The current lack of serious oversight in Congress is not an oversight. The MAGAsphere commands that the GOP majority submit to Trump’s will if they want to keep their jobs, and avoid horse heads on their pillows. Which means we now have an unchecked and unbalanced executive branch.

As stated in the Congressional Oversight Manual, “The goals of oversight are usually built around either successfully investigating a specific issue or creating a general environment of accountability and transparency between Congress and the executive branch.” It seems that accountability and transparency were not part of the Project 2025 playbook.

Our man in Washington, Mike Lawler, sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. One of their primary tasks is to exercise oversight regarding US relations with foreign nations. It’s not hard to come up with a list of pressing foreign matters that deserve a bit of urgent oversight. For starters: the abandonment of NATO and embrace of Putin as Russia escalates attacks in Ukraine, sends drones into Poland and conducts war games in Belarus; the US military bombing Venezuelan speedboats in international waters; supplying offensive weapons to Israel as it escalates the ground assault in Gaza City (“Gaza is burning”), conducts strikes in Qatar (a US ally), and a UN Commission of Inquiry declares Israel’s actions as genocide.

And what has Lawler’s Foreign Affairs Committee been up to? Their latest news release blasts the conviction in Brazil of its former President & Trump buddy Jair Bolsonaro for his attempted coup. And one of their latest hearings, entitled “Spies, Lies and Mismanagement,” was convened to provide the esteemed Kari Lake a platform to denigrate and justify shutting down the Voice of America. Two months after the hearing, Kari Lake proudly announced the layoff of hundreds at VOA’s parent agency.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs currently has no hearings on the calendar.

One of the great thrills for Lawler this year, with the ascension of the GOP to House majority, is that he gets to wield the gavel as Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. He quickly got to work posting attractive selfies with foreign dignitaries, like the Tunisian & Algerian Ambassadors.

Then he got to travel to the Middle East and North Africa on a couple of bipartisan Congressional Delegations, which made for more compelling selfies like these:

His opinion piece in the New York Daily News on Sunday about his late-summer junket to Italy, Vatican City, Tunisia and Morocco reads like a high school report on “My Summer Vacation.” He got to meet the Pope! His takeaway: “Alliances abroad keep us safe at home.” How’s Mike’s pal Trump doing on that front? EU, NATO, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, anybody? Red carpet for Putin?

Today brought the following lead story in the NY Times:

Worthy of attention from the Subcommittee on the Middle East that Lawler chairs? Or perhaps his other committee, Financial Services?

I suspect not. Lawler probably missed this article since it wasn’t in the Daily News. Just an oversight, I suppose.