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Why Did Butler Make So Much Difference? Gavin Newsom’s Meltdown Over Vance Family’s Disney Trip. But Gavin Loves Pot Farms! And More

What happened a year ago yesterday in Butler, Pa., dominated the news yesterday. We all went back to that moment when bloodied candidate Donald Trump rose from a mound of Secret Service agents to show that he had survived an assassination attempt.

In a magisterial piece in The Free Press, headlined “The Shot that Changed America,” (republished from Unherd), Christopher Caldwell meditates on “the great symbolical moment of the 2024 election”:

The striking thing about Trump’s behavior on 13 July 2024 was that it was excellent, and it was excellent in a way that was unreflective and spontaneous. Everything about it was at odds with the American postwar conception of leadership. In a culture where equality of opportunity is everything, the public came to believe there was something reprehensible about the idea that anyone has any special aptitude for anything. We’re not living in a democracy, they felt, unless anyone can go out and become a leader, through hard work or a degree-granting course. Nothing could be more repugnant than the notion that leadership is something you either have or you don’t. And yet here was Trump, in a moment of disruption, behaving like a born leader….

But the event was about more than vitality. “On a personal note,” Mark Zuckerberg said that week, “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air, with the American flag, is one of the most bad-ass things I’ve ever seen in my life. At some level, as an American, it’s hard not to get emotional about that spirit.” Trump was doing something archetypal: the pose in which many photographers caught him that day was almost exactly the one you will see in Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People, the great symbol of revolutionary republican patriotism that hangs in the Louvre: the raised right hand. The flag. The rallying of wounded followers. Trump was not just being brave or strong. He was, without meaning to, summoning Americans to feelings buried so deep that they had forgotten they had them. It was a powerful irruption into politics of reality, and even of religion.

A Washington Post reporter seized upon the belief of some Trump supporters (and Trump) that God had spared him to distort that into a piece on “the divine right of MAGA.”

Salena Zito—the authoritative journalist on all things Butler—reports that a year later, we still “have few answers” on the events of that day, especially regarding Thomas Crooks, the would-be assassin. Kurt Schlichter has a terrific piece about why Butler changed us at Townhall, but he also captures why Zito is THE go-to journalist for this story.

The Trump campaign says that requests to bolster security before the rally were rebuffed by the Secret Service. Helen Comperatore, widow of Corey Comperatore, who died that day, says she has not received answers from the Secret Service.  

Remembrance of Butler in no way suggested to California Governor Gavin Newsom that he might temper his remarks on Vice President J.D. Vance’s taking his wife and small children to Disneyland over the weekend:

Videos of the Vance family, including the vice president with his two children and wife Usha, enjoying the California amusement park quickly spread online on Saturday, eventually reaching Newsom’s feed.

The lefty governor — who was busy this weekend addressing the lawsuits California is currently facing on top of a disastrous raid on illegal immigrants at a marijuana farm — tried to light a proverbial fire under Vance’s feet as he took to X to share his grievances over the family enjoying a weekend out.

“Hope you enjoy your family time, @JDVance. The families you’re tearing apart certainly won’t,” Newsom wrote on X.

It’s fair to say that Newsom had a meltdown over the Vance family outing. While Newsom lately has been spending time with kingmaker Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Clyburn’s previous protégé gave an interview to the New York Times essentially averring, “Yes, darn it, I did know who my autopen was doing.” Twitchy is skeptical. Ditto Townhall’s Matt Vespa.

The Jeffrey Epstein Client List was always a little too neat and pat in Ms. Must’s humble opinion: Suddenly, all your enemies will be certified pedophiles! President Trump is rallying around Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino and AG Pam Bondi in the wake of what some consider a disappointing report that Epstein killed himself, and there is no client list. AOC has been utterly dependable: She said President Trump’s administration did not release the Epstein client list because the president is  “a rapist,” which is a maliciously fanciful falsification. The E. Jean Carroll case, as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who cost his network millions by making the same claim, could verify.

Miranda Devine writes that the “Epstein drama is an unnecessary distraction for the Trump administration and plays into the hands of malign Democrats.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues that the Epstein case has come back to haunt President Trump for previous dalliances with conspiracy theories, such as the Obama birth certificate or that Senator Ted Cruz’s father had a link to the Kennedy assassination.

Ms. Must knows the Epstein drama is loads of fun, but she can’t help thinking this might be more significant: The president is sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine. President Trump says Ukraine will pay for the sophisticated weapons. Axios reports that “in a major shift,” President Trump will announce a plan for aggressively arming Ukraine. Killian Kay Melchior writes in the Wall Street Journal about Russia’s intensifying drone warfare against Ukraine.

Do you ever get the feeling that Al Gore just doesn’t get the credit that he deserves? Well, Andy Kessler is out to remedy that:

I never thought I’d write these words, but Al Gore is responsible for America’s success in leaving Europe in our dust. He spewed climate-change rhetoric based on flawed models, and Europeans believed him. The German Renewable Energy Sources Act pushed solar panels in not-always-sunny Düsseldorf and elsewhere. High-cost renewables are 55% of the Germans’ energy generation—a burdensome tax on citizens. And Russian natural gas is their backup strategy!

Despite self-inflicted wounds like last week’s copper tariffs and our on-again, off-again going goo-goo for greens, the U.S. is a relative free-market paradise. Whatever the Europeans did on their road to stagnation, let’s make sure we don’t. The ingredients include large government, socialized medicine, limited-hour workforce, anti-innovation Luddite policies, rabid regulatory mandarins, unaccountable plutocrats and antirisk capital markets controlled by large banks.

The Wall Street Journal is hot this morning. Michael J. Petrilli, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a Hoover Visiting Fellow, writes about the big, beautiful act that flips the switch on Democrats and forces them to defend their unpopular stance against school choice.

Allyssia Finley writes about Governor Gavin Newsom’s ringing defense of the rioters who threatened federal agents who raided a pot farm. Finley makes the point that pot farms aren’t as popular in middle America as they are in California. National Review’s Beckett Adams says that the mainstream media isn’t being clear about who’s being picked up in federal operations against illegals:

Enjoy this headline from the Cincinnati Enquirer: “Cincinnati Children’s chaplain detained by ICE.”

Notably absent from the headline is mention of the fact that the former chaplain is an Egyptian national whose asylum status was revoked in December 2024 by the Biden administration. Also missing from the headline are mentions of the fact that the chaplain was flagged on the FBI’s terror watchlist during a background check, although the chaplain maintains that the fingerprints that led to his being flagged are not his. In the body of the story itself, it’s not until several paragraphs later that the reader learns the chaplain has filed multiple lawsuits against the federal government, most of which have been dismissed, except for one lawsuit that remains pending.

Meanwhile, a WSJ front-pager reports that the return to the office affects men and women unevenly. The article underplays somewhat the choices women make about their own lives and timing.    

They Shoot ICE Agents, Don’t They? GOP’s New Smarts. Mainstreaming Antifa? Citizenship Shindig at George’s Place & More

Tariff turbulence (here, here, here, and here) and civic turbulence are at the top of the news this morning.

A clash between ICE officials and activists at a (legal) California marijuana operation called Glass Door Farm is the latest eruption of mostly violent riots:  

Protesters clashed with federal authorities Thursday during an immigration operation north of Los Angeles at a marijuana farm allegedly employing illegal immigrants

Multiple agents arrived at the Glass House Farms, a state-licensed cannabis facility which is considered illegal under federal law, in Camarillo. Federal authorities had a warrant for illegal employees, Fox News has learned. 

Another raid also occurred at another Glass House Farm in Carpinteria.

Townhall’s Matt Vespa writes that the Camarillo riot arguably led to an assassination attempt on ICE agents:

We’ve gone beyond leftists being annoying and hysterical regarding disrupting Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. It’s now domestic terrorism. ICE conducted a raid on a cannabis farm in Camarillo, California, which devolved into a total circus. They tried to block vehicles, used human chain antics, and were being overall annoying. Then, things got violent. Video clearly shows an anti-ICE activist shooting at federal agents during the mayhem.

This mayhem follows closely on the anti-ICE ambush in Texas and other “protests” against ICE agents. Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York considers the role of antifa in such protests. Alarmingly, York concludes:

There’s no doubt that antifa is a fringe, extremist group. Not isolated — there are cells of radicals throughout the country — but extremist. Now, the issue of opposition to Trump’s immigration enforcement has brought the fanatics of antifa more closely than ever in line with the beliefs of progressive Democrats, and perhaps those in the party’s mainstream, too. Would it be fair to call antifa the militant wing of the Democratic Party? Maybe so. And if it is not fair, it is closer to true than many Democrats would ever want to acknowledge.

What’s the appropriate remedy for these terrible developments? Well, here’s one suggestion:

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) is now pushing for a law that would prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks and require them to display their identification on their uniforms. So, Democrats are now in favor of ID laws?

This should be called the Sitting Duck Bill.

This follows closely on the anti-ICE ambush in Texas and other riots against ICE agents.

Speaking of aspiring assassins, Ms. Must believes that a year later, we don’t know enough about Thomas Crooks, who tried to kill then-candidate Trump at the Butler rally. This is about all we are told:

Former FBI agent John Nantz said Crooks did not fit the profile of a politically motivated extremist.

“Crooks looked not so much like an ideologue, not so much like an individual who was being directed in some way to conduct an assassination attempt, but more like a person with anti-social issues that may have been seeking notoriety,” Nantz told Fox News Digital. 

More (but not all that much) about the six Secret Service agents who were suspended because of the Butler fiasco.

Who You Callin’ Stupid? With all the punditry devoted to the dissolution of the Democratic Party, is it time to think about the fate of the political party (formerly?) fondly known as “the Stupid Party”?

Yes, a funny thing happened on the way to the passage of the “One, Big Beautiful” act. The GOP did not blow itself up. Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal’s astonished Barton Swaim observes, the Republicans acted like a normal political party.” “What changed?” wonders Swaim.

The press would insist it’s President Trump’s ability to overawe his party:  

I would suggest another, more general reason for Republican cohesion. What has long kept Republicans on the Hill from functioning as their Democratic correlatives do—like a single-minded partisan machine—is that the news media, expert class and entertainment-industry elite are, and have been for decades, fully aligned with Democratic aims and dead set against Republican ones.

A consequential liberal initiative is virtually guaranteed gentle treatment: favorable descriptions from the media, endorsements from academic experts and cheerleading from high-profile entertainers. Tough votes are easier when cultural arbiters unite to assure you of your righteousness, and harder when they call you a monster. Voting for a measure opposed by liberal VIPs, or against one favored by them—academic hotshots, eminent intellectuals, Hollywood actors—isn’t something Democrats have to do all that often.

Yet in 2025 the Democrats’ use of the media and adjacent cultural authorities has had little effect.

We can’t ignore foreign developments this morning. The New York Post cover screams one word: “Barbaric!” It features a one-year-old casualty child, a casualty of “Putin’s horror” as laid bare by the latest Russian drone attack in Ukraine. A story inside includes a chilling video of an apparent Ukrainian spy gunned down on the street in broad daylight.

In other foreign news, a Wall Street Journal editorial ponders President Trump’s next move on Iran, urging more sanctions and other pressure. Move Over, National Injunctions: Closer to home, another Wall Street Journal editorial explores birthright citizenship. Would you believe a class action lawsuit challenging President Trump’s EO against birthright citizenship? The editors write:

The new lawsuit was filed by noncitizens who recently had a child or are expecting one. According to the complaint, the plaintiffs include a Taiwanese woman with a student visa who has lived here for 12 years and is applying for a green card. “Petitioners have satisfied the requirements for provisional class certification,” writes Judge Joseph Laplante, a George W. Bush appointee….

Winning class certification is a hurdle, but how high remains to be seen. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure set out four prerequisites: A class must be “numerous,” and its members must share common questions of law or fact. Also, the representative parties must have “typical” claims or defenses, as well as the ability to “fairly and adequately” protect the class’s interests.

Judge Laplante provisionally certifies a class of babies born on or after Feb. 20 who would be subject to Mr. Trump’s order denying them U.S. citizenship. Will this hold up on appeal? Was Judge Laplante scrupulous? Perhaps that question will be coming soon to the Supreme Court, bringing birthright citizenship back to the emergency docket. Sorry to spoil your summer beach plans, Justices, and can someone please hand Justice Thomas a Wi-Fi hot spot before he drives off in his RV?

Veteran political columnist Michael Barone writes that the gender gap—first discerned by pollsters in 1980 when women voted lopsidedly against Republican Ronald Reagan—is growing wider and wider. Of course, the gender gap back then was so much simpler—what with only two genders back in the dark ages.

In a sad and moving piece in the Daily Caller, detransitioner Prisha Mosley writes that President Trump’s insistence that there are only two sexes could have spared her a lot of anguish:

Prisha Mosley believes the Trump administration’s moves to ban “gender-affirming care” for minors could have saved her from transitioning when she was a teenager, she told the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview.

“This is what I needed to happen when I was going through this, when I was struggling and I was vulnerable,” Mosley told the Caller. “My doctors came to me with lies, and I really wanted to believe them. I really wanted it to be true. I wanted it to be possible that I could transform into a man who was not mentally ill or traumatized, and I believed them.”

Mosley, Ms. Must is proud to say, is an ambassador for Independent Women.

Intriguing headline: “Could City-owned Grocery Stores Survive New York’s Shoplifting Plague?” City Journal’s Steven Melanga explains that it’s disorder and crime, not greed, that cause New York’s food deserts.”

In a counterpoint to the riots across the country supporting illegal immigration, please don’t miss James Eustis’ “Born Again in Liberty, What Immigrants Teach Us about Citizenship.” Mr. Eustis recounts a beautiful naturalization ceremony at Mount Vernon on the Fourth of July.   

Remembering Butler One Year On. Why Selena Zito Won’t Get a Pulitzer. Why Socialism Won’t Go Away. Brennan, Comey & Doc O’Connor & More

Where were you when then-candidate Donald Trump got shot?

Come Sunday, it’ll be one year since President Trump survived the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. USA Today leads off with veteran journalist Susan’s Page’s reflections on how Butler changed everything:   

What becomes a legend?

On that list would surely be an assassination attempt that grazed the ear of a former-and-future president, prompting a flash of fist-pumping defiance that became instantly iconic.

One year ago, the shooting of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was an extraordinary news story in the moment − and an event that would reverberate for him and in the American landscape.

Well, it took nearly a year, but the Secret Service has finally responded to Butler by suspending six agents who were on hand for the near end of Donald Trump. The New York reports:

The suspensions for the six agents ranged from 10 to 42 days, and they won’t be paid while on leave, Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn told CBS News on Wednesday

The agents will not be fired, but upon return to work, they will be placed in roles with diminished operational responsibility. 

“We aren’t going to fire our way out of this,” Quinn told the outlet. “We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation.”

Gee whiz: I’d think you could at least partially fire your way out of this? Quinn “insisted that the Secret Service is “totally accountable for Butler.” Ya think?

Highly recommended: National Review’s Q&A with Salena Zito, author of “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland.” Great review of Zito’s book a few days ago in The Free Beacon; Zito’s latest is “McDonald’s vs. the Media: There Will Never Be Another Political Showman like Trump.” In a just world, Zito, who knows more about why the 2024 election turned out the way it did than any other journalist in America, would get a Pulitzer. But she’s too good for that tarnished prize.  

Biden White House doctor (not Jillthe other one) Kevin O’Connor is a legend too. Called before the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating former President Biden’s mental decline, the pint-sized physician pleaded the Fifth for every question. The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman unearthed O’Connor’s February 2024 memorandum on Biden’s condition. Powerline comments:

What do you think the odds are that Biden could have passed Medicare’s pitiful cognitive assessment test? I would approximate the chances somewhere between zero and zero. Maybe that’s why the report doesn’t mention a cognitive test.

James Freeman comments: “What a disgrace.” True — but also a complete and utter farce.

President Trump’s first term was partially held captive by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax to which much of the Left still clings. A piece in The Federalist argues that the investigations of former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan are the last chance for accountability:

The CIA recently released a damning Tradecraft Review that shreds the credibility of the Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) — the report that famously concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. Much of the attention has focused on the discrepancy between the findings of this new review and what former CIA Director John Brennan told Congress in 2017. Indeed, multiple credible reports suggest Brennan is now under investigation for perjury.

One of the most glaring examples is Brennan’s sworn testimony that the Steele dossier — a collection of fabricated claims about Donald Trump funded by the Clinton campaign — “was not in any way used as a basis for the ICA.” The new review makes clear this was false. It was Brennan himself who pushed to include the dossier in the assessment, despite its complete lack of credibility. Brennan’s apparent goal was to launder Clinton campaign lies into the bloodstream of U.S. intelligence and, from there, into the media.

Margot Cleveland reports in a Federalist “exclusive” that “henchmen” behind Brennan’s Russia assessment remain at the CIA. Oh, why not binge on The Federalist: Beth Brelje has a good story on Douglas Mackey, they guy who was sentenced to seven months in federal prison reposting for silly memes about Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, Ned Ryun says we must restore the rule of law in the wake of Comey and Brennan.

Pegged to New York’s mayoral race, Tyler Cowen poses a germane question in The Free Press: “Why won’t socialism die?” “The simple explanation is that people like free stuff,” he replies to his own question. Socialism won’t die, but it could put some nails in the coffin of (arguably) the world’s greatest city. Public policy analyst Bennett Nuss explains in a WSJ op-ed headlined “We’ll All Pay for New York’s Mamdani Folly“:

Support for Mr. Mamdani derives in part from his promise to freeze rents and tax millionaires. Both proposals would materially harm the city and state. Freezing rents eliminates the rationale for owning a leasable apartment, and the property-tax burden would still fall on real estate holders, making every investment a value loss. Further, freezing rents would undermine the rest of Mr. Mamdani’s agenda. If landlords are losing money, the city budget will suffer from reduced revenue from income-tax collections. The same is true at the state level, jeopardizing crucial funding support for poorer communities upstate.

The proposed tax on millionaires would chase many high earners out of the city and perhaps even the state…. If wealthier families leave the state, the total revenue collected by city and state will decrease substantially.

To put it bluntly: Upstate can’t afford a socialist New York mayor. The city pays for most of the services Albany provides.

You know who’s not putting things bluntly? New York’s Senior Senator Chuck Schumer. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal ponders whether Schumer’s “Mamdani moment” will cause him to abandon long-held convictions:

Mr. Schumer is the Democratic Party’s Senate leader, and Mr. Mamdani is the Democratic Party’s candidate for mayor. Then again, Mr. Mamdani is a socialist who spoke as an Assemblyman of “seizing the means of production” and blamed Israel, not Hamas, on Oct. 8, 2023.

You’d think Mr. Schumer, the author in March of “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” would have a lot to say about that. But the Senator who used to boast of being the shomer, or guardian, of the Jewish people today mainly guards his left flank. He fears a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another socialist, but Mr. Mamdani is more than a test of right-left politics. This is a defining moment in Mr. Schumer’s political career.

As long as we’re on anniversaries, it’s the 100th birthday of the play “Inherit the Wind” about the Darwin-Scopes trial (the movie starring Spencer Tracy and Frederick March came five years later in 1960). David Mamet, the great American playwright, suggests that a little ambiguity might have improved the play, which deals with Darwinism and education. The play may be an early milestone in pre-MAGA condescension.

If I Have Offended Anyone: The Texas pediatrician who said Trump voters got what they voted for in the horrific tragedy of the Texas floods, which took the lives of so many children, says she is taking “full responsibility” for her remarks. So no one twisted her arm? She’s speaking as “a mother, a neighbor, a pediatrician, and a human being.” In other words, blah, blah, blah.

Bad Things That Just Won’t Go Away: John Murawski argues in Unherd that California is setting a “dangerous precedent” regarding “trans” athletes. And the issue isn’t going away:

Trans participation in sport — and trans rights more broadly — is a hill progressives are willing to die on, despite public opinion surveys showing that they’re defending an unpopular position. 

The Hot Rage Against ICE: Mostly Violent. Another Eagerly Awaited Dissent from Justice Jackson. Big, Beautiful, Looong Cabinet Meeting & More

You’d have to be willfully blind—and many people, unfortunately, are just that—to ask why ICE agents are trying to protect their identities by wearing masks.

Anti-ICE Agitation Reaches a Boiling Point” is the headline on National Review’s lead story this morning.

The magazine’s Noah Rothman pens a stunning account of the Monday morning attack on a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas:

At around 6 a.m.on Monday, CBP officers hit the ground as “many dozens of rounds” were fired at the building and the agents inside, according to McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. The officers reclaimed the initiative and returned fire, killing their attacker, 27-year-old Ryan Louis Mosqueda. No federal officers were injured in the attack, but one local police officer is recovering today after taking a bullet in the knee.

Mosqueda’s motives have not yet been determined, but we can hazard a guess. “Images from the scene show the driver’s side door of the vehicle was spray-painted with “Cordis Die,” a Latin phrase meaning “Day of the Heart,” the BBC reported. “In the Call of Duty: Black Ops II video game, Cordis Die is a revolutionary movement that aims to cripple capitalist governments, according to gamer websites.”

An earlier ambush at the Alvarado facility on July 4 featured attackers in pseudo gear. An officer was shot in the neck.

Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York comments on this wave of attacks on ICE and border agents in a piece headlined “Disturbing Demonstrations of Democratic Anger”:

Obviously, these are Democrats who have moved beyond the defeat-them-at-the-ballot-box stage of politics, and even beyond the protest-by-civil-disobedience stage. They’re ready to turn a political fight into a physical fight. …

This is the radical, violent tip of the protests against the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration law. Other examples of recent radicalization include far-left “Free Palestine” extremist Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of murdering two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Jewish National Museum in Washington on May 21. Then there is Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024. Despite the brutality of his crime, Mangione found himself celebrated in some parts of the left — his crime minimized or excused — for what some apparently consider a bold action against an oppressive health-care system.

This reminds Ms. Must of violence perpetrated by the radical Weather Underground in the long-ago 1960s and ‘70s. I don’t think we ever really reckoned with the Weather Underground. Remember a future president once partied with guests in the Chicago residence of a former member, whose Wiki entry leads off disarmingly describing her as  “a retired law professor.”

Meanwhile, President Trump received some good news. “The Supreme Court Says the President Can Fire People” is how an editorial in the Wall Street Journal describes it:

Do you hear the Justices now? That’s the question for lower court judges after the Supreme Court on Tuesday nixed a universal injunction that had barred the Trump Administration from even attempting to shrink the federal workforce. …

The Justices stayed the injunction in a pithy order, noting “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful.” They also stressed that “we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose opinions have struck a favorable note with satirists, was singled out for mention by the editors:

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The order includes “no mention of congressional buy-in,” she writes. But Congress does not control the executive branch. “What is at issue here,” Justice Jackson says, is whether the order effects “a massive restructuring of the Federal Government (the likes of which have historically required Congress’s approval), on the one hand, or minor workforce reductions consistent with existing law, on the other. One needs facts to answer that critical question.” Precisely.

The American Thinker’s Andrea Widburg dubbed Justice Jackson’s dissent “wacko” (“For decades, I’ve read Supreme Court opinions that span centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”), while RedState’s Bonchie suggests that this time Justice Jackson “did something so stupid that even Justice Sotomayor couldn’t let it slide.” A Townhall report on Justice Jackson’s latest quotes a tweet from Eric Daugherty:

OMG: Now a LIBERAL Supreme Court justice is trying to teach Justice Ketanji Jackson how this whole “judicial” thing works…

President Trump conducted a rollicking, two-hour  Cabinet meeting yesterday (see it here: I dare you to watch the entire two hours) that prompted eagle eyed observers to claim the current president is more on the ball than his immediate predecessor. Speaking of whom, “How Insularity Defined the Last Stages of Biden’s Career” is the headline on a New York Times story.

“Insularity” is a rather mild word to describe the bunker White House insiders erected around the former president, but the story is worth reading. Former Biden doctor (no, not her) is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee probing the former president’s mental decline. Taking bets on whether he will phone in sick.

The Jeffrey Epstein client list was supposed to be the holy grail of smut: Suddenly, everybody anybody hated was going to be officially labeled a pedophile. But now AG Pam Bondi is under siege for announcing that there is no client list. Bummer. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board refers to “The Epstein Conspiracy Boomerang.”

Meanwhile, sea shell enthusiast and former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA head James Brennan, a member of the magic 51, have been referred for criminal investigation for their alleged roles in the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Brennan pushed for the discredited Steele Dossier, a work product of the Hilary Clinton campaign, to be included in a Justice Department investigation of President Trump in his first term.

“New York’s Mayoral Debate: No, You Quit” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams apparently agree that the most credible strategy for stopping a socialist takeover of New York is for one of them to drop out of this fall’s mayoral race. They simply disagree on the small matter of which one should do it. Zohran Mamdani, now the Democratic nominee, must be chuckling.

Mr. Adams said in a TV interview Monday that Mr. Cuomo had asked him to take one for the team, as it were, and quit the campaign. “I said, ‘Andrew, are you that level of arrogant?’” Mr. Adams told CNBC. “‘I’m the sitting mayor of the city of New York, and you expect for me to step aside when you just lost to Zohran by 12 points.’” …

The GOP’s nominee, Curtis Sliwa, doesn’t have much of a chance of winning, given New York City’s voter makeup, but he recently said the only way to get him out of the mayoral race before Nov. 4 “is in a coffin, in a pine box, and you bury me 6 feet under the ground.” This week he expressed no preference as to whether Messrs. Cuomo and Adams “play musical chairs on the Titanic.”

Identity Theft Alert! City Journal’s Chris Rufo explains how children of privilege, Zohran Mamdani and Sandy from Westchester, feign oppression for personal gain. Richard J. Sexton writes in the WSJ that instead of government grocery stores, Mamdani could make food more affordable, allowing Walmart to expand. One problem: Mamdani cares more about expanding government than growing food choices.

Two Marvelous New Freedoms: The TSA is going to let us keep our shoes on, and the IRS has ruled that priest, minister, rabbi, imam or shaman (have I missed anybody) “can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.” Let’s kick up our (shod) heels!

Neighbors Help Neighbors in Texas Tragedy. Left Blames Donald Trump. Judge Believes He is Congress. And More

Even the deaths of children, it seems, can’t shut up the haters. It’s a sign of the times. National Review editor Rich Lowry writes damningly this morning:

Donald Trump has been accused of many outlandish things, but killing children with flash floods has to be among the worst.

The first reflex of his critics was to blame him for the appalling tragedy in central Texas, where a flood on July 4 killed more than 100 people, including over two dozen children at a Christian summer camp.

This is one of the deadliest floods in the United States in the last 100 years, and the toll among kids is a particular gut punch.

It’s natural that observers will ask how it could have happened, but the fact-free, malicious attacks constitute one of the more poisonously stupid episodes of the Trump years — and that’s saying a lot.

The theory here is that Elon Musk’s chainsaw cuts to the National Weather Service gutted the agency with catastrophic consequences. See, Trump’s adversaries say, we told you DOGE would get people killed.

The tragic flooding in Texas’ hill country has claimed the lives of more than 100 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, the iconic camp for girls, which experienced catastrophic flooding. All the beautiful little girls in a group photo in this story were lost.

Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw wrote about the disaster this morning for The Free Press. Crenshaw’s piece was headlined “Heartbreak and Heroism in Hill Country, Texas.” “Neighbors saved neighbors. That is the spirit of my home state. No flood can ever wash it away,” the Congressman wrote. Crenshaw provided a welcome glimpse into what normal, ordinary people do when an unfathomable tragedy strikes. The United Cajun Navy has also been there to help, even though the grisly veterans admit that it’s “mentally tough” to witness the human tragedies.

That, alas, was not the only reaction, as the Lowry piece made clear. People The American Spectator accurately call “ghouls” immediately came to the fore to exploit the deaths of innocent children and adults. I guess you could say they “politicized” the tragedy, but that seems a weak way to characterize the truly disgusting. This pediatrician—a children’s doctor!—turns our stomachs:

A pediatrician for a chain of clinics affiliated with a prominent Houston hospital system is “no longer employed” there, according to officials, after a social media account associated with her published a post wishing the “Maga” voters of a Donald Trump-supporting county in Texas to “get what they voted for” amid flash flooding that killed more than 100 people, including many children.

Look at this woman’s face. She, too, blames President Trump for the devastating floods in Texas. Most people of course aren’t like that. They are more likely to fall into Dan Crenshaw’s category of neighbors who help each other out or send aid to people suffering hardships. They would be able to read and even respond to this piece in Reason (“Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster“) because they are not blinded by their own animosities. 

What we see on the left—and it is on the left—is not normal. No matter their political convictions, normal people shut up for a while and try to help when they are confronted with the immensity suffering represented by the Texas floods. (At least liberal writer Ana Marie Cox was able to balance her policy beefs with an appreciation of the generous spirit of the people of the Texas hill country.) A recent story from Axios captures how unbalanced and unmoored from American customs and civic traditions the Left has become:

At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.

House Democrats told Axios they see a growing anger among their base that has, in some cases, morphed into a disregard for American institutions, political traditions and even the rule of law.

“This idea that we’re going to save every norm and that we’re not going to play [Republicans’] game … I don’t think that’s resonating with voters anymore,” said one House Democrat.

Another told Axios that a “sense of fear and despair and anger” among voters “puts us in a different position where … we can’t keep following norms of decorum.”

As Townhall puts it, wealthy liberals are urging elected liberals to be willing to “take a bullet” to stop President Trump. The recent attacks on ICE and border patrol agents are another symptom of the increasing hostility of the Left. Another indication of how unhinged and truly bizarre the Left is becoming:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz believes President Trump’s mass deportation operation is an effort to “bleach America.”

The Florida Democrat has been making the case in interviews and on social media that the administration wants to “round up as many brown people as they can, and they are focused on making sure that they can get rid of immigrants to this country who helped make our country great.”

Meanwhile, the hate object himself, the man at the center of this maelstrom, Donald J. Trump is busy. President Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night at the White House, amid hopes for a Gaza ceasefire. Netanyahu has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a change of heart, President Trump resumes sending weapons to Ukraine, which he says is being hit “very hard” by Russia. 

The president also got back to the tariffs thingy. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, a consistent critic of tariffs, was not pleased sarcastically characterizing it as “’Tariff Man’ Is Back for More Liberation.” The S & P 500 seemed to rebound from yesterday’s tariffs-triggered selloff as the market shrugs at renewed tariff talk, but the day in young. Some of our biggest allies are making last-minute trade appeals to President Trump.

The Biggest Conservative Victory in Years.” That is what economist Stephen Moore calls the “big, beautiful” law President Trump signed on July 4. Moore supplies a list of “hidden gems” in the law. Daniel McCarthy writes in the New York Post that the new piece of legislation was a “righteous win” that saved the GOP’s future.

The GOP passed two make-or-break tests here: one of party discipline, the other of political principles.

And the party saved its life by getting this bill enacted.

Insane people famously think they are Napoleon. Judges who issue national injunctions think they are President of the United States. So maybe it’s sort of refreshing that one judge believes he’s the entire U.S. Congress. (And we thought Eve had a lot of personalities.) National Review comments:

You got that right: A single federal judge is ordering that public monies be spent after the Congress of the United States specifically passed a law declining to spend them. You can’t argue with the judge’s reasoning, because there isn’t any; the case was only filed today, and the order is not accompanied by an opinion. It’s just a raw exercise of power.

Will Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson have to recuse herself? Ms. Must has been meaning to mention that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on whether men can compete in women’s sports. It will be a watershed moment for female athletes.  

Mandani Time! Legal scholar Jonathan Turley writes amusingly about the New York Times’ struggles to explain to traumatized readers why it reported truthfully on Gotham mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani’s spurious claims about his background. Martin Gurri writes about Mamdani’s “radical ingratitude” to the city and nation that gave him everything. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu reveals what he will do if he came to New York and Mamdani tried to make good on his promise to arrest the Israeli PM. Just for the record: Ms. Must is betting on Bibi.

It’s Now the OBBLaw. Tragedy in Texas. Hebron Sheiks: Dump PLO. And More

We last met when the OBBB seemingly hung in the balance on the eve of our 249th Independence Day, also popularly known as “the real No Kings Day.”

Famed cat herder Mike Johnson, aka Speaker of the House, said yesterday on Fox News Sunday that the bill, which President Trump signed on the Fourth, will be” jet fuel for the economy” because of tax cuts for the middle class. Speaking of tax cuts, the New York Times seized upon what it called a celebratory letter” from the Social Security Administration, to claim that older American are being misled about tax benefits of the OBBB. The Times misstated the SSA letter, which claimed tax relief for “most” Social Security recipients (about 90%). But you know what? It doesn’t matter. You can’t fool people when it comes to pocketbook issues (See, Biden, inflation, “transitory.”)

Nevertheless, The Free Press’ “Is the One Big Bill a Masterstroke—or a Disaster?” with contributions from Newt Gingrich, Larry Summers, Tyler Cowen, and Jason Furman, is a good read. Meanwhile, Peter Van Buren of The American Conservative hails the OBBB as “a big, beautiful, financial weapon against illegal immigration.”

With the OBBB passed into law, the Trump administration faces a crucial week for trade deals.  

Sure, I’m wasting my breath telling my lefty friends that the OBBB is “not gutting the social safety net,” as a Wall Street Journal editorial explains; another WSJ editorial criticizes, however, “Trump Accounts” as potentially an inadvertent first stop towards guaranteed basic income.   

The death toll for the catastrophic Texas floods reached 81 early this morning. It was a grim scene as rescuers continued to search for the missing (via the New York Times):  

Survivors and family members shared stories about rescues and reunification, as well as accounts that ended in tragedy. In Kerr County, the hardest-hit region, a Christian girls’ summer camp was a hub of loss. A veteran high school teacher camping with his family near the Guadalupe River, which rose 20 feet in two hours on Friday, was also killed. So was a woman driving to work at Walmart when her vehicle was caught in rising waters.

At least five girls who were at Camp Mystic, the Christian camp for girls in Texas hill country, a haven for generations of girls, are confirmed dead and ten remain unaccounted for. CNN journalist Pamela Brown, an alumna of the camp, reported on the tragic scene. Two teenaged counselors wrote the names on campers—just in case. There were stories of heroism such as the young father who died saving his family. Two little girls, 13 and 11, who were vising their grandparents in a gated community were found dead, their hands locked together.

President Trump has declared the area “a major disaster area” and federal assistance is being rushed to Texas. The president plans to visit Texas this week. Texans are being told to brace for more flooding. I suppose that we should not be surprised that there was an instantaneous attempt from progressives to blame the Trump administration. Hot Air has a post on “the party of empathy” blaming DOGE cuts at the National Weather Service for a supposed lack of warning. Matt Vespa of Townhall also challenges this allegation, peddled by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

What’s the first thing that springs to mind when you hear about a tragedy of this magnitude? Well, if you are a prominent mayoral appointee in Houston, your first thought is that Camp Mystic, draped in sorrow, was … get ready … racist. This deserves to be quoted:

A former Houston mayoral appointee raged at a Texas girls camp for being “white-only’’ — hours after deadly flooding ripped through the facility, killing at least five little campers and leaving 11 more missing.

“I know I’m going to get cancelled for this, but Camp Mystic is a white-only girls’ Christian camp. They don’t even have a token Asian. They don’t have a token Black person. It’s an all-white, white-only conservative Christian camp,” Sade Perkins said in a widely condemned video on her private TikTok account.

“If you ain’t white you ain’t right, you ain’t gettin’ in, you ain’t goin’. Period,” Perkins said — as the state’s overall death toll from the devastating flooding soared, with the number of dead now at 80.

She then claimed no one would care if the victims were minorities.

Ms. Perkins, honey, I can’t cancel you quick enough. Ditto this vile pediatrician.

There is some old business from the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax era.

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine, of laptop from hell fame, writes that John Brennan, Obama CIA Director, may have opened himself up to perjury charges:

Brennan is said to be under renewed scrutiny by authorities over discrepancies between his sworn testimony to federal investigations and his written orders to underlings conducting the Intelligence Community Assessment commissioned by President Barack Obama in December 2016 that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.

The review, declassified last week, found that Brennan insisted on the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier, over the strong objections of the CIA’s two most senior Russia experts, who said it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.”

President Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House today. The Wall Street’s Elliot Kaufman writes about an astounding new Palestinian offer for peace—Hebron’s sheiks propose leaving the PLO and joining the Abraham Accords:

The idea of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians has never seemed more futile than in the months since Oct. 7, 2023. But maybe that opens the door to a new way of achieving peace.

“We want cooperation with Israel,” says Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari, also known as Abu Sanad, from his ceremonial tent in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city located south of Jerusalem. “We want coexistence.”…

 Asked if he is worried his vision of coexistence with Israel will be called a betrayal of the Palestinian people and their cause, Sheikh Jaabari scoffs. “The betrayal was done in Oslo. You forgot, but I remember—33 years of it,” of false promises, violence, theft and poverty, even as billions of aid dollars poured in from the West. “I believe in my path,” the sheikh says. “There will be obstacles, but if we confront a rock, we will have iron to break it.”

Betsy McCaughey is suspicious that New York public financing for campaigns is being doled out in a way that benefits socialist, pro-Palestine mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Wall Street Journal columnist Alyssia Finley says forget all the “abundance” chatter on the left. Finley argues that the Left’s goal is to drive out the middle class and solidify control of major cities:

Might the flight of middle-class families be driving California’s political culture left? Same in New York City, which has lost 163,000 children since 2020. The hipsters who have taken over Brooklyn and Queens no doubt vote differently from the families who left. Mr. Mamdani was the ironic beneficiary of population flight caused by progressive policies.

Progressives are trying to drive more people to live in cities even as their policies make them unlivable, which is driving people who don’t share their politics to leave. Whether they use nudges or brute force, the goal is the same: Expand liberal government control over how people live. You either put up, or get out.

In a similar vein, Victor Davis Hanson finds Mamdani’s “radical chic dream” frightening.

We just celebrated the birthday of our country. We’ve been reading a lot of dismal reports that pride in America is at a new low. There is a real danger to so many Americans losing faith in our country, according to Joel Kotkin. Kotkin writes:

Such unraveling demands urgent attention. At its core, America remains a capitalist superpower. But without a deeper connection to its founding ideals and a shared sense of future purpose, this exceptional Republic risks devolving into something like post-national Europe or modern Britain: diminished, adrift, and lacking even the consolation of historic charm.

As you no doubt have heard Elon Musk is founding a new political party. Kudos the PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser for his headline: “Mars Will Have a Tesla Dealership before Elon Has a Viable Third Party.”