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      Revealed: House speaker did little to fight toxic ‘burn pit’ his father campaigned against

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      Mike Johnson was a few months away from assuming elected office in late 2014 when he was confronted with an impassioned appeal by the man he would later pay tribute to in his first speech as House speaker: his father Patrick.The elder Johnson, a former firefighter in the Louisiana city of Shreveport, had survived a near fatal industrial explosion when Mike was 12 years old, a defining event in both men’s lives. He had just joined a local community environmental group, working to fight against US government plans to burn – in the open air – over 15m pounds of toxic munitions. It had thrust Patrick and his future wife Janis Gabriel on to the frontlines of Louisiana environmental advocacy.As authorities were on the verge of approving the “open burn”, which would have sent vast quantities of known carcinogens into the air, Patrick and Janis turned to the most influential person they knew.Then an ambitious, rightwing constitutional lawyer, Mike Johnson would in a matter of weeks fill the vacancy for Louisiana’s eighth state legislative district – whose borders are just 20 miles from Camp Minden, a military base where the illegal munitions dump – the largest in US history – was located. A small amount of the munitions had spontaneously exploded two years before, causing a 4-mile blast radius.The pair drove to Mike Johnson’s legal offices in the late morning, Gabriel recalled, and Patrick Johnson explained to his son the immediate environmental and health dangers the toxic dump posed, not only to residents in the immediate vicinity but to members of the Johnson family living in the region.“His father and I went to him and said: ‘Mike you need to get involved in this, this is really important. Your family really lives at ground zero,’” Gabriel said in an interview with the Guardian. “We basically begged him to say something, to someone, somewhere.”A terse back and forth followed, she said.“He just wasn’t interested,” Gabriel said. “He had other things to do. He was never interested in environmental things.”The couple left deeply disappointed.“It just blew my mind that he wouldn’t give five minutes of his time to the effort,” she said. “He basically shut us down.”A spokesperson for Johnson said he “disputes this characterization as described” but did not respond to an invitation to elaborate further.Gabriel, 72, has thought about this failed appeal to Johnson repeatedly in recent months, ever since he was thrust from relative obscurity to the US House speakership in October.A denier of climate science, Mike Johnson has spoken about how his evangelical faith has shaped his political worldview. According to a broad examination of his past statements, Johnson’s anti-climate advocacy often bears the hallmarks of a Christian fundamentalism linked to creationism.Louisiana’s fourth congressional district, which includes Camp Minden, has long voted staunchly Republican, but many residents still hold deep concerns about pollution and the climate crisis. In a year the district experienced record heat and a number of climate-related disasters, some say their representative in Washington, who is now second in line to the presidency, is fundamentally failing them.Mike Johnson’s views on climate change became publicly apparent in 2017, just five months into his first term in the US Congress. Asked how he felt about the climate crisis by a constituent at a rowdy town hall meeting in Shreveport, Johnson launched into a critique of climate change data, saying he had also seen “the data on the other side”.“The climate is changing, but the question is: is the climate changing because of the natural cycles of the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs?“I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”Some attendees booed.Two years later, Johnson – who has received almost $350,000 in political donations from the oil and gas industry since his election in 2016 – led the Republican Study Committee as it lobbied against progressive Democratic efforts to implement a Green New Deal. Johnson denounced the sweeping federal blueprint for climate action as a “guise to usher in the principles of socialism” and create a system of “full government control”.In Louisiana, which is economically dependent on the oil and gas industry, the remarks were consistent with the Republican party’s support for fossil fuels.But to experts who study the Christian fundamentalist movement of creationism, the comments revealed a worldview that falls far outside traditional Republican pro-industry norms. They see the remarks, and Johnson’s rejection of climate science, as evidence of Johnson’s adherence to young-Earth creationist beliefs, including the presumption that the Earth is just 6,000 years old.Johnson has been closely associated with the creationist movement since 2014 – before his entry into politics – when he became a vocal supporter and lawyer for Answers in Genesis (AiG), a global fundamentalist Christian organization that built a gigantic Noah’s Ark replica and amusement park in Kentucky. Following a headline-grabbing legal battle, Johnson ultimately helped the group secure taxpayer incentives for the project.“Creationists can just wave away all of the geologic evidence of climate change because they are convinced that all rock layers were laid down in a global flood about 4,400 years ago,” said David MacMillan, a former Christian fundamentalist who has left the movement.MacMillan grew up attending creationist conferences, had posts published on AiG’s website, and helped raise money for the establishment of AiG’s first creationist museum near Cincinnati, earning him a spot on a donor wall and a lifetime pass to attend. Now – having left his fundamentalist views behind – he is speaking out about the dangers of science denial.“They will tell you that hundreds of thousands of annual ice core layers are just a bunch of snow that formed while the Earth was cooling off after Noah’s flood. They believe climate scientists are sifting through meaningless noise to try and find patterns that will get them noticed and promote narratives that please the global elite who want to control us.”What’s more, MacMillan added, most fundamentalists argue that even if the climate is changing, it should make no difference because they also expect the imminent, apocalyptic, final judgment of the world.Johnson forged a close relationship with the AiG founder Ken Ham, an Australian Christian fundamentalist who has argued that humans “don’t need to fear that man will destroy the planet, as God wouldn’t let that happen anyway”.MacMillan, who knows Ham, said the AiG founder pioneered a technique of trying to sow doubts about science by presenting scientific consensus as merely a belief system, much like religion.In a video interview with the Canadian psychologist and alt-right provocateur Jordan Peterson in November last year, Johnson drew directly from this creationist strategy when asked why Democrats pursue policies to address the climate crisis.“They regard the climate agenda as part of their religion,” Johnson said. “I don’t know any other way to explain it. They pursue it with religious zeal. And they care not what type of pain these policies inflict upon the people that they are supposed to be serving because they’re not serving the people, they’re serving the planet.”While many media reports have highlighted Johnson’s controversial relationship with Ham, MacMillan said Johnson’s close association with the group – his bio appears on its website, he has written blogposts for the group, and spoken at an AiG event in Kentucky – means Johnson would probably have had to agree to the group’s statement of faith, which includes the assertion that the Bible is “factually true” and that its authority is not limited to spiritual or redemptive themes, but also history and science.According to the group’s website: “All persons employed by the AiG ministry in any capacity, or who serve as volunteers, should abide by and agree to our Statement of Faith and conduct themselves accordingly.”An AiG editorial review board regularly reviews all articles, books and other materials produced or distributed by the group to make sure they are in line with AiG values and that there “is not mission drift”.In a speech delivered at Ham’s Ark Encounter conference center last year, Johnson raised the apocalypse and Christ’s second coming.“We are hopeful people because we know how the book ends … God wins,” he said in an address that was met with a standing ovation. “The charge is for us, it’s not yet determined. We’re going to be here until the Lord tarries, when the Lord comes back. And maybe that’s soon, because we’re seeing a lot of signs.”Mike Johnson and his wife are due to speak at an AiG conference event in April next year, entitled: “Reclaim: overcoming the war on women for the glory of God.”“There is no doubt that Mike Johnson demonstrated to AiG’s satisfaction that he agrees with every aspect of that statement of faith,” MacMillan said.A short biography of Johnson is included on AiG’s contributors page. A review of the 267 biographies on the AiG site indicates he is one of only two elected officials to post on the fundamentalist group’s website. The other is Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana state representative and the current president of the Family Research Council, a far-right evangelical lobby group. Perkins, one of Johnson’s political mentors, once said he believed floods were sent by God to punish homosexuality and regularly cites the Bible to deny solutions to the climate crisis.When asked by the Guardian if Johnson had ever endorsed the AiG statement of faith, or if he shared Ham’s views on climate or if he believed the Earth was 6,000 years old, a spokesperson said: “The speaker is not responsible for the views of others” and did not respond to an invitation to elaborate.AiG did not respond to specific questions about Johnson and the group’s statement of faith and instead commented on his legal work for the organization. “Mr Johnson served the ministry very effectively and professionally in the matter and Answers in Genesis was very pleased and grateful for his services,” said a spokesman, A Larry Ross.Janis Gabriel pointed to Mike Johnson’s hardline faith and political pragmatism when explaining her interpretation of why he had brushed aside his father’s appeals to help with the air pollution crisis at Camp Minden.“It speaks to those religious beliefs,” said Gabriel. “‘Don’t take care of the environment because we have a finite amount of time here and God will take care of you.’ It’s crazy.”Gabriel, who was discussing her relationship with the House speaker for the first time publicly, said she was disclosing details of private conversations because Johnson now holds a position of immense power. She wanted to further public understanding of “what and who he is and how that will affect the job he’s doing for us.”“That is the important conversation,” she said.In his 2022 interview with Peterson, Mike Johnson couched his critique of those seeking climate solutions around conversations he was having with residents in his district.“When I’m in Louisiana I try to explain to our folks, listen: ‘They have effectively replaced Father God with Mother Earth … They believe we owe fealty to Mother Earth.”Even as the speaker rejects concerns about the climate crisis, Louisiana’s fourth congressional district is already experiencing new extremes tied to global heating.In a year almost certain to become the hottest on record, the city of Shreveport endured back-to-back days of record heat in August as temperatures soared to 110F (43C).Louisiana, too, endured months of devastating drought, which contributed to a water crisis in the south-east, and hundreds of wildfires in America’s wettest state. The largest wildfire in Louisiana’s history occurred this year in Johnson’s district, scorching a staggering 33,000 acres and decimating the local economy. The heat and drought combined cost Louisiana’s agriculture industry $1.69bn alone this year.The state also logged a record number of heat-related deaths over the summer, according to a spokesman for the Louisiana health department (LDH), with 69 people dying between June and September this year. This was almost double the death toll of any in the past six years, according to data released to the Guardian by LDH.A report published this year, which examined all occupational heat-related illnesses between 2010 and 2020, found that the highest rates of illness occurred in Louisiana’s north-west, which has some of the highest rates of poverty in the state and is entirely covered by Johnson’s district.“Heat exposure is intensifying as the frequency, severity, and duration of extreme heat events increases due to climate change,” the government report acknowledges.In Shreveport, six people died from extreme heat this year alone – a record year, according to Todd Thoma, who has served as coroner in the Shreveport area for 16 years. “This was an exceptional year to me,” Dr Thoma said, as he combed through each case file in his office, pointing to a combination of prolonged extreme heat, high poverty rates and power outages that contributed to the increased risks for the city’s most vulnerable residents.A 62-year-old woman who died in June after a tornado knocked out power to her home, leaving her with no air conditioning. A 49-year-old man, found collapsed on the sidewalk just four days later. And, on 13 July, 34-year-old Ted Boykin, a father of one who was found dead inside a trailer home, with no air conditioning, that was used by Shreveport’s unhoused community.The ambient air temperature inside was 98F, according to the coroner’s report. Boykin’s internal temperature was 107.9F.In an interview Boykin’s sister, Sandy Boykin-Hays, said she considered her brother a victim of the climate crisis and chastised her congressman and others for a failure to accept science.“He was let down by the system,” said Boykin-Hays. “And to them [in Washington], I’m sure they wouldn’t believe, even if it [climate change] was staring them in the face, because they’re rich. They have money. They don’t have to worry about air conditioning or where your next meal is coming from.”Boykin-Hays, who works as a food delivery driver and volunteers with homeless outreach, was forced to take out a $3,000 loan to pay for her brother’s funeral.“They’re ignoring the true issue because it doesn’t affect them,” she said.In Washington, where Johnson now holds the power to bring legislation to the House floor, the speaker has not yet expressed a position on a bill introduced by the California Democrat Judy Chu, to protect workers from excessive heat, despite it receiving some bipartisan support in committee.“The denial of the climate crisis by Maga extremists like the speaker isn’t just a danger to the health of his constituents during summer months,” said Chu. “It’s a danger to the long-term wellbeing of future generations in America and around the world.”Both Janis Gabriel and Patrick Johnson became board members of the Citizens Advisory Group set up to engage with the EPA over community concerns at Camp Minden, according to meeting minutes reviewed by the Guardian and interviews with two other board members.Johnson even co-wrote, recorded and performed an original song to help the “stop the burn” efforts, which eventually helped force the EPA into a course change by approving use of a cleaner alternative to dispose of the waste throughout 2016 and 2017.“Take a stand against the poison, protect our future children’s lives,” Patrick Johnson sings.The former firefighter had become a national advocate for hazardous material safety after surviving a fiery explosion caused by leaking ammonia at a cold storage facility. Another firefighter died in the 1984 accident. The near-death experience, said Gabriel, changed his spiritual outlook. The couple met in 2013 when Johnson attended Gabriel’s Daoist center as a student in Shreveport to practice tai chi and qigong martial arts. The pair married in October 2016, shortly before Johnson’s death from cancer in December that year.The elder Johnson, said Gabriel, clearly accepted climate science and was “acutely aware of the environment”. While he “certainly didn’t agree” with Mike Johnson’s “extremist stance” on Christianity, he accepted it. The pair disagreed over support for Donald Trump, Gabriel said.Mike Johnson has described his father’s survival in the 1984 explosion as an “actual miracle” that “made me a person of very deep faith”. His campaign literature still references the accident and, in his first speech as speaker, Johnson described how his father’s near death “changed all of our life trajectories”.But from January 2015, when he formally entered politics, Johnson appeared to display little interest in the Camp Minden issue that his father was campaigning on. It was a period described by three organizers as the start of heightened advocacy.He was given invitations to attend citizens’ meetings as local campaigning ramped up, according to the board’s chairman, Ron Hagar, but did not attend.“He stayed as far away from it as possible,” said Hagar, a close friend of Patrick Johnson’s. “He had no sense of responsibility to stand up for the people he’s representing.”A search of public records did not indicate Mike Johnson had spoken on the issue at the time although he was listed as a co-sponsor of a minor 2015 state house resolution to stop the facility from accepting further waste explosives. Photographs show Johnson was also present at a December 2015 press conference at the site, but according to a senior organizer in attendance, Johnson did not speak and the state representative is not quoted in local media.The issue was championed by a Democratic state representative for the 10th district, which includes Minden, named Gene Reynolds. Reynolds, who is now retired, did not return multiple calls for comment.A spokesperson for Johnson pointed to public activity cited by the Guardian and “other activities” to dispute claims he had not been involved in the matter.Johnson’s short tenure in the state legislature was spent focused on far-right policy initiatives tied to his biblical worldview, including introducing legislation to push back against same-sex marriage, and a continued focus on his non-profit law practice, including work with Ham’s Ark Encounter.Following her husband’s death, Gabriel moved out of state. She began to lose touch with Johnson, although the pair exchanged occasional cordial text messages.In one May 2019 exchange, seen by the Guardian, Johnson contacted Gabriel to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. Gabriel told him she had left Shreveport permanently and moved to a different state.“Don’t blame you one bit for staying there! Shreveport is really going downhill now and it’s sad to watch,” Johnson replied.Gabriel then explained that her decision to leave had come on Patrick’s advice, partly due to his prediction of “worsening environmental problems”. She also told Johnson that his father would be proud of his “love and devotion and support” of his own children.“Dad was right about the environmental problems in Shreveport. Those and other issues are mounting,” Johnson replied. But in the same message, he moved quickly to update her on his rapid rise in Congress: “I’ve been advanced in leadership in record time (currently the 10th ranked Republican!), and God continues to affirm that we are doing what He has called us to do, so that keeps us encouraged.” More

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      in US Politics

      New election ordered in Louisiana sheriffs race won by one vote

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      A Democratic politician who recently won a Louisiana sheriff’s election over a Republican candidate by a single vote has been ordered to run the race again after a judge determined that a handful of illicitly cast ballots muddied up the results.The Democratic candidate, Henry Whitehorn, defeated his Republican opponent John Nickelson in an election to be the next sheriff of north-western Louisiana’s Caddo parish on 18 November 2023 by a count of 21,621 votes to 21,620. A 27 November recount gave each candidate an additional three votes, but Whitehorn preserved his minimal advantage in the contest to succeed a retiring Republican incumbent.Nickelson subsequently filed a lawsuit against Whitehorn and elections officials that challenged the validity of the result. The lawsuit demanded that the election be awarded to Nickelson or held again.During the subsequent proceedings, the retired and specially appointed judge Joe Bleich found that at least 11 votes had been illegally cast and counted. A state official at one point testified about an example of those votes, involving a pair of constituents who had twice cast their ballots in the race.The pair voted during the early period ahead of the election, according to the official’s testimony. And, the official said, they also voted on election day itself.It would be illegal for those people to be compelled to reveal for whom they voted so that it could be determined whether their four combined ballots made a definitive difference in the tight margin, Bleich’s ruling said. The ruling explained that those votes had “a constitutional guarantee of secrecy”.Ultimately, Bleich, who is registered as a political independent, ruled Tuesday that the contest should be held again. The earliest that rerun can occur is 23 March, the local news outlet KTBS.com reported.Bleich’s ruling came in one of at least two almost incomprehensibly close local political elections reported in the US in the last few weeks. On 17 November, a coin flip decided the winner of the mayor’s race in Monroe, North Carolina.The two candidates in that case had received the exact same number of votes in a race held on 7 November, triggering a coin toss tiebreaker that made local businessman Robert Burns Monroe’s mayor-elect. Burns and his opponent accepted the results of the coin flip as valid.Whitehorn has asked a state appellate court to reverse Bleich’s ruling. He said he is prepared to argue his case all the way up to the Louisiana supreme court if necessary.“I was always taught that the person with the most votes wins, even if that’s by a thousand votes or by one vote,” Whitehorn said in a statement reported by KTBS. “But it seems as though the rules of the game are different depending on who the players are.“I won the sheriff’s race – not once but twice. My opponent conveniently chose to question the integrity of the election only after he lost, not once but twice. In elections, you should not be given a redo simply because you are unhappy with the results.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe lead attorney for Nickelson, Scott Sternberg, said in his own statement that “it’s a very rare thing” for an election to be challenged.“You’ve got to have rock-solid evidence, and we thought we had that here,” Sternberg said. “Fortunately, the court agreed.”“Based just on a small sample, the judge found at least 11 unlawful votes, but that there could be many more. The ruling ensures that Caddo parish will have a sheriff’s race that is decided by legal and lawful votes, and we expect that’s exactly what will happen in March.”Louisiana attorney and writer Royal Alexander told the Shreveport Times of Louisiana that Bleich’s ruling was not a surprise to him.“Louisiana law clearly allows for a new election to be ordered when the outcome of an election cannot be determined,” Alexander said to the Times. “Judge Bleich pointed to 11 defective votes, which obviously exceed [the] 1-vote margin of victory.”Most of Shreveport – Louisiana’s third largest city, behind New Orleans and Baton Rouge – sits within Caddo. In Caddo, the sheriff oversees the law enforcement agency that patrols streets in unincorporated areas, operates the jail and provides security at the local state courthouses. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans secure all statewide offices in Louisiana after sweeping runoff races

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      Upon January’s arrival, Republicans will control every elected statewide office in once-bipartisan Louisiana after the GOP swept runoff races Saturday for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer.The Republican success, in a state that has had a centrist Democrat in the governor’s office for the past eight years, means that political conservatives have secured all of Louisiana’s statewide offices for the first time since 2015. Republicans secured the governor’s mansion in October and also hold a two-third supermajority in the state house as well as the senate.Liz Murrill was elected as attorney general, Nancy Landry as secretary of state and John Fleming as treasurer. Murrill and Landry are the first women in Louisiana to be elected attorney general and secretary of state.Saturday’s election completes the shaping of Louisiana’s next executive branch. Most incumbents didn’t seek re-election and opened the door for new leadership in some of the most powerful positions.Louisiana’s gubernatorial election was decided on 14 October when Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former president Donald Trump, won a multi-primary party outright and avoided a runoff.The outgoing governor, John Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the US’s Deep South, was unable to run for re-election due to term limits.Also in October, lieutenant governor Billy Nungesser and commissioner of agriculture Mike Strain were Republican incumbents who won re-election. And Republican Tim Temple was newly elected as insurance commissioner.Despite a low voter turnout, Saturday’s election caught Trump’s eye. The former president and favorite to clinch the Republicans’ 2024 White House nomination endorsed the GOP’s candidates in each of the three statewide races, which featured little meaningful resistance from Louisiana’s Democratic party.The three Republicans “are outstanding in every way and have my complete and total endorsement”, Trump said in a statement issued by the Louisiana Republican party.Murrill will replace her boss Jeff Landry when he becomes governor in January. Murrill’s opponent in the attorney general race was Lindsey Cheek, a New Orleans-based Democratic trial attorney.The attorney general represents the state in a variety of legal disputes. However, Landry often made statewide and national headlines in the role, including his support for legislation banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths and a near-total abortion ban with no exceptions for cases of rape and incest.Murrill has joined Landry in championing conservative causes, including a lawsuit against the Joe Biden White House for the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors.On the campaign trail, Murrill pledged to fight overreach by the federal government, defending Louisiana’s abortion ban and pushing a tough-on-crime rhetoric that is antithetical to progressive criminal justice reforms.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFleming’s victory, meanwhile, vaulted a close Trump ally into the state treasurer’s office. Fleming is a conservative former congressman who co-founded the US House Freedom Caucus.After his time in Congress, Fleming served as a member of the Trump administration. He faced Dustin Granger, a Democratic financial adviser based in Lake Charles, in Saturday’s runoff.Nancy Landry, who is not related to Jeff Landry, beat Gwen Collins-Greenup – a Democrat from Louisiana’s capital of Baton Rouge – in the race for secretary of state. Nancy Landry is a former state House member from Lafayette and has worked in the secretary of state’s office for four years.She will handle replacing Louisiana’s outdated voting machines, which don’t produce the paper ballots critical to ensuring accurate election results.The lengthy and ongoing replacement process was thrust into the national spotlight after allegations of bid-rigging and when conspiracy theorists who support Trump’s lies that fraudsters robbed him of re-election in 2020 inserted themselves into the public dialogue.Though Landry is Louisiana’s first woman elected to secretary of state, the first woman to hold the position was Alice Lee Grosjean. Grosjean was appointed in 1930 by then-governor Huey P Long after the secretary of state at the time, James Bailey, died suddenly of pneumonia.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Louisiana General Election 2023: Live Results

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      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Cam Baker, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Will Houp, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. More

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      Republican praises January 6 attacker’s ‘good faith and core principles’

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      Seeking leniency for a January 6 rioter charged with assaulting police, the Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins – a former law enforcement officer himself – saluted the man’s “good character, faith and core principles”.In video taken during the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, the rioter was seen to say: “It’s going to be violent and yes, if you are asking, ‘Is Ryan Nichols going to bring violence? Yes, Ryan Nichols is going to bring violence.’”Nichols, in an affidavit, admitted posting the video, attacking officers with pepper spray and urging rioters on with shouts including, “This is not a peaceful protest”.In court in Washington last week, Nichols, of Longview, Texas, pleaded guilty to two charges: obstruction and assaulting, resisting or impeding police and obstruction of an official proceeding.More than 1,000 arrests have been made over the attack and hundreds of convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Donald Trump, who incited the riot as he attempted to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat by Joe Biden, faces 17 charges related to his election subversion, four federal and 13 at state level in Georgia.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack staged by the former president’s supporters, including law enforcement suicides.Higgins’ own website describes him as having “spent much of his career dedicated to uniformed service [as] an army veteran and law enforcement officer”. It also says he is “widely regarded as one of the most conservative members of Congress”.Nonetheless, in a letter dated 7 November, he asked the US district judge in Nichols’s case, Royce C Lamberth, to show leniency when passing down sentence.“Sir,” Higgins wrote. “I submit to you this letter in support of Ryan Taylor Nichols. He is a man of good character, faith, and core principles.“I humbly ask that he receive fair consideration of the whole of circumstances regarding his case, condition, and background. He has already served nearly two years in the District of Columbia jail in pretrial confinement, which has been destructive to his physical (liver issues) and mental health (PTSD).”Nichols had been under house arrest since 22 November 2022 and had “not sought to flee nor shown any indication of dangerous activity”, Higgins said.He added: “Prior to his arrest, Mr Nichols had no criminal background and served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. He continued to serve domestically in a search and rescue capacity, even being publicly recognised for his heroic actions on national television.”That referred to Nichols’s commendation by the Louisiana-raised TV host Ellen DeGeneres – in 2018 – and in relation to his work to rescue people and animals stranded by Hurricane Florence.Nichols, Higgins said, “has already paid a tremendous price in time and treasure” for his actions on January 6.“His case must be considered fairly and thoroughly in line with his fundamental constitutional rights.”No date has been set for sentencing. More

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      Louisiana must draw new congressional map by mid-January for 2024 elections

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      The Louisiana state legislature has until the middle of January to enact a new congressional map after a federal court ruled that the state’s current map illegally disfranchises Black voters.A conservative federal appeals court in New Orleans issued the deadline on Friday. According to the order, if the state legislature doesn’t pass a new map by the deadline, then a lower district court should conduct a trial and develop a plan for the 2024 elections.Whether the outgoing Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, will call a special session to redraw the political boundaries or whether his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry – who will be inaugurated on 8 January – will have enough time to call a special redistricting session and meet the court’s deadline has yet to be determined.Black voters in Louisiana represent about one-third of the state’s population, but currently represent a majority in just one out of six congressional districts in the state.Republicans have argued the current map is fair, with Democrats arguing the districts discriminate against Black voters in the state.A lower court in June 2022 struck down Louisiana’s current congressional map. The court ruled that the map violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a new map to be drawn that includes a second congressional district with a majority of Black voters.The ruling was appealed to the US fifth circuit court of appeal. Black voters in Louisiana pushed for an emergency appeal to expedite the new map drawing before the 2024 election year, though that was rejected in October.A special session of the Louisiana legislature now has until 15 January to decide on a new congressional map. Edwards has yet to call that session, though he has said he plans to do so.“As I have said all along, Louisiana can and should have a congressional map that represents our voting population, which is one-third Black,” Edwards said in a statement on the recent ruling. “This is about simple math, basic fairness, and the rule of law.“With the fifth circuit’s action today, I remain confident that we will have a fair map with two majority Black districts before the congressional elections next year.”US House representative Troy Carter of New Orleans, Louisiana’s sole Black and Democratic member of Congress, said he “sincerely” hopes the state’s legislature will draw a new map with a second majority-Black district. Carter posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, to urge lawmakers to “do the right thing” and said “there is no need to wait for a court to force compliance with clear law”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEdwards leaves office on 8 January, when his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry, will be inaugurated. If it’s left to Landry to call a special session after his inauguration, the timing will be tricky.The session couldn’t start until seven days after the proclamation is issued, meaning the earliest lawmakers could return to Louisiana’s state house in Baton Rouge is the 15 January deadline.Landry did not immediately comment on Friday. The appellate court’s order does say the district court retains the discretion to grant “limited additional time” if requested.If the legislature refuses to draw a new map, a trial will be held in the district court. Plaintiffs in the case could object to the plan and new map, and the court will determine whether it is compliant under the Voting Rights Act.“The court is to conclude all necessary proceedings in sufficient time to allow at least initial review by this court and for the result to be used for the 2024 Louisiana congressional elections,” the fifth circuit’s court order said. More

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      in Elections

      Speaker Mike Johnson Helped Efforts to Overturn The 2020 Election

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      If Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was the most prominent public face of the congressional effort to fight the results of the 2020 election, his mentee, the newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, was a silent but pivotal partner.The election on Wednesday of Mr. Johnson, 51, to the post second in line to the presidency has focused new attention on his behind-the-scenes role in trying to overturn the election results on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump.A social conservative, Mr. Johnson played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results.In December 2020, Mr. Johnson collected signatures for a legal brief in support of a Texas lawsuit, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, that tried to throw out the results in four battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the suit, but not before Mr. Johnson persuaded more than 60 percent of House Republicans to sign onto the effort. He did so by telling them that the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was “anxiously awaiting” to see who in Congress would defend him.A constitutional lawyer, Mr. Johnson was also a key architect of Republicans’ objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Many Republicans in Congress relied on his arguments.In 2020, Mr. Johnson embraced Mr. Trump’s wild and false claims of fraud. In a radio interview, he asserted that a software system used for voting was “suspect because it came from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.”Mr. Johnson also falsely claimed the election was “rigged.”“You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that,” Mr. Johnson said.No credible evidence has ever emerged to support the conspiracy theories about Dominion and another voting machine firm having helped to ensure Mr. Trump’s defeat. In April, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit by Dominion over reports broadcast by Fox that Dominion machines were susceptible to hacking and had flipped votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, Mr. Johnson had honed his arguments undermining the election to be more palatable. He presented colleagues with arguments they could use to oppose the will of the voters without embracing conspiracy theories and the lies of widespread fraud pushed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Johnson instead faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional.After a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters, believing the election was rigged, stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and injured about 150 police officers, Mr. Johnson condemned the violence. But he defended the actions of congressional Republicans in objecting to Mr. Biden’s victory.He wrote a two-page memo of talking points meant to buck up Republicans, and lamented that the violence had almost eclipsed his careful arguments. “Most of the country has also never heard the principled reason,” he wrote.Over a year later, on “Truth Be Told,” the Christian podcast he hosts with his wife, Kelly, Mr. Johnson continued to argue that he and his colleagues had been right to object to the election results.“The slates of electors were produced by a clearly unconstitutional process, period,” he said.Mr. Johnson came to Congress in 2017 with support from the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, though he has never joined the group.In an interview this year, he referred to Mr. Jordan, a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, as a “very close friend” who “has been a mentor to me since I got here.”Mr. Johnson said Mr. Jordan called him when he was running for office, because “he knew I was a conservative,” contributed money to his campaign and invited him to Washington for a meeting with him and other Freedom Caucus members.“He started providing advice to me,” Mr. Johnson said. “So now we’ve become very close.”In 2020, the two men and their wives traveled to Israel together and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Mr. Johnson has also made a close ally of Mr. Trump, and he served on Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense team.On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church speaking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump called. Mr. Johnson had been in touch with the president’s team on his myriad legal challenges seeking to overturn the results, “to restore the integrity of our election process,” according to a Facebook post by Mr. Johnson recounting the exchange.“We have to keep fighting for that, Mike,” he said Mr. Trump told him.“Indeed we do, sir!” Mr. Johnson said he replied.Karoun Demirjian More

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      The California town that could hold the key to control of the House in 2024

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      When customers come in for a cut and a conversation at Miguel Navarro’s barbershop, there’s one topic they raise more than any other: gas prices.A gallon of regular goes for about $5 in Delano, a farming town in California’s Central Valley where in 1965, grape pickers staged a historic strike over bad pay and working conditions that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, led by Cesar Chavez. Today, everyone in the city who can afford to do so drives, which means feeling the pain of California’s pump prices, the highest in the nation.“You kind of think about it twice before you go out,” said Navarro as he cut a customer’s hair in his eponymous barbershop on Delano’s Main Street. His shop sits among a strip of tax preparers, taquerias and leather goods stores, in an area that also happens to be some of the most fiercely contested political territory in the nation.The city of nearly 51,000 is in the middle of a California congressional district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, Joe Biden won overwhelming support in 2020, but despite its apparent blue lean, voters have repeatedly sent the Republican David Valadao to be their voice in the House of Representatives over the past decade.Next year, Democrats hope to change that as part of their campaign to seize back control of Congress’s lower chamber, which hinges on flipping 18 districts won by Biden in 2020 that are represented by Republicans like Valadao, a dairy farmer who is one of just two Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump and managed to keep their seats.That battle, which will play out alongside Biden’s re-election campaign and Senate Democrats’ defense of their small majority in the chamber, may well be the easiest for the party to win in 2024.Though the numbers appear to favor Democrats in California’s 22nd congressional district, several hurdles stand between the party and victory. Nearly a year and a month before the general election, the down-ballot races that are crucial to deciding the balance of power in Washington DC are far from the minds of many in Delano.“People here are just living day by day, and if you do not remind them about elections, they might not remember,” said Susana Ortiz, an undocumented grape picker who lives in Delano and has campaigned for Rudy Salas, Valadao’s unsuccessful Democratic opponent in last year’s election.Democrats must gain five seats to win a majority in the House, and Valadao’s district – encompassing dozens of farming communities and half of Bakersfield, California’s ninth most-populous city – is one of 33 targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2024.Beyond campaigning, Democrats are expected to benefit from a supreme court decision that has forced Alabama, and potentially Louisiana, to redraw its congressional map. The party also has a good shot of gaining a seat in New York City’s Long Island suburbs, where voters are reeling after discovering their Republican congressman George Santos is a fabulist who is now facing federal charges.The GOP has its own redistricting advantages, particularly in North Carolina, where new congressional maps could knock at least three Democrats out of their seats. The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting Democratic lawmakers in 37 seats, five of whom represent districts that voted for Trump three years ago.“I think the House is going to come down to redistricting fights, candidate recruitment and, probably, most importantly, the top of the ticket and what that does to down-ballot races,” said David Wasserman, an election analyst who focuses on the chamber at the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.No race has a dynamic quite like the contest to unseat Valadao, whose spokesperson declined to comment. The 46-year-old won election to the California state assembly in 2010, and then to the US House two years later. Valadao defeated successive Democratic challengers in the years that followed, until TJ Cox ousted him in a close election in 2018, a historically good year for the party.Valadao triumphed over Cox two years later. The January 6 attack on the Capitol occurred just as he was to take his seat in the House, and a week after that, Valadao joined nine other Republicans and all Democrats to vote for impeaching Trump.“Based on the facts before me, I have to go with my gut and vote my conscience. I voted to impeach President Trump. His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent and absolutely an impeachable offense,” Valadao said at the time. The decision ignited a firestorm among Republicans in his Central Valley district.“It was ugly, man. I mean, it was really, really, really ugly,” said James Henderson, a former GOP party chair in Tulare, one of the three counties that make up Valadao’s district. Donors threatened to withhold their funds, but Henderson said arguments that Valadao was uniquely able to hold the vulnerable seat, and crucial to representing the county’s agriculture interests, prevailed.“The alternative is, if you lose this seat, you lose this seat forever,” Henderson said. It was nonetheless close: styling himself as a Trump-aligned conservative, Chris Mathys, a former city councilman in the Central Valley city of Fresno, challenged Valadao in the primary, and came within 1,220 votes of beating him.Mathys was assisted by the House Majority Pac, which was linked to the then Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi and spent $127,000 on television advertisements boosting his candidacy and attacking Valadao, according to the analytic firm AdImpact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt was one of many instances across the country in which Democratic groups channeled dollars to rightwing Republicans in their primaries, betting that they would be easier to defeat in the general election. Valadao would go on to triumph over state assemblyman Salas, and make an unlikely return to the House.Valadao’s re-election fight is shaping up to be a repeat of what he faced the year prior. Mathys is running again, and has once more put Valadao’s vote against the former president at the center of his campaign. Trump is the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, and California Republicans will vote in primaries for both races on the same ballot.“The big issue, clearly, is the impeachment issue. It looms very large. People remember like it was yesterday,” Mathys told the Guardian in an interview. “With President Trump being on the ballot, it’s going to even resonate stronger, because he’ll be on the same ballot that we’re on.”CJ Warnke, the communications director for the House Majority Pac, said the committee would “do whatever it takes” to defeat Valadao and Mathys, but did not say whether that would include another round of television advertisements supporting the latter.Salas is also challenging Valadao again, and another Democrat, the state senator Melissa Hurtado, is in the primary. Salas believes that next year will be when Valadao falls, due to the presidential election driving up turnout in the majority Latino district.“The fight is making sure that people actually get out to the polls, vote, or that they turn in their vote-by-mail ballots,” Salas said in an interview. “That’s what we fell victim to last year and something that we’re hoping to get correct going into 2024.”Then there is the ongoing mess in the House, which could have direct effects on Valadao. He’s referred to Kevin McCarthy, who represents a neighboring district, as a “friend”, and opposed removing him as speaker. Valadao three times voted to elect the Republican Jim Jordan as his replacement, unsuccessfully, but also supports giving the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, the job’s full powers.Jordan is a rightwing firebrand, and an advocate of Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Wasserman said Valadao’s support for him could undercut the reputation he has built for himself as an “independent-minded farmer”, while the downfall of his ally McCarthy may affect Valadao’s ability to benefit from his fundraising.Delano has a reputation as a pivotal community in Valadao’s district, and winning over its voters may come down to money and messaging.A member of the UFW, Ortiz has for several years campaigned for Salas in the spare time she has when she’s not picking grapes for minimum wage. She knocks on doors in Delano’s sprawling neighborhoods, believing Salas is the kind of politician who can bring solutions for undocumented people like herself: she has not seen her father in Mexico since leaving the country 18 years ago, and her oldest son is also undocumented but, for now, protected from deportation by the legally shaky Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy.Among the voters who open their doors for her, disillusionment is high, and there’s one phrase Ortiz hears repeatedly: “I don’t even vote because after, they do not help you.”Meanwhile, as an independent, Navarro, the barber, said he would probably vote for Trump next year, as he had in the past, citing his hope the former president would bring, among other things, lower gas prices.“I think we were a little bit more peaceful with him,” Navarro said. But he’s not sure whom to support for Congress, and would probably go for whichever candidate he hears from the most: “We’re meant to vote for whoever has more to offer.” More