Here’s Another Big Far-Right Thing Mike Johnson Never Reported

When House Speaker Mike Johnson gave the keynote speech at an elite right-wing conference in 2019, he failed to report the trip on his financial disclosure forms. Four years later, it’s still not clear who paid for him to get there or how much the trip cost, according to a Daily Beast report published Monday.

Johnson delivered his 31-minute speech to the Council for National Policy’s conference in person, traveling from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans for the October 4, 2019, event. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the CNP as “a shadowy and intensely secretive group [that] has operated behind the scenes … to build the conservative movement.”

It’s not unusual for lawmakers to speak at the CNP conference, which occurs three times a year. Representative Jody Hice spoke to the group in February 2019, while Representatives Mark Green and Chip Roy spoke to CNP in 2019 and 2022, respectively. The difference, though, is that all three men reported their trips as gifted travel. They also list the trip on their personal financial disclosure forms. Johnson did not file anything, The Daily Beast found.

“The most reasonable inference is that the very well-heeled CNP covered Johnson’s expenses when he addressed the group’s meeting in 2019, but the new speaker failed to report those gifts,” Brendan Fischer, the deputy executive director of the watchdog group Documented and a legal expert on campaign finance and ethics rules, told The Daily Beast.

“What [would make] it an ethics violation is if the payments aren’t reported.”

Hice, Green, and Roy reported gifted expenses ranging from more than $1,400 to more than $2,600 for travel, lodging, and the event registration fee. Johnson’s financial disclosure forms, already incredibly barren, do not show any trips funded by the CNP.

It’s possible that Johnson paid out of pocket for the trip. But again, given the spare nature of his reported financial situation, that seems highly unlikely (unless he has mounds of cash squirreled away under his mattress).

Johnson could have used campaign or PAC funds to travel, but his campaign and leadership PAC expenses don’t reflect costs that match the CNP event. Another explanation would be that Johnson used taxpayer money for the trip. The House statement of disbursements at the time shows his office reported commercial travel and lodging expenses that match the October 4 trip.

It’s unclear why Johnson would feel the need to pay for his trip at all, though. The CNP is well funded and clearly has no issue paying for his colleagues to speak. What’s more, Johnson has been a member of the CNP since at least July 2012. It’s strange that the organization would reward his loyalty by making him foot the bill.

The New Republic reached out to Johnson’s office for comment, but they had not responded by time of publication.

Johnson is no stranger to speaking at far-right events. He was scheduled to give the keynote address Friday for the Worldwide Freedom Initiative. Johnson spokesman Raj Shah assured TNR that Johnson did not travel for any events over the weekend, but he refused to explicitly confirm whether Johnson had spoken virtually or why the speaker was featured so prominently on WFI social media and event publicity if he did not speak.

An internal memo floating around the U.S. State Department is urging senior officials to rethink their approach to the Israel-Hamas war, criticizing America’s unwavering support of Israel’s counteroffensive as backing “crimes against humanity.”

The five-page memo, signed by 100 State Department and USAID employees, also accuses President Joe Biden of “spreading misinformation” in his October 10 speech, in which Biden described Hamas’s October 7 massacre as an “act of sheer evil” and likened it to the “worst rampages of ISIS” while unequivocally aligning U.S. military capabilities with Israel.

“Members of the White House and (the National Security Council) displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight,” the memo said, reported Axios.

The bulk of the memo focuses on condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza, which has constituted attacking hospitals, cutting off access to water and electricity, limiting humanitarian aid, and displacing 1.6 million Palestinians.

All of these actions, according to the memo, “constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law.”

“Yet we have failed to reassess our posture towards Israel,” the memo reads, according to the outlet. “We doubled down on our unwavering military assistance to the (Israeli government) without clear or actionable redlines.”

It’s not the first such memo to be leaked out of the State Department. Last week, another memo blasted the U.S. response to Israel as inappropriate, arguing that supporting the Middle Eastern state’s “settler violence” went “against American values,” reported Politico.

Senator Marsha Blackburn shared a racist tweet about Representative Rashida Tlaib over the weekend. Recent evidence shows she likely won’t face any consequences for it.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has understandably been vocal in her support for Palestine and for a cease-fire since the war in Gaza began. The House censured her last week for her words, with 22 of her fellow Democrats joining Republicans in reprimanding her.

But Blackburn has gone a step further and accused Tlaib, with no evidence, of being linked to Hamas.

“Rashida Tlaib has alleged ties to Hamas,” the Tennessee Republican tweeted Sunday. “Based on these allegations, it’s sadly not surprising she’s calling for a genocide against the Jewish people.”

Blackburn is referring to Tlaib’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” While many Jewish and pro-Israel groups say the saying is antisemitic, it has also been used by Israeli politicians. Tlaib defended her use of the phrase, saying it was a call for “freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.” Before she was censured, Tlaib called out the rise of both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

But while Tlaib has been censured for calling for peace, there is no outcry on Capitol Hill yet over Blackburn accusing her colleague of links to an extremist group. And there may never be one.

Republicans have repeatedly said outrageous things about Palestine, primarily calling for the extermination of an entire country and people. They make no distinction between Hamas and Palestinian civilians, and yet no one is getting in trouble for it.

What’s more, House Speaker Mike Johnson has a Christian nationalist flag flying outside his district office. The creation of a Christian nation implies the elimination of all other religions, and yet no one is accusing Johnson of calling for genocide.

The closest another lawmaker got to facing consequences was when Representative Brian Mast compared Palestinian civilians to Nazis. A Democratic representative drafted a resolution to censure the Florida Republican, but it has since been dropped.

More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.

Ohio state Republican lawmakers are once again trying to overturn the will of the people, after a devastating loss on abortion rights.

Ohioans overwhelmingly chose to enshrine abortion protections in the state Constitution earlier this week. Republicans had tried multiple times to block the referendum, called Issue 1, but they were handily defeated every time.

So on Friday, the state GOP unveiled a new tactic: stopping the courts from allowing the new amendment to take effect.

“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” Republican state representatives said in a press release. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”

The new amendment doesn’t take effect until December 7, and even then, it isn’t automatically implemented. Each individual abortion restriction needs to be repealed by a court. And Ohio has a lot of restrictions.

Abortion is legal up to 22 weeks, but certain abortion procedures are banned. Patients must wait 24 hours and undergo anti-abortion biased counseling before they can undergo the procedure. State-based insurance is prohibited from covering abortion services, and minors must have the consent of a parent, guardian, or judge in order to get an abortion.

As abortion reporter Jessica Valenti explained, Ohio Republicans don’t want the courts to repeal all of these restrictions. They want the GOP-controlled state legislature to decide whether to repeal the restrictions.

In the press release, lawmakers also blamed “foreign billionaires” for interfering in the election and tipping it in favor of abortion rights. In reality, right-wing billionaires and organizations donated millions of dollars from out of state (although still domestically) to try to block Issue 1.

This isn’t the first time Ohio Republicans have blatantly ignored—and actively worked against—what the people want. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority.

When that failed, the Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on the ballot to a Republican-authored summary littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language.

Republicans have repeatedly refused to accept the results of elections on abortion, in a massive threat to local democracy. In Kansas, despite residents voting overwhelmingly in August 2022 to keep abortion rights in the state Constitution, the state legislature is still trying to pass laws that would restrict abortion access. And in Wisconsin, after voters elected a state Supreme Court judge in large part because of her outspoken support for abortion access, state Republicans tried to impeach her.

Many Democratic lawmakers are telling their staff to let phone calls asking for a cease-fire in Gaza go to voicemail.

At least 24 lawmakers in the House and Senate have called for a cease-fire in Gaza, but Joe Biden has said there is “no possibility” of that happening. Instead, Israel agreed this week to a daily four-hour “humanitarian pause,” which it seems to think is enough time for civilians to flee bombs on foot.

Staff from more than 24 Democratic congressional offices told HuffPost in a story published Thursday that the caucus was unprepared for how many calls, emails, and letters they are receiving from constituents demanding a cease-fire. Most lawmakers do not yet have an official response.

One staffer, speaking anonymously, said that until a formal stance is developed, many of them have been told to “let it go to voicemail.”

Another staffer said that the office phone rings every five minutes with someone urging a cease-fire. A third staffer said the phone “doesn’t stop ringing at any point in the day.”

The majority of voters across party lines believe in the need for a cease-fire, and 80 percent of Democratic voters agree that the United States should call for a cease-fire and de-escalation in Gaza, according to a poll from Data for Progress.

It’s not just constituents, either. More than 100 staffers, both Democratic and Republican, staged a walkout on Wednesday to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

But lawmakers, by and large, seem to be fine ignoring the calls. Some believe the movement will eventually just die down, and one lawmaker allegedly joked, “They weren’t going to vote for me anyway.”

Staffers are shocked at both the public unity behind the issue and lawmakers’ refusal to take it seriously.

“This building is not listening,” one Democratic aide told HuffPost. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”

More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.