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

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.

I’m sure Trump is behind this. Trump wants to sink Biden’s foreign and domestic policies, drive a wedge among Democratic lawmakers, and create so much chaos that the nation’s attention shifts away from his criminal trials to a government shutdown in the midst of two wars, either of which could spread and endanger America.

So, this week’s Office Hours question: What should Biden and the Democrats do to minimize the threat Mike Johnson poses?