Excellent Jobs Report. Flight of the Billionaires. Trump Foreign Policy Called ‘Churchillian.’ Not Feeling Churchillian Today: Keir Starmer Susie Wiles Honored at NOT the Met Gala. More
News Flash: April wasn’t the cruelest month after all.
Not by a long shot. “Hiring Defied Expectations in April, with 115,000 New Jobs” is a Wall Street Journal headline this morning. Here’s the 411:
The U.S. economy added far more jobs than expected in April, buoyed by strong corporate earnings and businesses that are shrugging off the supply-chain shocks of the Iran war.
The U.S. added 115,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday, far exceeding expectations.
That compared with a net gain of 185,000 in March. It was better than the 55,000 jobs that analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see for April.
Remember the Rule: Any good economic news reported when a Republican is in the White House must “exceed expectations” and be “unexpected.”
Meanwhile, the flight of billionaires from blue states and municipalities to red areas on the map proceeds apace.
It’s the topic of Kimberley Strassel’s column today in the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps we are reaching a clarifying moment:
There’s a silver lining in the clouds that produce today’s political storms. It is the growing, obvious disparity between red-state and blue-state economic models, which puts their theories to a real-world test. One side is doing all the winning.
This was beautifully illustrated this week via the amusingly unequal battle between New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Citadel CEO (and Florida resident) Ken Griffin. Mr. Mamdani provoked it by using a malicious, personal attack to promote his pied-à-terre tax. In a video, the mayor complained that “rich” owners of second homes in his city don’t pay their fair share, pointing to “this penthouse, which hedge-fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.” …
The obvious success of one model and the obvious failure of another is documented with every one-way U-Haul rental.
And it conjures in the mind a future Mamdani video. One in which the mayor is still raving about injustice—but nobody is left in New York to hear him. …
The New York Post has a story this morning about New York leaders desperately trying to stop billionaire bigs from fleeing the city over Mamdani. Blue states have lost $2 trillion in wealth to red states over the last decade. Joel Kotkin (here) addresses the public policies based on elite virtue signaling that have led to the ruin of the erstwhile Golden State. A New York Post editorial exhorts, “Don’t give up on NYC, Ken Griffin — expose the idiocy of Mamdani’s socialism.” But the voters of New York were well-informed about Mamdani’s socialism, and they gave him the job anyway. Douglas Murray writes about the economic consequences for everybody of billionaire flight.
Meanwhile, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is engaged in a budget standoff with public unions. Hochul and other NY pols are described as “deferential” to the public unions. Looking on the bright-ish side: “New York’s Teachers’ Unions Are So Progressive, They’re Even Alienating Teachers.”
No Iran deal update yet. “Round one of Iran fight went to the US military. But ending things is much harder” is the headline on a Fox Digital opinion piece by Lt. Col. (ret) Robert Maginnis. Niall Ferguson writes about “the Iran stalemate” at The Free Press. Taking the long view, Michael Barone reflects on President Trump’s “Churchillian Foreign Policy.”
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is probably not feeling very Churchillian today (of course, Labor PMs aren’t supposed to feel Churchillian). Sir Keir is “fighting for political survival” after Nigel’s Reform obliterated Labor in local elections. An ouch Telegraph headline: “Starmer must agree to orderly exit, say Labour MPs.”
In election news closer to home, a California county has found 600 unopened ballots in a successful Gavin Newsom-backed redistricting measure, former U.S. Attorney Michael Mukasey is appalled that a former associate of the “Blind Sheik” is running for Congress, and WSJ opinion editors spot a fallacy in Dem rhetoric on Tennessee redistricting:
Democrats say the GOP is erasing black representation because the safe Democratic seat being dismantled is majority-black. Except the Memphis seat is held by Rep. Steve Cohen, who is white, and who told CNN that Memphis was “never a VRA [Voting Rights Act] case,” but a compact district that “happened to be majority African-American.”
Will Wonders Never Cease? I recommend three worthy opinion pieces in the formerly knee-jerk lib Washington Post: Senator John Fetterman on why he won’t switch parties (“I haven’t changed. Here’s what has”), David “Scion of the Establishment” Ignatius on “an American industrial revolution brewing in Pittsburgh,” and “You can earn a billion dollars,” by the editorial board. Since billionaires seem to be a theme this morning, here’s a snippet:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) doesn’t just think there should be no billionaires. She believes accumulating that much wealth is inherently immoral, probably criminal and definitely illegitimate.
“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” the socialist congresswoman said in a podcast interview with comedian Ilana Glazer published Thursday. “You just can’t earn that.”
Read why AOC got it wrong. Again.
“Medicine without Merit,” by Forrest Bohler, in Compact magazine, isn’t going to make you feel reassured the next time you see a new doctor. Bohler describes the travails of getting into medical school and attending medical school, and what kinds of applicants are accepted:
When I arrived at medical school, it became clear that admissions were only the beginning. The same ideological framework that governed entry into the system shaped the culture inside it. Orientation included an entire day devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). We were asked, and even pressed, to publicly recount moments of discrimination from our lives. The exercise assumed a shared framework of identity and victimhood. At one point, a student asked the DEI instructor to explain the meaning of “demisexual,” which was written next to the “Gender Unicorn” they were teaching us about. After a long pause, the instructor admitted she didn’t know how to define it.
Ms. Must went out on the town last night—Independent Women’s star-studded gala at the DC Waldorf Astoria.
It was sort of our NOT the Met Gala. Instead of “empty celebrities” in outre outfits, Independent Women’s event was filled with well-turned-out, serious men and women who want to make the world a better place. Brisk and beautiful.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was our Woman of Valor, presented with the Barbara K. Olsen Award by Heather Higgins. The DC Examiner has a glowing report (there is a glitch you’ll immediately spot that anyone who’s ever written on a tight deadline will overlook). Victor Davis Hanson was given the Lifetime Achievement Award (we like men, too, as Heather Higgins noted), and he offered a beautiful tribute to his mother. It was perfect for the lead-up to Mother’s Day, and I hope Independent Women makes it available.
A good time was had by all, even if Ms. Must is very sluggish this morning.
