When House Speaker Mike Johnson first crossed paths with then-teenaged Michael Tirrell James in the mid-1990s, the moment carried the quiet urgency of a rescue mission. Johnson, then in his early twenties, was volunteering with a Christian ministry when he encountered Michael, a homeless Black teenager in Baton Rouge. According to Michael, and later media interviews, the Johnsons—Mike and his wife Kelly—opened their home to him when he was about 16 and he credits them with “saving” him from a bleak fate. Yet despite what looks like a familial bond, Johnson never completed a formal adoption of Michael—explaining that the...
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