Republican Mike Johnson hasn't even been speaker of the House for a month yet and we're already learning things about him we wish we hadn't.
In an interview at Benton, Louisana's Cypress Baptist Church's "War on Technology" event last year, Johnson admitted that he and his son track each other's online activity to make sure they aren't consuming pornographic content. He talked about an app they used called Covenant Eyes, a subscription-based software that tracks all of his electronic devices to provide a weekly report to an "accountability partner," in this case his then 17-year-old son.
“It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it," he shared. "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."
Beyond the creepiness of the tracking software, it also raises security concerns. The third-party software tracks, as Johnson himself put it, all of his devices daily. It begs to question who else might have access to that data beyond his "accountability partner," if that is something he and his son are still doing.
Johnson has come under much-warranted scrutiny since being named the 56th speaker of the United States House of Representatives on October 25. His past stances include denying the results of the 2020 election, working with the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Alliance Defending Freedom, and the belief that school shootings could perhaps be prevented if it weren't for abortion and schools teaching evolution, per Rolling Stone.
Johnson also indicated that he's against contraception entirely, as well as IVF treatment. However, in a recent interview on Fox News, he suggested he's never "brought forward any measure to address any of those issues." Johnson also didn't rule out the possibility of voting against contraception in the future.
