Mike Johnson deeply linked to 'dangerous, anti-democratic' extremists: scholar

Newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) may come across as “mild-mannered,” “soft-spoken,” but don't be fooled – he has deep and abiding ties to some of the most anti-democratic extremists in U.S. politics, according to one scholar on American religion.

The back-bench Louisiana Republican managed to take over the gavel from ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) following three weeks of chaos, and his lawyerly efforts to help Donald Trump overturn his election loss in 2020 flow from his ties to a broad nondenominational network of religious extremists working to end American democracy, wrote expert Matthew D. Taylor in a new column for The Bulwark.

"Politically extreme conservative Christians were some of the foremost leaders who bought into and bolstered Trump’s 2020 election lies, who used theology to justify their own authoritarianism, and who have brought their extremist theologies into the heart of right-wing politics," wrote Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. "Mike Johnson can be located in this group."