Press Releases
Speaker Johnson’s Decade-Long Leadership in Far-Right Extremist Group Exposed
WASHINGTON, DC – New reporting in Politico today revealed Speaker Mike Johnson’s decade-long leadership of Living Waters Publications, a far-right extremist group that has espoused intensely homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-abortion beliefs.
Even given all we’ve learned about Speaker Mike Johnson’s laundry list of radical comments and problematic affiliations, his decade-long leadership on the board of the far-right Living Waters Publications is a new low. One thing is clear: Speaker Johnson is a champion for the dangerous extremist faction of the House MAGA majority, and his leadership only means more desperate attempts to force a far-right agenda on everyday Americans,” said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone.
The organization, on whose board Johnson has served for the past decade, has gone as far as to seemingly refer to monkeypox as an “inevitable and appropriate” penalty of homosexuality and claim that former President Obama was a potential “antichrist” due to his “leanings toward Islam.”
Living Waters’ founder and CEO Ray Comfort recently praised Johnson’s election as speaker, calling him “wonderful.”
As Politico notes, in a recent podcast interview with Comfort, “Johnson said he was first introduced to Comfort when someone more than two decades ago gave him a cassette tape of a sermon of Comfort’s called ‘Hell’s Best Kept Secret.’ ‘It was a game-changer for me, Ray and I’ve told you that many times over the years,’ he said.”
“It’s certainly another troubling sign of how extreme Johnson’s views may be, that he would sit on a board and wouldn’t have a problem with them putting out ideas like this,” Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, told Politico.
Accountable.US has worked to expose Mike Johnson’s far-right extremism since he was elected Speaker last month. Accountable.US released a report on Johnson’s decades-long legal history working to roll back critical LGBTQ and reproductive rights, exposed his extreme views intertwined in his political and business life, and highlighted his ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.
