Surreal week in the House shows just how broken the GOP is

Some things you just can’t make up. The federal government is one week away from a shutdown, and the Republican-led House wasted another (short) week failing to pass appropriations bills. The kicker? New House Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson has swanned off to Paris for the inaugural Republicans Overseas Worldwide Freedom Initiative conference, where he’s a star speaker.

The first two weeks of Johnson’s sparkly new speakership not only have nothing to show for the time, but have contained real disasters like having to pull major funding bills off of the floor at the last minute. The lowest bar for competence in a speaker is putting bills on the floor with enough votes to pass. Only a notch or two above that bar is the ability to avoid shutting down the government. That’s where this week gets even more preposterous: “MAGA Mike” has no plan for how to do that. Oh, excuse me—no “real” plan.