New House speaker is a poster boy for Republican anti-abortion extremism

Republicans underperformed expectations in the 2022 elections in a voter backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the harsh state abortion bans that followed. With their choice of Mike Johnson as speaker of the House, they’re doubling down on that. This guy is extreme—even by Republican standards.

In a 2015 interview with Irin Carmon, Johnson called overturning Roe “the silver bullet” and blamed abortion for school shootings:

“Many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.”

He has also suggested that abortion drags down the economy, saying:

Roe v. Wade gave constitutional cover to the elected killing of unborn children in America, period. You think about the implications of that on the economy. We're all struggling here to cover the bases of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest. If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy, we wouldn't be going upside down and toppling over like this.

It almost goes without saying that his concern for a lack of able-bodied workers does not translate into support for immigration.

When the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Johnson's press release said it was “an historic and joyful day. After nearly a half century, the Supreme Court has finally corrected its egregious error.”