(CNN) — Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Friday that she will be resigning from office in January, stunning some in her own party after a shocking, monthslong political pivot that catapulted her from one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies to one of his top antagonists.
Greene dropped the news in a post on social media just days after her public falling out with Trump, who called her a “traitor” and said he’d support a GOP challenge to her House seat next year.
In her statement, Greene said she wanted to avoid a nasty primary — while predicting that the GOP would lose its House majority in the midterms.
“I have too much self-respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms,” Greene said in a statement.
The decision to step down will cap a turbulent five-year career in Washington, during which Greene was publicly condemned for violent rhetoric on the House floor and booted from the hard-right Freedom Caucus over a feud with a fellow Republican — while wielding extraordinary influence in her party as one of Trump’s most trusted political allies on Capitol Hill.
In the days since Trump’s “traitor” comments, Greene faced direct threats against her life, the congresswoman said in an interview with CNN. In the same interview, the conservative firebrand apologized for her own years of “toxic” rhetoric — comments that reverberated around the country amid an increasingly violent political culture.
Greene had been contemplating her resignation for over a week, according to a person close to her, as the threats against her continued to escalate amid her falling out with the president.
Her next steps remain unclear. But the Georgia congresswoman, who just months earlier had been discussed as a potential candidate for her state’s high-stakes Senate race, currently has no plans to run for any office, the person added.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
In recent weeks, Greene criticized the president for being too focused on foreign policy and not doing enough with his domestic agenda at home — going as far as to side with Democrats over the contentious issue of costly enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire next month.
Greene also became one of the White House’s most vocal critics of the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files. She and fellow Republican Rep. Thomas Massie accused the White House of attempting to conceal details of the files. Following fierce resistance, Trump ultimately signed an Epstein transparency measure into law earlier this week.
“I’m very sad for our country but so happy for my friend Marjorie. I’ll miss her tremendously. She embodies what a true Representative should be,” Massie wrote on X, shortly after Greene’s announcement.
Greene’s exit is likely to be quickly felt in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson must navigate a razor-thin majority. The Republican leader already faces the tall order in the new year of corralling his fractious conference to move on major legislation and further the president’s priorities.
First elected in 2020, the Georgia congresswoman was known for vocally touting conspiracy theories and for her incendiary rhetoric, including prior remarks endorsing violence against Democrats in Congress.
Her first year in office, a Democratic-led House under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the extraordinary step of stripping Greene of her committee assignments because of her past rhetoric endorsing violence and claims the deadly Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings had been staged.
In a sign of Greene’s recent political turnaround, the Georgia congresswoman praised Pelosi’s leadership in an interview with CNN, saying of the longtime Democrat, “She had an incredible career for her party. … I served under her speakership in my first term of Congress, and I’m very impressed at her ability to get things done.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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Sarah Ferris, Kaitlan Collins, Kaanita Iyer and CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump late Wednesday signed a funding package to reopen the federal government, officially bringing a close to the longest shutdown in history.
The final approval came hours after the House voted 222 to 209 to pass a deal struck between Republicans and centrist Senate Democrats that keeps the government running through January and ensures some key agencies will be funded for the remainder of fiscal year 2026.
The agreement, which ended a record 43-day stalemate in Congress, will also reverse the mass federal layoffs carried out by Trump during the shutdown. It paves the way for paychecks to flow to government employees, as well as the resumption of critical food and nutrition services relied on by tens of millions of Americans.
Trump on Wednesday night cast the legislation as a victory over Democrats, calling it “a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was, they tried to extort.”
“They didn’t want to do it the easy way,” he said from the Oval Office, attacking what he called “the extremists” in the Democratic Party. “They had to do it the hard way, and they look very bad.”
The White House signing ceremony was attended by a range of Republican lawmakers and capped a four-day sprint to pass the funding bill, after eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to compromise with Republicans amid worries about the shutdown’s widening economic consequences.
The deal guarantees an early December vote in the Senate on the expiring Obamacare subsidies that Democrats made the focus of their demands during the shutdown fight. But a vote to extend the subsidies is unlikely to succeed, a likelihood that’s driven intense blowback across the Democratic Party.
Most congressional Democrats loudly protested the bill in the run-up to Wednesday’s vote over concerns Americans’ health care premiums will skyrocket without the subsidies, with only six House Democrats voting in favor of the package.
“This fight is not over. We’re just getting started,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said ahead of the vote. “Tens of millions of Americans are at risk of being unable to afford to go see a doctor when they need it.”
Back in Washington for the first time since mid-September, Speaker Mike Johnson corralled almost all Republicans behind the bill, despite sharp complaints from some of his members over a contentious provision added by Senate Republicans that allowed senators to retroactively sue the Department of Justice for obtaining phone records during a Biden-era probe – potentially amounting to a major financial windfall for those lawmakers.
Johnson himself said he was blindsided by the language, and he said he didn’t know about it until the Senate had already passed the package.
“I was shocked by it, I was angry about it,” the speaker said, though he added that he did not believe Senate Majority Leader John Thune added it in a nefarious manner. “I think it was a really bad look, and we’re going to fix it in the House.”
To win over conservative holdouts, Johnson vowed that the House would take a future vote to strip that language — though it’s unclear if the Senate would take it up. Republicans like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas ultimately agreed not to amend the language in the current stopgap bill, since it would require the Senate to return to Washington to vote again and delay the end of the shutdown.
Conservatives like Roy had blasted that provision as “self-dealing,” since it would award senators $500,000 or more in damages for each violation by the government if their lawsuit is successful. The amendment appeared to benefit eight senators in particular who had been subpoenaed by the previous administration into investigations into Trump’s first term.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, accused those eight senators of voting “to shove taxpayer dollars into their own pockets – $500,000 for each time their records were inspected.”
The House Democrats who voted in favor of the compromise bill to reopen the government were: Reps. Jared Golden, Adam Gray, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Henry Cuellar, Tom Suozzi and Don Davis. GOP Reps. Thomas Massie voted and Greg Steube against the bill.
The end of the government shutdown will usher in a frenetic few weeks of work for the House, which has been largely shuttered since late September. As part of the GOP’s pressure campaign on Democrats, Johnson had decided to keep all members out of Washington until Senate Democrats agreed to back the GOP’s existing funding plan.
Now, Republicans and Democrats have just four weeks in session before the end of the year — when those Obamacare tax credits expire. Trump has called for revamping the law rather than extending the existing subsidies, setting up a high-stakes showdown over health care that could carry political ramifications for next year’s midterm elections.
“Obamacare was a disaster,” Trump said Wednesday night. “We’ll work on something having to do with health care. We can do a lot better.”
But there are plenty of other deadlines, including Congress’ farm bill and a slew of expiring energy credits.
House Republicans are also eager to pass as many spending bills as possible to improve their negotiating stance with the Senate ahead of that next deadline on January 30.
Johnson also faces another hot-button issue: the question of how Congress should handle the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Not long before the votes to reopen the government got underway, a newly elected Democrat — Rep. Adelita Grijalva — became the critical 218th signature to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of its case files related to Epstein.
Johnson announced to reporters soon after Grijalva signed the petition that he will put a bill compelling the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein case files on the House floor next week – earlier than expected, and after an extraordinary White House pressure campaign earlier Wednesday failed to convince any Republicans to remove their name from the petition.
The effort coincided with intensifying scrutiny over the Epstein files in the House. Earlier Wednesday, House Democrats on the Oversight panel released new emails that showed Epstein had repeatedly mentioned Trump by name in private correspondence, and then the GOP-led committee released 200,000 pages of documents the panel received from Epstein’s estate.
This headline and story have been updated with additional details.
The Missouri House on Tuesday approved a congressional map designed to weaken one of the state’s two Democratic incumbents, intensifying the partisan redistricting battles that are shaping the political landscape ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
The measure, which passed in late August by a 90-to-65 vote, makes Missouri the second Republican-led state to adopt a plan targeting the seats of Black Democratic representatives. The Missouri Democrat most impacted, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), said that he will run for re-election. Earlier this summer, Texas Republicans pushed through a map that could put as many as five Democratic lawmakers at risk. Democrats in California have mounted a counteroffensive of their own: last month, the Legislature advanced a proposal to the ballot that would reshape five Republican-held districts.
As the vote was taking place in Missouri, thirteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Cleaver, spoke emphatically about the state of play for Black elected officials targeted by redistricting. They spoke about what happened in Texas and how they knew that other states would follow. The group was strong in their statements on the current situation. “Texas has more African Americans than any other state in this country right now. Under the proposed maps, they want to make it so that Texas only has two districts in which African Americans have an opportunity to choose their representation. What does that mean for black voices in Texas? That means that it is approximately 1/5 the voting strength of their white Texan neighbors. That is what is going to be, not three-fifths, but we are going to be reduced to 1/5, so my colleagues have laid out a number of things that they believe are going on as to why it is that this is happening. But I’m going to start with number one, Trump himself. He’s racist,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).
“We will not be silenced. They’ve tried to bury us before, not knowing that we were seeds. We will grow and we will be resilient, just as we have time and time before,” added Crockett. “We are about to experience something that we never thought we’d see in our lifetimes, especially after having experienced what happened at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which is probably the reason a good many of us in Congress are in Congress. It was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday that John Lewis and a host of other people of goodwill suffered grave, gross, and inhumane injustices… Bloody Sunday is the reason we have the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We would not but for Bloody Sunday,” said Rep. Al Green (D-Texas). “We are going to fight this. We are not going to back down. And I believe that the Voting Rights Act will be upheld and that these maps in Texas will be overturned. But again, Texas is just the beginning. This is a nationwide fight, and it’s bigger than who holds the majority in the House of Representatives. This is about maintaining our democracy and our republic,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas). When asked by Black Press USA whether or not there is an actual plan to combat what is happening to Black elected officials around the country, several members answered yes. Rep. Veasey added that perhaps there needed to be a special group to deal with the redistricting attacks against Black members at the DNC. The members also relayed that legal strategies are ongoing, and in some cases have been for years, on redistricting.
Former President Barack Obama this week inserted himself into the national debate over partisan gerrymandering with his proprietary blend of self-righteousness, self-interest and duplicity.
With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushing through a new congressional map to benefit Republicans and California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeking to do the same for Democrats, Obama lent a weary world his wisdom.
“Over the long term, we shouldn’t have political gerrymandering in America, just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas,” he began in a Wednesday post on X.
“But,” he stipulated.
But of course.
“Since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Gov. [Gavin] Newsom has approached this,” insisted Obama.
“He’s put forward a smart, measured approach in California, designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”
Who didn’t see that one coming?
Obama’s high opinion of himself has only ever been matched by his scorn for the masses.
He hopes no one will notice his blatant projection: Obama himself personally participated, to put it lightly, in a highly beneficial gerrymander over 20 years ago.
Without a doubt, the former president’s initial suggestion has merit.
It would be wonderful if House districts were drawn so as to be maximally representative of discrete communities, and to keep representatives maximally attuned to their constituents’ interests.
Perhaps one day the two parties will come together to ensure as much.
Alas, that’s not the world we live in today.
As it stands, both sides are locked in an unforgiving battle to enshrine the most structurally advantageous maps into law in as many states as possible.
In Illinois, where Texas Democrats initially fled to deny Abbott the quorum needed to pass his new map, Democrats represent 14 of 17 districts, or more than 82% of the state.
Yet Kamala Harris won Illinois last year by fewer than 11 percentage points, 54.4% to 43.5%.
In New Jersey, where President Donald Trump won 46% of the vote in 2024, the GOP holds just 25% of the congressional seats.
In Massachusetts, Trump won 36%, but Republicans hold none of the state’s nine seats.
Trump actually won Nevada, yet Democrats occupy three of its four spots in the House.
And in California, where Newsom is supposedly championing a “smart, measured approach” — and where a supposedly independent commission is responsible for redistricting — the GOP is already at a massive disadvantage.
Trump won over 38% of the vote in the country’s largest state, and Republicans represent only about 17% of its districts.
“We’re responding to what occurred in Texas. We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance,” Newsom declared before signing his plan into law on Thursday.
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Just how much more lopsided must it be for elections to be “fair” to “the American people,” by which Newsom means “the Democratic Party”?
Now, it’s undeniable that Republicans have also drawn unrepresentative maps in states they control.
Wisconsin, Texas and the Carolinas are particularly damning examples.
But with both Team Red and Team Blue adopting no-holds-barred approaches to redistricting, honest observers must admit that gerrymandering is a bipartisan pastime in which all’s fair — even if it shouldn’t be.
And that’s precisely what makes Obama’s claim to the moral high ground so galling.
Newsom has every right to advance his undemocratic map; Obama has every right to support it.
They ought not insult our intelligence by flattering themselves, though.
They’re motivated by the same political objectives that Republicans are, not some nobler commitment to principle that excuses their actions — much less makes them deserving of praise.
Obama is the same ambitious, self-serving partisan he was back in 2001, when he personally helped draw an Illinois state Senate district to boost his political prospects after falling short in a House campaign the year prior.
The lines he created gave him new constituents in some of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods — donors he tapped to fuel his ascent to the US Senate and, not long after, the White House.
So much for only reluctantly endorsing Newsom’s proposal to retaliate against Texas: Obama himself embraced the power of the gerrymander in a smoke-filled room decades ago.
His haughty tone now is perfectly representative of the Democrats’ collective hero complex.
Not to mention their palpable disdain for the public, whom they believe can be duped into believing in it.
Here’s some background information about violence against US politicians and diplomats throughout history.
January 30, 1835 – President Andrew Jackson is shot at by Richard Lawrence as he attends a congressional funeral in the Capitol in Washington. Lawrence fires twice, but the bullets do not discharge.
April 14, 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln is shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth during a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.
July 2, 1881 – President James Garfield is shot by Charles Guiteau as he is about to board a train at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. President Garfield is severely wounded and dies on September 19.
September 6, 1901 – After delivering a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley is shot in the stomach by Leon Czolgosz. McKinley dies of his wound on September 14.
October 14, 1912 – Former President Theodore Roosevelt, while campaigning as a candidate of the Progressive Party, is shot and wounded by John Schrank while on his way to a campaign appearance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
February 15, 1933 – President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt is shot at by Joseph Zangara while sitting in his open air car after addressing supporters in Miami, Florida. Roosevelt is not harmed.
November 1, 1950 – Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, try to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Harry Truman is staying while the White House is renovated. The gunmen never reach the interior of Blair House and Truman is not harmed.
November 22, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald while traveling by an open car motorcade through Dallas, Texas.
September 5, 1975 –Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempts to shoot President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Secret Service agents grab her and the gun, and Ford is unhurt.
September 22, 1975 – Sara Jane Moore, a woman with ties to left wing radical groups, attempts to shoot President Ford in San Francisco.
March 30, 1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. as he leaves the Hilton Hotel in Washington after delivering a speech to the Construction Trades Council.
Congressmen and Senators (selected)
December 22, 1867 – Rep. Cornelius Hamilton (R-OH) is shot and killed by his mentally ill son in Marysville, Ohio.
October 22, 1868 – Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan member George Clark while traveling on horseback to a speaking engagement near Indian Bay, Arkansas.
April 24, 1905 – Rep. John Pinckney (D-TX) is shot and killed at a Waller County Prohibition League rally in Hempstead, Texas.
September 8, 1935 – Sen. Huey Long (D-LA) is shot in the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Long dies two days later from the wound to his abdomen.
March 1, 1954 – Rep. Alvin M. Bentley (R-MI), Rep. Clifford Davis (D-TN), Rep. Ben F. Jensen (R-IA), Rep. George Hyde Fallon (D-MD), and Rep. Kenneth A. Roberts (D-AL) are wounded when four Puerto Rican nationalists enter the US Capitol and open fire from an upstairs spectators’ gallery onto the House floor.
June 5, 1968 – Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) is shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, following his victory speech after the California Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy dies the next day.
November 18, 1978 – Rep. Leo Ryan (D-CA) is shot and killed at an airstrip in Guyana after investigating the activities of the People’s Temple led by Rev. Jim Jones.
June 14, 2017 – Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House majority whip, is shot in Alexandria, Virginia, during a Republicans’ baseball team practice. Two others on the congressional team, and two Capitol police officers are also shot. The gunman James Hodgkinson is killed by authorities.
Governors and Mayors (selected)
February 15, 1933 – Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak is killed in Miami, with a bullet meant for President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. He dies on March 6.
May 15, 1972 – Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer while campaigning for president in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down.
November 27, 1978 – San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk are murdered by Dan White.
December 10, 1986 – Mount Pleasant, Iowa Mayor Edward King is shot and killed by Ralph Davis at a city council meeting.
February 7, 2008 – Kirkwood, Missouri Mayor Mike Swoboda and six others are shot when Charles Thornton opens fire at Kirkwood City Hall. Swoboda passes away seven months later due to complications.
August 28, 1968 – US Ambassador to Guatemala John Gordon Mein is killed by guerrillas in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
March 2, 1973 – US Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel Jr. is killed by Palestinian militants at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.
August 19, 1974 – US Ambassador to Cyprus Rodger P. Davies is shot and killed during a protest outside the US embassy following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
June 16, 1976 – US Ambassador to Lebanon Francis E. Meloy Jr. is kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian militants in Beirut, Lebanon.
February 14, 1979 – US Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs is kidnapped and killed by militants in Kabul, Afghanistan.
October 28, 1947 – Oregon Governor Earl Snell (R). Snell dies in a plane crash during stormy weather near Klamath Falls, Oregon.
January 25, 1962 – Montana Governor Donald Nutter (R). Nutter dies in a plane crash during a snowstorm.
October 16, 1972 – House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, Louisiana (D) and Rep. Nick Begich, Alaska (D). Both are aboard a plane that vanishes from the radar in bad weather over Alaska. The wreckage is never found.
December 8, 1972 – Illinois Rep. George W. Collins (D). Collins is killed when a United Airlines jetliner plane crashes on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport. Forty-four others are killed. Collins’ widow, Cardiss Collins, succeeds her husband in the House.
February 14, 1975 – California Rep. Jerry Pettis (R). Pettis, a former military pilot, dies while flying his private plane. The aircraft crashes into a mountain near Banning, California. His wife, Shirley N. Pettis Roberson, replaces him in the House five days later.
August 3, 1976 – Missouri Rep. Jerry Litton (D). Litton is killed in a plane crash in northwest Missouri. He was en route to a victory celebration after winning the state’s Democratic senate nomination.
September 1, 1983 – Georgia Rep. Larry McDonald (D). McDonald is killed when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Russian fighter.
April 8, 1988 – Montana Secretary of State Jim Waltermire (R). Waltermire is aboard a twin-engine plane that crashes as it approaches Helena’s airport in light snow. At the time, Waltermire is a Republican gubernatorial candidate.
August 7, 1989 – Texas Rep. Mickey Leland (D). Leland, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Select Committee on Hunger, is killed when his plane crashes during a trip to inspect relief efforts in Ethiopia.
August 13, 1989 – Mississippi Rep. Larkin Smith (R). Smith is a passenger on a Cessna 152 that crashes into woods in southeastern Mississippi. Pilot error in hazy conditions is ruled the probable cause of the crash.
April 4, 1991 – Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz (R). A collision between a plane and a helicopter kills Heinz, a three-term Republican senator and heir to the Heinz food fortune.
April 5, 1991 – Texas Sen. John Tower (R). Tower, his daughter and 21 other people, including NASA astronaut Manley “Sonny” Carter Jr., are killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.
April 19, 1993 – South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson (R). Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned turboprop plane crashes into a grain silo while trying to make an emergency landing near Dubuque, Iowa.
April 3, 1996 – US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. A US Air Force jetliner, carrying Brown and American business executives, crashes into a mountain in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.
October 16, 2000 – Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan (D). Carnahan, his son and an aide are killed when their small plane crashes in bad weather. He is elected to the US Senate posthumously, and his widow is appointed to take his seat.
October 25, 2002 – Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone (D). Wellstone, his wife, daughter, three staff members, and two pilots are killed when their small plane crashes in Eveleth, Minnesota.
August 9, 2010 – Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R). Stevensis killed in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska. Five people are killed, and four survive, including former NASA chief Sean O’Keefe.
October 3, 2005 – A second indictment is brought against DeLay, charging him with money laundering.
October 19, 2005 – An arrest warrant is issued for DeLay in connection with his indictment for conspiracy and money laundering. He turns himself in the next day.
December 5, 2005 – A judge dismisses the conspiracy charge against DeLay, but upholds the money laundering charges.
January 7, 2006 – Announces he will not try to reclaim the House majority leader post, but he will seek reelection when his term expires in November.
March 7, 2006 – Wins the primary election in his Texas district.
July 2012 – Registers as a lobbyist on sex-trafficking issues.
September 19, 2013 – Delay’s conviction on money laundering charges is overturned by a court in Texas. The court opinion says that “the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain DeLay’s convictions.”
March 19, 2014 – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agrees to hear the case.
October 1, 2014 – By a vote of 8-1, Texas’s criminal appeals court upholds the lower court’s ruling to throw out DeLay’s 2010 convictions of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Here’s a look at the life of former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who represented Hawaii’s 2nd District and was a 2020 presidential candidate.
Birth date: April 12, 1981
Birth place: Leloaloa, American Samoa
Birth name: Tulsi Gabbard
Father: Mike Gabbard, Hawaii state senator
Mother: Carol (Porter) Gabbard, former Hawaii Board of Education member
Marriages: Abraham Williams (2015-present); Eduardo Tamayo (2002-2006, divorced)
Education: Hawaii Pacific University, B.S.B.A., 2009
Military service: Hawaii Army National Guard, 2003-2020, Major; US Army Reserve, 2020-present, Lieutenant Colonel
Religion: Hinduism
As a teenager, co-founded Healthy Hawai’i Coalition, an environmental non-profit.
She is the first American Samoan congresswoman and first practicing Hindu member of the US Congress.
She is an avid surfer.
2002 – At age 21, is elected to the Hawaii State House to represent West Oahu, making her the youngest woman ever elected to the state legislature.
2003 – Enlists in the Hawaii Army National Guard. She completes her basic training between legislative sessions.
2004-2005 – Gabbard’s unit is activated, and she voluntarily deploys, serving with a field medical unit in Iraq.
2006-2009 – Legislative aide to Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii.
2007 – Graduates from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy. This makes Gabbard the first woman in the Academy’s 50-year history to earn the title of the distinguished honor graduate.
2008-2009 – Gabbard deploys to Kuwait, training counterterrorism units.
November 2, 2010 – Is elected to the Honolulu City Council.
2011 – Founds the film production company, Kanu Productions.
January 22, 2013 – Elected vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
August 28, 2013 – Aniruddha Sherbow is apprehended in Tijuana, Mexico, after making threats against Gabbard that the FBI and US Capitol Police “deemed credible.” Sherbow is later sentenced to 33 months in prison.
February 28, 2016 – On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gabbard announces her decision to step down as DNC vice chair to endorse Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid.
November 21, 2016 – Meets with President-elect Donald Trump. “President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as other foreign policy challenges we face,” Gabbard says in a statement.
January 25, 2017 – Gabbard tells CNN’s Jake Tapper that she met with Assad during an unannounced, four-day trip to Syria. “When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt that it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace,” Gabbard says.
January 31, 2017 – Facing criticism, Gabbard issues a statement saying that she will personally pay for her trip to Syria.
April 7, 2017 – Gabbard claims she’s “skeptical” that Assad’s regime was behind a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens in Syria though the President, secretary of state and Pentagon officials found that Assad’s regime was responsible for the attack.
November 21, 2018 – Gabbard refers to Trump as “Saudi Arabia’s bitch” in a tweet after he issues a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
January 11, 2019 – Gabbard tells CNN’s Van Jones she will run for president in 2020, during an interview slated to air on January 12. “There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision. There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I’m concerned about and that I want to help solve,” she says.
Here’s a look at the life of Mike Pence, the 48th vice president of the United States.
Birth date: June 7, 1959
Birth place: Columbus, Indiana
Birth name: Michael Richard Pence
Father: Edward Pence, gas station owner
Mother: Nancy Pence-Fritsch
Marriage: Karen Pence (1985-present)
Children: Michael, Charlotte and Audrey
Education: Hanover College (Indiana), B.A., 1981; Indiana University School of Law, J.D., 1986
Religion: Evangelical Christian
After two early unsuccessful runs for Congress, Pence wrote an essay, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner.” In the 1991 piece, he pledged not to use insulting language or air ads disparaging opponents.
During the 2010 Value Voter Summit, Pence took the stage and said, “I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.”
Pence was a Democrat as a teen. He has said that he voted for Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan, in the 1980 election.
Pence’s Irish grandfather immigrated through Ellis Island in 1923.
1991-1993 – President of the conservative think tank, Indiana Policy Review Foundation.
1992-1999 – Hosts a talk radio show, “The Mike Pence Show.” The show is syndicated on 18 stations in Indiana.
2002 – Is elected to the US House of Representatives for the 6th District of Indiana. The district was renumbered in 2002. He is reelected in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.
2009-2011 – Is the Republican Conference chair.
2012 –Is elected governor of Indiana. His campaign includes a grassroots trek across the state called the “Big Red Truck Tour.”
January 2015 – Announces, then scraps plans to launch a state-run news outlet called “Just IN.”
January 27, 2015 – Gains federal approval for a state plan for Medicaid expansion, “Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0.”
February 18, 2017 – Pence delivers a speech at the Munich Security Conference, declaring that the United States will hold Russia accountable for acts of aggression even as the Trump administration makes an effort to cultivate stronger ties with Moscow. The vice president also says that the United States “strongly supports NATO and will be unwavering in our commitment to our transatlantic alliance.” Pence adds a caveat, saying that NATO member nations should boost their defense spending.
August 9, 2018 – In a speech to US military and civilian personnel, Pence calls for the establishment of a Space Force by 2020. Pence also announces immediate steps the Department of Defense would take to reform how the military approaches space.
April 7, 2021 – Pence announces the launch of a new political advocacy group, “Advancing American Freedom.” The group’s stated goal is to “promote the pro-freedom policies of the last four years that created unprecedented prosperity at home and restored respect for America abroad, to defend those policies from liberal attacks and media distortions, and to prevent the radical Left from enacting its policy agenda that would threaten America’s freedoms,” according to a statement from the group. On the same day, publisher Simon & Schuster announces it will publish Pence’s autobiography.
November 14, 2022 – During a interview with ABC’s David Muir, Pence says he thinks “America will have better choices in the future” than Trump as president in 2024, and admits he’s considering running himself.
April 27, 2023 –Pence testifies to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of Trump and others, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The testimony marks the first time in modern history a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he served beside.
March 15, 2024 – Says he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
The people of Puerto Rico are US citizens. They vote in US presidential primaries, but not in presidential elections.
First named San Juan Bautista by Christopher Columbus.
The governor is elected by popular vote with no term limits.
Jenniffer González has been the resident commissioner since January 3, 2017. The commissioner serves in the US House of Representatives, but has no vote, except in committees. Gonzalez is the first woman to hold this position.
Puerto Ricans have voted in six referendums on the issue of statehood, in 1967, 1993, 1998, 2012, 2017 and 2020. The 2012 referendum was the first time the popular vote swung in statehood’s favor. Since these votes were nonbinding, no action had to be taken, and none was. Ultimately, however, Congress must pass a law admitting them to the union.
In addition to becoming a state, options for Puerto Rico’s future status include remaining a commonwealth, entering “free association” or becoming an independent nation. “Free association” is an official affiliation with the United States where Puerto Rico would still receive military assistance and funding.
1493-1898 – Puerto Rico is a Spanish colony.
July 25, 1898 – During the Spanish-American War, the United States invades Puerto Rico.
December 10, 1898 – With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Spain cedes Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States. The island is named “Porto Rico” in the treaty.
April 12, 1900 – President William McKinley signs the Foraker Act into law. It designates the island an “unorganized territory,” and allows for one delegate from Puerto Rico to the US House of Representatives with no voting power.
March 2, 1917 – President Woodrow Wilson signs the Jones Act into law, granting the people of Puerto Rico US citizenship.
May 1932 – Legislation changes the name of the island back to Puerto Rico.
November 1948 – The first popularly elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, is voted into office.
July 3, 1950 – President Harry S. Truman signs Public Law 600, giving Puerto Ricans the right to draft their own constitution.
October 1950 – In protest of Public Law 600, Puerto Rican nationalists lead armed uprisings in several Puerto Rican towns.
November 1, 1950 –Puerto Rican nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempt to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Truman is living while the White House is being renovated. Torresola is killed by police; Collazo is arrested and sent to prison.
March 3, 1952 – Puerto Ricans vote in favor of the constitution.
July 25, 1952 – Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth as the constitution is put in place. This is also the anniversary of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War.
August 6, 2009 – Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is confirmed by the US Senate (68-31). She becomes the third woman and the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
November 6, 2012 – Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. The results are deemed inconclusive.
June 5, 2017 – Puerto Rico declares its Zika epidemic is over. The Puerto Rico Department of Health has reported more than 40,000 confirmed cases of the Zika virus since the outbreak began in 2016.
June 11, 2017 –Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. Over 97% of the votes are in favor of statehood, but only 23% of eligible voters participate.
December 18, 2017 –Gov. Ricardo Rosselló orders a review of deaths related to Hurricane Maria as the number could be much higher than the officially reported number. The announcement from the island’s governor follows investigations from CNN and other news outlets that called into question the official death toll of 64.
January 30, 2018 – More than four months after Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells CNN it is halting new shipments of food and water to the island. Distribution of its stockpiled 46 million liters of water and four million meals and snacks will continue. The agency believes that amount is sufficient until normalcy returns.
September 4, 2018 – The US Government Accountability Office releases a report revealing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was so overwhelmed with other storms by the time Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico that more than half of the workers it was deploying to disasters were known to be unqualified for the jobs they were doing in the field.
September 13, 2018 – In a tweet, Trump denies that nearly 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He expresses skepticism about the death toll, suggesting that individuals who died of other causes were included in the hurricane count.
July 9, 2019 – Excerpts of profanity-laden, homophobic and misogynistic messages between Rosselló and members of his inner circle are published by local media.
July 10, 2019 – Six people, including Puerto Rico’s former education secretary and a former health insurance official, are indicted on corruption charges. The conspiracy allegedly involved directing millions of dollars in government contracts to politically-connected contractors.
July 13, 2019 –The Center for Investigative Journalism publishes hundreds of leaked messages from Rosselló and other officials. Rosselló and members of his inner circle ridicule numerous politicians, members of the media and celebrities.
September 27, 2019 – The federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances releases a plan that would cut the island’s debt by more than 60% and rescue it from bankruptcy. The plan targets bonds and other debt held by the government and will now go before a federal judge. The percentage of Puerto Rico’s taxpayer funds spent on debt payments will fall to less than 9%, compared to almost 30% before the restructuring.
January 7 –Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.
January 24 –CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.
January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.
February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.
April 7 –A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.
October 25 –Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
August 4 –Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.
January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.
February 19 –Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.
March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.
March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.
May 21 –Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.
July 3-16 –Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.
November 1 –The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.
November 5 –The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.
The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.
The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.
The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.
Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.
Often, these victims don’t know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI – but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they’re outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day.
Known as “Spamouflage” or “Dragonbridge,” the network’s hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit US politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China’s interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.
Private researchers have tracked the network since its discovery more than four years ago, but only in recent months have federal prosecutors and Facebook’s parent company Meta publicly concluded that the operation has ties to Chinese police.
Meta announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Google, which owns YouTube, told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years, while X, formerly known as Twitter, has blocked hundreds of thousands of China “state-backed” or “state-linked” accounts, according to company blogs.
Still, given the relatively low cost of such operations, experts who monitor disinformation warn the Chinese government will continue to use these tactics to try to bend online discussions closer to the CCP’s preferred narrative, which frequently entails trying to undermine the US and democratic values.
“We might think that this is confined to certain chatrooms, or this platform or that platform, but it’s expanding across the board,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told CNN. “And it’s only a matter of time before it happens to that average American citizen who doesn’t think it’s their problem right now.”
When trolls disrupted an anti-communism Zoom event organized by New York-based activist Chen Pokong in January 2021, he had little doubt who was responsible. The trolls mocked participants and threatened that one victim would “die miserably.” Their conduct reminded Chen of repression by the government of China, where he spent nearly five years in prison for pro-democracy work.
But his suspicions about who was behind the interruption were solidified when the US Department of Justice charged more than 30 Chinese officials earlier this year with running a sprawling disinformation operation that had targeted dissidents in the US, including those in the Zoom meeting Chen says he hosted in 2021.
It was just one of multiple indictments the Justice Department unsealed in April exposing alleged Chinese government plots to target its perceived critics and enemies, while impugning the sovereignty of the United States. Two alleged Chinese operatives were charged with running an “undeclared police station” in New York City. Last year, another indictment outlined how Chinese agents allegedly tried to derail the congressional campaign of a Chinese dissident.
“They want to deprive my freedom of speech, so I feel like it’s not only an attack on me,” said Chen, who was ejected from his own meeting during the disruption. “They also attack America.”
The DOJ complaint named 34 individual officers with China’s Ministry of Public Security and published photographs of them at computers, allegedly working on the disinformation campaign known as the “912 Special Project Working Group.” The operation, primarily based in Beijing, appears to involve “hundreds” of MPS officers across the country, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
The complaint does not refer to the cluster of fake accounts as “Spamouflage,” but private researchers and a spokesperson for Meta told CNN that the social media activity described by the DOJ is part of that network. As part of a mission “to manipulate public perceptions of [China], the Group uses its misattributed social media accounts to threaten, harass and intimidate specific victims,” the complaint states.
When asked about Spamouflage’s reported links to Chinese law enforcement, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, denied the allegations.
“China always respects the sovereignty of other countries. The US accusation has no factual evidence or legal basis. It is entirely politically motivated. China firmly opposes it,” Liu said in a statement to CNN. He claimed that the US “invented the weaponizing of the global information space.”
A report released by Meta in August illustrates how the posts from the network often align with the workday hours in China. The report described “bursts of activity in the mid-morning and early afternoon, Beijing time, with breaks for lunch and supper, and then a final burst of activity in the evening.”
And while Meta detected posts from various regions in China, the company and other researchers have found centralized coordination that relentlessly pushed identical messages across multiple social media platforms, sometimes repeatedly insulting the same individuals who have questioned the Chinese government.
One of those individuals is Jiayang Fan, a journalist for The New Yorker who told CNN she began facing harassment by the network when she covered pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
Attacks directed at Fan – which ranged from cartoons of her painting her face white as though rejecting her identity to accusations that she killed her mother for profit – carry telltale signs of the Spamouflage network, said Darren Linvill of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University. Linvill’s group found more than 12,000 tweets attacking Fan using the same hashtag, #TraitorJiayangFan.
Although she hasn’t lived in China since she was a child, Fan believes such messages have been levelled against her to spark fear and silence others.
“This is part of a very old Chinese Communist Party playbook to intimidate offenders and aspiring offenders,” said Fan, who questioned what her distant relatives in China may think when they see such content. “It is uncomfortable for me to know that they are seeing these portrayals of me and have no idea what to believe.”
Experts who track online influence campaigns say there are signs of a shift in China’s strategy in recent years. In the past, the Spamouflage network mostly focused on issues domestically relevant to China. However, more recently, accounts tied to the group have been stoking controversy around global issues, including developments in the United States.
Spamouflage accounts – some of which posed as Texas residents – called for protests of plans to build a rare-earths processing facility in Texas and spread negative messages about a separate US manufacturing company, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Mandiant last year. The report also described how the campaign promoted negative content about the Biden administration’s efforts to hasten mineral production that would curb US reliance on China.
Other posts by the network have referenced how “racism is an indelible shame on American democracy” and how the US committed “cultural genocide against the Indians,” according to a Meta report in August. Another post claimed that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “riddled with scandals.”
Chinese government-linked accounts have also posted messages that included a call to “kill” President Biden, a cartoon featuring the so-called QAnon Shaman who rioted at the US Capitol as a symbol of “western style democracy,” and a post that suggested US defense contractors profit off the deaths of innocent people, according to a Department of Homeland Security report in April obtained through a records request.
The DOJ complaint filed against Chinese officials alleged that last year they sought to take advantage of the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death and post on social media about his murder to “reveal the law enforcement brutality” in the US. They also received a task to “work on 2022 US midterm elections and criticize American democracy.”
Spamouflage is “evolving in tactics. It’s evolving in themes,” said Ben Nimmo, the global lead for threat intelligence at Meta. “Our job is to keep on raising our defenses and keep on telling people about it, especially as we get closer to the election year.”
Yet as social media companies race to stop disinformation and the US government files complaints against those allegedly responsible, accountability can be elusive.
“This is the rub with a lot of cybercrimes, that it becomes very, very difficult to actually put the perpetrators in jail,” said Lindsay Gorman, the head of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.
But, Gorman added, that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for China.
“Even if individuals have a degree of impunity because they are never planning on coming to the United States anyway, that doesn’t mean that the party operation has impunity here – certainly not in terms of public opinion, certainly not in terms of US-China relations,” she said.
Meta, Google, and other companies that have published reports outing Spamouflage stress that most of the social media accounts within the network receive little or no engagement, meaning they rarely go viral.
But Linvill of Clemson University argues that the network uses a unique strategy of “flooding” conversations with so many comments that posts from genuine users receive less attention. This includes posting on platforms typically not associated with disinformation, such as Pinterest.
“They are operating thousands of accounts at a time on a given platform, often to drown out conversations, just with sheer volume of messaging,” Linvill said. “When we think of disinformation, we often think of pushing ideas on users and making ideas more salient, whereas what China is doing is the opposite. They are trying to remove conversations from social media.”
When Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics, for example, human rights groups began promoting the hashtag #GenocideGames to bring attention to accusations that China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps.
But then something surprising happened. Accounts that Linvill and his colleagues believed were part of Spamouflage started tweeting the hashtag too.
It might be counterintuitive for a pro-Chinese government group to start spreading a hashtag that brought attention to the Chinese government’s human rights’ abuses, Linvill explained. But by using the hashtag repeatedly in tweets that had nothing to do with the issue itself, Spamouflage was able to reduce views on the legitimate messages.
Jiajun Qiu, whose academic work focused on elections and who fled China in 2016, showed CNN what happens when he types his name into X, formerly known as Twitter. There are sometimes dozens of accounts pretending to be him by using his name and photo.
They are designed by the operators of Spamouflage, Linvill explained, to confuse people and prevent them from finding Qiu’s real account by muddying the waters.
Now living in Virginia, Qiu runs a pro-democracy YouTube channel and has faced an onslaught of homophobic, racist and bizarre insults from social media accounts that Linvill’s team and others have tied to Spamouflage.
Some accounts have posted cartoons that convey Qiu as an insect working on behalf of the US government. Another image depicts him being stomped by a cartoon Jesus. Yet another paints him as a dog on the leash of an American rat.
“I tell people the truth, so they want to do anything possible to insult me,” Qiu said.
Linvill and his team have tracked hundreds of these cartoons across the internet, and said they are a “tell” of Spamouflage. Cartoons, Linvill explained, can be more effective than text because they are “eye-catching” and “you have to stop and look at it.” In addition, these original cartoons can easily be translated into hundreds of languages at a very low cost.
Beyond the online smears, Qiu says he has also faced threats via other online messages and escalatory calls from unidentified sources who he believes have ties to the Chinese government. One anonymous message told him he would be arrested and brought to justice for breaking Chinese law. An email referenced the church he attends in Manassas, Virginia and said, “for his own safety and that of the worshippers, he would do well to find another place to stay.”
Qiu told CNN that the FBI has interviewed him four times regarding these threats, and that he has been instructed to contact local police if he is ever followed.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.
Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
In print, radio and on television, Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, frequently disparaged homosexuality, according to KFile’s review. He advocated for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire.
“Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a CNN request for comment asking about his work with Exodus.
Exodus International joined ADF’s Day of Truth event in 2006 and the groups worked together on promotional material for the event, including a standalone website which pointed users to Exodus’ conversion ministries. Documents on that website cited the since-repudiated academic work in support of conversion therapy. Exodus Youth, the group’s youth wing, promoted the event within its blogs.
Videos put out by Exodus and ADF on their standalone Day of Truth website featured two Exodus staffers speaking about how teens didn’t need to “accept” or “embrace” their homosexuality. The videos featured testimonials of a “former-homosexual” and “former lesbian.”
Documents on the website were not archived online but were saved by anti-conversion therapy groups such as Truth Wins Out in 2007 and 2008. The website featured a FAQ on homosexuality provided by Exodus and sold t-shirts saying, “the Truth cannot be silenced.”
One video featured Johnson, who was later quoted in a press release on Exodus International’s website ahead of the event, saying, “An open, honest discussion allows truth to rise to the surface.”
Johnson promoted the event heavily in the media – through radio interviews, comments in newspapers, and an editorial. In interviews, he repeatedly cited the case of a teen who went to school after the Day of Silence wearing a shirt that read, “Be ashamed. Our school has embraced what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful.” The teen was suspended and ADF represented him in legal action over the incident. The case was dismissed because the teen graduated, and the court found he no longer had standing to challenge the dress code.
“Day of Truth was really established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
Those who worked to counter ADF and Exodus at the time, said the event was dangerous to confused youth.
“This directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. “This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate.”
Randy Scobey, a former executive vice president at Exodus, who worked on the Day of Truth in the organization’s collaboration with ADF, called the event one of his biggest regrets.
“It was bullying those who were trying to not be bullied,” said Scobey, who now lives openly as a gay man. “That was one of the public ways that the Alliance Defense Fund worked with us.”
Ties between Exodus and ADF extended beyond the event.
ADF, which has since changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted Exodus International in promotional brochures in 2004, crediting it as an organization that “played an instrumental role in helping thousands of individuals come out of homosexual behavior.”
Scobey recalled Johnson as quiet, but firm in his beliefs that homosexuality was wrong. He said Johnson and ADF provided crucial legal advice to Exodus and its “member ministries.”
“We worked with them behind the scenes a lot,” Scobey told CNN, saying the group offered them legal guidance over their ex-gay counseling. “They were very important to us as far as helping us to feel more secure legally and politically.”
Exodus International stopped sponsoring the Day of Truth event in 2010, saying it became adversarial and counterproductive.
Rep. Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and was a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Louisiana Republican was first elected to the House in 2016 and serves as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, as well as GOP deputy whip, an assistant leadership role. An attorney with a focus on constitutional law, Johnson joined a group of House Republicans in voting to sustain the objection to electoral votes on January 6, 2021. During Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020, Johnson, along with a group of other GOP lawmakers, served a largely ceremonial role in Trump’s Senate impeachment team.
Johnson also sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the longshot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from multiple states.
After the election was called in favor of Joe Biden on November 7, 2020, Johnson posted on X, then known as Twitter, “I have just called President Trump to say this: ‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’”
Although Trump said he wouldn’t endorse anyone in the speaker’s race Wednesday, he leant support to Johnson in a post on Truth Social.
“In 2024, we will have an even bigger, & more important, WIN! My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & GET IT DONE, FAST!” Trump posted.
Johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is also a former chair of the Republican Study Committee.
After receiving a degree in business administration from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Johnson took on roles as a college professor and conservative talk radio host. He began his political career in the Louisiana legislature, where he served from 2015 to 2017, before being elected to Congress in Louisiana’s Fourth District.
Rep. Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican who chairs the influential Republican Study Committee, dropped out of the race for speaker Tuesday evening and backed Johnson.
“I want everyone to know this race has gotten to the point where it’s gotten crazy. This is more about people right now than it should be,” he said. “This should be about America and America’s greatness. For that, I stepped aside and threw all my support behind Mike Johnson. I think he’d make a great speaker.”
Johnson’s win in the secret-ballot race for the House Republican Conference’s nominee for speaker followed Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer’s decision to drop out of the race hours after Republicans chose him to be the nominee following resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from Trump. Reps. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan have also dropped out after earlier seeking the speaker’s gavel.
Johnson joined the speakership race in a Saturday post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I have been humbled to have so many Members from across our Conference reach out to encourage me to seek the nomination for Speaker. Until yesterday, I had never contacted one person about this, and I have never before aspired to the office,” he said in a posted letter. “However, after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”
Rep. Mike Johnson is set to take his fight for the speakership to the House floor on Wednesday, a pivotal moment for House Republicans that comes amid uncertainty over whether the Louisiana lawmaker can secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.
Johnson, who serves as the House GOP conference vice chairman, secured the nomination for the speakership late Tuesday evening. The vote capped off a chaotic day that started with Republicans picking Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer to be their latest nominee only for him to drop out hours later after facing stiff resistance from the right flank of the conference and a rebuke from former President Donald Trump. The day ended with a vote to elect a new nominee – this time, Johnson won out.
The GOP conference is under increasing pressure as the House remains paralyzed without a speaker. But Republicans have so far struggled to unite behind a successor to Kevin McCarthy following his historic ouster. The vote to push out McCarthy plunged the House into uncharted territory and it has remained unclear whether any candidate can win the gavel in the aftermath of the unprecedented move.
Following the nomination vote, House Republicans took another vote to gauge the nominee’s support within the conference. There were around 20 members absent for that vote and Johnson can only lose four votes on the floor, creating uncertainty over whether he will have the needed votes for the gavel.
“Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system,” Johnson said Tuesday evening. “The intention is to go to the House floor tomorrow and make this official. So we will be doing that.”
Emmer was the third Republican to win the GOP nomination only to then exit the race after failing to lock up the necessary votes to win the gavel, following Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise also of Louisiana.
After winning the party nomination, Emmer faced swift opposition from the right flank of his conference as well as a rebuke from Trump. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Emmer a “Globalist RINO,” and said that voting for him “would be a tragic mistake.”
House Republicans are once again scrambling for a path forward after Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer dropped his bid for speaker just hours after winning his party’s nomination.
The swift exit from the race is the latest sign that Republicans are still no closer to electing a new speaker three weeks after Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.
The House remains in a state of paralysis, and Republicans remain unable to govern as the conference has repeatedly failed to coalesce around a successor to McCarthy amid deep division within the ranks. The politically precarious situation has plunged the House into uncharted territory as it looks increasingly unclear whether any Republican can get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.
Emmer is now the third Republican to win the nomination of the GOP conference only to then exit the race after failing to lock up the necessary votes to win the gavel.
Earlier in the day, Emmer’s bid to be speaker appeared on the verge of collapse amid opposition from the right flank of his conference and fresh attacks waged by former President Donald Trump. Emmer could only afford to lose four Republicans in a floor vote, and 26 voted against him behind closed doors, an ominous sign for his speaker’s bid.
Emmer voted to certify the 2020 election, voted to keep the government open for 47 days, voted for the bipartisan law to avoid a debt default and voted to codify same-sex marriage – all issues that members of the hard-right had cited as issues for his candidacy.
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump went after Emmer after House Republicans elected him as their latest speaker nominee, writing that voting for Emmer “would be a tragic mistake.”
Ahead of his exit, members of Trump’s team also called GOP members and urged them to oppose Emmer for speaker, two sources told CNN. One source said they’re “whipping hard.” The other source said more members were pulling their support because of it.
Despite a cordial phone call with the former president over the weekend, Trump reposted attacks against the House GOP whip on Truth Social Monday night and then followed up with his own attack after Emmer was nominated.
Leaving a GOP conference meeting Monday night, Emmer told CNN, “We have a good relationship,” when asked about Trump.
With multiple candidates in the running, members cast a series of successive secret ballots on Tuesday with the candidate with the fewest number of votes in each round dropped from the race. The other candidates who had been in the running were: Reps. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Byron Donalds of Florida, Austin Scott of Georgia, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pete Sessions of Texas.
Republicans gathered on Monday for the candidate forum also behind closed doors. Meuser, who had been in the running, dropped his bid at that meeting.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday, “It’s going to be very difficult, but we have to get there,” when asked how concerned he is that no candidate can get 217 votes on the floor.
And GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida warned that if the eventual nominee can’t get to 217 votes on the floor, the conference may have to work with Democrats.
“It’s, it’s not good. Because a lot of people are gonna want to – with a mind set out there, they don’t want to work with Democrats, but it might end up to be a point where that’s the only way,” Buchanan said. “We’ve got to get the government open. People are very angry, upset.”
This story and headline have been updated with updated with additional information and developments.
Investigators are searching for a motive in the death of a Detroit synagogue leader found stabbed over the weekend, the city’s police chief said.
The body of Samantha Woll, president of the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, was discovered with multiple stab wounds at her home on Saturday morning, the Detroit Police Department said in a statement. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Responding officers had followed “a trail of blood leading officers to the victim’s residence,” where it is believed the crime happened, the Detroit Police Department said in a statement.
Police have not identified a suspect in the case, and it’s still unclear what led up to the killing.
“Understandably, this crime leaves many unanswered questions,” Detroit Police Chief James E. White said in a statement on social media site X. “This matter is under investigation, and I am asking that everyone remain patient while investigators carefully examine every aspect of the available evidence.”
“It is important that no conclusions be drawn until all of the available facts are reviewed,” White added.
The FBI is aware of the incident, and “will assist the Detroit Police Department as requested,” the agency said in a statement to CNN.
Michigan State Police have also been assigned to support local police in the case, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced. “Together, they will investigate this vicious crime and bring the perpetrator to justice,” she added.
“My heart breaks for her family, her friends, her synagogue, and all those who were lucky enough to know her,” Whitmer said. “She was a source of light, a beacon in her community who worked hard to make Michigan a better place.
Woll’s synagogue released a statement Saturday expressing shock over the her death.
“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the unexpected death of Samantha Woll, our Board President,” the synagogue said. “May her memory be a blessing.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said he and Woll were celebrating the newly renovated synagogue together just a few weeks ago.
“It was a project she successfully led with great pride and enthusiasm,” Duggan said. “This entire city joins with her family and friends in mourning her tragic death.”
MoReno Taylor II, who worked with Woll on Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s reelection campaign in 2022, said her death was “a devastating loss.”
“Sam was a bright ball of light,” he told CNN. “She lit up every room that she walked into. She always had a huge smile. She always gave you a firm handshakeand asked about you, wanted to get to know who you were.”
He remembered Woll as a kind soul who was always involved in her community and was dedicated to giving back.
“She didn’t deserve this, and I really hope that they find a resolution to this as soon as possible and find whoever is responsible,” he said.
Taylor said he knew Woll for five years, and thought of her as a little sister.
“It’s very difficult to imagine that someone who was so genuine and so kind could befall this kind of tragedy,” he added.
Attorney General Nessel also shared her condolences in a statement on Facebook, saying, “Sam was as kind a person as I’ve ever known. She was driven by her sincere love of her community, state and country.”
Woll had also previously worked with Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, according to a post on Slotkin’s social media.
The congresswoman said Woll “dedicated her short life to building understanding across faiths, bringing light in the face of darkness.”
The Democrat said Woll worked for her by helping set up the office and leading it throughout her first term.
“My heart aches that we have lost someone so dedicated to serving others in such a senseless act. I’ll miss her relentless desire to serve & her bright smile seemingly everywhere across the Detroit area,” the congresswoman said.
House Republicans are once again scrambling with no clear path to elect a new speaker after voting to push Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan out of the race, the latest sign of the chaos and divisions that have engulfed the majority party and left the chamber in a state of paralysis.
In a dramatic turn of events, the House GOP conference voted by secret ballot on Friday to drop Jordan as their speaker designee after he failed to win the gavel for the third time in a floor vote earlier in the day.
The House remains effectively frozen as long as there is no elected speaker. The paralysis has created a perilous situation as Congress faces the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolds abroad. The battle for the speakership has now dragged on for more than two weeks with no end in sight.
Jordan’s exit from the race now sets the stage for more speaker hopefuls to emerge. Republicans are expected to hold a candidate forum Monday evening. But it appears increasingly uncertain whether any lawmaker can get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel while Republicans control such a narrow majority.
Jordan’s failure to win the gavel also highlighted the limits of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after he endorsed Jordan.
Speaking to reporters after the vote to push him out, Jordan said, “We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” and said he told the conference, “It was an honor to be their speaker designee.”
The move by Republicans against Jordan came after three failed floor votes for his speaker bid and vows from the Ohio Republican to remain in the race despite mounting opposition against him.
In Friday’s floor vote, 25 House Republicans voted against Jordan – a higher number than in the two prior votes and far more than the handful of defectors Jordan could afford to lose and still win the gavel given the GOP’s narrow majority.
When the vote count against Jordan increased to 25 House Republicans, there were three new GOP votes in opposition – Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Kean of New Jersey and Marc Molinaro of New York.
Kean said in a statement explaining his position, “it has become evident that Chairman Jordan does not and will not have the votes to become Speaker.”
Some Republicans who have oppose Jordan decried what they described as a pressure campaign against them by allies of the Ohio Republican. And several Republicans who opposed Jordan’s speakership bid have said they experienced angry calls, menacing messages and even death threats since casting their votes. Jordan has condemned the threats.
A closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Thursday turned heated, multiple sources told CNN. Some members encouraged Jordan to drop out of the race. There was also an emotional discussion over the threats some Jordan holdouts are facing. Later, members leaving the meeting described it as an airing of grievances with tensions running high.
Some Republicans looking for a way to break the impasse have suggested expanding the powers of interim Speaker Rep. Patrick McHenry – a controversial move that would put the House even further into uncharted territory. But there is widespread opposition within the Republican conference to the idea.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan again failed to win the House speaker’s gavel in a second vote on Wednesday, faring worse than he did during the first round of voting one day earlier. The loss raises serious questions over whether the Ohio Republican has a viable path forward as he confronts steep opposition and the House remains in a state of paralysis.
Despite the defeat, Jordan has vowed to stay in the race. The House is expected to hold a third speaker vote on Thursday at noon ET. Without a speaker, the chamber is effectively frozen, a precarious position that comes amid conflict abroad and a potential government shutdown next month.
The conservative Republican’s struggle to gain traction has also highlighted the limits of Donald Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after the former president endorsed Jordan.
As pressure grows on Republicans to find a way out of the leadership crisis, some are pushing to expand the powers of the interim speaker, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, though such a move would not be without controversy and has divided Republicans.
During the first round of voting on Tuesday, 20 House Republicans voted against Jordan. On Wednesday, that number rose to 22, showing that the opposition against the candidate has grown. There were four new Republican votes against Jordan and two that flipped into his column. Given the narrow House GOP majority, Jordan can only afford to lose a handful of votes and the high number of votes against him puts the gavel far out of reach.
Following his second defeat on the floor, Jordan indicated that he is dug in on pressing ahead.
“We don’t know when we’re going to have the next vote but we want to continue our conversations with our colleagues,” he said, adding: “We’ll keep talking to members and keep working on it.”
Jordan is a polarizing figure in the speaker’s fight, a complicating factor in his effort to lock down votes. He is a staunch ally of Trump, has a longstanding reputation as a conservative agitator and helped found the hardline House Freedom Caucus. As the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, he has also been a key figure in House GOP-led investigations.
It took former Speaker Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds of voting in January to secure the gavel. But Jordan faces an uphill climb amid the deep divisions within the House GOP conference and the resistance he faces.
As the speaker battle drags on, tensions and frustration have risen among House Republicans. Some of the lawmakers who have voted against Jordan in the speaker’s race have railed against what they have described as a pressure campaign against them.
Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas derided what he called the “attack, attack, attack” tactics of Jordan allies against his Republican opponents.
“Frankly, just based on what I’ve been through – I can only speak to myself and what my staff has been through over the last 24 or 48 hours – it is obvious what the strategy has been: Attack, attack, attack. Attack the members who don’t agree with you, attack them, beat them into submission,” he said.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s wife received anonymous text messages warning her husband to back Jordan. Bacon has been a vocal holdout against Jordan and was one of the 20 Republican members that did not back Jordan on the floor in Tuesday’s vote.
“Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappointment and failure he is,” read one of the messages sent to Bacon’s wife and obtained by CNN through Bacon.
Bacon’s wife responded to that text saying, “he has more courage than you. You won’t put your name to your statements.”
GOP lawmaker voted for a congressman he didn’t want to be Speaker. Hear why
Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa said in a statement that she has “received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after flipping her speaker vote Wednesday, instead casting a ballot for House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger.
Russell Dye, a spokesman for Jordan, condemned the threats against Miller-Meeks, saying: “This is abhorrent and has no place in civil discourse. No one should receive threats and it needs to stop. We have condemned these actions repeatedly. It is important that Republicans stop attacking each other and come together.”
And Jordan wrote on X that “no American should accost another for their beliefs.”
“We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. Stop. It’s abhorrent,” he added.
Opponents to the congressman’s bid so far have included centrist Republicans concerned that the face of the House GOP would be a conservative hardliner as well as lawmakers still furious at the small group of Republicans who forced out McCarthy and then opposed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s bid for the gavel.
Scalise initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference to become the speaker nominee, but later dropped out of the race amid opposition to his candidacy.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
A number of House Republicans are in talks to block Rep. Jim Jordan’s path to the speakership as the Ohio Republican tries to force a floor vote on Tuesday, according to multiple GOP sources.
One senior Republican House member who is part of the opposition to Jordan told CNN that there he believes there are roughly 40 “no” votes, and that he has personally spoken to 20 members who are willing to go to the floor and block Jordan’s path if the Ohio Republican forces a roll-call vote on Tuesday.
“The approximately 20 I’ve talked to know we must be prepared,” the member said. “We cannot let the small group dictate to the whole group. They want a minority of the majority to dictate and as a red-blooded American I refuse to be a victim.”
But another GOP source familiar with the matter says that Jordan has had positive conversations with members and believes by Tuesday evening he will be elected speaker of the House. The source said it was “likely” the vote would still happen on Tuesday and that Jordan may decide to go to multiple ballots on the floor if necessary.
Republicans are expected to meet behind closed doors Monday evening.
Yet there is still sizable opposition to Jordan. The GOP member says there are some Republicans who are critics of Jordan and not willing to back him – and there are others angry at the hardliners who took out Kevin McCarthy and sunk Majority Leader Steve Scalise and don’t want to reward those moves by electing Jordan, who is their preferred candidate.
“I know of many hard nos. …We can’t reward this behavior,” the GOP lawmaker said. “We can’t let a small group be dictators.”
The Republican conference nominated Jordan as speaker last week after Scalise dropped his bid for the role. Scalise had initially been selected by the conference as its nominee – after he defeated Jordan 113-99 in the conference’s first speaker vote – but more than a dozen Republicans said they would not vote for Scalise, forcing him to withdraw.
Now Jordan is facing the same problem from Republicans angry at McCarthy’s ouster and a small faction of the conference refusing to get behind Scalise after he won the first vote. After Jordan’s nomination, he held a second, secret vote in the conference on whether Republicans would support him on the floor. Fifty-five Republicans voted no.
To be elected speaker, a nominee must win the majority of the full House, which is currently 217 votes due to two vacancies. That means Jordan or any other Republican nominee can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor if every Democrat votes for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Some of Jordan’s allies have pushed for votes on the floor in order to try to call out the holdouts who aren’t behind the Ohio Republican. But Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas railed against his House GOP colleagues who plan on rallying support for Jordan’s speakership through a public pressure campaign, calling it “the dumbest thing you can do.”
“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan,” Crenshaw told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “As someone who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them.”
