Democrats roar as Mike Johnson allows Covenant Eyes to access his electronic devises and prepare a weekly report to make sure he is not viewing any “objectionable” material

#DemVoice1 #ProudBlue 

With the revelation that House Speaker Mike Johnson allows an outside Christian based surveillance company “Covenant Eyes” to access his electronic devises and prepare a weekly report to make sure he is not viewing any “objectionable” material. 

This opens up the Speaker to a real security risk. To allow a non secure outside source full access to the Speaker of the House’s phones and computers is a security breach waiting to happen. I’m sure this did not dawn on MAGA Mike Johnson in his attempt to make sure neither he nor anyone around him is watching porn or anything else the radical Bible believer finds objectionable. But as Speaker of the House. 

Johnson needs to have secure and private conversations that are not shared with others. According to Johnson a weekly report of all searches etc is viewed and prepared. A clear National Security risk for the Speaker of the House. The Republicans did not think this through before making MAGA Mike Speaker.

“It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.” Outside of the creepy Big Brother-ness of it all, Receipt Maven also aired concerns about whether Covenant Eyes — which is still a working subscription-based service — might “compromise” Johnson’s devices, if he’s still actively seeking accountability. 

“A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is accessing that data?”

It’s also a milestone that he does not typically mention when discussing a pre-Congress resume that includes work as litigator for conservative Christian groups that fiercely opposed gay rights and abortion, as well as his brief tenure as a Louisiana lawmaker who pushed legislation that sanctioned discrimination for religious reasons.

Johnson’s office declined to make him available for an interview and did not offer comment for this story.

“The law school deal was really an anomaly,” said Gene Mills, a longtime friend of Johnson’s. “It was a great idea. But due to issues that were out of Mike’s hands that came unraveled.”

This is a lot to absorb. We’re often uncomfortable discussing a politician’s faith. But in this case, Johnson acknowledges that his fundamentalism determines his politics and policy positions. As he said during a Fox interview, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”

The elevation of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) to House speaker was a shocker. Not since John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate has a heretofore little-known politician been lifted so quickly to a position of prominence and importance. Though Johnson now is second in the line of presidential succession, we’re still finding out basic and important facts about him and how he sees the world. This includes his alarming record as a hardcore conservative cultural warrior, motivated by a Christian fundamentalist belief, who has fiercely opposed gay rights (comparing homosexuality to pedophilia), called for a total nationwide ban on abortion, proposed the end of no-fault divorce, and urged a return to “18th century values.” One more significant thing I’ve discovered is that Johnson appears to believe in a religious litmus test for politicians.

This weekend I broke the news that Johnson and his wife, Kelly Johnson, a self-described Christian counselor, a few years ago created a seminar that promoted the premise that the United States has been a “Christian nation.” I found a video of one of these sessions they held in 2019 at the Baptist church they belong to in Bossier City, Louisiana. At that event, from the pulpit, Kelly declared that “biblical Christianity”—that is, a literal reading of the Bible as fundamentalists interpret it—is the only “valid worldview,” and nothing else makes sense. (This worldview includes creationism—believing that the Earth was created by God in six days 6,000 years ago—and the denial of evolution.) Mike Johnson called for “biblically sanctioned government.” In this venue and many others, including a podcast they have hosted together, the pair have contended that there is only one truth: “Jesus’ truth.”