After 22 days of internal GOP battles over which faction got to pick the Speaker and little House business getting done, the U.S. House of Representatives finally agreed upon a Speaker of the House Wednesday. Republicans chose Congressman Mike Johnson as the 56th Speaker of the House.
Johnson represents his native Shreveport and the state’s fourth district. On Wednesday, Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-AL07) released a statement regarding the election of Rep. Johnson as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Sewell expressed her concerns about Johnson and called him a “MAGA extremist.”
“While I am grateful that House Republicans have finally ended their stalemate and selected a new House Speaker, I am gravely disappointed that my colleagues across the aisle have rejected our calls for bipartisanship and empowered yet another MAGA extremist,” said Sewell.
“I have very serious concerns about Mike Johnson’s record, namely his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his hostility toward our hard-fought rights and freedoms, and his work to slash Social Security and Medicare,” Sewell said. “I will work with Speaker Johnson where we can agree but make no mistake; when it comes to protecting our democracy, our freedoms, and the programs that Americans rely on, I will not back down.”
Since President Donald Trump’s (R) election in 2016, new Republican candidates elected to Congress have tended to become more in line with his “Make America Great Again” agenda. Meanwhile, many moderate Republicans in swing districts and blue states lost or retired from Congress when House Republicans lost the majority in 2018. The GOP regained the majority in 2022, but those new Republicans and the old GOP leadership who had served for decades under multiple presidents had a clash of agendas and personalities. The Speaker’s battle effectively repudiated the entire Republican leadership team. MAGA Republicans, many of them in the Freedom Caucus, ousted Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and then respectively rejected both the House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota). Moderates and more mainstream conservatives formed a block to reject Freedom Caucus Founding Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), but it was clear to everyone after the rejection of Emmer on Tuesday that the House Republican Conference was ready to move in a new, more rightward direction.
Johnson is an attorney, a former state legislator, a college professor, a former conservative talk radio host, and a spokesman for groups advocating for religious liberty. In January 2021, Johnson was elected Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference. Johnson also serves as a Deputy Whip for the 118th Congress. Johnson was elected to Congress while Trump was in office but has quickly risen through the GOP ranks. In 2021, Johnson was elected Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference. In 2022, he was also selected as a Deputy Whip. Now, he is the 56th Speaker of the House, with far fewer years of congressional tenure than McCarthy, Scalise, Jordan, or Emmer, and the second most powerful person in the U.S. government.
Johnson had the support of all six Republican members of the Alabama Congressional delegation.
Sewell is in her seventh term representing Alabama’s Seventh Congressional District.
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