How to deal with the most extremist House speaker in living memory — and Trump’s puppet

Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House, is turning out to be the most aggressively right-wing, confrontational speaker since … who? (I was about to say Newt Gingrich, but early indications are Johnson will be far worse than Newt.)

Johnson has already separated the White House’s funding requests for Israel and Ukraine — jeopardizing aid to Ukraine.

And he wants to finance the $14 billion aid bill for Israel by cutting the same amount of money earmarked for the Internal Revenue Service in the Inflation Reduction Act, — letting wealthy tax-dodgers avoid IRS audits while increasing future budget deficits. (For every $1 spent auditing the richest 1 percent of U.S. earners, more than $3 is brought in to the Treasury, and for every $1 auditing the richest 0.1 percent, over $6 is brought in.)

What about funding for the government after November 17? Johnson says any new funding will have to be accompanied by “budget concessions.” Translated: To keep the government open, Johnson and his extremist colleagues will demand spending cuts that hurt average and poor Americans, but they won’t demand tax increases on the corporations and the rich.