Author: Charlotte Hays

We must bid farewell to the summit between President Trump and China’s President Xi. President Trump will once again have access to his trusty cellphone.

Both leaders want to stabilize relations between the two countries, but they may mean different things. President Trump touts “hundreds of billions” in U.S. tech companies whose CEOs met with Xi. Larry Kudlow gives the win to President Trump in an RCP offering headlined “Mr. Xi Can Saber-Rattle, But Mr. Trump Has the Goods.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was just a cipher, so to speak:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a fierce China critic, was banned in 2020 from entering the country. On Thursday, however, he sat across from Chinese officials in Beijing — with a nameplate displaying a new Chinese spelling of “Rubio” that perhaps made his visit possible as part of President Donald Trump’s entourage.

The change predated Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese state media and official records began using a different transliterated character for the “Ru” or “Lu” in Rubio’s name after Trump named him secretary of state in 2025.

The unexpected star of the gathering was some fellow named Thucydides. “About That Taiwan ‘Thucydides Trap’” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial today:

Who knew Xi Jinping was a student of ancient Greek history? The Chinese President warned President Trump in this summit meeting on Thursday about the “Thucydides trap,” but don’t be fooled by the historical reference. His real point was warning Mr. Trump not to risk a war by interfering with China’s designs to retake Taiwan—by force if necessary.

Thucydides was the great ancient historian of the Peloponnesian War, and he argued that a rising Athens frightened Sparta and led to war. Harvard political scientist Graham Allison popularized what he called the “Thucydides trap” by identifying a dozen times in history when a rising power threatened an established power and war resulted. World War I was an example as a rising Germany threatened Britain as Europe’s leading power.

Getting what Mr. Xi likes about the analogy? In his reading, China is the rising power and America the hegemon fearful of being surpassed. He is warning Mr. Trump in pointed terms not to interfere with China’s ambitions or the result could be a destructive war. …

Speaking of Thucydides and traps, one risk is that Mr. Xi really believes China is a rising power that can become a new Middle Kingdom in which everyone else is a vassal state. His economy depends too much on exports for jobs, the country is aging fast, and its military hasn’t fought a real war in decades. He might fall into his own trap if he thinks the U.S. really is in decline enough for China to risk a war.

The Free Press also explores the Thucydides angle. Aaron MacLean explains why Xi introduced the popular highbrow theory into the discussion, suggesting that in the wake of Xi’s nod, it “must then be bliss for Graham Allison.” Xi seems to have Thucydides in his brain.

President Trump said that Xi, whom he invited to Washington, will help him with the Iran War.  As far as I have seen, there is no update on the fate of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong newspaper proprietor, who is languishing in a Chinese prison. Did President Trump ask for freedom for Jimmy Lai?

Meanwhile, Mark Clifford, president of the Committee of Freedom for Hong Kong Foundation, proposes cutting off Hong Kong’s financial support for Iran:

Some of Hong Kong’s banks and traders are a vital pipeline for moving cash to Iran. New research from the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation finds that entities in Hong Kong may be the most important connection between Iran and the international financial system—and the location of the most vital intermediaries routing key parts to Iran for drones and missiles, based on physical evidence on battlefields and customs data as well as U.S. indictments and designations. …

While Operation Economic Fury is a good first signal, Treasury’s current approach looks more like whack-a-mole than a strategy. Treasury already has slapped sanctions on more than 40 Hong Kong entities since 2020 for ties to Iran. Banking giants HSBC and Standard Chartered together paid billions in fines in 2012 and 2019 respectively for violating Iran sanctions. But dealing with Hong Kong’s terror-haven status requires a systemic approach.

Optimistic Headline of the Day: “After the Ayatollah,” by Jason Greenblatt in the Tablet. Greenblatt begins, “Something has changed in the Iran nuclear negotiation that many analysts are not fully accounting for.” One Thing that Did Not Change: President Trump’s authority to pursue the Iran conflict. GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote for a war powers measure was canceled by maverick Democratic Senator John Fettrman, who broke a tie.

President Trump is not the only high official who has been gallivanting. CIA Director John Ratcliff flew to Havana this week to meet with officials of the communist regime about fuel shortages and growing street protests. CBS reports that the U.S. is moving towards indictment of Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former President of Cuba and Fidel’s brother. Cuba’s downing of two planes operated by Cuban exile groups could be key.

“Why won’t Democrats moderate on immigration?” asks Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen. He offers a clue:

Democrats need these unlawful foreign residents to offset the departure of Americans fleeing to less oppressive red-state governance. But Trump’s border policies have halted the flood of illegal migrants that Biden unleashed, while his deportation policies seek to remove them….

Because the fact is, conventional politics alone doesn’t explain why Democrats are running headlong into public opinion by fighting Trump’s efforts to deploy ICE agents to their states and seeking to defund ICE on Capitol Hill. But add in the inescapable census math, and a method starts to emerge from the madness. For the Democratic Party, open borders are existential.

LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, whose house burned down in the LA fires, is being attacked because he no longer lives in a trailer. In another story on the closely watched race, Guy Benson writes about incumbent Mayor Karen Bass’s campaign (“Karen Bass Is Terrible at This”):

Accusing Pratt of “exploiting grief” over the Palisades fires is a stunning approach, not just in light of Bass’s prominent failures in handling that disaster, but because both Pratt and his parents lost their homes as a result of the catastrophe. He is not “exploiting” someone else’s grief; this event affected his family in the most personal way imaginable. 

What is actually reprehensible, to borrow her word, is this cheap and clueless line of attack from a politician who presided over the devastation that motivated Pratt to try to unseat her.

Democrats have a high regard for whistleblowers, right? Weeeel, they’re selective. David Marcus writes about a CIA whistleblower who gave testimony this very week:

It was an amazing sight in the Senate on Wednesday, as the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led by its chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., held an explosive hearing featuring a CIA whistleblower testifying on COVID origins, and not a single Democrat bothered to even show up.

Every chair on the left of the dais sat empty as high-ranking CIA official James Erdman outlined the duplicity and lies, not just of the government during COVID, but especially of disgraced former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, which is precisely why the cowardly Democrats took the morning off.

According to Erdman, suppression of the lab leak theory, now widely accepted as how the COVID pandemic began, “was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci, injecting himself into the IC [intelligence community].”

We started this morning with the China summit. In closing, Rep. Kim Young reminds us that the Chinese Communist Party monitors the most intimate aspects of private life in China:

Flip off the lights, hop in your car, connect your phone to Bluetooth, and turn on your favorite podcast for the drive to work. That everyday routine depends on copper, lithium, and a whole host of other critical minerals that power batteries, speakers, navigation systems, electric motors, and modern communications technology. 

These materials are so deeply embedded into our daily lives that most Americans would never think twice about them. But they should. 

The Reds rolled out their red carpet for President Trump.

Behind the toasts and pomp, the Trump-Xi summit is a defining test for America in the new Cold War, according to an opinion piece at Fox Digital. This cold war “is being fought with chips, data and AI.” Which brings us inevitably to Taiwan.

“Taiwan Is the Key to AI Dominance,” write Doug Feith and Alexander Benard in the Wall Street Journal. That is why, as a Free Press headline on a Niall Ferguson story puts it, “Trump Wants Détente. Xi Wants Taiwan.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal takes note of Taiwan’s advance in defense spending:

President Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday hoping for big deals in China, but the truth is that more of America’s economic and strategic future depends on Taiwan. Chinese President Xi Jinping will rehearse his shibboleths about the island as a rogue province, so it’s worth noting Taiwan’s progress on self-defense. …

While Taiwan practices the politics of persuasion, Mr. Xi’s police state is arresting defense officials and giving them suspended death sentences. President Trump sees the world mainly through a lens of brute power politics. While such realism can be an asset, it may mislead him about the U.S. balance sheet in Asia. Taiwan is a technology powerhouse with a rule of law that will never exist in China as long as Mr. Xi rules. (See David Feith and Alexander Benard on the tech nearby.)

Taiwan is showing that it understands the free world has to be defended. Mr. Trump can reward the democracy’s defense boost by unlocking an arms-sale package that’s been held up amid mood setting for this week’s China summit. All the pageantry is in Beijing, but America’s most profound interests to protect are across the windy strait.

Many of us, I am sure, are rooting for President Trump to gain the release of Jimmy Lai, the heroic Hong Kong newspaper proprietor who now languishes in a Chinese prison. The Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Melchior writes about the Lai family, which has been “cursed by communism.” Kim Strassel interviews her colleague Bill McGurn (who is Mr. Lai’s godfather) on the situation.

Xi said something to President Trump that got my attention (even if I had to Google the term): Xi asked whether the U.S. and China could avoid the “Thucydides Trap.” The “Thucydides Trap” is a term coined by an American political scientist to describe the tensions between a rising and dominant power. One way to avoid the Thucydides Trap is for the dominant power to acquiesce and fade, and one can assume that this is exactly what President Xi prefers. Lee Smith writes in the Tablet that, contrary to the MSM’s conventional wisdom, the U.S. war against Iran hasn’t ushered in American decline but, paradoxically, has exposed China’s weakness.

The UK Telegraph highlights Xi’s economic woes. Noah Smith writes that the economic “decoupling” of China and the U.S. proceeds slowly but surely. Fox Digital has frequent updates on the summit.

Vice President J.D. Vance may be stuck in the U.S. while Marco and other cool kids are in China, but Vance made good use of the time yesterday. As the latest in his quest to combat massive fraud in federal programs, Vance announced that the federal government will suspend $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds to California. The beneficiaries will not be affected. Other states were warned that this could happen to them. The Federalist covered the presser:

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, vice chair of the anti-fraud task force, said states allowing fraud are a “result of decades of corruption, particularly in blue states,” noting that many of them “have taken tens of billions of dollars to pay lawyers” to prosecute fraud, but have little or nothing to show for it.

“When the states just take this money and turn it into a jobs program for blue state lawyers, they are effectively participating in the elder abuse in those states, because the American people turn over their money to these state programs to protect their parents and their grandparents from elder abuse, and if you aren’t doing it, you are effectively participating in that process,” Ferguson said.

The scale of this brand of fraud is almost unimaginable. Obtaining more money for entitlement programs is practically the entire program of the Left. But Real Clear Politics reveals that billions were spent on Medicaid expansion that Congress never approved. Even Russia and Cuba found ways to rob the U.S. Medicaid program.

“Watching Porn on California’s Death Row.” That’s the arresting headline on Christopher Rufo and Haley Strack’s latest City Journal piece. Under Governor Gavin Newsom, taxpayer-funded tablets are being turned into “personal sex machines” by inmates:

In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations. Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection. …

But inmates told us a different story. For some, the devices have become personal sex machines. In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately “horny” criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer.

Another Inmate Update: Convicted of killing his wife and son, Alex Murdaugh will get a new trial:

A juror who helped convict Alex Murdaugh in the killings of his wife and son was left stunned by the South Carolina Supreme Court’s “crazy” decision Wednesday to overturn the verdict.

Juror Ami Williams insisted she was never swayed into convicting the disgraced legal scion in the grisly 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, after the state’s top court unanimously found that a court clerk improperly influenced his dramatic six-week trial.

Judges ruled that Colleton County court clerk Becky Hill tainted the 2023 trial by meddling with the jury.

Liberal Patriot, RIP. “I was saddened to learn a few weeks ago that The Liberal Patriot (TLP) had closed up shop,” writes Daniel Stid of AEI. Well, that makes two of us, and I imagine many, many other TLP fans.

The iconoclastic TLP, cofounded by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, was a delight and always provocative.  Stid writes:

The fall of TLP sheds light on a strange disequilibrium in American democracy, one driven in no small part by the self-defeating logic of polarization….

There is an inescapable, small-“d” democratic calculus animating the faction that TLP helped rally: in a country where fewer than two in five adults hold a four-year college degree, it will be difficult to build an enduring governing coalition without winning substantial support from the majority of voters who are not college graduates.

AOC is a college grad, and I bet she wasn’t a fan of populist-oriented Liberal Patriot.

Wall Street Journal politics guru Karl Rove writes in “AOC Could Turn Back the Blue Wave” that “bumptious radicals like her are the GOP’s best hope in a tough midterm election.” Meanwhile, another politics guru, Henry Olsen of the Washington Post, writes that “the map is becoming so tilted that a four-point Democratic win might not be enough for a majority.”

Not surprisingly, the New York Times characterizes Chinese President Xi as a “philosopher king” this morning, the day the superpower summit gets underway. I kid you not.

President Trump is expected to “press” the Philosopher King—also known as a despot—on support for Iran, trade, and Taiwan. Taiwan will be “one of the touchiest subjects of this week’s summit,” says The Free Press, which features a symposium on how Taiwan will play.

“Trump Can Stare Down a Weak Xi Jinping This Week,” writes China expert Gordon Chang at Gatestone Institute. The Washington Post proposes that President Trump arrives in China with lowered ambitions, hoping for deals. Bret Stephens of the New York Times writes that China is much weaker than it seems, but that is the bad news. The New York Post reveals Trump’s “first request” of Xi.

Meanwhile, Drudge and like-minded outlets are having a field day with President Trump’s alleged admission that he “doesn’t think about [the] American financial situation.” This was the takeaway from a presser as the president prepared to fly to China. Powerline calls it “the Dems’ absurd lie of the day,” misleadingly concocted from sentence fragments.

It would have been absurd, Powerline added, for President Trump to go to the negotiating table with the Philosopher King while admitting that he is quaking in his boots about the U.S. economy. But he knows that the Labor Department’s latest consumer price index is not good news: the CPI rose at a 3.8% annual pace in the year ending in April, up from 3.3% in March and much hotter than the 2.4% in February. Gasoline prices, as you already know, are key.

A Twitchy headline to love: “Kristof Screws the Pooch.” Kristof is the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who recently wrote that Israel used sexual predation—including dogs trained to rape human beings—against Gazans. National Review’s Brittany Bernstein writes that “Kristof’s Extraordinary Claims” require “extraordinary evidence,” which the New York Times did not have. She writes:

But media watchdogs have now raised questions about the integrity of the sourcing in the reported opinion column, which relies predominantly on claims from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and several individuals with checkered backgrounds.

“There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes,” Kristof acknowledges. “But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s ‘standard operating procedures’ and ‘a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.’”

Bernstein quotes a canine behavior expert saying that the claim that dogs could be trained to rape human beings is “absurd,” though it would be possible to train a dog to inflict damage on genitals. A piece in the Wall Street Journal’s “Free Expression” section explores the sourcing of Kristof’s “unbelievable tale.”

Don’t miss Powerline’s “Annals of Dog Rape” (family-friendly alert: there’s a bestiality mention) and the Free Beacon’s report, including a series of factual errors that have dogged Kristof. Israel accuses the Times of committing a “blood libel,” while columnist Andrea Peyser says the story is the latest in a libelous campaign against Israel. 

The timing of the Kristof story is interesting. It came out just before Israel’s release of the damning findings of a two-year investigation into Hamas’ use of rape and sexual torture during the October 7 massacre of Israelis. Hamas’ barbarism that day was almost unimaginable horror.

New Yorkers are about to find out how expensive free stuff is. The New York Post on Mayor Mamdani’s new budget: “Mamdani boasts of savings in $124.7B NYC budget plan — that’ll nickel-and-dime New Yorkers with hidden fee hikes.” The Post reports:

Zo’s nickel-and-diming New Yorkers to save a buck.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani officially rolled out his $124.7 billion spending plan Tuesday as he patted himself on the back for closing a so-called multibillion-dollar budget gap with short-term fixes — but included a menu of hidden fee hikes.

Fiscal watchdogs poked holes in Hizzoner’s cheers that his first-ever budget was “evidence of a new era of government in our city” as his administration touted numerous ways the city would hold onto $1.7 billion over the next two years.

“School Choice Is a Winning Issue for Republicans” is the headline on Jason Riley’s column today. Riley notes that two Dem Governors—New York’s Kathy Hochul and Colorado’s Jared Polis—have embraced the federal tax credit created by the Big Beautiful Bill and aimed at promoting school choice. Riley writes:

Republican candidates looking for an issue in November with broad bipartisan support might consider talking up school choice. To paraphrase President Trump, what do they have to lose?

The poor quality of our K-12 system, particularly in large urban districts, is a perennial voter concern. Yes, good public schools exist, but they tend to be in communities where only the better-off can afford to live. Affluent families who don’t like their local options use private schools or relocate, while poorer families are relegated to schools where most children can’t read or do math at grade level.

Democrats and their teacher-union confederates have been calling the shots on education policy for decades, and they’ve chosen to perpetuate a system that everyone knows disproportionately harms underprivileged minorities. Republicans haven’t spent nearly enough time talking about this, but now’s their chance.

Minnesota Fraud Update. “Million-dollar SNAP food stamp fraud scheme in Walz’s backyard sparks outrage,” Fox Digital reports. What stood out was the sophistication and patience of the scheme:

Abdidwahid Mohamed, the owner of Minnesota Food Grocery LLC, allegedly used EBT cards registered to others to purchase items at Sam’s Club and Costco in 2021 before turning around and reselling them in his store, Fox 9 Minneapolis reported.

Authorities in Hennepin County say they observed Mohamed making purchases and followed him back to his store with the goods. Surveillance footage and GPS data backed this up, while investigators noted that many of the EBT cardholders were either out of the country or say they never shopped at the stores he used. 

“Is Spencer Pratt the hero LA needs?” Joel Kotkin asks in Unherd of Los Angeles’ iconoclastic candidate for Mayor. Kotkin concludes:

Today LA, like its longtime rival New York, is increasingly dominated by highly organized public unions. They appeal to the same constituency of overeducated, underpaid single professionals who elected Zohran Mamdani in NYC. In both cities, espousing anti-Trump views and opposing ICE outweigh matters such as decent public services or economic growth. On the positive side, Pratt is rallying those who despair over the decline of one of the world’s great cities. Whether there are enough people who believe that may prove to be the critical factor.

Meanwhile, critics are claiming that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s new free diaper program is all wet. An editorial in the Washington Post argues that the diaper program “infantilizes” new parents. GOP candidate to succeed Newsom, Steve Hilton, calls attention to the price of the diapers—apparently, taxpayers will pay triple what the diapers cost at Target.

Carnivores, Unite! Meat may cure what ails you. Alan Dershowitz explains why, despite appearances, 1935 was the worst year in history. Not idle musing, the Dersh ties 1935 to 2026, which still has a shot at being a very good year.

Foreign affairs grab the headlines this morning with the president heading to China, and Iran and the U.S. seemingly stalemated.

A Wall Street Journal headline describes the situation of the U.S. and China as “neither peace nor war.” An editorial in the same outlet proposes that Iran’s leaders (whoever they are) are willing to preserve this state because they believe that President Trump is “bluffing”:

Iran’s regime clearly thinks it can outlast a President who no longer wants the fight. “They think that I’ll get tired of this or I’ll get bored, or I’ll have some pressure,” Mr. Trump recognized in his Monday remarks, “but there’s no pressure at all. We’re going to have a complete victory.”

The problem is that he is under pressure, and everyone knows it. …. This is a regime that thinks it can absorb economic pain from the U.S. blockade longer than Mr. Trump can tolerate higher prices for oil and petrochemicals. Mr. Trump will have to persuade Tehran’s leaders they’ve underestimated him—and the pain.

An alternative scenario was revealed late yesterday at Fox Digital—it has Iran’s “power players” eyeing Russia to provide an Assad-style escape as talks falter: 

Golkar, a senior adviser at United Against Nuclear Iran, noted that flight destinations would likely depend on rank.

While top commanders like Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf might head to Moscow, lower-ranking figures would more likely seek shelter in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the IRGC maintains operational connections, he clarified.

“For the most senior figures, Russia would probably be the most likely destination, again as we saw with Bashar al-Assad,” Golkar said, noting many officials have already moved wealth into “financial networks outside Iran.”

Golkar explained that the “invisible state,” or Bayt-e Rahbari, was designed to survive decapitation, while the ideological cost of fleeing for leaders would be high.

“Inside the regime’s ideological culture, leaving the country during the collapse would look like desertion,” Golkar noted.

They won’t like the weather, but a piece in the London Spectator suggests they’ll find like-minded thugs (but not their own thugs). The Spectator story is an analysis of Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day oration, which lacked the army tanks:

The official explanation for the missing weaponry is the threat from Ukrainian FPV drones. That threat is real, and it is itself a humiliation: the center of the Russian capital can no longer be defended against a few thousand dollars’ worth of plywood and electronics. But the parade is not the cause of anything. It is a symptom of a quieter rearrangement inside the regime, in which power is shifting away from the technocrats who run the economy and towards the men who run Putin’s bodyguard.

It is a sign of Russia’s military depletion that Putin sent a soldier with one arm into battle.

President Trump is set to arrive in China for a summit with President Xi tomorrow evening. Hudson Institute Fellow Thomas Deusterberg writes that the president has a “strong hand” to play, despite the slanted media’s reporting that Xi holds all the cards. Taking His Posse: The president has invited Elon Musk, Larry Fink, Tim Cook, and other top CEOs to join the trip to the Xi summit.

Bill McGurn raises the matter of Jimmy Lai, champion of liberty, now in a Chinese prison. Freeing Jimmy Lai would be a win for President Trump but also for …

Freeing Mr. Lai would not only get him off Beijing’s hands. It’s a helpful concession to make when Mr. Trump is pressing Beijing over its imports from Iran.

Bringing China Home. A mayor in a California town is facing federal accusations that she was secretly working for China while in office:

Eileen Wang, former mayor of Arcadia, California, has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and has agreed to plead guilty to the felony offense, the Justice Department announced. She now faces up to 10 years in federal prison along with a potential $250,000 fine, though any sentence would be determined by a federal judge.

Federal prosecutors say Wang admitted she acted “at the direction and control” of Chinese government officials from at least 2020 through 2022, coordinating with individuals in the U.S. to spread pro-Beijing messaging, all without notifying the U.S. Attorney General as required by law. The conduct described by prosecutors occurred before Wang took office on the Arcadia City Council in December 2022.

Two more from our—uh—Foreign Desk: Brendan O’Neill on how a working-class revolt against “the death cult of globalism” led to U.K. PM Keir Starmer’s recent embarrassment in local elections, and Gerard Baker about the “coming apart of British politics,” a decade after Brexit.

“Doesn’t Add Up!” is the message the New York Post’s cover headline shouts. What doesn’t add up is that New York spends $43 billion on education, and the most per student in the nation, while its public schools are shrinking and its students are failing.

New York spends a walloping $44 K per student per year. It could be even more lavish when the Mamdani budget is completed. This has nothing to do with New York per se, but Geoffrey Conti, a Princeton professor, recently wrote a fascinating piece for the Washington Post on the religious illiteracy of Ivy League students, which hampers them in understanding (among other things) great literature.

Speaking of profound ignorance, we must not fail to note Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s astonishing remark that the American Revolution was a rebellion against billionaires—and AOC doesn’t even have the excuse of an Ivy League education!

Will hordes of mothers move to California, reversing the Golden State’s storied U-Haul exodus, to take advantage of Governor Newsom’s new diaper service? Alas, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal finds Gavin’s Diaper Service all wet:

California’s government can’t keep homeless off the streets, keep energy prices low, or do much of anything else well. But never fear, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state diaper service is here.

The California Governor who wants to be President said Friday that the state will soon begin providing every “newborn delivered in a participating California hospital” 400 diapers at no cost. “This is what affordability looks like,” he said. “It’s not a slogan. It’s a box. It’s a box of diapers.” Apparently he’s serious.

Droll: The WSJ editors say that the new program “gives new meaning to the phrase ‘nanny state.’”

“Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made” is the title of a piece by former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in (where else this morning?) the Wall Street Journal:

Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. She has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave.

In the state capital, the Legislature and governor have confronted difficult fiscal trade-offs by emphasizing taxation rather than reform or performance management. The theory appears to be that prosperity can be mandated through redistribution rather than generated through growth.

Washington has a broken tax system. The reliance on sales taxes—10.55% in Seattle—is deeply regressive. 

Maybe Washington state simply needs a free diaper service?

Ms. Must mentioned Miranda Devine’s column on the misguided empathy of liberal women that can turn deadly yesterday. Kat Rosenfield employs the phrase “suicidal empathy” in a Free Press story on the same phenomenon. The title of the piece is “I Don’t Want to Put Another Black Man in Jail.” The subtitle:

The murder of a New Yorker could have been averted if not for the suicidal empathy that is spreading among victims.

We’re in the throes of redistricting battles, debates over whether to eat the rich, and the mercurial state of foreign affairs.

The most astonishing development was Vladimir Putin’s saying, at a lackluster parade in Moscow, that the Ukraine war is “coming to an end.” Who knows? “Is Ukraine Winning Without U.S. Help?” asks The Free Press. That would be ideal, right?

A similar editorial in the Wall Street Journal asks, “Is Ukraine Turning the Russian Tide?” and suggests that Putin’s “shrinking victory parade signals Ukraine’s military advances.” Meanwhile, President Trump rejects Iran’s latest proposal. Busy week for the president, who goes to China this week for a summit with Xi, which an editorial in the Wall Street Journal describes as “high stakes.” “The U.S. wants ‘stability’ but China’s Communist leader has larger ambitions,” is the subtitle.

The Washington Post (news story) reports that Xi is “holding no illusions about making lasting deals at this week’s summit, China’s leader looks to project Beijing as an alternative to U.S. volatility on the world stage.” Yes, this story is more pro-Xi (who’s never wanted to make peace) than pro-the U.S. president.

The Wall Street Journal has a front-page story on Xi’s China: “Dazzling Technology, Military Muscle—and an Economic Mess.” It’s a bit more challenging for the legacy press to portray the U.S. as an economic mess after last week’s jobs report and the stock market’s dazzling performance (though I know they will rise to the challenge). Apropos of this, Tyler Cowen advises, “Trust the Markets, Not the Headlines.”

Well, now it’s time for some fun. “Spencer Pratt can win in Los Angeles. Here’s how,” the Examiner’s media columnist Joe Concha writes. Peter Savodenik of The Free Press has the same concern: Can Pratt, a former TV reality star, who is running for Mayor of Los Angeles, win? Savodenik’s lead is worth quoting:

At last week’s mayoral debate in Los Angeles, there were three competing visions of the city on offer. There’s Mayor Karen Bass’s Democratic theory of government, according to which things are pretty good. There’s City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s uber-progressivism, according to which the city is facing an affordability crisis that demands more “planning” and fewer cops. And then there’s former reality television star Spencer Pratt, and his rage against the machine.

Pratt, 42, grew up in the Pacific Palisades, which, once upon a time, was idyllic: beautiful Spanish revival and midcentury modern homes overlooking the ocean, pools and tennis courts, a very quaint “village” full of pricey boutiques. His father was a dentist; his mother didn’t work. He went to Crossroads, which was known as the hippy-dippy school for the children of famous actors and directors. (Jonah Hill was in his class.)

“Spencer Pratt Is Making Them Sweat in L.A.” is the headline on Kyle Smith’s WSJ “Free Expression” piece. Smith writes:

In politics, the candidate who tells the best story always has the best chance of winning.

Enter Spencer Pratt, the possible next mayor of Los Angeles. His story glows with righteous outrage: Los Angeles is wasting huge sums of money on ineffectual responses to homelessness and disorder, it has areas that are Disneyland for meth heads, and it horribly mismanaged both last year’s wildfires and the rebuilding effort….

Mr. Pratt, like Golden Tempo at the Kentucky Derby, is a notional no-hoper who appears to be coming up fast on the outside. In a bluntly emotional campaign spot featuring shots of Ms. Bass’s and Ms. Raman’s multimillion-dollar homes, Mr. Pratt cut to his own residence—a trailer—and noted with unsuppressed anger, in reference to the Palisades fire, “This is where I live. They let my home burn down. I know what the consequences of failed leadership are.” He titled the spot, “They not like us,” echoing the now-classic 2024 diss track by rapper Kendrick Lamar.

A union-funded, anti-Pratt advertisement backfired. A Spencer Pratt interview by CBS.

Virginia Democrats are so furious that the state Supreme Court ruled their redistricting plan is unconstitutional, that they’re ready to resort to gutting the court. GWU law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley explains:After the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the results of the recent Democratic effort to effectively wipe out Republican representation in the state, Democratic pundits and activists have latched onto a proposal by Michigan State law professor Quinn Yeargain to gut the court by forcing the retirement of the current justices, appointing liberal activists, and then reversing the opinion. It is extremely telling that some are pushing the raw muscle play to retake power in Washington, particularly in light of the calls to pack the United States Supreme Court once the party is back in control.

Professor Yeargain declared on Substack that there is “a simple – and lawful – solution: Send the entire court into early retirement.” Under this plan, Virginia Democrats would adopt an absurdly low age for retirement in a gut-and-pack scheme: Yeargain suggested that they could set “the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.”

Ms. Must promised that we would get to the debate over whether to eat the rich. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is currently the top proponent of eating the rich (of taxing them to Florida). Tasty as the rich might be (with a little rosemary and butter), Michael Goodwin argues that the Mayor’s policies are harmful to all the city. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is winning praise from unusual sources (City Journal and an editorial in the Wall Street Journal) for her decision to buck the education unions to opt in for federal scholarship credits.

Please Don’t Eat These Billionaires. “Billionaires to California’s Rescue” is the headline of an American Spectator article by Ken Khachigian, formerly a Ronald Reagan speechwriter. Here’s the subtitle:

Faced with punitive taxes and escalating hostility, America’s most successful entrepreneurs are beginning to challenge progressive dominance head-on.

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine writes that the misplaced empathy of women is being weaponized by the Left, and that this makes the world more dangerous for us all:

A young liberal woman refused to cooperate with prosecutors after violent recidivist Rhamell Burke attacked her on the subway five weeks before he allegedly pushed a retired NYC teacher to his death on Thursday. 

Now the 23-year-old woman has regrets.

“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail,” she told The Post.

Maybe if she had indulged in less self-congratulatory empathy for the maniac who allegedly tried to kill her and felt more compassion for her fellow New Yorkers left to the mercy of an out-of-control predator roaming the streets, Ross Falzone would still be alive. 

Another twist on empathy. The U.S. job market is changing. A news story in the Wall Street Journal reports that the emerging job market skews against men:

The American labor market is tilting away from men….

As the needs of an aging population stack up, occupations that men have historically been loath to enter, such as jobs as home health aides and medical assistants, will likely play a bigger role in the labor market. A growing educational divide is also part of the equation: Women now earn bachelor’s degrees at a substantially higher rate than men, and employment rates among people who are college-educated are substantially higher than those who aren’t.

Two Classic Gentleman: Ms. Must can’t close without highly recommending City Journal’s printing of the new foreword for “Truth Teller” Theodore Dalrymple’s now 25-year-old classic, “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass,” and Peter Berkowitz’s on “Harvey C. Mansfield’s Honorable Quest to Educate Harvard,” at RCP.

Hope you had a nice Mother’s Day. Lots of ladies looking like they were being taken somewhere for a special treat after Mass in church yesterday. Pertinent to this is Caitlin Flanagan’s Free Press piece, which has this subtitle:

Everyone is arguing about whether to have children. Almost no one is talking about what you get when you do.