New boss, same as the old boss

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November 1, 2023

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

The next Washington mess

New boss, same as the old boss.

A week after winning office, new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is sending shockwaves through Washington.

The rookie leader's tactics suggest that he is likely to be as much a hostage to hard-right conservatives as his predecessor Kevin McCarthy was — or that as one of the extremists himself, he's bent on confrontation.

His decision to seek huge cuts to Internal Revenue Service funding to pay for a $14 billion emergency aid package to Israel as it retaliates against Hamas' horrific October 7 terror attacks shows that nothing is immune from the stunt politics of a majority that often seems to be performing for conservative media. The new speaker's refusal to accept President Joe Biden's request to tie together Israel and Ukraine war funding, meanwhile, set up a clash with the Senate's Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, raising the prospect of a new round of Republican-on-Republican tension following three weeks of internal feuding over the speakership.

Johnson's willingness to stage the first battle of his tenure over the Israel package will burn precious legislative time just over two weeks ahead of a threatened government shut down, if new federal funding isn't approved.

Johnson's moves are particularly interesting because he was largely unknown outside the House GOP until he emerged as a fallback speaker candidate after three weeks of self destructive party clashes after the ouster of McCarthy. But he's also new to managing a fractious GOP conference that far more experienced speakers, most recently McCarthy, found impossible to control.

The smart bet is on more chaos.

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The world and America

An Israeli strike targeting a Hamas commander in the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza has left catastrophic damage and killed a large number of people, according to eyewitnesses and medics in the enclave.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested at an oil conference in London, eyewitnesses tell CNN.

And Lake Como has burst its banks.

Meanwhile in America, the Supreme Court is considering when the government can block followers on social media.

Here's how big the wealth gap is between White Americans and Black Americans.

And US realtors were found liable for $1.8 billion in damages in a conspiracy to keep commissions high.

A 'shooting match' with Russia

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks at a Senate Appropriations hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Yet another partisan fight over national security as American friends fight existential wars will only deepen perceptions that what US President Joe Biden calls the "indispensable nation" is losing its grip on the world stage.

China and Russia for instance are relying on domestic dysfunction in Washington to play into their own attempts to challenge US power and to tarnish America's democracy and its capacity to maintain its global commitments.

"US leadership and credibility is at stake here," Beth Sanner, a former deputy director for National Intelligence, said Tuesday. "The Republicans say Biden isn't showing strength -- well, they are actually making it a lot harder for this president to show strength and US leadership by handling the funding in the way that they are with all this shenanigans," Sanner said.

The administration is so alarmed that two of its most senior Cabinet members were on Capitol Hill on Tuesday warning that American power was at stake.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there were "clear links" between the wars in Israel and Ukraine. He reasoned that since the US had cut off Russia's military supply lines after the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned to Iran -- a key backer of Hamas -- for support with military technology. Russia in turn supplied advanced military kit to Tehran that threatens Israel's security, he said.

"Allowing Russia to prevail with Iran's support will simply embolden both Moscow and Iran," Blinken said.

And Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a failure by the US to continue supporting Ukraine would hand victory to Putin and critically endanger the safety of NATO states.

"If Putin is successful, he will not stop at Ukraine," Austin said. "And if you're a Baltic state, you're thinking, 'I'm next.' And, you know, there's no question in my mind that sooner or later, he will challenge NATO and we'll find ourselves in a shooting match."

Thanks for reading.

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visits Turkey. Most of West Maui, Hawaii, reopens to tourists after August's deadly wildfires.