Rosie Gray reports on Ted Cruz’s latest stunt:

Cruz said earlier this week that he would hold all State Department nominations that are set to come before the Senate until he has answers about the Federal Aviation Administration’s ban on U.S. carriers flying to Tel Aviv in the midst of the Gaza war, which has since been lifted.

Using holds to get answers from the executive can be a legitimate and appropriate thing for members of the Senate to do, but like anything else it can be abused in ridiculous ways. Cruz’s decision to hold all State Department nominations to make some hay out of the very brief FAA ban on U.S. flights to Israel is a perfect example of just such an abuse. It is also yet another example of how easily Cruz resorts to cheap demagoguery on foreign policy. There is no reason to think that the ban was part of an “economic boycott,” since there is no chance that this or any other administration would want to impose such a boycott, and it was so short-lived that its effects will be negligible. The trouble here is that the questions that Cruz wants answered are absurd, the answers to them should be obvious, and the ban he is protesting has already been lifted. Meanwhile, important diplomatic posts will go unfilled while Cruz puts on his display to show just how obsequiously “pro-Israel” he can be. It’s the worst kind of obnoxious grandstanding over a phony issue, which unfortunately seems to have become Cruz’s specialty during his brief time in office.