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Author: Charlotte Hays

Oct. 7 Brings Out the Monsters. Green Party Embraces Antisemitism. The French Love to Riot. This Time It’s Different. Cornell & the Sexual Revolution. York on Senate Races. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

On the third anniversary of October 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, “SOULLESS” anti-Israel protestors plan to march on the streets of New York in support of Hamas terrorists.

New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin responds to the celebrations planned in honor of the atrocities of Oct. 7:

Groups calling themselves “anti-Zionists” say they will mark the event with rallies in Gotham and many other cities around the world.

In effect, they aim to turn Oct. 7 into an international day of joyful celebration of the butchers who carried out the initial attack, and hail their ultimate cause of eliminating the Jewish state.

“Glory to the martyrs, victory to the resistance,” say some flyers for the rallies. Some display a figure wearing a keffiyeh and an upside-down triangle, a symbol often used to signify Hamas.

Goodwin rightly calls these remorseless supporters of horror, inhumanity and savagery “monsters.”

Meanwhile, “The Israelis Who Never Left October 7 Behind” at The Free Press observes: “Three years after October 7, survivors and their families are still learning how to live with what happened.” Polina Fradkin writes:

Lihi shouted [her brother] Bar’s name, thinking he’d fallen asleep there—it was a place he regularly visited—but he didn’t answer. He had shot himself in the heart. He was 30.

“I think about the day I found him a lot,” Lihi told me. “Finding the person you know and love, a person who is so happy. . . and you’re calling his name and he’s not answering.”

“We couldn’t even cry,” she said. “We were too shocked.”

The Free Press publishes an exclusive excerpt from the new memoir of Avinatan Or, kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, and subsequently held hostage in the tunnels under Gaza for 738 days. “Avinatan’s attention to detail in captivity was extraordinary; his will to live, even more so,” the editors write.

Eli Lake writes that we’re “still drowning in myths about the Gaza War,” while Brendan O’Neill of Spiked Online calls Gaza “the most liked about war in history.” Spiked also notes the U.K.’s Green Party’s embrace of antisemitism. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair writes at TFP that “Britain’s fastest-growing party has a Jewish problem.” “If you care about the future of the UK and the future of the Holy Land: Pay attention,” urges Sir Tony. What should be done with the site of the kibbutzim Hamas attacked three years ago?

The French are still rioting. A Wall Street Journal editorial refers to “France’s Bonfire of Inanities.” The problem in a nutshell: “Leftists riot in defense of a welfare state the country can no longer afford.” The editors write:

It’s easy to scoff at French rioting as its national pastime, but what’s unfolding now is different. France is approaching its most serious crisis in decades, and the disorder in the streets may be only the start.

Ostensibly the destructive rioting of the past few days is a student protest against underfunded schools. If you believe that, we have a pont over the Seine to sell you. The riots have been encouraged by politicians on the left, as Dominic Green recently reported on the Journal’s Free Expression newsletter….

The violence obscures the related crisis engulfing public finances. France doesn’t have more money to spend on schools because it doesn’t have more money to spend on anything….

France’s main problem isn’t math. It’s slow growth. The right fiscal reforms, such as tax cuts and welfare and pension reforms that encourage work and investment, would create new opportunities for prosperity. Young people would be the biggest beneficiaries. The alternative is what’s happening in the streets.

Americans can’t afford to gloat from the sidelines. U.S. debt is 100% of GDP, and its politicians can be as feckless as the French. At least the U.S. economy is growing at a healthy clip, but that could change in a hurry with the wrong mix of regulation and a ham-handed attempt to tax our way out of our fiscal hole.

The Muslim element of the French riots cannot be ignored. Brendan O’Neill calls the riots an intifada in the heart of Europe. Matt Vespa’s take: “‘From the River to the Sea’ Isn’t So Fun When It’s the Seine to the Mediterranean, Huh?“

Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff is in the hot seat as a result of the Cornell rape allegations. Kotlikoff is now talking about “body autonomy.” Ira Stoll of the Free Beacon argues that Kotlikoff is “missing the point—in a telling way”:

It’s an illuminating message nonetheless as Kotlikoff, or his speechwriters, struggle for language to explain to themselves and the community why the events alleged by Jane Doe are wrong. The word “wrong” doesn’t appear in the statement. Maybe he doesn’t want to prejudge what happened, but given that the university already conducted a Title IX investigation and expelled two students, it seems a little late on that. It’s hard to draw moral judgment without any framework of shared moral values.

In “How the Sexual Revolution Led to Cornell,” Emma Camp of Free Expression poses an argument: “The rebels of 1968 sought ‘freedom’ from traditional attitudes. But the trade-off may be the occasional shocking failure of modern sexual culture.” A snippet:

For this is what we ask of the young people at a frat party in the post-1968 world. Both the boys and the girls are encouraged to have sex, including with strangers, including while inebriated. The only rule is that everyone must consent at all times, which sounds simple enough.

But, for a young man, this simple rule demands fine-tuned social judgment. His libido urges him to seek out as much sex as possible, as do his frat brothers, and the young male mind is addled when he is part of a pack. He must seek out certain proof of consent from young women whose signals he can’t reliably read. Is this woman he’s never met before too drunk, or just drunk enough? Does that body language indicate a “no,” even if she hasn’t said as much?

Will the Senate flip? Byron York writes that it is likely to do so, starting with the Dems taking North Carolina. Here are the Washington Examiner’s high points of the debate featuring Maine’s moderate GOP Senator Susan Collins and progressive challenger Troy Jackson. Former President Barack Obama is on the campaign trail, most notably for Senate hopeful Abdul E-Sayed. Powerline’s John Hinderaker doesn’t mince words:

The fact that Obama is willing to campaign with the radioactive El-Sayed illustrates the fact that there is no division between moderate Democrats and far-left Democrats. They are all far-left. The only division in the Democratic Party is between those who think that their constituencies are far enough left that they can come out as socialists–Communists by the ballot–and those who think that the American people are not yet “ready” for socialism/Communism, so progress toward that goal should be more gradual.

We are informed that Christa Pike, the death row inmate who survived a botched execution, is “conscious and speaking” after the ordeal. Charles Fain Lehman helpfully recalls Pike’s victim and the obscenely horrible manner in which she died. Don’t Miss. “Preparing to Fire“: The Wall Street Journal this morning publishes fascinating transcripts of audio recordings of months of warnings, confusion, and attacks in the blockade on Iranian oil exports. Iran is increasing attacks on ships, but the flow of oil and gas is also increasing. Welcome news: “Reports about taking out Los Angeles and San Diego are greatly exaggerated.”

Rage at Cornell: Rapists Walk Among Us. Allegations Political Now—And There’s No Turning Back. A Russian Lab. French Riots. What About El-Sayed’s Financial Acumen? More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

“The Rage at Cornell: ‘Rapists Still Walk Among Us’.”

That’s the headline on a Free Press report on protests at the Ivy League school in the wake of an explosive rape accusation. Olivia Reingold attends the Cornell protests:

“We are known as the rape school, but we don’t have to be,” Sya Taylor boomed into a microphone before a vast crowd, her pink hair falling over her face. “We can be the students that lead a nationwide reform movement against the institutions that perpetuate rape at every single level.”

Cornell’s main building is covered in graffiti (“Smash the patriarchy!”) and windows have been broken. More than a thousand demonstrators have descended on Cornell’s campus, demanding the university President resign and proclaiming, “We are Jane Doe.”

For my money, Byron York of the Examiner has the sanest take (“The Political Path of the Cornell Rape Allegation“) on the Cornell situation. The rape allegation comes from an ugly scene at the Phi Chi fraternity house. Cornell investigated and handed down stiff penalties for several of the frat guys:

If the alleged victim, whose behavior that night precluded criminal charges against the men, wanted some retribution, or justice, for what took place, she got it: two expulsions, two suspensions, an entire fraternity chapter put out of business, and more. If she had stopped there, she might conceivably have been able to move on to living her life, with less alcohol and ketamine.

The alleged victim instead filed a massive lawsuit earlier this month, two years after the ugly incident. She sued Cornell, a bar that has served her a drink on the night in question, each of the fraternity brothers involved, the local fraternity chapter, and even her own sorority:

The lawsuit said that Delta Delta Delta “held itself out to the public, and more particularly to [the woman] herein, as possessing the proper degree of safety measure to adequately protect its members and to use reasonable care and diligence in its monitoring and policing of the [local chapter’s] house and those living in and utilizing said house.” In other words, the woman is suing her sorority for allegedly not putting a stop to her heavy drinking.

The prosecutor reopened the case and “now the matter is in a new realm — the realm of politics.” And, as York points out, it’s just getting started. Wendy Kaminer, meanwhile, finds the case of the Cornell 7 “murky”: “The fraternity members’ treatment of Jane Doe may have been morally repulsive, but it’s not clear it was criminal.”

“Missing details keep U.S. plague response on hold,” according to Axios:

Two big unknowns stand in the way of determining how serious the plague threat in Russia is and whether travel advisories, restrictions at U.S. ports of entry or other precautions are warranted.

We still don’t know which pathogen killed a Russian researcher, or how well contained it is.

Why it matters:Though public health experts say there’s no cause for Americans to panic, the episode serves as a wake-up call emphasizing the nature of global biological threats and the need for pandemic preparedness.

Fox Digital observes that the hardest hit by the bio-leak could be Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

The violent French protests started with students but quickly spread:

What happened over the past week is what always happens when school pupils protest: the movement gets hijacked by extremists of various stripes. Already, the main union behind the protests, the Union syndicale lycéenne, is a far-left organisation. Unsurprisingly, far-left tropes were apparent in the banners and slogans of those protesting – from anti-racism and the supposed need to decolonise education to the plight of Gaza and the usual ‘anti-Zionism’, which swiftly descended into anti-Semitism.

The current riots lead Dominic Green to reflect on whether the collapse of Charles de Gaulle’s France is upon us (highly recommended). The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson sees the riots as a warning for the U.S. and other Western countries about mass immigration, which can split a country in two:

Among the “protesters,” we don’t see a broad cross-section of French society but overwhelmingly nonwhite males, immigrants and the children of immigrants. The barricades are being raised largely by Muslim youth of North African and Middle Eastern descent. Outside many schools, students weren’t chanting about funding cuts or classroom conditions, they were chanting “we are antifascists” and other such slogans. In Marseille, rioters flew the flag of Algeria and Hamas, not the tricolor. It was the same at a number of high schools that saw rioting.

RCP says our leaders should be studying what is happening in France.

Former President Barack Obama will appear at a rally to support Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed ten days before the midterms. On the other hand, Matthew Hennessey of Free Expression dubs El-Sayed “Mr. Financial Know-Nothing“:

“I’d rather an economy that makes 1,000 millionaires than one billionaire,” Abdul El-Sayed said recently in a clip featured on his X feed. Mr. El-Sayed is the Democratic candidate for U.S. senate in Michigan. “Most billionaires don’t park their money making more businesses. They park their money in the stock market. That is not meaningfully investing in opportunity. It’s just investing in other billionaires.”

Start with the numbers. The U.S. has more than 1,000 millionaires. Something like 23.6 million, actually. So we’re doing pretty well on that front. 

But here’s the critical thing: A stock market isn’t a parking garage. Nobody “parks” money in an investment with the expectation that he’ll come back later and pick it up. Investors seek return. They want action. No risk, no reward.

An educated person Mr. El-Sayed’s age should know all this. By now he should have outgrown the child’s view of financial economics, in which every transaction is hocus pocuniks and wealth goes into the stock market to hide. That he not only clings to these views but peddles them should embarrass him and alarm his supporters. Since it appears to do neither, we can only assume he—and they—are getting something useful out of their ignorance.

But impossible promises have no use. And fairy tales often end with painful lessons.

Meanwhile, “Democrats are poised for a win in the midterms — but can they govern?” ask Doug Schoen and Carly Cooperman in The Hill:

If the Democrats win, what will they do to best position themselves for 2028? Because if the Democrats do win, it will be from collecting protest votes, not from offering solutions.   

The data bears this out. According to NBC, a plurality (46 percent) of independents said their midterm vote will be “a signal of opposition to the president.” 

Peter Savodnik has an interesting piece at The Free Press headlined “The Democratic Party’s Crooked Kingmakers.” Savodnik writes about the hosts of “Pod Save America,” “who have built a media juggernaut—and are using it to channel a new progressive rage.” I want to quote this:

[I]n a mock-serious tone, [former Obama speechwriter Jon] Lovett, a co-founder of Crooked Media, which produces the podcast, declared: “I do want to get this out of the way: I denounce you.”

That elicited a chuckle from Piker, who replied: “I denounce myself as well.”

The hard-to-miss point was: All the controversy around Piker—the streamer has declared that “America deserved 9/11,” that accusations of Hamas committing sexual violence on October 7, 2023, are “rape fantasies,” that he would pick Hamas over Israel “every single time,” that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century,” that “pound for pound” the U.S. is worse than Al Qaeda—was overblown.

Meaning it’s permissible—desirable—for Democrats to make room for Piker in their “big tent.”

Before I go, USA TODAY’s Nicole Russell has a good, measured column on the death of Renee Good at an ICE protest in Minneapolis. … President Trump says he will pay for the series of TV ads praising the president and his accomplishments. The ads were formerly paid for by the government.

The Good Guys Made Sloppy Mistakes. Anthropic Courts Religious Leaders to Sell Bizarre Fantasies. Is Higher Education Moving South? Justice Alito on Covid and Our Rights. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

In fighting terrorism, the good guys have to be right every time.

“Multiple Security Failures Allowed FlyDubai Pilot into Cockpit” is a Wall Street Journal headline. It reveals just how many times the good guys got it wrong—and several times purely because of sloppiness:

Before Hamam al-Hammami stood behind his captain on FlyDubai Flight 1073 and raised an emergency ax to begin the assault that nearly brought down the plane, there had been ample opportunity for authorities in three countries to keep him from getting anywhere near that cockpit. 

Oman had scrutinized his online habits and decided he showed too much interest in radical ideology to trust as a pilot at state carrier Oman Air, where he worked. They banned him from flying, sent him to a deradicalization program and put him in a desk job but didn’t flag their concerns more broadly, people familiar with the matter said.

When FlyDubai hired him in February, it didn’t contact Oman to vet his experience.

The last chance to stop him before the airport came in Israel. It was a low bar—pilots from countries like Oman that don’t have diplomatic relations are barred from flying to the country, so Hammami should have been stopped outright. 

Danielle Pletka takes a look at how the New York Times covered the attempted hijacking—or “altercation in the cockpit” in Times speak and concludes that the mainstream media is irredeemable.

In other news of the not-so-friendly skies, the U.S. military evacuated a dozen B-1 bombers from the RAF Fairford airbase in the UK, with a U.S. official telling Axios that the base is under threat of attack from Iran. Several dual British-Iranian citizens arrested last week are suspected of planning an attack on Fairford.

The flydubai stabbing—in which Iranian influence is suspected-and Fairford suggest that Iran might be switching its tactics to covert and deniable attacks:

The two suspected attacks are raising questions over whether Iran’s war strategy is shifting, but experts caution not to treat the incidents as equally indicative of Iranian involvement — or evidence yet that Tehran has changed its tactics.

Could New York Governor Kathy Hochul have acted in a more provocative fashion when she named New York AG Tish James to investigate the Cornell rape allegations? “Letitia James Appointed Special Council Despite Declaring Guilt of the Accused” is Johanthan Turley’s headline. This is a case that demands a meticulous and objective special counsel, not a partisan activist. But Hochul picked James. Turley doesn’t mince words:

Hochul’s appointment of James maximizes the chances of a criminal charge in the case. James has always followed the policy of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “Sentence first, verdict afterward.”

The stunning moment in the Hochul-James presser was when James dismissively declined to comment on a Facebook post prematurely condemning the frat guys—it was her own post. A lawyer for a student has asked James to step down, considering such prior comments. Don’t count on it. Hochul is urged to call a special Albany assembly to tighten rape laws. Meanwhile, Sasha Stone has a fascinating article on what she calls the “consent trap.”

Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s $3 billion donation to start a new campus of Carnegie Mellon in Florida is a loss for New York (whose Mayor all but personally chased Griffin out of town). But Griffin’s Carnegie Mellon bet could pay off big for higher education and the growing Miami region:

Higher education is facing a series of market distortions. Public confidence in America’s universities remains low across the political spectrum. For many years, there’s been an apparent mismatch between what parents and students want and what America’s top universities have offered. Even setting aside the culture-war battles of the last decade, many students and parents seem to doubt the value of higher education, a sentiment that the disruptions of artificial intelligence could easily intensify.

But these market distortions might also create the kinds of opportunities Griffin’s donation could help Carnegie Mellon seize. Vanderbilt University, which is also establishing a campus in the Miami region, provides one case study….

Does AI model Claude have feelings? Does Claude suffer? No, but “Anthropic’s idiot savants are trying to play God while pushing frightening utopian fantasies,” Miranda Devine writes: 

The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been busy for months wining and dining religious leaders and influencers to try to push their self-serving agenda and utopian fantasies. 

The Vatican’s response has been to pour cold water on bizarre claims that Anthropic is embarking on its own “creation story” to give birth to new sentient beings in the form of computer software.

Billionaire co-founder Chris Olah, a 34-year-old Canadian-born evangelical who has turned his back on Christianity, thinks their AI model, Claude, has feelings and a sort of moral consciousness. He’s worried about its “mental health” and believes it experiences human emotions like love and “suffers perpetually,” The New York Times reported. 

Devine mentions Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical on AI, which rejects the bizarre notion of machine consciousness. Devine suggests that a real threat to humanity might be Anthropic’s staff composed of “utopians who believe they are uniquely equipped to save humanity thanks to their superior intelligence and extreme wealth.” See also: Anthropic vs. the Pope.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s new book—“So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court and Our Country”—out tomorrow. Adam J. White reviews it for the Washington Free Beacon. Alito was interviewed by Fox Sunday news host Shannon Bream yesterday. She asked the Justice about draconian Covid restrictions:

I think it was a stress test of our constitutional rights.

In other words, it put our loyalty to those constitutional rights, our dedication to those constitutional rights to the test. And one of the things that, unfortunately, it disclosed was that many people were willing to downgrade certain constitutional rights, the right to freedom of speech and the right to the free exercise of religion in particular.

They were willing to make those secondary to other things. The example of the casinos, I thought, was telling. And what I said in the speech was nothing more than what I had said in a written opinion. The governor of Nevada at that time said, the casinos are open. Come back to Las Vegas.

And so people came back to Las Vegas, and there were pictures of people in the casinos. And they were not wearing masks. Not all of them were wearing masks. They certainly were not maintaining a certain degree of separation among themselves. That was all predictable.

But, at the same time, the state had a very severe limit on the number of people who would — could attend a house of worship, no matter how big that house of worship was. A similar thing happened in New York City.

And always the sound of the midterms hurrying near. “Four ways the midterm elections could go, one month away,” by Isaac Arnsdorf at The Washington Post says Dems have polls and history on their side; Republicans have money. The Brazilian race was a shocker. Conservative Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned former President, surged to first place and will be in the Oct. 25 primary.

Two More Things. Here’s how a City Journal piece on the National Book Foundation begins:

“A good coat of paint can hide a multitude of sins,” a time-tested adage maintains. Unless that paint happens to be white—then, according to Columbia University writing professor Wendy Walters, it might have “figured into systems of erasure, exclusion, violence, and the masking of power in the social and natural world.” Walters is so exercised by white paint, for which she professes “a genuine and visceral dislike,” that she has written a 352-page book, A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, to be published on October 13.

Lest you think Walters’s book is just another indulgence of American academia’s bizarre notion of scholarship, the five judges enlisted by the National Book Foundation have picked A Dead White as one of ten longlisted titles for this year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Joel Klein couples ed union boss Randi Weingarten and 1619’s Nikole Hannah-Jones as two women who have made public education worse in an excellent WSJ op-ed.

Moral for Terrorists: Don’t Mess with Zionists. Christa Pike’s Botched Execution. Cornell Retreads: Me Too and Tish James. Porn and Sexual Assault. Hopeful in Hormuz. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

What is the takeaway from the thwarting of what might have been Israel’s September 11?  

“The lesson of Flydubai? Don’t mess with Zionists.” That’s the Spiked Online headline for Brendan O’Neill, who was at the Tel Aviv airport as news of the attempted terror incident broke. O’Neill writes about the passengers who fought back:

This was a revolt worthy of the history books. A people’s fightback against the violent narcissism of either a suicidal freak or a murderous Jew-hater (or possibly both). This man may have craved death, and possibly loved it, but he came up against a swarm of people who far prefer life. That’s the civilisational divide distilled: worshippers of death vs lovers of life. There is something profoundly moving about the clip in which the passengers chant ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ as the plane safely lands. ‘The people of Israel live’ – in a time of untrammeled Jew hate, it’s the most defiant, life-giving cry you can make. It fortifies the hearts of those of us who love civilisation, and breaks the spirit of civilisation’s enemies.

There was humility with the bravery. …

UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband said he was ‘deeply concerned about the incident’, which was only stopped by ‘the actions of those on board’. Oh Ed, would it kill you to say something nice about Israelis?

You might also like The Washington Free Beacon’s “’A Nation Like a Lion’—Israeli Airline Passenger Heroics Avert Jihadist Terrorist Attack.” The near catastrophe exposed a gaping hole in Dubai’s airport security. Meanwhile, “Flydubai Terrorist Identified as Radical Muslim with Bizarre Practice in Front of Women.”

The New York Post gave convicted murderer Christa Pike, who survived a botched execution in Tennessee, the full tab treatment on this morning’s cover: “Die Another Day.” Pike is in critical condition with her prognosis unknown. Predictably, the accident has triggered calls to end the death penalty.

In “Am I Lying to Myself About the Death Penalty?” Charles C. W. Cooke, who (unlike Ms. Must) had not previously supported the death penalty, has a counterintuitive reaction to the failed execution—he now wonders if the death penalty is right:

The truth is that I think that Pike should be dead, and I am not at all upset that Tennessee tried to kill her. I wish it had succeeded, and I feel no qualms about this. I have read what she was convicted of — what she confessed to — which was this:

Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Slemmer and that she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir. Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut the victim’s throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim’s head. Pike told Iloilo that the victim had begged “them” to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike ….

Melanie MacDonogh writes in the London Spectator that Pike should be allowed to live. At this point, Ms. Must doesn’t disagree. The authorities indulged Pike’s wish for an all-female execution team. What kind of statement was this supposed to be? Isn’t the last meal of favorite dishes sufficient? Babylon Bee has the best take.

“Cornell brings back #MeToo” is a headline in the London Spectator. That’s not the only unwelcome returnee. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed state AG Letitia James to take over the investigation of the Cornell allegations.

Does pornography help explain the Cornell assault? “Where else would young guys get the idea that women want group sex with strange men?” asks Emma Camp of Free Expression. Camp makes a good case:

In the middle of it all, I’m left wondering how this could have happened in the first place. Sexual entitlement and drug-loosened inhibitions are for sure part of the story. But there’s another likely factor that’s so far gone unmentioned in public discussion of the case: pornography.

It’s unfashionable to ask if endemic pornography use among young men contributes to some sex crimes. It’s a sign of moralist hysteria—akin to thinking videogames cause school shootings or heavy metal is turning the kids into Satan worshipers. Porn is presumed harmless, and anyone who suggests otherwise is consigned to whatever cultural trash heap Tipper Gore and the Church Lady now reside in. …

Watch enough porn, and you’ll think it’s perfectly normal for a woman to want group sex with strange men. Watch enough porn, and you’ll think it’s perfectly normal to strike a woman while you’re having sex with her.

Republican voters are panicking at the prospect of a blue wave, even as the President Donald Trump receives two plaudits from the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. The first is “Trump Has the Right Instincts on AI.” Trump knows the risks if China is left to dominate AI. The second is “The Battle of Hormuz Is Turning“:

Did you notice the sudden media realization that the oil export pressure is now working against Iran? New reports from tanker-tracking groups confirm what the Trump Administration has been saying: Adm. Brad Cooper and the forces of U.S. Central Command have turned around the battle of the Strait of Hormuz.

Data from Kpler indicate that the seven-day average for oil clearing the Strait is 14.19 million barrels a day, approaching the prewar baseline of 17.13 million. Most of what’s missing are Iranian oil exports stopped by the U.S. blockade. The recent resumption of oil flowing through the Saudi bypass pipeline, followed by accelerating loadings at the port of Yanbu to transit the Red Sea, will unlock more exports….

This is what progress looks like: Iran’s oil is blocked while the world’s oil increasingly gets through. The effect is to reduce pressure on the West and its Gulf allies while Iran must scrounge for money. The regime is rapidly running out of oil already on the sea from before or between blockades, though payments will have a longer lag. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimates the Iranians will deliver the last of this oil to China in mid-October.

Even The American Conservative (TAC)—steadfast opponent of the Iran war—sees “glimmers of hope in Hormuz” but with tons of caveats.

Annals of Not Free Speech. “I Questioned Transgender Ideology. Now I’m Facing Prison in France,” by Dora Moutot at The Free Press. The 411:

I went on television to debate what makes a woman a woman. Four years later, I have a criminal conviction and face new charges that could put me in prison.

Fox has a follow-up to Ms. Rachel, who has built a sprawling media empire contributing to radical causes. This is not free speech; it is indoctrinating small children behind their parents’ backs.

This Just In: President Trump reveals a possible change in what we must tell IRS that might help prevent illegal immigration. Usual suspects are apoplectic.

The Company He Keeps. Zohran Mamdani is being honored by a group that apparently has close ties with Iran. City Journal has the scoop:

But critics have long questioned NIAC’s relationship with Tehran. In a 2020 letter, Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Mike Braun called on then-Attorney General William Barr to launch a Justice Department investigation against NIAC and NIAC Action (its sister organization) for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, identifying a pattern of what they called “troubling behavior.”

The senators pointed to a 2019 internal memo in which NIAC blamed the United States for an Iranian militia’s attack on a military base that killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several others. Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that carried out the attack, later stormed a U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The senators also highlighted tweets from NIAC and NIAC Action staffers pushing “conspiracy theories deflecting blame from the Iranian regime for shooting down a Ukrainian civilian airliner, killing 176 individuals.” (NIAC called the accusations “slanderous.”)

Religion News. Scientists are claiming to have discovered Noah’s Ark. The Duchess of Sussex is marketing a new chocolate-filled Advent calendar for a mere 112 pounds. Perfect. As ever, Ms. Must.

Heroes Foil Hijacking. Israeli Plumber One of the Valiant. Legacy of Flight 93 Hailed. U.S. Economy Takes Off. But Is It Too Late for Midterms? Miranda Devine on Cornell 7. And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

We’re going to hear the word hero a lot today.

And thank heavens for the “Heroes in the Sky,” who foiled the attempted hijacking of a Dubai airplane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, saving the lives of 174 passengers.     

This, from Jonathan Sacerdoti of the London Spectator:

The heroes who saved the flydubai flight from disaster a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv appears to have been hijacked by its own co-pilot. It ended with the plane on the ground in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and all 174 passengers alive, among them 27 children and many Israelis. Very little has been officially confirmed. But what we do know points to a potentially massive disaster that was averted, thanks to the bravery of Israeli passengers and members of the crew. …

If the early indications are right, this morning a pilot tried to turn a passenger jet into a weapon on a route that stands for that new relationship. He was stopped by ordinary passengers who ran toward the danger instead of away from it, and by a crew who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We came very close to a very different headline today.

The grievously wounded captain managed to open the cockpit so passengers could swarm in and subdue the treacherous co-pilot. The Wall Street Journal reports on the cockpit stabbing and terrifying nosedive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credits an Israeli plumber for “preventing another 9/11.” Passengers further recalled the plane’s drastic, stomach-churning plunge. The Free Press profiles one of the heroes in “‘I Ran Toward the Cockpit’: An Exclusive Interview with the Israeli Dad Who Stopped a Hijacking.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal ties this to the legacy of the “spirit” of Flight 93 25 years ago in September 11:

The threat from Islamic terrorism isn’t over. But on their way home to Israel at last, survivors of the hijacking could be seen on video breaking into an old Jewish song: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge / and the main thing—is to have no fear at all.”

Don’t miss “The Hero Who Stopped Israel’s 9/11” in the U.K. Telegraph.

“The U.S. Economy Is Accelerating” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors write:

You’d be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is slouching toward recession based on the gloomy headlines. But cheer up—the Commerce Department on Wednesday made an unusually large upward revision in its economic growth estimate for the first half of the year. Might rising yields on the 10-year Treasury reflect accelerating economic growth? …

The larger story here is that the economy as a whole looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years when growth was driven by government handouts. Recall how the Biden team boasted that its climate spending was increasing construction and even defended its endless student loan forbearance as propping up consumer spending.

Mark Skousen writes that gross output signals an economic surge. In his Best-of-the-Web column, James Freeman observes that the U.S. economy is better than was previously reported. I know what you’re thinking. Does any of this help Republicans, or are the midterm results already baked into the pie? Victor Davis Hanson had a piece recently about what he called the “false gloom” about the economy that defeated George H.W. Bush and elected Bill Clinton.

Karl Rove’s column this morning does not radiate hope for the GOP’s electoral prospects. Headlined “A Blundering 2026 Midterm Campaign,” the column suggests that the Republican campaign strategy looks good on paper but suffers from subpar execution:

Messaging is one of the few areas of Team Trump’s execution we can judge in real time. The past month it’s been awful.

Especially given Mr. Trump’s poor approval numbers, he has to drive home each day what the GOP has accomplished and will accomplish—and clearly contrast that with what Democrats believe and promise. Instead, we’ve gotten off-putting confusion.

“How many House seats will the Democrats win? The polls may already know,” is Henry Olsen’s Washington Post headline. Olsen writes:

This week, I set about reverse engineering the past three midterms using generic congressional ballot polling. I expected the analysis to be fruitful, but even I was surprised by just how predictive it turned out to be. Applying the same model to the election before us renders this verdict: a Democratic majority of at least 225 seats and as many as 232.

So many commentators are off and running. We should wait for more information in the complicated case of the Cornell rape accusations. “The lynch mob is out for the ‘Cornell 7’ — proving we’ve learned nothing from past injustices,” Miranda Devine cautions. She writes:

The “Cornell 7” gang rape case is descending into the same lynch-mob hysteria as the notorious Duke lacrosse or “mattress girl” hoaxes of old — only with social media making ­everything worse. 

It seems we have learned nothing from past injustices. 

A young woman who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell University, where she was a student at the time. 

Predictably, the fraternity brothers have been judged guilty in the court of man-hating public opinion. 

Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to stop, they did. 

In “The Moral Wilderness of the Cornell Seven Case,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin writes:

Moral panics are not always bad. Sometimes, they represent an overdue societal correction against some entrenched injustice. But they are always dangerous, and we should always have a clear head about the fact that we are in one. So it is with the “Cornell Seven” case. …

“Jane Doe,” the thus-far anonymous alleged victim, now says that she was raped on October 19–20, 2024, by seven members of the same fraternity at Cornell, where she was a 20-year-old junior. The central issue in every rape case has to be this one: Did he do it? The surrounding facts may show aggravating or mitigating factors; they may or may not tell us bad things about the victim or other possible accomplices or bystanders. But the essential question has to come first: Did he rape her? If so, he’s a violent criminal and should be treated by the law and society like any other predatory felon. If not, we’re not dealing with a rape.

Of course, a non-rape can still be many sorts of morally dreadful behavior, but it doesn’t become rape just by the application of hot rhetoric. Sadly, after decades of assaults by progressives and feminists on traditional moral frameworks and rules, we don’t really have a coherent language to deal with immoral sexual behavior that doesn’t cross the line into crime. We’d be in a better place if we had those sorts of standards. It’s hard to teach your sons, or your daughters for that matter, moral rules if you treat the whole idea of moral rules with contempt.

Dangerous Women. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich is warning parents about the radical content of Ms. Rachel’s kiddie shows. “Not Mr. Rogers,” says Descovich. … The “‘Palestinian Rachel Dolezal’ Scandal Isn’t What You Think.” Take her and what she represents seriously, says City Journal.

Genius Day at White House. The AI ‘Constitution.’ How Not to Get Deported to Uganda. Rape Accusations at Cornell. Elliot Page Bares ‘His’ Mastectomy Scars for Men’s Fashion Spread. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Guess who got invited to lunch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday?  

Just about everybody who’s anybody in the AI world. Real Clear Politics dubs the event “AI Day at the White House“:

It was AI Day in Washington on Tuesday, with the Trump administration hosting an all-day conference and the launch of a new AI landing page. Donald Trump lunched with executives before signing an executive order directing the government to start calling AI “super intelligence” instead. Between red tape updates, rebranding, and wrangling corporations, the president hopes to turn the tide of public opinion.

In a spontaneous gaggle with reporters at the White House, Trump declared that his lunch guests had all signed onto an accord to add guardrails on AI technology. He described it as a “constitution,” “a joint commitment,” a “statement of principles,” and “morally binding.”

Axios has a skeptical slant on the AI “constitution” but is still worth reading.

Hey, what about your soul? UnHerd has an article with the intriguing headline “AI Versus the Human Soul.”

There’s a foolproof way to avoid being stranded in some alien spot on the globe, say Uganda: Simply don’t come to the United States illegally. It’s that easy.

No doubt, however, the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday that third-country deportations can continue for now will raise a hue and cry. Here’s the gist of what the Court said:

The Trump administration can resume deporting certain migrants to countries where they are not citizens for the time being, while the justices hear arguments and make a final ruling on the policy, a divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling is a temporary victory for a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and sets up a major Supreme Court argument in December over the controversial policy.

“Maryland Man Hardest Hit” is Powerline’s take on the ruling. “Maryland Man,” as you no doubt know, is a Salvadoran gangbanger, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the original bad penny of deportations. Meanwhile, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) writes about “Immigration Enforcement Without the Melodrama.” ICE, Krikorian argues, is getting the job done—but very quietly:

The intentionally provocative approach of ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her field commander, Border Patrol agent Greg Bovino, was thrilling for the more excitable elements on both the Right and the Left. One side wanted revenge for Biden’s and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s truly lawless and harmful border policies, while the anti-borders side was practically giddy with euphoria at having their fantasies of impending fascism seemingly confirmed.

Krikorian also has fascinating and encouraging data on the population. It may not be as big as we think.

“A Firestorm Over Rape Allegations Threatens to Engulf Cornell” is a Wall Street Journal report on the confusing situation at the Ivy League school:

In 2024, a Cornell University student went to campus police after being drugged and gang-raped by fraternity members, a lawsuit alleges. Local prosecutors decided not to press charges, believing she hadn’t alleged any criminal behavior.

Now, two years later, controversy over the handling of the case has erupted, throwing the Ivy League school into crisis. …

On Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) denounced the school’s “culture of rape.”

If you are at all interested in this perplexing and important case, I urge you to read both CBS’s police transcript of the original 2024 interview with Jane Doe and the Free Press account by Kat Rosenfield headlined “The ‘Cornell 7’ Have Not Been Proven Guilty.” Here is the Free Press subhead:

A handful of former frat bros were accused of a horrific crime. The court of public opinion has already punished them.

More Legal News. “Lindsay Clancy’s Lawyer Makes Stunning U-Turn on Who Killed the Kids.” Huh? Shouldn’t he have mentioned this in the trial? Lawyer Kevin Reddington, you’ll recall, tried to get Ms. Clancy off by arguing insanity, not that she didn’t do it. 

News Flash: “The Strait of Hormuz Is Open.” That’s a Free Press headline on an Aaron MacLean article. Here’s the subhead:

Oil is once again moving through the strait. Can the Trump administration turn a winning Iran strategy into lasting victory?

Meanwhile, motorcycle patrols are swarming Iranian cities, and checkpoints are being established as the regime braces for unrest:

The security buildup comes as university students have returned to the streets in Tehran, protesting compulsory hijab rules, rising education costs and political repression, videos published on Iran International show.

Midterms. The Democrats are running on “affordability.” Say what? “The ‘Affordability’ Democrats? You Have to Be Kidding” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors point out ways in which Dem policies would lead to higher prices:

It costs on average about 2.8 times as much to build an apartment in California as in Texas, according to the RAND Corp. Some “affordable” housing projects in the Golden State cost more than $1 million per unit to build. One reason is state and local prevailing wage mandates, which Democrats want to require for all projects that benefit from federal funds.

Democrats also want to raise the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage to $15 or higher. Most Democratic-run states already impose minimum wages of at least $15 an hour, so this would mainly slam states with lower wage mandates, many of which have contested Senate races this year like Texas, Iowa and New Hampshire (all $7.25) and Ohio ($11). Businesses pass on higher wage costs to consumers to the extent they can.

So what are Democrats now proposing to improve affordability? More of the same policies—more spending on welfare and “affordable” housing, more green-energy subsidies, more healthcare regulation and higher minimum wages nationwide.

Democrats claimed the Affordable Care Act would reduce healthcare costs. But that law’s command-and-control regulations drove industry consolidation and pushed up prices instead. Premiums for employer plans have roughly doubled since 2010, rising at about twice the rate of inflation.

A new Wall Street Journal poll suggests that voters want contradictory things. “Americans Want Populist Policies That Defy Traditional Political Labels“:

Americans in both parties back government-imposed price caps and other market interventions to make life more affordable, suggesting new support for populist ideas that were once largely outside the political mainstream.

That’s the takeaway of a new Wall Street Journal survey that asked respondents what they want from their elected officials and the political system. Voters of all partisan stripes strongly support capping the cost of prescription drugs, child care and credit-card interest rates.

The survey suggests that a coalition reaching beyond the nation’s familiar party labels exists for a range of policies at a time when Americans view Republicans and Democrats negatively.

Large majorities, for example, support both strong border security and a pathway to citizenship for many people in the country illegally, the poll finds. A near-majority of Democrats agrees with Republicans and independent voters that people should show a photo ID when balloting to ensure that only citizens vote.

Elliot Page—formerly Ellen Page—made the cover of New York Magazine’s “Men’s Style” issue. It was supposed to be bold, but it was sad:

The issue featured multiple covers, including one with Page, and linked to an article headlined “The Boys in the Baths.” The magazine described the piece as “Shvitzing and kibitzing with some of New York’s most stylish men at the East Village’s Russian & Turkish Baths.”

Page was among numerous others featured largely unclothed and described the bathhouse experience.

“I went to a bathhouse recently. I’ve only in the past couple of years been like, ‘Yeah, that sounds nice, to like go somewhere and sit around in your body like that.’ I do sing in the shower sometimes,” Page said. “The same songs and lyrics will get stuck in my head, and I don’t know why. Like ‘Do you believe in life after love?’ That’s one I’ll belt out. Or ‘The Sound of Music’: I’ve never seen the movie, which seems crazy, but for some reason I find myself belting out that song in the shower. I can’t explain it.”

The scars from Page’s double mastectomy were prominently visible in the cover photo.

The BBC has decreed that getting a manicure but not having nail polish applied is white supremacy. The Wall Street Journal’s Meghan Gurdon writes:

That line about “perpetuating white supremacy” is tedious, but it is the faux profundity of “who gets to decide” that marks the whole piece as risible and about as on-trend as a polyester leisure suit. It’s so . . . six years ago.