Do we like Mike Johnson?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A long run of his own words and bills aimed at LGBTQ+ people, plus a big role in health and food cuts, with only thin good to set against it.
Before he was Speaker, Johnson was a lawyer on the culture-war circuit. In 2003 he filed for the Alliance Defense Fund in a case where he argued states could criminalise same-sex sex, and the same year he sued New Orleans over health benefits for the partners of gay city workers. He then won a Louisiana state seat and moved on to Congress.
The old writing is where the harm test bites hardest. In 2004 he wrote that same-sex marriage was “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy”, and in 2003 he called the ruling striking down sodomy laws a “strategic first shot for the homosexual lobby’s ultimate prize”. NBC News reported both, and said his office hadn't responded to its request for comment at the time.
On democracy, he took the lead in filing a brief in the lawsuit seeking to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 win, which the Supreme Court quickly threw out, with legal scholars of all stripes criticising it. As Speaker he then helped push through the 2025 tax and spending bill, which passed 218 to 214. It cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs, took $185 billion from SNAP and rescinded more than half a trillion in clean energy programs, and the CBO estimated nearly 17 million people could lose coverage or subsidies.
The recent stuff is more of the same. Johnson says Congress has not handed power to Trump, calling that idea “absolute nonsense”, yet he cut the House's sitting short rather than face a vote forced by Republican Thomas Massie on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the unauthorised Iran war. He's also said he prays God's will is for Republicans, “not the communists”, to run America, which is how he describes his Democratic opponents.
On how he treats people, the record is thinner. Texas Republican Tony Gonzales has been accused of an affair with a staffer, which he has denied. Johnson called what is alleged “detestable” and said “we allow all the facts to play out”, which critics read as slow and supporters read as due process. We found no court finding against Johnson personally.
The good stuff is mostly faith and fundraising. He led a public prayer on the National Mall for the nation's 250th and has raised nearly half a billion dollars for House Republicans, per the AP. Faith alone is never a fail here, plenty of devout people pass with flying colours, but the harm in this file is his own words, bills and votes rather than his beliefs.