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Author: Charlotte Hays

Madman Gets Ceasefire! Dems Lose Their Minds! Middle Class Growing! UN Useless! Queen Liz I: Not Trans! And More!

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

“Apocalypse Not Now” is the New York Post headline.

Ninety minutes before the deadline was to expire, it was announced that President Trump had agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran if whoever is in charge there opens the Strait of Hormuz. The markets did a happy dance. Here’s the president on Truth Social.  

Axios details in an exclusive that it was the Supreme Leader, formerly believed to be incapacitated, who instructed his negotiators, for the first time since the war began, to move towards a deal:

As Trump was publicly threatening total annihilation, there were signs of diplomatic momentum behind the scenes — though even sources close to Trump didn’t know which outcome to expect right up until a ceasefire was announced.

Exciting, right? What’s not to like? Well, our friends on the left lost their minds, as a New York Post editorial puts it:

“TACO,” anti-Trump crackpot Rick Wilson posted on social media, shortly after the president announced a two-week cease-fire that has Iran agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

This “Trump always chickens out” sentiment was repeated by left-wing pundits, who only hours before were furious that Trump was threating to “blow up the whole country.”

So, which is it? You’re mad when he threatens to bomb a country, then mock him when he doesn’t?

The U.K. Telegraph also has a good article on how the ceasefire unfolded. According to the same newspaper, the U.S. and Iran will work together to remove the “deeply buried” uranium in the Islamic Republic, Donald Trump said.

While the world was on tenterhooks yesterday, the New York Times fumed that President Trump’s rhetoric was “beyond bluster.” The Times quoted an expert who said that the president’s rhetoric “damaged his credibility as a negotiator.” Apparently not, though.

The Free Press’s Eli Lake gets it. “Trump’s Madman Act Delivers in Iran” is Lake’s headline. “Now that Trump has postponed his threat to ‘end Iranian civilization,’ America has won twice,” Lake argues. The dauntless Free Press even published a story this morning with this headline: “My Friend in Iran Isn’t Happy About the Ceasefire“:

We were on the phone when the news broke. He sighed—and wondered if Trump will ‘come back and finish the job.’

Michael Goodwin compares Donald Trump and the unblustering Jimmy Carter in a column headlined “Trump’s Iran Approach a Stark Reminder of How Hapless Jimmy Carter Butchered Saving US Hostages in Tehran.” Steve Forbes writes that Iran’s “nuclear insanity” means that the U.S. and our allies can’t afford to blink.”

Daddy Is Mad. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the man who called the president Daddy, is coming to the White House today for what Politico calls a “fraught trip.” Rutte’s mission is to prevent a Trump break with NATO. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal helps Rutte prep for the meeting—in a nutshell, Europe is doing better with defense spending, but it needed to help the U.S. in the Iran conflict.

Guess which well-funded (largely by the American taxpayer) international organization has been utterly useless. The United Nations, which, as a WSJ editorial notes, has offered no help with Hormuz:

In times of crisis, serious people don’t turn to the United Nations. The failure on Tuesday of an already watered-down Security Council resolution to try to do something—anything—about Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz again shows why. Now the states in Europe and Asia that had hoped to hide behind the U.N. logo must make a real decision.

A hold on the total annihilation of the civilization of Iran is not the only pleasant news today. Closer to home and very good for U.S. civilization, our middle class is growing.  The estimable Jason Riley addresses this phenomenon (“The American Middle Class Keeps Getting Richer“):

Earlier this year, the Journal editorial page told you about a study from the American Enterprise Institute’s Stephen Rose and Scott Winship that pushes back on that glum narrative. This week the Journal’s news department followed up with a front-page story highlighting that research, which demonstrates upward mobility in the U.S. is alive and kicking.

Messrs. Rose and Winship divided households into five categories—poor or near poor, lower middle class, core middle class, upper middle class and rich. Technically, the middle class has been getting smaller, but that’s only because more families have ascended the income ladder. …

Populist rhetoric is designed to appeal to emotion, not reason. And the political class has no problem stoking voter grievances, real or imagined, to advance their various agendas, be it wealth redistribution, industrial policy or some other big-government scheme. It’s up to us to separate the rhetoric from the reality.

Unfortunately, fraudsters specializing in public programs are also doing well. CBS reported that one hospice doctor raked in $71.7 million in Medicare claims:

While fraud in the hospice industry is a long-running and complex problem, the role of physicians – knowingly or unwittingly facilitating it – has largely gone overlooked.

Let’s hope the DOJ’s new taxpayer fraud unit will be effective. It will be interesting to see how the Dems, so much of whose agenda depends on promising more taxpayer spending on fraud-vulnerable programs, respond.

Blue city mayors are increasingly city organizers, according to John Fund at National Review. It’s not a good trend:

Historians may someday trace the decline of America’s great cities in part to the mayors who were elected to run them.

The most populous U.S. cities are New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Each has a mayor with no real private-sector job experience. Zohran Mamdani was a “community organizer” before being elected to the New York legislature at age 29. Brandon Johnson of Chicago was a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union before his election in 2023. Karen Bass briefly worked as a physician’s assistant before becoming a community organizer and launching a political career that vaulted her into the job of Los Angeles mayor in 2022.

Each of those mayors has demonstrated a lack of practical management skills and knowledge of how complex organizations run, and an addiction to patronage politi

Bellwethers? Republican Clay Fuller held onto Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old seat for his party in Georgia’s special election. But Democrats overperformed, narrowing the gap in Georgia. The Dems also won a high-stakes, low-profile state Supreme Court race in the swing state of Wisconsin.

The Devil Wears Prada and …. Hearts New York’s Hamas-friendly First Lady. Kirsten Fleming describes the hellish situation:

In a Vogue cover story released Tuesday to promote the upcoming “The Devil Wears Prada” sequel, Wintour and Meryl Streep — who plays Miranda Priestly, the fictionalized version of the powerful former editor — team up for a Q&A conducted by director Greta Gerwig.

The 76-year-old stepped down from the magazine last June but still remains atop Condé Nast as its chief content officer. And never has the icy Wintour looked so playful.

And then there is the interview, where Wintour gushes over a woman who liked reprehensible social media posts about Oct. 7 rape denial.

“I’m full of admiration for New York City’s new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage — young and modern and also entirely herself,” said Wintour.

Please, God, don’t let our elite class grow, too.

In other news of New York’s Fab First Family, “Mamdani’s Equity Plan Misses What Makes New York Expensive,” according to a story at City Journal.

New Yorkers want lower rents; Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s solution is more government. His preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan, released yesterday, responds to the city’s affordability problems with a sprawling managerial framework—hundreds of goals, strategies, and indicators across 45 agencies. The plan and its new “True Cost of Living” (TCOL) measure suggest that the administration is focused more on process and performance than on lowering New Yorkers’ cost of living.

And now it can be told: Queen Elizabeth I was NOT—repeat not—trans. Julie Burchill argues that the persistent, 21st-century campaign to portray the monarch as such reflects “rampant misogyny” of today.  

Heroic Rescue for the Ages Detailed. Left Very Excited about (But Probably Can’t Define) War Crimes. NY Homeless Couple Does Everything in the Road. Did Your Supermarket Do Ramadan? More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Well, that was spine-tingling.

In case you had the distinct misfortune of missing yesterday’s briefing on the dazzling rescue of two American airmen (given by President Trump and military and intelligence officials), here is a full video.

Charles Lipson, an American correspondent of the London Spectator, writes that it was impossible to listen to yesterday’s briefing without “an overwhelming sense of patriotic emotion, suffused with gratitude for the men and women who have pledged their lives to keep America safe.”

Well, alas and alack, it was possible to listen to the presser without patriotism or gratitude. Powerline (which also has a video of the presser) has a description (“Daring Rescues and War Crimes”) of the opposite reaction:

The New York Times has been promoting the idea that for the U.S. to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges would be a “war crime.” Yesterday’s Times email bore the subject heading “Trump revels in threats to commit war crimes in Iran.” In today’s press conference, a New York Times reporter asked President Trump whether he is concerned about committing war crimes by bombing power plants and bridges.

So, what defines bombing power plants or bridges as a war crime?

But what defines a war crime? Is it the destruction of “civilian infrastructure” such as bridges, which seems to be the popular definition currently (since President Trump has vowed to do this, if necessary—and here)? National Review’s Andrew McCarthy is no fan of what he calls “President Trump’s disgraceful rhetoric,” but McCarthy is clear about what constitutes a war crime:

We should stop speaking of “civilian” infrastructure, because it deludes us. “Civilian” is a Western concept, based on the Western understanding of the individual’s relation to the state, the individual’s array of civil rights that states are formed to promote and safeguard. In a sharia-supremacist state such as Iran, there are no citizens, no “constituents” of the state’s government, as we understand these terms. There are subjects and rulers

The war crime narrative quickly spread from the haughty New York Times to—well, everywhere—as a USA TODAY story headlined “Why are you getting war memes on your feed?” shows. Slate’s Fred Kaplan portrays President Trump as “openly” calling on the nation to commit war crimes. In “The Iran War Around the World,” Walter Russell Mead gives his take on losses and gains for other countries. Biggest loser if regime collapses: Russia.

The Man in White. “Pope Leo XIV Goes to War” by Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal describes the Holy Father’s Easter remarks about peace:

Pope Leo didn’t name names. He didn’t have to. This was a shot at Donald Trump. In the abstract, the pope’s words might apply to any number of leaders, including Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. But the press are taking this as a shot against President Trump—and that is how it was meant.

McGurn is critical of Pope Leo and other recent Popes for giving the erroneous impression that pacifism is the only Christian response to war. But that is not the case:

[P]acifism is always an individual option, not a communal response. To put it another way, I have the right to turn my cheek. I don’t have the right to turn my neighbor’s cheek.

In “Why the Vatican and the White House Are on the Outs,” The Free Press takes readers inside the collapse of White-House-Vatican cooperation. This Just In: The Iranian regime is calling upon (I bet that’s really ordering) young people to surround infrastructure targets as human shields. Not actively participating: Supreme Leader Junior, who is said to be “unconscious” and “unable to be involved in decisions” because of injuries. Meanwhile, President Trump’s deadline tonight draws near without a breakthrough in negotiations. Nicole Russell of USA TODAY calls the deadline “strategic, not stupid.” Okay, Ms. Must admits she is detecting some hyperbole on the president’s part.

The Artemis II astronauts are heading home after venturing farther from the Earth than human beings have ever gone. Rich Lowry captured the exuberance of the mission beautifully in a column headlined “Yes, Boldly Go.” Lowry says we must also go boldly to Mars. The Artemis II crew also got to see a solar eclipse during a lunar flyby:

The mission’s showstopper event gave the astronauts the world’s first-ever glimpses of parts of the lunar dark side, which they described as being “impossibly rugged” and “alien” — and broke the historic record set more than 50 years ago by Apollo 13.

They later crowded around the windows — wearing protective glasses — to watch a solar eclipse. Unlike on Earth, where the celestial phenomenon lasts just a few minutes, the crew’s glimpse lasted for nearly an hour.

In “My Morning in Mission Control,” The Free Press’s Frannie Block asks if NASA administrator Jared Isaacman can build NASA back into the leading space power it once was.

Back on earth, New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser is miffed that in “Mad Mamdani’s” New York, a homeless couple is permitted to do everything—and I mean everything—in the middle of the sidewalk:

A homeless couple — or should I say “unhoused,” a euphemism that implies victimhood — lives outside in filth in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s New York. Boozing. Sexing. Using the sidewalk as an al fresco toilet….

And authorities shrug and do nothing, claiming they can’t force the filthy and aggressive pair to leave or, at a minimum, wash. Not as long as lefty policies treat them as poor, downtrodden recipients of society’s disgust rather than entitled perverts luxuriating in squalor of their own making.

Meanwhile, Howard Husock writes about “Mamdani’s Racial Equity Obsession” at The Free Press. Mayor Mamdani believes that New York’s history has been “one of colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression,” and so he wants policies that “privilege minorities.” Like Ms. Peyser’s randy homeless couple? More on Mamdani’s “racial equity” plan.

And “New York Times Finds More Illegal Aliens It Thinks Should Be Allowed To Break The Law” is by Eddie Scarry at The Free Press:

It’s been a minute, but The New York Times is back with a couple of articles meant to assist in blocking the deportation of every single illegal alien in the country, even if it means excusing their reckless, dangerous conduct.

Also back on earth, “The Islamification of Britain” proceeds apace according to Joanna Williams in City Journal:

In Britain, March meant Ramadan. My local supermarket advised me to “Make this holy month meaningful” and offered “everything you need for Iftar, Suhoor, and beyond,” including a range of halal foods. At televised Premiership football matches, play stopped to allow Muslim players to break their fast. Days before Eid, Muslims gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to pray in public. The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, hailed the “power of being Muslim” as he addressed thousands at the “biggest Iftar in the Western world.”…

For more than a generation now, British politicians have told voters that “diversity is our strength,” and that multiculturalism should be welcomed. Yet, what has emerged are decidedly monocultural communities that are prepared to act collectively in their own political interests—and a political class afraid that commenting on the phenomenon will expose them to accusations of racism or Islamophobia.

I noticed the same thing at D.C. grocery stores—displays of Ramadan fast-breaking foods were prominently displayed, but nothing about what one might cook during Lent.

In “The Left Is Baffled—but Still Repulsed—by the White Working Class,” Victor Davis Hanson argues that the Left simply won’t be able to hide its condescension. I think we can say that Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was able to hide her lack of moderation during her campaign—but Virginia has caught on, Jim Geraghty says.

Hatchet Job. Politico profiles the DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon. Fears she will emerge more important in post-Bondi DOJ. Congrats, Harmeet.

Only the U.S. Could Have Pulled Off Rescue. Miranda Devine on Greasy Gavin’s Helpmeet. SNL Chortles at Trump Assassination Joke. Dog Votes in CA. And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Phew … the downing of two American pilots over Iran might have ended in tragedy. Instead, it was a uniquely American triumph. “Britain couldn’t have pulled off this Iran rescue,” admits a Member of the U.K. Parliament:

The American airman will have had to display huge courage but he would have known the most powerful military in the world was with him.

“We got him,” President Trump said. The New York Times report said that the capture of the Air Force Colonel (who has not been identified” could have been “possible leverage” for Iran—ya think? Unlike the U.K. Member of Parliament, a New York Times analysis found that the American rescue “dangerously emboldened” both the U.S. and Iran.

The New York Post (Ms. Must proffers thanks for a great newspaper that doesn’t parrot the pathetic elites) describes how a seriously injured American pilot climbed a mountain, hid in a crevice, and dodged Iranian bounty-hunters for 36 hours:

The tough-as-nails US Air Force colonel shot down over Iran was seriously wounded but still climbed a 7,000-foot ridge and hid in a crevice to evade capture for 36 hours — even with bounty-hunters on his tail.

The cool-as-a-cucumber American hero, who has yet to be publicly identified, spent one and a half days hiding in the Zagros Mountains range and dodging the enemy after his F-15E went down in hostile territory Friday.

The CIA and SEAL Team 6 resorted to subterfuge to throw Iranian bounty hunters off the trail. Here’s another account of the amazing rescue. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal cites the rescue as evidence of American competence and bravery:

Within hours of the crash, the press was already asking the White House press secretary if the airman’s capture would complicate President Trump’s war strategy. Instead the rescue is a moment to celebrate a wartime triumph.

It is nothing short of remarkable that more U.S. pilots haven’t been shot down in the month since the war began. This testifies to the U.S. and Israeli dominance of the skies, even if the risks of a lucky shot from the ground can never be eliminated in a conflict.

President Trump has given Iran until Tuesday evening to open the Strait of Hormuz or else. The New York Times quotes Iranian officials saying that Trump’s “or elses” amount to war crimes. The Free Press’s Eli Lake is also against bombing Iran’s civilian infrastructure, but because it will be needed if opposition forces are able to establish a new government.

Super-duper New York Post op-ed by former CIA agent Martin Gurri answers the 10 most important questions about the Iran war (e.g., is this war legal?). “Experts” are arguing that Iran is winning, leading The Free Press’s Armin Rosen to ask, “Why are so many pundits, professors, and think-tankers arguing the absurdity that Iran is the real winner of a conflict it is lopsidedly losing?” This Just In: Iran’s Intelligence Chief has just been killed. Mark Penn posts on X that the next two weeks are critical.

Oh, let’s have some good, clean fun. We won’t be downright sledgehammer nasty as liberals are about conservative women, but Ms. Must predicts that Jennifer Siebel Newsom is destined to give conservatives more fun than we’ve had since Teresa Heinz Kerry addressed the DNC. Miranda Devine writes about Gavin Newsom’s helpmeet this morning:

Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the very avatar of Democrat Woman.

Haughty, hectoring and pleased with herself, she is single-handedly wrecking her henpecked husband Gavin’s lofty political ambitions.

Over the weekend, she inserted herself into the news again with an Instagram video pontificating that the departure of Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem from President Trump’s cabinet is proof that the commander-in-chief is waging a “war on all women.”

As she enunciated every bad word she could think of for Trump’s “sexism and misogyny,” she bizarrely smiled: “Devalued” — smile. “Degraded” — smile. “Diminished” — smile.

Meanwhile, a dog voted, and his vote was counted in California. Allysia Finley has the story—and its implications.

Obviously, Ms. Newsom wasn’t the only Dem on Hate Trump duty this weekend. SNL was also at its post (via the Daily Caller):

The live audience of Saturday Night Live loudly applauded a joke about the possibility of President Donald Trump being assassinated while attending a musical.

Trump attended the opening night of “Chicago” Tuesday at the Kennedy Center with First Lady Melania Trump, where he was “mostly cheered,” according to the Associated Press. SNL’s “Weekend Update” host Michael Che made an apparent reference to President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated during a performance at Ford’s Theater in 1865.

Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, which makes the “joke” even more unfunny. 

It appeared during oral arguments last week that the Supreme Court was not likely to rule in favor of President Trump’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship. Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter is readying his troops. “Don’t Freak Out When We Lose the Birthright Citizenship Case,” he advises.

George Washington University Law Professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley, also sympathetic to limits on birthright citizenship, argues that we must “reclaim” our own birthright, even if it means a constitutional amendment:

We are becoming a virtual mockery as we watch millions game the birthright citizenship system. China alone has hundreds of tourism firms that have made fortunes in arranging for Chinese citizens to come to U.S. territory to give birth and then return home.

No republic can last without controlling its borders and the qualifications for citizenship. We have allowed U.S. citizenship to become a mere commodity for the most affluent or unscrupulous among us.

The combination of open borders and open-ended citizenship is an existential threat to this Republic. 

“Bailing Out Chicago Would Send a Dangerous Message” is the headline on a City Journal story by Thomas Savidge. Bailing out Chicago? Savidge writes:

At its core, Chicago’s fiscal problems are straightforward. For decades, the city has committed itself to unsustainable spending levels. While its ridership is declining, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is flush with funds thanks to sales tax and driver fees. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) expenditures keep growing despite declining student enrollment. In addition to structural budget deficits, Chicago has some of the nation’s largest unfunded pension liabilities.

Meantime, residents are fleeing both Chicago and the State of Illinois….

The only constructive way forward is for federal officials to make an explicit warning against bailouts. When fiscally mismanaged states and cities see that Washington won’t enable their behavior, they may finally make the necessary and painful adjustments to restore fiscal solvency.

How Chicago manages its fiscal situation going forward will tell us a lot—both about the city’s financial future and about Washington’s response.

“Even Southern States Should Worry About Migration to Florida” is the headline on a WSJ op-ed. Florida attracts families because of school choice. The author suggests that other southern states should beef up their school choice policies to keep up with Florida.

More Education News. The Washington Post reports on a great development:  

An upstart college entrance exam — designed to be an alternative to the ACT and SAT and featuring works from ancient Western civilization — is gaining support from the Trump administration and conservatives in red and purple states.

“We’ve had some big wins,” said Jeremy Tate, founder of the test and the Maryland company behind it, Classic Learning Initiatives.

While all three tests have verbal and math sections, the CLT stands out because it mainly features passages from noted philosophers, religious scholars, scientists and authors in the canon of Western literature, including Plato, St. Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare. Students can take the test at a traditional testing site or online at home.

One of King Charles’ titles is “Defender of the Faith” (first conferred by a Pope but then by Parliament after the Pope revoked it). Some U.K. Christians are angry that the King, having delivered himself of Ramadan and Eid statements, declined to deliver an Easter message. Ms. Must’s Easter message is that she hopes you had a beautiful Easter Sunday.

Was that so hard, Your Majesty?  

Bondi Out. The War on the War. Miscarriage of Justice: Cop Killer Verdict a ‘Gut Punch’ to NYPD. You’ll Never Guess Where the Kids Are Going? Church.

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

President Trump has ousted his second Cabinet official.

Former AG (it was that fast!) Pam Bondi learned her fate Wednesday in a ride to the Supreme Court with President Trump: 

During the drive, Trump told her, “I think it’s time,” she would later tell an associate. 

The ensuing hours were as awkward and chaotic as Bondi’s 14-month tenure as the nation’s top law-enforcement official. Trump and Bondi briefly sat near each other during the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, but the president soon switched chairs. Later, Bondi would ask Trump if she could keep her job until the summer. The president declined.

The President called Bondi “a Great American Patriot” in a Truth Social post announcing her departure after a 14-month tenure that started with the declaration, “We love Pam.”  Well, it was a nicer send-off than Jeff Sessions got. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal comments:

Is there a worse job in Washington, D.C., than Attorney General under President Trump? We can’t think of many, and on Thursday Pam Bondi learned this the hard way as the President sacked her after only 14 months on the job….

Ms. Bondi’s great fault is that she was never good at saying no. She blundered on the Epstein files by boasting about big revelations that never materialized. This fed the conspiracists who fretted about a cover-up. A manageable problem turned into a political fiasco that has hurt the President.

Among the moments that defined Bondi was her claim that the late convicted pedophile Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk and would be released. It was never released (probably because there wasn’t such a list). Whenever there is a breaking legal story, Ms. Musts asks herself: What does Andrew McCarthy say? McCarthy says that “Bondi couldn’t do the impossible“:

From the president’s standpoint, lawfare — the leveraging of the government’s law enforcement apparatus against political enemies and for partisan ends — is a strategy that must be used because it was used against him. …

There are many ways in which Bondi came up short: She didn’t have DOJ experience, she’s not a good communicator, her instincts aren’t great. But in the end, the job on the terms offered was one at which it was impossible to succeed.

Offering a different perspective, The Federalist headline is “The Only Criterion For Trump’s Next AG Is How Many Antifa And Russia Hoaxers He’ll Arrest.” Eli Lake of The Free Press counters that “Bondi Did What Trump Wanted—Not What He Needed.” Lake cites the Epstein files, where doing Trump’s bidding, Lake argues, backfired.

There Are Two Wars. “The War—and the War on the War” is the headline on a Free Press piece by classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson. VDH argues:

Militarily, the war is going as well as could be envisioned, yet Democrats seek to turn it into another Vietnam or Afghanistan—hoping to win control of Congress at the expense of national security….

AEI’s Danielle Pletka has been hitting it out of the ballpark on the Iran conflict. In her latest, she takes on our NATO allies, which is akin in polite society to saying the canapes suck. Pletka writes:

So now, as we engage in a war to squelch the nuclear, missile, and terroristic ambitions of the Islamic Republic (not to speak of stopping them from killing their own people), is it presumptuous of us to ask — not for help, mind you — but to overfly or use bases in our NATO allied nations?

We’re not asking for troops; not for planes; not for fuel; not for love. Just overflight and landing rights. And guess what? We had to bully our “bestie” in Europe, Sir Keir Starmer, to allow us to use Diego Garcia. Our pal Giorgia Meloni denied us landing rights on Sigonella in Sicily. The Spanish won’t let us fly over their precious Jew-hating country. France has reportedly refused us overflight to resupply Israel. …

These are our “allies.” These are nations in which Iran has conducted multiple terrorist attacks. These are nations that acted to refer Iran’s nuclear non-compliance to the UN Security Council. These are nations that import more oil via the Strait of Hormuz than the United States. Far more.

The New York Post’s cover headline: “Justice Was Not Served.” It refers to the verdict in the trial of Guy Rivera, who shot and killed hero cop Jonathan Diller in 2024:

Cop-killer Guy Rivera was stunningly acquitted of first-degree murder Wednesday for fatally shooting the married dad and officer. He was instead convicted of the lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter in Diller’s death — and found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of Diller’s partner, who survived the March 2024 carnage in Queens.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the verdict a “gut punch” to the NYPD. But how did it happen? It is worth considering whether juries in New York absorb their mayor’s anti-policing agenda. Let us hope that a jury will not take such a cavalier attitude if this terrible New York shooting of a 7-month-old baby in Brooklyn comes before them.

More Crime. What kind of hospice has a 97% survival rate and has received more than $7 million in Medicare funds? This kind:

The FBI arrested a married couple Thursday accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.45 million while running a hospice with a survival rate reported to be more than 97% after five years. They were the first in a series of arrests planned Thursday, federal officials told CBS News….

A high survival rate at a hospice provider is one of a series of red flags identified by state auditors for fraud because most people enter hospice care in the final stages of a terminal illness. In past cases of fraud, operators were found to be using false or stolen identities to collect federal reimbursements for palliative care. 

The FBI raid took place in San Dimas, California, where the hospice is located. Kudos to CBS News (linked above) for the hospice scoop. I linked yesterday to “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud” in City Journal. Don’t expect blue state politicians to necessarily crack down—these scams involve federal welfare money, the lifeblood of the Left.

USA TODAY’S Ingrid Jaques has written a column that needed to be written. Love or hate former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, she doesn’t deserve the humiliation brought about because of pointless stories about her cross-dressing husband.

It’s the over-the-top mocking and apparent glee so many people are taking from this family’s pain that rubs me the wrong way. And it’s coming from both sides. Since Noem lost President Donald Trump’s support, apparently, it’s fair game for the right to pile on, too. 

That said, Malcolm Clark uses the unfortunate Noem story to make a point about what the headline calls “the dark secret of trans.” “Men who wear women’s clothes were not ‘born in the wrong body’ – they do it for a sexual thrill,” Clark argues in Spiked Online.

While we’re about gender, see “How Gender Medicine Set Itself Up for Disaster” in Compact Magazine. Just one wrong way:

It’s likely no one has done more to push pediatric gender medicine toward more liberal prescribing practices than Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who until recently directed the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Charismatic and indefatigable, the pediatrician has been particularly vocal in questioning the comprehensive psychosocial assessments WPATH’s guidelines recommend for minors seeking gender-transition interventions. What some have held up as invaluable safeguards, she has disparaged as stigmatizing and counterproductive. 

Some Good News. U.S. hiring rebounded in March.  

Since it’s Good Friday, it’s the perfect day to mention that young people are turning to church in record numbers (here and here). Meanwhile, Unherd asks, “Can We Have the Good without Good Friday?” The article suggests that the movie “The Exorcist” is helpful in deciding.

Wishing you a good Good Friday and a happy Easter.

The President’s Speech. We’re Back in Space! Also in Space: KBJ Outdoes Herself. What’s Missing from Presidential Libraries? VDH Calls NATO ‘Foolish’ And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

While it was very far from a “mission accomplished” speech, President Trump’s 19-minute address to the nation last night emphasized that U.S. goals have been substantially achieved. The Federalist’s Eddie Scarry sums it up:

There are another two or three weeks of fighting the war in Iran, President Trump said Wednesday in a nationally televised address.

Trump said Iran is “really no longer a threat” after more than a month of combat. Trump also stated that in a short time the U.S. would withdraw from the conflict and leave the still-imperiled Strait of Hormuz in the hands of other countries to “take it” and “cherish it” on their own.

The Hormuz Strait, a key passage for global energy shipment, is currently choked off as Iran threatens to target cargo ships attempting to flow through.

The imperiled Strait of Hormuz is a gift that other nations really did not want. The Editors of National Review question whether leaving Hormuz to be sorted out by other nations is in U.S. interests. Unlike many other countries, the U.S. gets only a small portion of its energy through the Strait. Interestingly, Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal suggested before the speech that Hormuz would “solve itself when the shooting stops” in a column headlined “Hormuz, Shmormuz.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal praises the president for finally making his case for war (I guess 47 years of Iran’s bloody regime wasn’t persuasive enough?) and saying that the U.S. won’t end the war until our goals are accomplished.

The Free Press’ Eli Lake also observes that the U.S. isn’t folding its tents. “Trump’s Speech: No TACO This Time,” is Lake’s headline. Lake argues, “The pundits thought the president would declare that he was winding down the war. Instead, he said it was still full speed ahead.” Eye of the Beholder: Susan Page of USA TODAY, meanwhile, saw in the speech “a head for the exits in Iran [that] leaves complications behind.”

The market wanted a speedier exit with Hormuz open. Oil prices are up, and stocks tumbled. Iran issued threats. Survivor Derangement Syndrome: Fans of the CBS show were outraged that the president’s speech cut into their favorite show. Before we leave Iran, there’s NATO to be considered. In an editorial headlined “Bomb Iran but Blow Up NATO?” the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board is sympathetic to the president’s frustration with European allies but counseled that the end of NATO would be a boon to Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing.

Victor Davis Hanson is blunter in “A Foolish NATO Was a Big Loser in the Iran War.”

We’re Back in Space! “Artemis II Completes First Day of Its NASA Lunar Mission” is a New York Times headline:

A towering orange-and-white NASA rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday evening, lifting four astronauts toward space and transporting spectators’ imaginations to a future in which Americans may again set foot on the moon.

As they did during the heyday of the Apollo program, which first put men on the lunar surface, spectators squeezed onto the beaches along Central Florida’s Space Coast. The crowds cheered when the powerful rocket launched into the clear sky at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time. It traveled eastward, over the Atlantic Ocean, on a journey that will take astronauts around the moon but not land there.

Going to the Moon Is Cool. There are strategic reasons to go to the Moon. Boots on the Moon: Axios sums up the dazzling achievement:

Artemis II’s planned crewed lunar flyby is set to mark the closest humanity has come to the Moon since the Apollo days.

It’s also a key step towards NASA’s grand ambition to return human boots to lunar soil, and the Trump administration’s dreams of a permanent Moon base.

In a way, going to the Moon is Back to the Future.

The Supreme Court, the press seems to think, is leaning towards birthright citizenship, even for children born to transient people in the U.S. illegally. “It turns out that the Constitution is a suicide pact, after all,” Powerline’s Bill Glahn writes in a post headlined “Birth Tourism.” Glahn does the math and observes:

And the birth tourists don’t even have to live here. They can vote absentee for life from overseas. And they get to pick which state to vote “from.” And I can guarantee you, given the nations of origin, none of those absentee votes are coming back marked “Republican.”

The Washington Post suggests in an editorial that the Court could take a middle path on birthright citizenship:

The first path is a sweeping constitutional ruling that the 14th Amendment of 1868 requires automatic citizenship for anyone born to immigrants in the country illegally, for now and all time. The second is a narrower ruling that blocks Trump’s unilateral effort to rewrite U.S. citizenship rules but leaves the door cracked for Congress to legislate on the subject in the future.

The Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro writes in the New York Post that the issue is not going to go away:

But we could end up with a splintered decision, with plenty of concurrences on the finer points of ratification debates, precedent — especially Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case granting citizenship to the children of noncitizen permanent residents — and statutory interpretation.

President Trump won’t like that at all, but it could be a winning issue for Republicans in the midterms, energizing not just the base but those many independents for whom immigration is a decisive issue.

Guess which Justice stood out yesterday? Of course, it was KBJ. I positively pant for her dazzling obiter dicta. What other Justice would compare birthright citizenship to losing your wallet in Japan? Brilliant! PJ Media’s Matt Margolis spotlights the Justice in a post subtly headlined “This Might Be the DUMBEST Argument Justice Jackson Has Ever Made.”

Meanwhile, Hot Air’s David Strom steps into the arena with a post headlined “Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Not the Idiot You Think She Is.” Well, you just don’t get KBJ:

A lot of people have been noticing that even her liberal colleagues are exasperated with Jackson, who speaks by far the most in oral arguments, and often seems to make absurd and self-contradictory arguments. …

Given how stupid this LOOKS, how could I argue that it is not stupid in fact?

Insert Critical Theory, or Critical Legal Theory in this case, which is a subset of CT, just like Queer Theory and CRT. All of them assert that words and, in particular, the law, are all about power structures. The current legal system is designed to preserve the power of the ruling elite, or white supremacy, or colonialism, or some form of oppression or another. 

George Washington University Law Professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley addresses Justice Jackson’s “narrow view” of the First Amendment.

I’ll Believe It When I See It. The Senate passed by voice a bill to fund most of DHS. The House will vote when it returns from the Easter holiday.

No Trouble Believing This. James Carville says that after midterms, the Dems will “go after” President Trump and his “stupid, jack— kids.” Karl Rove tips us to the midterm races to watch—the ones that will guide Dem presidential hopefuls as to how far left to go.

There’s one country the International Criminal Court isn’t messing with. It’s Iran. “The ICC’s silence reveals its politicization and the urgent need for tougher American sanctions,” says a WSJ op-ed.

“Anti-Trump catastrophism is the real menace to the West,” writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked Online. O’Neill finds the elite’s dream of an American defeat in Iran scares me far more than Trump’s premature claims of victory.

Teflon Hair Gel? “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud” in City Journal reports that California has lost at least $180 billion to fraud, according to officials and experts.

What’s missing in the presidential libraries of former President Obama and President Trump? Books.

Be good. It’s Maundy Thursday!

Court to Consider Birthright Citizenship Today. President Trump to Address Nation Tonight. The Ms. Must Challenge: Can Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Sentences Be Paraphrased? Poor Mr. Noem. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

All eyes are on SCOTUS today.

The Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the fraught matter of birthright citizenship today after handing down a major free speech ruling yesterday.

The Court will address the constitutionality of President Trump’s Executive Order to exclude from automatic citizenship the children of illegal aliens. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues that the Trump EO would “change the settled meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment.

On the same page, Georgetown University’s renowned constitutional lawyer, Randy E. Barnett, argues that “Trump is right on birthright citizenship”:

President Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of nonresident aliens goes before the Supreme Court Wednesday, and conventional wisdom has it that the president will lose in Trump v. Barbara. If the court stays true to the original meaning of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, however, the conventional wisdom will prove wrong.

The constitutional debate is about the original concept embodied in the text that explains these exclusions and whether that concept embraces or excludes children born on U.S. soil to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily in the U.S. The court has never squarely addressed this question.

Dan McLaughlin of National Review argues that the “constitutional case against birthright citizenship is strongest when dealing with the children of transients through the country.” The respected Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo raises the specter of “larger questions about blood, soil,” in the Washington Monthly. Fox Digital has an exhaustive and highly recommended report on “the issues at stake.” President Trump is threatening to attend oral arguments, which would be a first for a sitting president.

In yesterday’s landmark ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado ban on therapists even discussing conversion therapy with patients. An editorial in the Washington Post hails the ruling for repelling “an egregious assault’ on the First Amendment.” “Conversion Therapy Is Controversial. It’s Also Free Speech” is a headline at The Free Press. Jed Rubenfeld led off TFP story this way:

Can a state permit therapists to assist in “transitioning” the gender of minors but bar them from assisting kids who want to “detransition”? Can therapists be stopped from encouraging kids who feel unsure about their gender to become more comfortable with their biological sex? In an 8-1 decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court answered those questions with a resounding no. It’s a victory for free speech—and, to be perfectly honest, for sanity.

Some news outlets described the ruling as “almost unanimous.” It was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who produced a lone dissent. Fox Digital:

Jackson’s fiery 35-page dissent, which she read from the bench when the high court announced the opinion, was longer than the majority opinion and Kagan’s concurrence combined.

“Professional medical speech does not intersect with the marketplace of ideas: ‘In the context of medical practice we insist upon competence, not debate,’” Jackson, a Biden appointee wrote, later adding, “Treatment standards exist in America.”

Gentle Reader, can you paraphrase Justice Jackson’s highlighted sentence above? I know I can’t. I wonder if Jackson can. More from the linked Fox Digital story:

Fellow liberal Justice Elena Kagan criticized Jackson for failing to acknowledge case law that governs when speech can be regulated in the medical field, marking a rare public break between two justicestypically aligned in cases centered on high-profile cultural issues. 

Justice Sotomayor agreed with Justice Kagan. Perhaps the Babylon Bee has the final word:

KBJ: ‘How Can a Law Be Unconstitutional If I Like It?’

President Trump is set to address the nation tonight on the Iran War. The president told reporters yesterday in the Oval Office that the U.S. will leave Iran “very soon.” He mentioned a timeline of two weeks. What the president says to our allies tonight will be interesting. From NBC:

President Donald Trump has urged allies who didn’t join the war but are facing fuel shortages to “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” The United States “won’t be there to help you anymore,” he said, adding that “Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”

Meanwhile, the U.A.E. wants the Strait of Hormuz open and is prepared to join the U.S. in the fight. Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino advanced the shocking notion yesterday that President Trump may not care that much about the midterms:

“He’s not running for president again. If it’s the midterms, I don’t know if he cares that much. He is going to do what he can, but he understands history and knows that it’s probably likely that the Republicans won’t be able to hold it even if they try,” she added, noting that the “political price” is not weighing in on some of Trump’s “tough decisions.”

The stock market appears to be happy with an end (perhaps) in sight. In other news, Secretary of State Marco Rubio asks why the U.S. is in NATO if NATO allies did not permit the U.S. to use their air bases for the Iran war, and President Trump issues an Executive Order aimed at tightening rules for mail-in voting.

“Will the Insane Shutdown Ever End?” is the headline on Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York’s latest offering. York’s lead is a humdinger:

It seems weird to say, but Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., appears to believe Democrats have honored the memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by withholding the pay of Transportation Security Administration workers at the nation’s airports for more than six weeks. …

The short version is that Schumer and his colleagues took aim at ICE and hit TSA. Some 50,000 TSA airport officials across the country found their paychecks stopped because Schumer was unhappy with another agency’s enforcement of federal immigration law.

“Is ‘White Supremacy’ Causing an ‘Epidemic’ of Transgender Murders?” is the headline on a City Journal story. Huh? City Journal notes:

The problem is that many of these claims just don’t add up. Transgender people are less likely to be murdered than the rest of the population, most transgender people are murdered by members of their own race, and intimate partner violence—not hate—is the leading identified motive for most such murders….

While every death is doubtless a tragedy, we think the evidence is clear: the “epidemic” narrative has no basis in reality. Continuing to point the finger of blame at white supremacy and hatred will do nothing to serve the transgender people whose lives are taken every year for different—and preventable—reasons.

Hot Air has a nice post by John Sexton headlined “LA Times: Leaving California is Golden”:

It’s a pretty simple idea. You’re doing well enough to have a decent life in California but you’re always going to struggle to cross that line from renter to homeowner. The mortgage on that first house is just a bit more than you can comfortably afford. However, if you move to a nearby state like Arizona or Texas, your same salary will go a lot farther and you’ll be able to buy a nice house for the price of renting in California. So why stay?

Meanwhile, Jason Riley weighs in on what he considers “The Tragic Tale of Tiger Woods.” Unlike the rest of us, sports celebrities have to deal with their demons in public. But would it be too much to ask Tiger to hire a driver to keep the rest of us safe?

Unherd’s promo email this morning features a picture with the caution: “Warning: the below image is not an April Fool’s joke.” It is a grotesque, busty picture of poor Byron Noem, whom the U.K. Daily Mail has ousted as a crossdresser. The New York Post put Mr. Noem on the cover and has an extensive story:

Noem addressed shocking photos in a statement to The Post, saying she is “devastated.”

“The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time.”

A simple “no comment” would have been sufficient, Ms. Noem. Poor man.