It's my Amera show on WNYC, good morning everyone.

You haven't really talked yet on this show about the new speaker of the house, Mike Johnson

of Louisiana.

One thing that jumped out at me from his acceptance speech on Wednesday and I don't know if this

has got a lot of attention was that he leaned into being what you might call a creationist

and the idea that the country was founded to be kind of a religious state.

He emphasized the point when giving his take on the most famous line in the Declaration

of Independence which he described as our creed.

What is our creed?

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, not born equal,

created equal.

He was making the point that God created people.

We weren't just born equal, we were created equal, he didn't lean into the equal part

of that, he leaned into the created part of that as he was making a point in some other

lines that God called him to be speaker and God decided that everyone else in Congress

was destined to be there too and the country was founded on mixing church and state.

So it's no surprise that he holds very conservative Christian political positions as well like

he voted for a federal cap on when abortions could be performed rather than leave it to

the states.

The big thing about Mike Johnson that you probably have heard is that he was an architect

of the election denial movement in Congress.

The New York Times article on him yesterday said he was a key architect of his party's

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