Navalny’s death has shown Speaker Mike Johnson up as a coward

Upon the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced Vladimir Putin.

“As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States and our partners must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states,” he said in a statement.

Of course, Johnson’s words would hold much more weight if he had actually put through the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that the Senate passed on the floor of the House of Representatives. Indeed, as the Senate labored late into the night on Monday and into the wee hours of Tuesday to pass that aid bill, Johnson summarily killed the bill because it did not address immigration at the US-Mexico border.

This came after Johnson and the rest of House Republican leadership blew up a bipartisan agreement that would have included aggressive restrictions to immigration in exchange for aid to Israel and Ukraine. Johnson, like most of the Republican Party, did so in the service of Donald Trump after he came out in opposition to the deal — despite the fact it would give him sweeping authority to deport migrants if he became president again.

Despite his tough words, Johnson — a political neophyte only elected to the House in 2016, who became Speaker after three other candidates for the job faltered before him — has elected to appeal only to the most extreme elements of the GOP conference.

After the Senate passed its aid package, Johnson didn’t spend Tuesday dispatching Republicans to come up with a counter offer to Democrats. Nor did he spend the day trying to come up with a way to keep the government open, since it runs out of money next