Commies Against Snow Days! Hard To Find Facts In Minneapolis. The Secret Ted (Cruz)Talks. School Choice Week. And More
“Expansive Winter Storm Snarls the Central and Eastern U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal trumpets. “Land of the Freeze,” the New York Post cover announces.
The “monster” storm is leaving power outages, school closures, and subzero temperatures in its wake:
A colossal winter storm barreled across an unusually large swath of the nation on Sunday, dumping snow and ice from Oklahoma to the Deep South to New England. The giant system knocked out power to more than a million customers, caused deaths in multiple states, prompted widespread school cancellations, ground travel to a halt and promised more uncertainty during the frigid days to come. …
Commies against Snow Days! Killjoy socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani nixes a snow day for New York school kids, who will instead be cooped up with remote learning. An op-ed at the Wall Street Journal says New York kids were robbed. School Choice. Premiere charter school Success Academy is making a different choice. (More on school choice later.) The country was lucky to have coal for the last few days.
The snow is calm and beautiful outside my window, so it is jarring to turn to Minneapolis. What a contrast (via the New York Post):
Anti-ICE protesters violently swarmed a Minneapolis hotel where they believed federal officers were staying, hurling items at people inside, smashing its windows, and graffitiing “F–K ICE” across the building’s facade Sunday.
The large mob descended on the Home2 Suites by Hilton Hotel late Sunday night, as tensions gripped the Twin Cities just one day after Border Patrol agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis.
Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the VA, who was tragically killed Saturday, is the second protester to be killed in Minneapolis. “A situation that was already a tinder box now verges on an inferno,” writes National Review’s Andrew McCarthy. McCarthy urges the public not to rush to conclusions (oh sure) and criticizes the Trump administration officials for making “bold” statements prematurely. The Editors of The Free Press lambasted DHS Secretary for her incautious statements. Federal agents on the scene are also voicing “extreme frustration” about administration statements. (Hat tip to RCP for spotting this.)
USA TODAY’S Susan Page did not waste time waiting for a thorough investigation. “’Your eyes don’t lie.’ Trump, ICE, a death and a turning point” is her headline. “Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minneapolis,” Ben Cherkin argues in the London Spectator:
Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus. Trump opponents post freeze-frames and selective snippets of the horrible video to hammer home their assertion of out-of-control ICE death squads. The media, eager for click-generating hysteria, fail to report on laws that protect officers when they shoot to kill in self-defense if a gun is sighted during an arrest. Trump supporters, meanwhile post red circles around Pretti’s hand to suggest he’s reaching for his gun.
“The Far-left Network that Helped Put Alex Pretti in Harm’s Way, then Made Him a Martyr” is a Fox Digital headline this morning. Asra Nomani describes “a coordinated web of encrypted chats, street alerts and tracking of ICE ‘Abductors’ in a sophisticated database reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that agitators were already mobilized at the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed minutes before any shots were fired.”
Who was Alex Pretti? For Joan Walsh, writing in the Nation, “Pretti was a good man at a time of great evil.” Miranda Devine sees him as “one more martyr for cynical Democrats.” It is interesting that Pretti had a gun—and WHAT a gun—at the protest. Strange, I haven’t heard any calls for more stringent gun control, even though Pretti’s gun may have accidentally fired.
How fortunate we are that disgraceful Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is pouring gasoline on the powder keg that is Minneapolis, isn’t a heartbeat away from the presidency. An Unherd piece proposes that Minneapolis is becoming a dual state. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it is time for ICE to pause in Minnesota. Simon Hankinston suggests a way for ICE to enforce the law without giving the Left talking points. The odds of a government shutdown suddenly increase due to ICE funding.
“Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It?” asks an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal. Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock has five ideas to turn the reply to a “yes,” and here are a few of them:
Second, the return on investment matters. Affordability isn’t enough. A college education is one of the largest investments a family will ever make, and there must be an undeniable return. Institutions should be held accountable for student outcomes: Are our graduates getting jobs, pursuing meaningful work, and contributing to their communities? …
Third, re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing. Too often, colleges and universities have participated in the culture wars. The result is an environment in which students and faculty feel they must toe an ideological line rather than explore ideas that fall outside prevailing norms.
Our institutions must reclaim a narrower, firmer sense of our role. That means embracing institutional neutrality—or restraint, as we call it at Dartmouth—on issues that don’t directly affect our mission or core functions. When we, as institutions, rush to issue statements every time there’s a national or global controversy, we signal there’s a “right” position and that opposing views are unwelcome. …
We must ensure that students can encounter the best arguments, assess evidence and reach their own conclusions. That requires a campus culture where controversial speakers are heard rather than canceled, where disagreement is expected rather than feared, and where people can explore ideas without being defined by them.
The infrastructure for this already exists—it’s the classroom.
While we’re on the subject of education: “Red States Have Many Wins to Celebrate for National School Choice Week”—which, by the way, is this week—is a City Journal headline.
This week marks the 16th year that families and educators across the country celebrate National School Choice Week, and it is an especially important one. After passage of the school choice program in Texas last year, a majority of American school children are eligible for school choice, by one count. Thirty states now run some form of school choice program, and 12 have passed universal school choice laws since 2024, including New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Idaho.
But while we have much to celebrate this week, more work remains to be done.
Oh, What Fun. AEI’s Danielle Pletka eviscerates the Davos crowd. Pletka writes:
Post-Davos, those of us who follow such things were inundated with hand-wringing, put-down-your-pinot-gris, pseudo-intellectual laments about The Rules Based Global Order. Trump, you see, is Threatening it. He is Endangering all that is good about the post-World War II world. Things were So Much Better PT (pre-Trump). America is At Risk. Russia Is Winning. Democracy is Done.
This is garbage, plain and simple.
It’s a long but eminently worthy piece.
2028 Here We Come: Texas Senator Ted Cruz torched Vice President Vance and ridiculed President Trump’s tariff policy during private meetings with donors, according to tapes obtained by Axios:
The recordings — nearly 10 minutes in total — provide an unvarnished look at how Cruz is positioning himself as a traditional free trade, pro-interventionist Republican ahead of a possible 2028 primary campaign against the less hawkish Vance.
During his talks, Cruz cast Vance as a pawn of conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson. Cruz has accused Carlson of promoting antisemitism and an anti-Israel foreign policy in their well-publicized spats.
California, Here We Don’t Come. And don’t miss “The Great California Wealth Exodus” at The Free Press. The author spoke to 21 billionaires whose servants are packing their bags.
Is there an undercurrent in Iran about something that might happen in Iran? “The Countdown to Iran’s Liberation Has Begun” is the headline of Roger Kimball’s hopeful piece at American Greatness.
