part, because I feel that what you just said is very confusing and troubling reality to confront; that, yes, these views that the majority of people — decent people, you know — think: Why would you criminalize sex between people of the same sex? How could you even think of that? Or being against same sex marriage or any of the host of things that he stands for. Then sitting with the fact that that’s mainstream now in the GOP.

Sarah Posner 18:26

I think it really points to how the GOP is a minority rule party, because the Christian right has an outsized role in the Republican Party, relative to like its proportion of the population at large, it plays an outsized role in the Republican Party. And because we have a two party system, and gerrymandering, and the Senate with, you know, regardless of whether your state has a Wyoming population or a California population, you all have two senators, so it then therefore plays an outsized role in our politics, but it’s very dangerous because they represent a minority view.

They represent a view that is contrary to the Constitution. They argue that the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. It is, but they try to make that claim in order to assert their ability to, what they would call, govern from a biblical worldview. Which means just enforcing their theocratic beliefs on everybody else.

Sam Goldman 19:23

So, so scary. I wanted to talk a little bit more about Johnson’s accomplishments, if you will. If you think about the things that he’s pushed forward, it covers almost all the recent battles; from Trump’s impeachment and the January 6th coup attempt, as well as battles over what we see as touchstones of the rights of women to control their bodies, and LGBTQ folks to simply exist in public. I was hoping that for those who haven’t been following this as closely, if you could point out some of those highlights that people should be aware of in terms of Johnson’s record.

Sarah Posner 20:03

I think it’s also important to understand that ADF has a lot of attorneys and he was one of them. He was not alone responsible for any single court decision or accomplishment of ADF, that they work in tandem with a large group of attorneys, both that are on their staff and who provide pro bono work for them across the country. He was involved in cases and efforts to fight marriage equality, to criminalize abortion, and also, one of the things that he stood out for to me, was how he was able to express in very ordinary language, that we’re still seeing the mainstream media accept without much interrogation, the idea that LGBTQ rights are in conflict with the religious rights of anti LGBTQ Christians.

Obviously, all the other things that he did were really important too in terms of filing cases or filing briefs or representing organizations or people in court, but I think that he has played a very important role in talking about the notion that rights for LGBTQ people are in conflict with the rights of Christians. This is something that was a founding principle of ADF Allen Sears, who was a lawyer and activist, who was the first president of ADF, often would talk about how gay rights and religious freedom are on a collision course.

This was before Obergefell, before the Supreme Court struck down bans on same sex marriage. Johnson has been able to talk about this issue in such a way that gets him quoted in the newspaper and seeming reasonable. For example, there was a really good AP story that came out yesterday or the day before about his background, litigating all of these cases and working in religious rights circles, but it quoted him saying, we’re just trying to make it so that everybody can live in a diverse society being tolerant of one another — I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. The AP article used that quote to kind of say: Well, maybe he’s softened his sharp edges a little bit. But really, what that quote means is — what he’s saying is: We Christians, who are bigoted against LGBTQ people, need to be listened to more and tolerated more in a diverse society.

I think a lot of people miss that, and I think that that is part of how well he is done on the PR front for them, because I think that’s something that you’re seeing crop up in a lot of the mainstream news coverage of his ascent to the speakership. There’s another thing that I want to point out that’s really important along those lines of how he frames that collision course between LGBTQ rights and religious freedom, is that the religious right is treating Obergefell much like it did Roe. They’ve said this themselves, it’s not like I’m reading into anything, they’ve said this themselves.

With Roe, which was decided in 1973, they decided: Well, eventually we’d like to see this whole thing overturned, but in the meantime, we’re going to do some other stuff to make it harder for people to get abortions. So then you see trap laws and parental notification laws and various restrictions at the state level, leading up to Dobbs. This was a 50-year project. They never lost sight of what they aimed to do. And this is exactly what they’re doing with Obergefell too. They would really like to see Lawrence vs. Texas overturned. Lawrence vs. Texas was the Supreme Court case, striking down criminalization of sodomy. They’re not just going after marriage equality, they’re basically going after everything. Just like with Roe, they’re not looking at it as: Oh, are we going to accomplish this in the next two years?

No, they’re looking at it like, are we gonna accomplish this in the next 50 years. Johnson is very much in that milieu, and that’s why his framing and work on the religious freedom angle of this is so important, because it’s part of this effort to chip away the rights that LGBTQ people have slowly gotten from the Supreme Court with the eventual goal of eviscerating that.

Sam Goldman 24:12

Really helpful reminder of the trajectory, what they’re going for, and how they’re going for it, in terms of the normalization of the right to be a bigot if you can somehow use religious grounds, and then the legal strategy behind it. I think that’s really helpful reminders. You were not surprised to see him come to the fore. You’ve been tracking, as you said, is somebody that is studying and has been studying the religious right, for so many, his ascension was a real big like: Who is he? Big surprise. I guess I have to ask how is he risen to such a powerful position without coming to the fore the way that, let’s say, a Jim Jordan, a Matt Gaetz, or Marjorie Taylor Greene have?

Sarah Posner 25:01

I think it’s true that he hasn’t gone for outlandish stunts, or, you know, got, you know, real sort of like showman gotcha moments like Jim Jordan would, not that he doesn’t favor the bogus investigations and that sort of thing that Jim Jordan has been spearheading, he’s in favor of all of that, but he doesn’t put himself front and center in that kind of show trial kind of showmanship that Jordan is so famous for. And you know, you’re not going to see him pull stunts, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Matt Gaetz. He definitely does do all of this in this kind of more low key way, but that should not be mistaken for him being less radical than those other people. It’s just style over substance.

I think, judging from the way the mainstream media has portrayed his rise and the reaction of his colleagues and so forth, I think that they were hoping that they could just sort of like slide that in there, like: Okay, here’s our guy who’ much more soft spoken and nice and nobody hates him. He doesn’t pick fights with his colleagues. I mean, at this juncture in the speaker, fight, not picking fights with your colleagues was like a really major selling point. But I think that dangerously over the past few days, that has been mistaken for an absence of radicalism, which I don’t think it should be.

Sam Goldman 26:25

I’m forgetting who said it, but he’s not vulgar MAGA, he’s refined MAGA. He’s more palatable because he’s refined? As opposed to as vulgar as some of the others are.

Sarah Posner 26:38

Yeah, there was a Washington Post article this morning that talked about his quieter tone. Okay, yes, he does have a quieter tone, but he believes the same things that all these other Republicans believe. He was willing to go to the mat for Trump on his impeachments. He was willing to go to the mat for Trump on the stolen election lies. He thinks there’s no separation of church and state. He thinks that God ordained government. He thinks that government should be run from a biblical worldview. He thinks that abortion should be criminalized. He thinks that same sex sex should be criminalized. If you say it quietly, it doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

Sam Goldman 27:13

What do you think his ascension tells us about the influence of Christian nationalism? Has it shifted at all?

Sarah Posner 27:23

I think that the Trump era made it more acceptable within the Republican Party to be so out front about it. And I think that that’s attributable to a couple of things. One is just Trump himself, sort of normalized, being upfront about everything; about white nationalism, Christian nationalism. Also, the Christian right support for Trump was a backlash to the Obama era in that there was a sense that we can’t go back to the Bush era where we were just values voters, we need to like be much more assertive about what we want — not that they didn’t have these views about church/state separation and government being run from a biblical worldview before, they just felt like they needed to sort of soft peddle it in front of everybody else.

I think that the all those guardrails are off. I think another thing that has happened is that the Christian right itself has become more radical over that period of time — that there are more sub movements, sub religious movements within it, that focus a lot more on radical expressions of their fate, in the political sphere. All of those things came together to produce a moment where the Republican Party either did not consider, or did not care that someone with Johnson’s track record was going to be their speaker. I have no doubt that they knew what his views were.

I’m not sure that they knew that there was going to be a collective investigation into his record as an attorney, as a state legislator in Louisiana, and you know, the earlier days of his role in Congress. It could be that they just were decided they didn’t even care; that the speaker mess had gone on too long. And then they just wanted somebody who, like I was saying earlier, hadn’t picked any fights with his colleagues. Maybe at the end of the day, that became the number one prerequisite to be Speaker.

I mean, that doesn’t mitigate all of the other things that I just said. I do think that it has become a more radicalized movement over the last eight years or so. It has to do with a lot of factors, including I would add, that they feel like they have the Supreme Court now. So they feel a little bit more emboldened to take more extreme legal positions in those kinds of cases.

Sam Goldman 27:46

I think that part of his victory was he was aggressive, but in a that soft way, MAGA affirming, he was election denying. His credentials of, like, being the architect of the effort to overturn the election and install Trump. I think all of that played a role, and I think that Trump’s endorsement [SP: Yes] was not just the icing on on the cake, but for some, it was a defining feature like it showed… that the Dear Leader wasn’t going to have an issue with them. Riight.

Sarah Posner 30:33

And if that wasn’t going to be an issue, it made it safer for others to enter, regardless of whether that’s their brand or not. I wanted to get your take on what he has signaled. He seems to do with this position? There’s what he’s been doing with the pairing of aid for Israel with the IRS, just trying to undo Biden’s programs as a contingency for for Israel. What else does he have in store that we know of? Well, I think that the first real test is going to be with funding the government, whether he’s going to let the Republican Party shut down the government, again.

Who knows what kinds of demands his caucus is gonna make in terms of programs or programs cut or poison pills and that sort of thing. And how he manages that, I think is going to be his first real test. When we think in terms of his more radical goals, like legislation on criminalizing abortion or legislation on criminalizing gender affirming care for minors, things that he supports, he might want to hold a floor vote while the Republicans have a majority and be able to say, I passed this bill in the House, but any of those bills would be a dead letter on arrival in the Senate, so it’s not like it would be accomplishing anything. But I do think he sent some very clear signals to the base with his attempt to pair the aid for Israel to the cuts at the IRS.

A lot of people interpreted that as: Well, you know, it’s the Republican Party, and they’re in bed with rich people who are tax cheats, so that’s why he wanted to cut the IRS agents. And there’s obviously an element of truth to that, but I think he also knows his base and his base is very Christian Zionist, and would want to provide financial support to Israel no matter what the Israeli government or the Israeli military is doing right now. But they also have a long standing historical antipathy to the IRS, which has nothing to do with collecting taxes from rich people. It has to do with their perception that the IRS is anti Christian, dating back to the Bob Jones University tax exemption revocation over its ban on interracial dating, and up into including, you know, more…

Sam Goldman 32:45

Not to interrupt, but I learned so much about this from your book. [SP: Right] That section. Yeah.

Sarah Posner 32:52

But, you know, not just the Bob Jones thing. They’re very much opposed to the Johnson Amendment. Which is never actually enforced against them, but of course, they perceive it as muffling the ability of Christians to endorse political candidates and have free speech. And also there was that manufactured controversy during the Obama era where they claimed that the IRS was discriminating against Christian nonprofits who were applying for tax exempt status. So that goes back a long way. He doesn’t have to say anything out loud. Cutting the IRS to fund aid to Israel is just something that requires no more elaboration to the base, and I think it’s important for people to understand why.

Sam Goldman 33:32

One question that one of our producers wanted me to ask you, Lina, wrote: What sort of disruptive role can a coup plotter play in holding this position as we approach the 2024 election?

Sarah Posner 33:47

I am not an expert on election law, or on the change to the electoral Count Act that was made after the coup attempt in 2021. I’ve read a few things about the mischief that whoever is Speaker of the House on January 6, 2025, could get involved in, but I don’t really feel confident knowing the ins and outs of that law to really say. But I would say that his track record on supporting Trump is very troubling, combined with the fact that he believes that as Speaker of the House, he’s carrying out God’s will. Those are troubling setups, but I would love to learn more about what elections experts think about what impact the changes to the electoral Count Act that were made would have on his ability to actually help Trump have a coup again.

Sam Goldman 34:39

Likewise, yeah, I think it’s it’s something that we’ll we’ll be returning to in future episodes. If you’ve read the Washington Post — well, some of their coverage, I shouldn’t say a blanket statement like that — Johnson has been portrayed as just a faith and family man. I was wondering if people haven’t gotten it yet, if we could distill, what will it be, what is the danger posed by a man whose believes he’s on a mission from God, second in line of succession to the presidency right after the Vice President, both in the immediate and as we look ahead?

Given his track record, I don’t know what Johnson would do if he were to become President. If something were to happen to President Biden, and something were to happen to Vice President Harris, he would become President. I think it would be fairly uncharted territory because, while George W. Bush had the stamp of approval of the Christian right, and they would often talk about him as a God ordained kind of President. And I think to a certain extent, he did believe that in a kind of less radical way, and a kind of more just kind of like, yeah, I feel like, you know, God has this hand on my shoulder kinda way. Johnson does not really care about the politics outside his little orbit, or even really fully understand the politics outside his little orbit. He would not have had the experience of actually running for president, you know, having to do the politics and juggling to win a national election.

So that just seems like really uncharted territory, an unelected president who has such radical views of his mission from God and what God has ordained the government to do. I kind of shudder to think about it, actually. It’s extremely frightening, and absolutely unprecedented. These are the moments where I feel like I have to say that almost every week that something awfully brand new and frightening becomes reality. But those are the times we’re living in. And the the best thing, as people that are listening to this show, know is is that we have to look at it and we have to confront it, or we can’t do anything about it, as horrifying and new in the most awful ways as it is. That’s just something that I think about a lot.

I wanted to return to ADF as we kind of close out this conversation. You brought Alliance Defending Freedom up at the beginning. And I think it’s important to come back to because it has played, and is continuing to play an incredibly outsized role in shaping and defining politics and the lived experience of so many. We’ve touched on it already in this this interview and I just wanted to remind people of some of the things that we’ve talked about in previous episodes relating to ADF, is their coordination of the recent onslaught of anti abortion laws at the state level across the U.S. They’re the group that is challenging approval of mifepristone.

They represented 303 Creative in the SCOTUS astroturf case intended to overturn anti discrimination protections for gay people. The Washington Post had recently published an expose, on Alliance for Defending Freedom, where, as Sarah, you mentioned that he worked for almost a decade for ADF, in The Washington Post piece did an expose say that show that they’re even more manipulative of the justice system than we already knew. It’s clear, they’re entirely out to win what I see is a theocratic vision of the future by hook or by crook. I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about what’s the story there? Is there anything else that we didn’t touch on already about this group and the role that they’re playing?

Sarah Posner 38:34

I’m glad you brought that up because what I talked about was Johnson being such a successful purveyor of the idea that the rights of Christians are at risk because of the gains in LGBTQ rights. Since masterpiece cake shop, which did involve a proprietor, a baker, who was investigated by a state anti discrimination commission, civil rights commission. Since then, a lot of their cases have been kind of before the fact — there was no investigation, but their client is claiming they fear there will be an investigation and they want a preemptive ruling that the civil rights law violates their freedom, when there’s not even been any hint that anybody, any gay couples are going to ask them for a cake or for photography or wedding website or anything.

In 303 Creative, which was decided in the last term, the fact that the plaintiff, who ran a graphic design and website business had not actually even started her website business. So the idea that she was afraid to start her website business because then she would be required by the big evil government to create wedding websites for gay couples, that she went all the way to Supreme Court to ask them to, like, declare that a violation of her free speech rights. And the conservative majority on the Supreme Court agreed with that.

I mean, Justice Gorsuch, in his opinion, basically admitted that she hadn’t started a website, doing any website design at all, but still ruled for her anyway. What was so important about the Washington Post piece is that it really exposed how a lot of their clients, not just in the 303 Creative Case, but in other cases, hadn’t really had the purported business at all. Some of their clients were supposedly wedding photographers. In at least one of those cases, the Washington Post, in just fantastic reporting, figured out that the supposed wedding pictures taken by their clients that were on their website — to show like: Oh, our client has a wedding photography business — were actually just staged photos of ADF employees dressed up in a wedding dress and stuff.

They’ve really been misleading the courts with no consequences. It’s bad enough to make the argument that other people’s civil rights should be extinguished because of your religious beliefs, but then to even go even further and to claim this harm. You can’t say: I’m a wedding photographer, and I don’t want to be forced by the government to do wedding photography for same sex couples. But not only have you never been asked by a same sex couple to photograph their wedding, you didn’t even have a wedding photography business in the first place.

Sam Goldman 41:19

For those that want to read more from you, where should they go?

Sarah Posner 41:27

A lot of my most recent stuff has been for MSNBC, so they can look at my author page at MSNBC.com. My website, if you wanted to find my older writing about Alliance Defending Freedom, I have kind of a long list of all of my work up on my website, which is just SarahPosner.com. Those are probably the best places to find my current and older work and of course, my books.

Sam Goldman 41:53

I want to thank you so much for coming back to share your expertise, your perspective, your insight, and thank you for all your continued investigation and writing and talking about this topic.

Sarah Posner 42:07

Thank you, Sam. [SG: Take care.] You too.

Sam Goldman 42:10

The chaos wrought by the most hardcore MAGA fascists like Matt Gaetz paid off. They held the line and won. Preventing governing, creating chaos, was part of the point for sure, but it had a specific purpose. It was in the service of a fascist program they are trying to consolidate, which includes getting Trump back into the White House and into power. So, if there remained any question that Donald Trump and the MAGA forces still dominate the GOP nearly three years after Trump lost the 2020 election, Johnson’s installation should put that to rest.

It’s worth heating Robert P. Jones warning that, “the maneuvering that will likely happen under Johnson’s gavel and the inevitable attempts to undermine free and fair voting in 2024. We must realize that white Christian nationalists are not a fringe movement, but one that has now fully seized control of one of our two political parties. And we must grasp that they are dedicated not to a fair process, but to a predetermined indeed predestined outcome. One that corresponds to their self serving interpretation of the Bible and American history.”

So too must we confront that the Democratic Party will not stop this nightmare. Yes, they’ve been branded as enemies and traitors, yet the Democratic Party will consistently pull to try to work with conciliate to and collaborate with the same people, the same party that’s branding them as enemies and traders. Yes, even collaborating with Mike Johnson. There can be no reconciliation with fascism, except on the terms of the fascists. Fascism must be resolutely opposed. It is beyond ominous shit, that the third in line for presidency is a raging theocrat.

It’s time we stop being surprised. Stop preemptively writing and sharing obituaries for Christian fascism or Trumpism, or yeah, even Trump, because these zombies mean death. Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Got thoughts or questions off this episode? We want to hear ’em. Ideas for topics or guests? Yes, please. Send them to us. Have a skill you think get help? We want to know all about it. Reach me at the site previously known as Twitter, @SamBGoldman, drop me a line at [email protected]. Find us @RefuseFascism on places like Threads, Instagram, Mastodon, BlueSky, @RefuseFascism, or do one better and leave us a voicemail see the show notes for that button.

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Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. Until next Sunday, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!