It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

We'll begin the week with our usual Monday morning politics segment this week with Rebecca Davis O'Brien, who covers campaign finance for

the New York Times, as they said in the Watergate era, follow the money trail, right? And there

are several newsworthy money trails to follow right now. One is the money trail from the United

States to the two wars it's involved with at the moment, as the Times and others report,

House Speaker Mike Johnson actually does believe in funding Ukraine to help them defend against the Russian invasion,

even though so many of his House Republican colleagues and led by Donald Trump are more on Putin's side.

Look for details in the coming days of how much Johnson is willing to risk being ousted

as speaker to pass this funding with democratic support and only a minority of his own caucus.

Then there's the war in Gaza.

For all the critical things President Biden has been saying about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu lately,

and Biden's stated opposition to an assault on the city of Rafa,

the Washington Post reports that Biden has now quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars

in additional bombs and fighter jets to Israel.

The Post says that includes more than 1,800, 2,000-pound bombs, the kind of bombs that the

Post describes as being linked to previous mass casualty events in that war.

The Post notes that even some allies of Biden in Congress

are now becoming critical of the disparity between Biden's words and his deeds when it comes

to protecting Palestinian civilians. For example, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, very close to Biden,

told the Post, quote, we need to back up what we say with what we do, unquote.

So we have the Ukraine and Israel, U.S. money trails, and the contrast between which war we're funding and which one were not.

Then there's one of the strangest money in politics stories of all time with Donald Trump's social media

...