Trying to Explain Biden’s Bumbling Policy on the Houthi Rebels and Iran

The Arab TV hosts seemed befuddled by Middle East security and U.S. policy toward the region. Disturbingly, this also appears to be Joe Biden’s thinking about the Middle East.

by Fred Fleitz for American Greatness

During recent interviews with two Arab-language TV networks, I was asked to comment on the Biden administration’s announcement that it has re-designated Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization. The programs’ hosts asked me to explain why this decision took so long and whether it indicates a significant change in the Biden administration’s policy.

My explanation puzzled the Arab TV hosts.

I started out by explaining that, despite press reports that the Biden administration reversed its 2021 decision to take the Houthis off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, this is not exactly correct.

At the beginning of the Biden administration, the president rescinded decisions by President Trump to place the Houthis on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and to name the group a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization (SDGT).

The FTO designation represents the generally known U.S. terrorist group list; the SGDT is a little-known, weaker designation. The Biden administration only restored the SGDT designation and postponed enacting it for 30 days. Under this designation, Houthi members can apply for a U.S. visa; it is not a crime to support them; and U.S. banks are not required to seize Houthi funds.

Moreover, tough sanctions against the Houthis imposed as part of the Trump administration’s FTO designation will not be reimposed.

The Arab TV hosts were incredulous about my explanation and asked why the Biden administration would reimpose a weak terrorist designation against the Houthis and why, after three months of Houthi missile and drone attacks against Israel and Red Sea shipping, it took Biden administration officials three months to make this decision.

I answered that this decision was made for domestic political reasons in response to growing criticism in the U.S. of how President Biden is handling increased instability in the Middle East after the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel. This was a symbolic move that allowed the White House to inform the press that the president was doing something in response to this instability. It was not a serious response to the Houthi missile and drone attacks.

I said I also thought this was an act of desperation by Biden officials after the airstrikes President Biden ordered against Houthi missiles and drone facilities in Yemen failed to stop Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.

On the U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis that began on January 12, I said there was less there than it appeared. Although the first U.S./U.K. attacks on Houthi military sites were described as massive air and missile strikes against 60 targets at 16 locations, these attacks destroyed only about 20% of Houthi missiles and drones because these weapons are mobile and well-hidden.

In addition, according to a January 17 Wall Street Journal editorial, the U.S. warned the Houthis of the airstrikes in advance so they could evacuate targeted sites, a move the Journal said made the strikes less effective and probably was interpreted as a sign of U.S. weakness.

I told my Arab TV hosts that it was therefore unsurprising that the Houthis were undeterred by the airstrikes and escalated attacks against ships in the region, including a U.S. cargo vessel, which suffered minor damage from a missile strike, and a cruise missile fired at a U.S. Navy ship that was intercepted. As a result, the U.S. has conducted several follow-up attacks against missile and drone sites in Yemen., including airstrikes on January 17 that targeted 14 Houthi missiles.

I added that the airstrikes against the Houthis did not deter their sponsor, Iran, which also escalated tensions in the region over the last few days by firing missiles at targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan. I noted that cross-border rocket fire into Israel from Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon, is increasing, and attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed militias are continuing.

My Arab TV hosts were dejected after hearing this depressing analysis and asked what the Biden administration should be doing to counter increasing aggression by Iran and its proxies.

I replied that President Biden must implement tough and credible policies against Iran and its proxies as soon as possible. This should include much more aggressive airstrikes against Houthi missile and drone sites and against Iran-backed militias that attack U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

The Biden administration should immediately return to President Trump’s tough “Maximum Pressure” sanctions against Iran. This must include fully enforcing oil sanctions against Iran and the end of providing Tehran with any more multi-billion-dollar sanction waivers, like the $10 billion sanctions waiver Biden officials quietly gave Iran in mid-November.

Neither TV host had any further questions after I gave my policy recommendations. They seemed confused and befuddled about Middle East security and U.S. policy toward the region.

Disturbingly, this also appears to be Joe Biden’s thinking about the Middle East.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- January 20

 

The American Nomenklatura is Destroying the Country

posted by Mark Lewis at Townhall 

Washington, D.C. is slowly strangling America.  Big government always razes a country because government never stops growing, soaks up increasing amounts of a country’s resources to spend on its own (mostly) useless interests, and thereby gradually impoverishes its people through taxation, inflation, and oppression.  Expandinggovernment robs the people of their freedoms, and the free spirit of man will eventually rebel.  Our Founders warned us incessantly about this, but we never pay any attention to them, and truly, it is in the vested interest of Washington (the Uniparty) NOT to pay attention to them.  The people must be vigilant to protect their freedoms, but sadly, too many people aren’t vigilant, don’t even know what the wordmeans, and thus freedom is ultimately lost.

Our federal government is our number one enemy. I recently saw a Wall Street Journal poll which said that Joe Biden is at the lowest rate of popularity that he has had inhis presidency, the lowest of any modern president, evenworse than Trump and Bush at their minimum. The American people sense that something is dreadfully wrong with our republic, but they aren’t educated enough to understand what it is.  Democrats think it is Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats, and so nothing ever changes.  Setting citizens against each other is one way government tyrants remain in control.   

The two political parties don't care what Americansthink as long as the people continue to send this elite bureaucratic morass to positions of power.  That’s all that matters to virtually every politician.  These politicians, with the bureaucratic offspring they have fathered, have caused most of the conundrums the country faces, and yet they have convinced the majority of the people that government is theonly solution to those very problems politicians/bureaucratshave produced.  It is a con game of gargantuan proportions.

Perhaps these people (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell, etc.) actually believe that they can solve America’s problems, that you can’t get along without them.  Their media and academic allies certainly drill it, non-stop, into the American mind.  It’s all we hear:  “government can solve your problems.”  Ronald Reagan challenged this thesis,got virtually nowhere, and thus most Americans, who cannot, or will not, think for themselves, have no cause to doubt it.

Whether Leftists such as Democrats truly believe that government can solve all problems is really irrelevant; they want power, that’s their only goal.  They don’t care if any problems are solved or not.  Actually, the more “crises” they can manufacture, the more power they can seize.  “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant,” James Madison said.  Surprise.  Our Founder recognized, over 200 years ago, this principle, and that’s because it has been true all through history.  Destroy history and you can control the people.  Marx said that, and modern-day Leftists DO believe that, and live it.

Thus, since government is the “solution” to every problem, government will continue to expand in order toplan the people's lives and to “solve” the problems it generates. This means an ever-increasing bureaucracy. The Soviet Union had a term for it—the “nomenklatura,” a cadre of elitists who basically absorbed more and more of the country's resources until eventually the system collapsed due to fiscal irresponsibility.  That was in the lifetime of many Americans living today, but we still haven’t learned the historical lesson.   History teaches us that men learn nothing from history.  

China confronts the same problem. The Chinese Communist party is getting into greater and greater debt mainly because local communist party governments have borrowed so much money to build their infrastructures that Beijing is running into the serious conundrum of having to bail out countless of these local governments who are in such debt that the banking system is liable to collapse at any time. Let’s hope it happens soon.  

And we are watching the same disaster befall America as the “Deep State” (nomenklatura) continues to expand and suck up more of America's resources, debilitating theeconomy to its eventual collapse.  This state within a state,above the people, acts upon its own will, its own desires, and it will annihilate America just as surely as the Communist Party in the Soviet Union destroyed that country.  Mr. Trump promises to eradicate the “Deep State,” but he promised that in 2016, too.  How did that work out?  Nobody in history has ever been able to overthrow a bureaucratic monstrosity once it becomes entrenched.  If Trump does it, he will be the first to ever do so.  But, frankly, such is the main reason he probably won’t win this year—the supremely-powerful “Deep State,” the American “nomenklatura,” will never let him near the levers of poweragain if it can help it.  If we think the “people” are in control of electing the President, we are of all men most unenlightened.

Mr. Trump faces a juggernaut of mammoth proportions.  Countless millions hate him, but his biggest obstacle is this “Deep State” which will do anything and everything it can to protect its interests.  The Democratic Party represents absolutely no threat to it, indeed, is doing all it can to enhance and perpetuate its growth.  Uniparty Republicans like Ronna McDaniel and Mitch McConnellalso hold their positions of power and influence due to the “nomenklatura”—they are part of it. Trump’s difficulty is not just the Democratic Party. If the McDaniel wing of the Republican Party truly believes Trump will try to overturnthe “Deep State,” then they will not help him; rather, they will do all they can, subtly, to undermine his campaign and make sure he loses.  Who do you think Mitch McConnell prefers as President—Donald Trump or Joe Biden?  If you say “Trump,” go back to history class.  If you say “Biden,” then you are on your way to understanding what is trulyhappening in America today.

And why Washington, D.C., is the greatest threat in existence to our country.

New GAO Report on Chinese Ownership of US Farmland 'Confirms One of Our Worst Fears'

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

Common sense dictates that any American with half a brain should support the precise tracking of foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land — particularly farmland purchased by entities or individuals in Communist China, whose stated objective is world domination.

Perhaps the operative words above are "half a brain." 

The Biden administration is not only failing to properly track such ownership; it doesn't appear to even have a plan to begin tracking that data — according to an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Moreover, according to a GAO report, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not consistently shared timely data on foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land as required under the 1978 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA). 

The GAO report, which was published late Thursday, states:

Sharing current data could help increase visibility into potential national security risks related to foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land. USDA implements AFIDA across field offices and headquarters, but its processes to collect, track, and report key information are flawed.

According to the GAO investigation, the USDA collects AFIDA data on paper forms filed with county or federal offices, but the process is "unclear and challenging to implement." Even worse, the USDA has no plans or timelines to create an online AFIDA database — despite Congress mandating the agency create one by 2025.

What the...? Then again, should we be surprised? Concerning Biden's apparent lack of concern about our national security, that is. 

Here's another example:

With the southern border virtually flung wide open since day one of the Biden presidency, as my colleague Jeff Charles reported in December 2023, there were 151 hits on the Terrorist Screening Database in fiscal year 2023 alone.

And, in the first two weeks of this fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended more than 30 Iranians, nearly 60 Syrians, 35 Pakistanis, 285 Afghans, more than 100 Russians, and nearly 2,000 Chinese would-be illegal aliens at the southern border. Um, Joe?

Clearly, Biden is more concerned with MAGA Republican "extremists" than with agents of foreign adversaries slipping into the country — or ChiCom entities scooping up our agricultural land.

Here's more on the troubling GAO report (emphasis, mine):

The government watchdog agency's review of the AFIDA data — the most recent of which is from 2021 — found the USDA has published errors such as reporting the largest land holding associated with China twice.

"This report confirms one of our worst fears: that not only is the USDA unable to answer the question of who owns what land and where, but that there is no plan by the department to internally reverse this dangerous flaw that affects our supply chain and economy," Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., said. "Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries to influence our food supply while we stick our heads in the sand."

"I will, in my capacity as a member of the Select Committee on the CCP, Chairman of the Western Caucus, and as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, be working to introduce measures aimed at fixing USDA’s internal reporting and data management to identify to Congress, and the American people, exactly who is investing in the over 40 million acres of U.S. farmland reported to have ties to foreign actors," he continued.

USDA's most recent data suggests that as of 2021, foreign investment in U.S. farmland grew to approximately 40 million acres. And ominously, Chinese agricultural purchases in the U.S. increased tenfold between 2009 and 2016 alone. Yet, where's Joe Biden and the Democrat Party? 

Comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. 

Go figure.

Influence Peddling: Kevin Morris Got 'Access' to Biden White House After Big Payments to Hunter

 Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

On Thursday, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) issued a statement describing the transcribed interview with Hollywood lawyer and Democrat donor Kevin Morris. The full statement can be viewed here. The smoking gun? Morris, shortly after being introduced to Hunter Biden in 2019, began shoveling cash towards Hunter, initially with no agreement as to any quid pro quo — although Morris did gain access to the Biden White House.

Morris has spoken to President Joe Biden and received “access” to the Biden White House after keeping Hunter Biden afloat financially with at least $5 million worth of loans, Comer said in a press release following Morris’ transcribed interview. 

“Shortly after meeting Hunter Biden at a Joe Biden campaign event in 2019, Kevin Morris began paying Hunter Biden’s tax liability to insulate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from political liability. Kevin Morris admitted he has ‘loaned’ the president’s son at least $5 million. These ‘loans’ don’t have to be repaid until after the next presidential election and the ‘loans’ may ultimately be forgiven,” Comer said.

Morris, it's significant to note, is financing a feature-length puff piece on Hunter Biden, presumably in an attempt to refurbish the First Son's badly tarnished reputation. That is in addition to paying Hunter's taxes and buying his "paintings."

If these aren't smoking guns, then there's no such thing. But wait! There's more!

“Since Kevin Morris has kept President Biden’s son financially afloat, he’s had access to the Biden White House and has spoken to President Biden. This follows a familiar pattern where Hunter Biden’s associates have access to Joe Biden himself. As we continue more interviews this month and the next, we will continue to follow the facts to understand the full scope of President Biden and his family’s corruption,” Comer added.

Morris has donated between $500,000 and $700,000 to Democrats, yet did not receive “access” to the White House until the Biden administration, Comer’s release states. He toured the White House with Hunter Biden and attended a wedding and July 4th picnic at the White House, according to the release.

The Biden administration has stonewalled any investigation into Hunter's peccadillos at every turn, but the evidence just keeps piling up, including evidence that Joe — at least, to the extent to which he is aware of what's going on — is involved and has met with Hunter's financier.

This prompts a few questions:

1. Who in the Biden White House did Morris speak with during this wedding and July 4th picnic?
2. What was discussed?
3. To which Democrats did Morris donate money?
4. Does the President have any idea what's going on with all this?

OK, that last question we can answer: "Probably not." But this transcribed interview, with a guy who has shoveled whopping big piles of cash towards Hunter Biden for reasons unknown and who is financing a soft-stroked "documentary" about Hunter — all this is just another piece in the puzzle, a puzzle that is coming together to produce a picture of one of the most deeply, fundamentally corrupt political families in recent history. 

And, I remind you, this is a history that includes Bill and Hillary Clinton.

‘We were brothers in the Legion. Now we fight each other in Ukraine’

 

Men who once stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the French Foreign Legion have found themselves on opposite sides after the Russian invasion, writes Anthony Loyd in Kyiv    

Franck sang his way across the Ukrainian frontier. In the absence of a passport, one particular song allowed him to pass through the border control post and onwards through the gateway to war: Le Boudin, the marching song of the French Foreign Legion.

A Ukrainian legionnaire in Paris had told the former sniper, 50, that the song would be enough to serve as an unofficial laissez-passer. It was 3am when Franck got off a night train in Poland and sang it to a specified Ukrainian border guard. It worked.

“I entered Ukraine vouched for by nothing more than the Legion’s song, and I have never been back home since,” said Franck who, restless in civilian life, served a ten-year stretch in the renowned corps as a younger man.

He made the border crossing just a few days after the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, and he has been fighting for Ukraine ever since. Many of his former brothers-in-arms from the Legion have served alongside him — but others have been fighting for the Russians. 

The 9,000-strong Legion bonds together the men of 140 different nations who serve in its ranks with an overarching sense of warrior élan, codified by the regiment’s motto Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our Fatherland). The war in Ukraine has tested that bond, pitting both deserters and men from different nations who had served out their contracts to France against each other, on different sides of the front line.

“They were my brothers but now, if I saw them face to face, I’d kill them, or they’d kill me,” Franck said. “The life in the Legion we once shared together was very different to our lives today. I respect them, and their wish to kill me. It’s normal. I want to kill them too.”

There were 710 Ukrainians and 450 Russians serving in the French Foreign Legion when President Putin ordered tanks across the border in February 2022. Though no official figures have been released by France, scores of former and serving legionnaires are believed to have gone to Ukraine to fight since.  

General Alain Lardet, head of the Legion, gave a video address to Ukrainian and Russian legionnaires soon after the invasion, exhorting them to remain loyal to the corps and not desert. Ukrainians were offered two weeks’ special leave to assist family members caught up in the war, but that was simply not enough: many made the decision to leave and fight for their homeland, giving up on the chance of French citizenship and the €30,000 golden handshake that would come with the completion of their terms of service.  

“I have met scores of legionnaires fighting here,” said Franck, whose call sign “Berlioz” is taken from Hector Berlioz, the French 19th-century romantic composer. “Guys like me, who had completed their service in the Legion, and guys who had deserted to fight.”

Just five days after singing his way through the Ukrainian border Franck was in action, joining a sniper team targeting Russian units approaching Irpin, north of Kyiv. All had French Foreign Legion origins, including a man who served 21 years with the corps. Some were Swedish, others Slovakian — and, of course, fellow Ukrainians. 

“War and the army are passions in which I found my talent,” said Franck, who joined the Legion as a troubled French teenager, listing his nationality as Swiss when he was hired to the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment, in compliance with Legion statutes for French citizens.

“I don’t live at all in civilian life,” he said. “Here, I am alive. It is like a drug for me. You can’t explain that to civilians.” He said he had left a sealed letter to be given to his eight-year-old son in France if he is killed, explaining his choice to fight in Ukraine.

Contracted to a special unit that is part of Ukraine’s own “international legion”, Franck has seen action in hotspots all across eastern Ukraine, including Soledar, Bakhmut, Severodonetsk and Zaporizhzhia.  

“I have become fatalistic,” he said. “The war is unlike anything any of us have previously seen in scale and intensity, like the Second World War combined with the trenches of the First World War. The horrors that waited for professional soldiers here — seeing men with no faces, comrades blown in half — were worse than anything we had seen before. Here I learnt that death chooses soldiers in its own time.”

That sense of fatalism was sealed in one particularly horrific mission that has become part of the legend of foreign fighters in Ukraine: a group of 30, Franck among them, led by a British former SAS NCO, tried to fight their way into a four-storey house during the battle for Soledar. The aim was to rescue nine Ukrainian soldiers trapped in the basement by Russian forces on the upper floors. After repeated attempts to breach the doorway of the building, and fierce, close-quarter fighting, the group came under Russian tank fire.

The SAS veteran had the insides of his thighs and the front of his head blown off. Another British fighter lost a leg. Two other members of the unit were killed and numerous others wounded, and the group was forced to admit defeat.  

“That was a number one bad mission. One shell went off right in front of me and killed a man behind me, wounding a Polish fighter next to me, while leaving me untouched,” Franck said. “In that battle I learnt to accept the awards of destiny.”

There are hints of professional pride in his grim stories of war: he spoke of his most accomplished long-range kill as a sniper, when he shot a Russian soldier, probably a Wagner fighter, at a range of 1,662 metres with a .50 calibre rifle. “He was nothing special, just an unlucky soldier,” Franck said matter-of-factly. “One hit with a .50, and he completely disappeared.”

The presence of French fighters in Ukraine was highlighted on Thursday when Russia claimed to have killed more than 60 French mercenaries in a strike on their accommodation in Kharkiv. The claim was denied by French authorities, and Russia produced no evidence to substantiate it.  

Yet despite the war’s horrors, and the way it has tested and sometimes cleaved loyalties, traces of enduring honour between former legionnaires have emerged. Yevhenii Kulyk’s death is a case in point: a 23-year-old Ukrainian deserter from the Legion, he was killed in January last year while fighting against Wagner Group troops on the outskirts of Bakhmut. His body fell into Russian hands.  

Three days later the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin referred to Kulyk on his Telegram channel. “Colleagues from the French Foreign Legion asked us to find Yevgeny Kulyk,” he wrote, months before his own death in an explosion on his private plane. “We regret to inform you that a French Foreign Legion soldier was killed on the DPR [self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic].”

That suggests that communication existed between legionnaires on the opposing sides; certainly, the Wagner troops were known to include several former French Foreign Legionnaires, including Vitali Perfilev, who served with the corps’s elite parachute regiment, 2REP, before heading the Wagner operation in the Central African Republic.

The strange connotation of enduring honour suggested by Prigozhin’s Telegram post was given further intrigue when a video was released by the Russians showing a masked Wagner fighter, speaking in fluent French, laying the Legion’s flag over Kulyk’s body prior to its repatriation to the Ukrainian side for burial.   

“Each of us has fought in many places,” the Wagner fighter said above Kulyk’s open coffin. “We send our Legion fighter back home.”

The poignancy of a warrior’s death resonated with Franck’s own mortal vision, and his hope for a Viking eternity — despite his avowed willingness to kill former legionnaires fighting for the Russian side. “I’ve never left Ukraine since coming here, but most of the guys I knew at the start of this either went home or were killed,” he mused last week in Kyiv, a few days before setting off on a new mission. “I know only four still here who I fought beside in those early days. I’ll go home at the war’s end if I am still alive. But if not? Then it’s Valhalla!”  

 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a433360d-5363-4f12-95e3-5e33026ba9b2?shareToken=4b07549bbd94565831bbea715eb972cf    

Speaker Johnson Is Willingly Funding The Biden Regime’s Authoritarianism

Whether he admits it or not, Matt Gaetz helped usher in a new House speaker who’s just as feckless as his predecessor.

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

When Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led the charge to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, many conservatives were cautiously optimistic that his successor, Louisiana’s Rep. Mike Johnson, would lead the lower chamber more capably. Surely the man with the self-professed biblical “worldview” and somewhat conservative voting record would be the fighter GOP voters need to take on Democrats’ extremism, right?

Wrong.

With Democrats in control of the White House and Senate, the House remains the only tool Republicans have at the federal level to stop funding President Biden’s authoritarian agencies and destructive policies. Yet on nearly every major spending fight that’s come across his desk, Johnson has surrendered to Democrat demands and placed conservative priorities on the back burner.

The speaker’s latest act of betrayal came Thursday, when the House passed a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the federal government funded through early March. Despite insistence from Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., and other House Freedom Caucus members on attaching a border security amendment to the bill, Johnson declined to do so, leaving America’s open border unaddressed for at least the next month and a half.

Another clear indication the CR represented a complete surrender by Johnson and House GOP leadership: more Democrats voted in favor of the measure than Republicans. In fact, 107 Republicans supported the bill’s passage, “while 106 opposed.”

Prior to that CR, Johnson supported a nearly $1.66 trillion “negotiated” package that would have increased federal spending beyond current eyewatering levels. It also failed to include meaningful provisions supported by Republican voters, including those addressing the ongoing invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border, Covid tyranny, and the weaponization of intel agencies to target Democrats’ political opponents. Weak-tea provisions reportedly included in the measure were a $6 billion claw-back in unspent Covid funds and $20 billion reduction in IRS spending.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly claimed the omnibus bill was “a good deal for Democrats.”

Johnson’s decision to kick the spending can down the road isn’t all that surprising given the Louisiana rep’s willingness to cede the only leverage national Republicans have to stymie Biden’s agenda. During November’s budget fight, Johnson and House Republicans passed a CR to keep the government funded through January, with Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. — one of the House’s most radical leftists — praising the bill and claiming it included “[t]wo of the big things” Democrats wanted.

Johnson also declined to fight for conservative priorities in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. Provisions axing the Pentagon’s radical abortion policy, drag shows on military bases, race discrimination, and using TRICARE to subsidize trans surgeries and wrong-sex hormones for service members and their families were also left out of the final bill. Meanwhile, the measure extended FISA, the program U.S. intel agencies have abused to, among other scandals, illegally spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Matt Gaetz: The Man Without a Plan

At first glance, Rep. Matt Gaetz’s maneuver to give McCarthy the boot appeared plausible. After all, McCarthy sold out Republican voters on May’s debt ceiling fight and a separate government-funding debacle that included little — if any — meaningful conservative priorities.

But with McCarthy gone, it became apparent Gaetz had no real plan on how to galvanize House Republicans around a more conservative successor. When Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., threw his hat in the ring for speaker, Gaetz emphatically endorsed him.

Scalise’s voting record, however, reveals the Louisiana rep is just as ineffective as McCarthy. If betraying conservatives and reneging on prior intra-party agreements were the reasons behind McCarthy’s ouster, as Gaetz claimed, then why replace him with someone from leadership who’s similarly failed to fight for conservative priorities?

Whatever Gaetz’s true motivations, the Florida Republican’s gambit clearly didn’t pay off. In some ways, Johnson’s speakership is worse than McCarthy’s because of the image the former quickly projected to GOP voters and conservative media.

After being plucked from obscurity to become speaker, Johnson was cast as the Bible-loving family man who was more than prepared to take on Democrats’ radicalism. In an age where leftism has taken a demonic turn (see Democrats’ obsession with trans-ing children), many conservatives found it refreshing to hear a leading GOP figure publicly espouse biblical values and recognize the spiritual elements at play in the current political landscape. Like many Republicans, he told GOP voters what they wanted to hear and left the impression that he cares about addressing major political problems.

Unlike Johnson, McCarthy never received the benefit of the doubt when he became speaker. The California Republican’s liberal voting record and time as majority leader under Paul Ryan’s lackluster speakership rightly gave many American restorationists reasons to be skeptical of whether he would fulfill his promises and fight on issues that mattered, when they mattered.

Unfortunately for McCarthy, these facts — combined with his betrayal on spending fights — led to a majority of conservatives supporting his ouster, paving the way for Johnson to assume the speaker’s gavel with little scrutiny. For conservatives, Johnson’s promotion offered the GOP a chance to halt Democrats’ extremist policies. That promise didn’t materialize, even for a little bit.

For Johnson, it doesn’t matter how tyrannical Biden and his administration become. All that matters is keeping the government open and avoiding backlash from leftist media, even if it means capitulating to Democrats on every single issue.

Whether he admits it or not, Gaetz helped usher in a new speaker who’s just as feckless as his predecessor. But unlike McCarthy, Johnson enjoys the appearance of a resolute conservative who’s backed by Republican “fighters” like Gaetz, allowing him to avoid the criticism he deserves.

Underneath the media hits and tweets is a House GOP still as useless and ineffective as the day they took power. And no amount of gaslighting can change that.